Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Hi all,

We're in the process of updating our Librarian Manual and we’d love your input here! We want to make sure that it’s current, especially when it comes to little-known rules that have been determined through Librarians Group discussions.

Do any rules come to mind that have been discussed as a group, but still need to be added to the manual? Are there any sections of the manual you found to be confusing or unclear when you first became a librarian?

This will be an ongoing project, so please feel free to post any thoughts as they come to you. Hopefully we can fill in some gaps right away.

Thanks, everyone - we really appreciate your help with this!

The alternate cover edition section could use an update, including the ARC rule for moving ISBNs.

Oh, and maybe add 'StoryBundles' to the list of things that are not valid books.

regarding format:
ASIN is a Kindle edition or Audible Audio

NOT A BOOKing ASIN? this is not mentioned. I have not had to, so I am not exactly sure about this.

"For audio books, number of hours should be used in lieu of number of pages, when that information is known."

I understood the numbering should be rounded up

Disambiguation by middle initial or name allowed rather than spaces.

disambiguate info in a lib note, rather than in author bio

More specifically address ebooks. Like how to handle nook 294... bnid numbers, kobo 123... id numbers.

Last I knew you put those in the isbn13 field, set format to ebook [not to nook or kobo] and could optionally specify in the edition field that it was a nook edition or kobo edition.

But for ebooks (epub, open epub or otherwise) with isbn13 978... numbers that could also be purchased on kobo or BN, those just got "ebook" in the format field, isbn13 entered as always and nothing specified about kobo, BN, etc. because the same isbn13 978 was available from multiple vendors for multiple devices and gr wasn't going to track hundreds of thousands of devices possibly used to read the exact same publishers ebook]).

It was a discussed policy (often with confusing answers) not actually set out officially in librarians manual (it's also been a while since I looked).

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ also did not track the file formats or copy protections used on or available for ebooks. For example publishers Baen and Smashwords allow you to download an isbn13 ebook in dozens of formats with or without DRM but goodreads just tracks "ebook, isbn13 978..." and not DRM, DRM-free, Social DRM, Avert DRM, Adobe DRM, pdf, epub, mobi, etc. Partly because authors and publishers can change that all the time; partly because still the same book; partly because that's the isbn agency policy. [publisher/author direct selling a book on their site is not required to get another isbn just to sell the same ebook in a different file format or for a different device).

An exception would be made if an author or publisher did obtain a unique isbn number for each file format. That is, if an author got one isbn for the epub file format and a second isbn for the pdf file format then goodreads would track both of those due to the separate isbn numbers (saying ebook in format field and specifying "pdf edition" or "epub edition" in the format field and recommended that a librarian note be added explaining the exception).

All of that may have changed; but, what hasn't changed is that it probably all should be clarified in the librarians manual.

More clarification on acceptable data sources.

Clarifying editing listopias (boy is that warning librarians get awfully intimidating). And quotes. And Manga "volumes"/"titles."

I think even beyond really emphasizing in librarian manuals that published covers are not to be overwritten that the email to newly accepted libarians should have a few policies emphasized, including the cover policy.

The following should make it into the revisions:

Extras, Shorts, Deleted Scenes
/topic/show/...

And this clarification to the above (Rivka's last post in the thread)
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Kindle/Audible books with ISBNs
/topic/show/...

ARCs and ACEs (Z-Squared's first post here)
/topic/show/...

D.A.-bully victims suffer more than a � on their commercial product wrote: "Last I knew you put those in the isbn13 field, set format to ebook [not to nook or kobo] and could optionally specify in the edition field that it was a nook edition or kobo edition. "

FYI, I was told by Rivka NOT to add nook or kobo to the edition field.

also, my limited skimming of the manual didn't pull up anything about adaptations. policy is to put adaptor's name as primary author and to keep separated from parent work. this should probably be added to the manual, unless it's already here and my limited ctrl F skills missed it.

I'd add that we should probably formalize the more or less unspoken rule that at if a series listing in the title field is already there, it should not be stripped out. But, it is not necessary to put it there.

Thank you for all the feedback so far! We'll get started adding these in - please keep the suggestions coming!

I just wanted to reiterate that Nook and Kobo shouldn't be added to the edition field, as these all fall under the ebook format. We've since updated the manual to reflect this here.

Meg wrote: "Thank you for all the feedback so far! We'll get started adding these in - please keep the suggestions coming!..."

