Member: br77rino

Re: Your post in the Recommend Site Improvements group under the topic 'Ten ways to make LibraryThing better!' :

You said: "The most important DATE associated with a book is the date of first printing - the dates that show up in Library Thing appear to be the latest date of publishing, which really isn't helpful. For example, Richard Price's "Clockers" is a 1992 book, but Library Thing lists it as 2008, presumably because a later edition got published. Very annoying."

Since your post didn't appear to ask for help in understanding how LibraryThing actually works, but rather seems to be just a statement, I thought it possible that you may not have gone back there to see responses, so I'm copying them here in hopes that you won't miss them.

My response to you was:
"br77rino - Your assumption that "LibraryThing lists it" is wrong. The books are listed at the respective libraries from which you choose to import data to furnish your "own" catalog.

Looking at your catalog, it appears that you chose the 2008 entry from amazon, so the 2008 edition is what shows up in your catalog. If you'd looked further down the amazon list, you could have chosen any of the other 9 entries to match your own particular edition. Or you could have chosen from the 2 choices listed at the Library of Congress, or from the 4 choices listed at the British Library, or any of the other results from any of the hundreds of other libraries from which you can search. You are not limited to the first result on the first search of the first library that meets your eye. And if you don't like ANY of the results, then just enter your edition manually."

A further response from jjwilson61, which clarifies the issue even more:
"There seems to be a misunderstanding as to what that entry in your library is. You want it to be the general work but that is not what LT stores at this level. In your library LT stores the physical book, which has a publication date but its not the original one because you probably don't own a book from the first printing. (If you are entering books in your library that you don't own then you still need to choose some edition since that's how LT works). LT does have the concept of works but it is generalized from all of the "same" books in different users' libraries. You get to it by clicking on the books title in your library. And on the work page are the Common Knowledge fields where you can enter information about the work, like original publication date."

It would be very much worth your while to play around with the workings on LT; to ask questions before jumping to conclusions; to investigate a bit into how things work before making such wrong assumptions. I hope that getting even a little understanding of how LibraryThing works may keep you from that unnecessary "very annoying" feeling.

posted by countrylife at 3:49 pm (EST) on Jul 17, 2008