susandennis

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What a day.... I had a great IHOP lunch with Elizabeth but getting there turned out to be a major frustration. Work was pinball city. Fix this, add that publish this, do you have that? can you do this? I was randomized out the yingyang. But all the randomizers have gone home so I'm good until at least tomorrow.

I did take a tiny little bit and added some ISBN numbers to my books database so that I could see if Library Thing would work... alas, cool idea but it ain't going to work. It won't accommodate my comments or the date I finished the book which are kind of important to my audience. On the up side, I won't have to look up 640 ISBN numbers.

So...

jimcarson, you were off the hook for about 10 minutes but you are back on now... Whenever. I'll be ready.

Leftover ginger chicken and rice for dinner and then TV and Teddy Bears.

Current Mood: chipper

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

librarythingtim.livejournal.com

Hi. Both comments and the date you finish a book are editable fields in LibraryThing. Check out the pencil icon, or the "styles" in your catalog.

Best,
Tim

From:

susandennis

Ok... color me very impressed. That must be one heck of a search routine you have that ferreted out my mention before it even got to be a half day old!

So... remember you started this:

1. I had 15 books with authors, titles, finished on dates, comments, isbn's and pub years in my csv. The 'import' button only grabbed 2 of them. And it did not grab the end dates or the comments. I do see how I could add them in manually. But cutting and pasting 640 sets of comments and dates... heck, I'm already 57, I'm not sure I'm going to live that long.

2. Do you have any ideas for how I could grab 640 ISBN's easily? I tried http://www.isbntools.com and it was quick but not at all complete and your database only liked 2 out of 15. 640 is going to be a killer.

3. Do you have any kind of uber account deal where someone who was old an lazy could pay extra and send in their csv of 640 books and get them magically stuffed into your database?

I'm still so knocked out that you have this account simply for trolling LJ for mentions - that's beyond cool.

thanks!

From:

librarythingtim.livejournal.com

Google Blog Search—what can I say? Anyway, I'm glad you don't mind.

Okay, to your questions:

1. The import *only* works by ISBN. It sees the ISBNs in what you give it—ISBNs have a certain "structure" to them it can recognize--and discards everything else. It would be nice if it could understand the thousand formats books could come in and adapt them to its format, but it settles for seeing the ISBNs and retrieving new, good data based upon them. We *tried* making individual import filters, and it was hard, impossible to do perfectly, and there were too many to do.

2. I'm unclear on what you mean, actually. What do you have now? LibraryThing REALLY ought to be able to handle any ISBN you throw it, particularly if you choose, say, Amazon, the LC and another good library (eg., California or maybe Scotland if you have British books). LibraryThing DOES have an "api" that turns titles into likely ISBNs (see http://www.librarything.com/api.php), but you need to be a programmer to use it.

3. No, not really. Again, if you have ISBNs, you should be set. Without them, it's hard. If you have them, but they aren't working, perhaps there's something going on. Send me the file and I will peek at it.

Best,
Tim

From:

susandennis

Thanks so much for your great answers.

My data base is very simple. 640 books - titles, authors, a paragraph of why I recommend, the publish year and the date I finished it.

No ISBN. None. The idea of looking up 640 ISBN's and adding them to the mix is daunting - especially since the ONLY quick way I could find had a less than 2% success rate with your importer.

So, it's really the ISBN that is the showstopper for me. I'll send you the little sample csv I created but I think unless I can figure out an easy way to get the ISBN's I'm doomed.

From:

jimcarson.livejournal.com

I'm surprised the librarything tool didn't work that well for you - it looks well-thought out.

Anyway, you mentioned you had your data in an access database somewhere? Would you mind emailing me a copy so I could play with it. (Else, I can use your existing tool and just list by genre.)

From:

susandennis

I zipped up the actual data base and a csv of the query that I pull from it and just mailed it to you. If you need/want anything else, just gimme a shout.