Meg, for ease of reference, will there be a separate section (or thread?) somewhere noting just the current edits/clarifications being made this round?

Deon wrote: "regarding format:
ASIN is a Kindle edition or Audible Audio"

I've noticed that Amazon also used (uses?) it for some older DTBs. :(

Karma♥Bites ^.~ wrote: "I've noticed that Amazon also used (uses?) it for some older DTBs."

They do. We don't.

rivka wrote: "Karma♥Bites ^.~ wrote: "I've noticed that Amazon also used (uses?) it for some older DTBs."

They do. We don't."

Yes, I know. :) Only mentioned it b/c in past, I've seen edits where, I assume, someone saw ASIN & automatically changed it to Kindle edition.

* Maybe nice to add:
Inspired by the Italian version, I made a list with a lot of Dutch (and some Belgian) publishers and imprints; also libraries included:

/story/show/...

* I know Dutch books are a minority compared to English books on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ. However, is it possible to add Bol.com (Dutch webshop) to the list of not acceptable sources? I find a lot of books with covers from Bol.com. Not just regular users (who will not read the librarian manual), also some librarians who should know better use bol.com as source for covers.

A clarification for serialized books, re this thread would be nice.

Karma♥Bites ^.~ wrote: "Meg, for ease of reference, will there be a separate section (or thr..."

Yes, we'll be sure to post, either here or in a separate thread, specifying the changes we've made!

Some things that I have to correct often are

- the ISBN13 in the ISBN10 field (which gets truncated, therefore invalid)
- adding BOTH ISBN13 and ISBN10 (helps to prevent duplicates)
- no more than one author together (for additional authors use the "add more authors" link)
- do not put ASIN in the ISBN13 field (click "click for ASIN" link)
- use the ASIN only for Kindle ebooks (not for old books without ISBN that have ASINs on Amazon)


One thing I suggest is to put screenshots, like a step-by-step guide to create a book record

Z-squared wrote: "D.A.-bully victims suffer more than a � on their commercial product wrote: "Last I knew you put those in the isbn13 field, set format to ebook [not to nook or kobo] and could optionally specify in ..."

I was told do, don't or optionally both ways by Rivka over the course of several months on several threads. Confused me.

Which is exactly why I think it needs to be clarified formally in the librarians manual.

Moloch wrote: "Some things that I have to correct often are

- the ISBN13 in the ISBN10 field (which gets truncated, therefore invalid)
- adding BOTH ISBN13 and ISBN10 (helps to prevent duplicates)
- no more than..."

I also used to have to delete isbn 10 numbers on ebooks that had bnid and kobo id numbers in the isbn13 field. The preset get-a-acopy/purchase links will not work for ebooks with bnid and kobo id numbers if there is something in the isbn10 field.

(I think that's mostly an issue only on older books from some data feeds, like Barnes and Noble, goodreads may not even use anymore. What happens is that the preset links search first by isbn field if available instead of the isbn13 field; for the bnid/koboid books search only works from the isbn13 field.)

literary awards allow or not allowed in the description

Many users get confused when they click "add a new edition" and they expect to have the new book already combined with the others, so they think they did something wrong when they see it's not: maybe adding in the manual that the "add a new edition" link only fills automatically author and title fields, but the combining has to be done manually by librarians

I have seen librarians renaming author on books in order to move them to a GR author profile. Which initially is fine, but the problem is they are sometimes leaving fans & quotes.
maybe mentioning the forum post(s) and how to use them, Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Author profiles needing merging

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Deon wrote: "literary awards allow or not allowed in the description"

I would think not, since this would be redundant to the existing Award field.

Meg wrote: "I just wanted to reiterate that Nook and Kobo shouldn't be added to the edition field, as these all fall under the ebook format."

Is there a thread where this was resolved? I ask because this seems to violate the general database principle of "never lose data." I can see it for "retailer specific information" as described in the new LM, but this is also, often, a technological limitation: knowing that it's an "ebook" doesn't help me if I can't actually read this or that format, and this field would seem to be the appropriate place to list it unless we're going to expand the format dropdown (which would seem like over-engineering). Hopefully, the thread where this was previously discussed will teach me why this is a better idea, unless I just convinced someone who matters that it isn't.

Keith wrote: "Meg wrote: "I just wanted to reiterate that Nook and Kobo shouldn't be added to the edition field, as these all fall under the ebook format."

Is there a thread where this was resolved? I ask beca..."

I would think that indicating in the edition field when a book is a unique specific ebook-retailer edition of an ebook would be useful info for readers. I.e. if the ISBN is used universally at all retailers for the edition, don't note it. But if the identifier is specific to Nook, Kobo, Comixology, etc., note it in the edition field.

For example, Comixology doesn't use ISBNs or any identifier (other than a URL, which may have an embedded item number), so the only way to indicate it as a distinct from the ASIN Kindle edition or any other ebook editions is to note it as "Comixology" in the edition field.

You have that long article on why people can't add an alternate cover and now they can. These is also a tutorial on how to do it. That needs to be update now that you have the combined thingy fixed. Adding an alternate cover and getting it to show up as the default edition is very much easier than one would think from reading either the 'can't do it' article or the older tutorial.

Moloch wrote: "Many users get confused when they click "add a new edition" and they expect to have the new book already combined with the others, so they think they did something wrong when they see it's not: may..."

My suggestion is now outdated thanks to the new fix to "add a new edition". :-)

I am copy&pasting a comment from Rivka:

Alternate cover editions get assigned edition publication dates of when the new covers were changed (on other sites when known; otherwise here), to help distinguish them from the original editions. Since there are no previous editions in 2014 for these, I just set them to 2014. The original publication date for the work remains unchanged.

I had been doing that already myself without really thinking about it. But now that I see it explicated, it would be nice if this was added to the manual section on ACEs, too.

The part about awards can also use an update. Both a better part about how to add a award correctly (I think there is already a good text for that in this group.) as an clear list about which things are not awards.

Add Library URL's as unacceptable sources to the URL field

/help/show/3...

Another point of clarification about literary awards is when one or more stories in an anthology receives an award but not the anthology itself. Should the award be linked with the anthology or mentioned only in the book's description field?

Clarify disambiguation of authors with initials in their names and add examples to the manual

First^M.^Lastname is the standard

if there are authors with the same name including initial I have seen both these being done

First^^M.^Lastname

First^.M^^Lastname

I use the second example rather than the first

I'd like to make sure the workaround for the similar author names gets into the updated manual.

Message #2 in this thread: /topic/show/...

Robert wrote: "Keith wrote: "Meg wrote: "I just wanted to reiterate that Nook and Kobo shouldn't be added to the edition field, as these all fall under the ebook format."

Is there a thread where this was resolved? I ask because this seems to violate the general database principle of "never lose data." I can see it for "retailer specific information" as described in the new LM, but this is also, often, a technological limitation: knowing that it's an "ebook" doesn't help me if I can't actually read this or that format, and this field would seem to be the appropriate place to list it unless we're going to expand the format dropdown (which would seem like over-engineering). Hopefully, the thread where this was previously discussed will teach me why this is a better idea, unless I just convinced someone who matters that it isn't."

I would think that indicating in the edition field when a book is a unique specific ebook-retailer edition of an ebook would be useful info for readers. I.e. if the ISBN is used universally at all retailers for the edition, don't note it. But if the identifier is specific to Nook, Kobo, Comixology, etc., note it in the edition field.

For example, Comixology doesn't use ISBNs or any identifier (other than a URL, which may have an embedded item number), so the only way to indicate it as a distinct from the ASIN Kindle edition or any other ebook editions is to note it as "Comixology" in the edition field."

I agree with Robert and Keith that specifying if a book is a Nook or Kobo or other retailer edition with its own unique identifying number is useful for readers, because it helps them to be able to find the book in question.

For example, if a reader stumbles across a book with a 294- ISBN, and they click on the Amazon "Get a Copy" link, they won't be able to find the book on Amazon, because it's not available there, which could lead them to believe the book is no longer available. But, if the edition were labeled as "Nook Edition", they would then know to use the Barnes & Noble "Get a Copy" link.

Meg wrote: "I just wanted to reiterate that Nook and Kobo shouldn't be added to the edition field, as these all fall under the ebook format. We've since updated the manual to reflect this here."

But don't the other acceptable edition descriptions, like "anniversary edition" or "movie tie-in edition", also fall under other formats? My understanding was that the edition field was used to specify what makes a particular ebook edition different from the other ebook editions, or how a particular paperback edition is different from other paperback editions. Just as the 3rd edition of a paperback is a different edition than the other paperback editions of a book, so too is the Kobo edition a different edition than the other ebook editions of that book.

Well, the Kobo edition would not be different in content from the Nook edition etc etc which, I think, is the intent of the different edition status. It is only different in its ISBN no.

Except that we generally count ebooks with ISBNs differently from kindles with ASINs, even when the kindle edition is itself generated from an ebook with a given ISBN.

Z-squared wrote: "Except that we generally count ebooks with ISBNs differently from kindles with ASINs, even when the kindle edition is itself generated from an ebook with a given ISBN."

Exactly. Technically, most of those Kindle editions still fall under the ebook designation too, but we not only specify they're Kindle books, we have Kindle as a whole separate format. So then it makes sense to me that we would at least note that ebooks with 294 numbers are Nook editions and ones with 123 numbers are Kobo editions.

´¡²Ô»å°ùé²¹ wrote: "So then it makes sense to me that we would at least note that ebooks with 294 numbers are Nook editions and ones with 123 numbers are Kobo editions."

Agreed, wholeheartedly. Especially because back in the day, before "Audible audio" was a format in the dropdown menu, policy was to put "Audible" or "Audible audiobook" in the edition field, along with "Abridged" or "Unabridged".

But despite the apparent contradictions, current policy indicates no nook/kobo in the edition field. :( Which is why, one way or the other, the final ruling needs to be in the librarian manual.

Sandra wrote: "Well, the Kobo edition would not be different in content from the Nook edition etc etc which, I think, is the intent of the different edition status. It is only different in its ISBN no."

The way I understood it:

There are nook and kobo editions that are exactly the same as any other ebook edition (the ones publishers and self-publishing put out with the usual isbn13 numbers starting with 978). So, no, they are not always different in content. Nor do the isbn agencies require obtaining a different isbn number for each device an ebook might be played on or what file format offered in so long as content is substantially the same.

On the other hand, both BN Nook and kobo do have their own licensed versions of ebook formats (BN calls it "pubit" and you'll see a pubit logo on pages with the bnid 294 books and kobo calls theirs kobo or kobo specific) that will only play on their device/apps and may include additional features or content not available to the regular ebook isbn13 978 editions. BN starts their unique id/sku system with "294" and kobo with "123."

So if the ebook has isbn 978whatever, even if nook or kobo edition, there is not a nook nor a kobo edition; it's the exact same ebook (goodreads doesn't track all the formats an ebook available in such as epub, epub with drm, epub without drm, pdf, html, mobi ... unless the publisher/author obtained a unique isbn number for each format).

If gr wanted to make an edition for every device that will read the ebook (likely epub format which you'll sometimes seen shown on publisher pages as "open ebook"), then there would be tens of thousands of ereader specific editions with dozens of new ereaders coming out each week (for example, the local department stores keep putting out their own and various brands of ereaders that will all read the ebook epub/open files that are isbn 978whatevers).

Think I'm exaggerating about the number of editions that would be needed to track every device that might read it (nevermind all the apps and all the publishers and authors that keep changing what and if they offer in various brands of digital rights management) -- check out how many devices supported by products like the overdrive database public libraries use to loan ebooks; that's just a small sampling.

I never did understand when an audible edition was supposed to use the asin from amazon.com or the asin from audible.com.

So maybe that should be clarified in manual. (I apologize for repeating if already mentioned above.)

Is adding a note when disambiguating authors no longer done, or just not required, or what? I've always added them (except for the claimed GR Author profiles where one can't) but I see it's not actually in the Manual in the separating authors section. I refer both to the visible note in the description field (Librarian Note: There is more than one yadda yadda) and the edit page note with spacing (John^^Smith). I know there is no longer a list kept, but it still seems a useful thing to do.

It's fine to do so, but it has never been required.

Monique wrote: "I'd add that we should probably formalize the more or less unspoken rule that at if a series listing in the title field is already there, it should not be stripped out. But, it is not necessary to..."

I think it's a good idea to always have the series there, but it must be in parenthesis. This way, the series number shows up when you are looking at your shelf or other lists. Without this feature, it would be very difficult to organize my books in order of series number. Opening each book to its perspective page each time, to see the series number, would be extremely aggravating and time consuming. This is especially true when dealing with series consisting of 10 to 50 or even more.

/book/show/1...

I'm not sure if you can see my shelf, "fiction-the-cat-who," but look at the series list. I was lucky, someone had already added the suffix on most of my, "The Cat Who" books. What about people who are not librarians? At least, I had the ability to change them.

What I don't have a solution for, is when a book is in multiple series! Some mat have the suffix of one series, while others have the suffix of a separate series. Maybe, only allow it for the main series?