Member: rorrison

Replying to your note in a discussion: I agree that listing DVDs should cause no problems for anyone. . . In fact only inertia has kept me from doing the same.

posted by Esta1923 at 12:38 pm (EST) on Jun 25, 2009

There are plenty of international member who have trouble getting money to the US. You could always browse the intl listings and give a gift membership to one of them?

posted by infiniteletters at 2:37 pm (EST) on Jun 24, 2009

Thanks. Got it.

posted by timspalding at 3:15 am (EST) on May 28, 2009

p.s.: If you want to look into that, you might also want to check "Holland". It's a popular but incorrect designation for Nederland (it's only one of the provinces historically - now two since they've split it).

posted by BarkingMatt at 9:15 am (EST) on May 27, 2009

Hi Randy,

Yes "Nederland" is the correct form in Dutch (but if you get very official it's "Koninkrijk der Nederlanden" = Kingdom of the Netherlands). I'm not sure you should use the Dutch form on the English CK though.

Let me know if / when you need more help, Matt

posted by BarkingMatt at 9:10 am (EST) on May 27, 2009

Thanks so much for your help!

Yes, Nickel is a Congo African Gray. She's 7 years old. I just adopted her a couple months ago. She says a lot of things but most of it isn't in context. She does say "Let's go take a shower" whenever we're out and she wants to come home. It makes for some surprised laughs. :)

posted by Storeetllr at 12:40 pm (EST) on May 25, 2009

Hi, Randy ~ Thanks for your response to my question/suggestion about favorite posts. I was just wondering how you got or created the link to the individual message.

Mary

posted by Storeetllr at 8:35 pm (EST) on May 24, 2009

Thanks. Blech. It's not on my high-priority list, unfortunately.

Tim

posted by timspalding at 11:54 am (EST) on May 24, 2009

I can mail to the UK.
I'll get to Bookmooch later today and reserve the book for you - I am new to that so will have to figure out how to reserve.
I'll drop you a messsage here when it's done.

posted by kevmaloneBM at 9:25 am (EST) on Apr 7, 2009

Thank you I changed it on the Book Page. I was positive I had listed his name just as it was on the book. I guess I missed it. Any way I hope I got it right. Thank you again for your help.

posted by LA12Hernandez at 2:01 pm (EST) on Apr 6, 2009

That is what confused me because I did enter the author's name as Elliott, Brian S. and as the real name Elliott,Brian Scott. But when I went back it was listed only as Elliott,Brian and had a bunch of books credited to him that he didn't write.I didn't know what had happened so I changed his name back but didn't know how to remove the books he didn't write. Thank you for your help. I sure wouldn't want The other Brian Elliott to lose credit for the books he wrote when Brain Scott Elliott only wrote one.

posted by LA12Hernandez at 1:07 pm (EST) on Apr 6, 2009

Why did you attribute the author Brian Scott Elliott who wrote [Compressed Air and Operations Manual] to books he did not write? When you combine works are they not suppose to be to the author who actually wrote the book?

posted by LA12Hernandez at 10:52 pm (EST) on Apr 5, 2009

In case you haven't seen it yet, I thought you might like to check out Ronald Turnbull's new book Granite and Grit, an informal and entertaining coffee-table guide to British mountain geology.

posted by brunellus at 7:26 am (EST) on Mar 25, 2009

"When publishing an NCE, is the purpose of the editors to collect together an assortment of essays and articles, and publish them with the work they refer to, or is it to publish an edition of a work, along with essays and articles that expand upon it? You appear to believe the former, and I the latter."

Actually, I am neither. I'm of the school of thought that says it's kinda friggin' futile trying to divine any kind of intent for doing anything! :)

That needs a little qualification. Why would I advocate using the ISBN field in order to "divine cataloguer intent"? As explained in my prior PM I don't really think "diving cataloguer intent" from any of the three fields I discussed (author, title, ISBN) is an unflawed process that will yield the results you desire 100% of the time. I've no idea what that % would actually be, so please don't ask me to guestimate the length of that particular piece of string either! My only take on that whole "divining cataloguer intent" nonsense is this: if you really feel you must attempt using such a flawed process, then use the ISBN field rather than the other two fields for all of the reasons I laid out in my prior PM. Very simply, the ISBN field best meets the KISS criterion. But that whole "divining intent" process you are using that field for is still VERY flawed !!

WRT to "divining publisher intent" I don't want to touch that concept with a barge pole. The fact that you do is, I guess, the main reason we are still having this conversation rather than having reached some kind of mutual compromise.

Finally, I myself introduced the concept of "book buyer intent" into the general thread discussion WRT why I purchased my MG editions of the "Alice" works rather than some other editions (post #297 I believe). But please notice I NEVER proceeded on to request that someone on LT must now "divine my book buying intent" in order to know how to correctly combine my copies of the "Annotated Alice" with other catalogued editions of the two "Alice" works!

Two people having different intents for doing something is no different than, say, two people having different tastes. This is where we differ. Apparently, you possess a taste measure that allows you to make your very subjective decisions with some authority. Unfortunately, I don't possess one of those wonderful devices and so am unable to do that.

"I still hold that the primary reason for separation of NCEs is because of the social difference, not because the non-titular (using that word instead of the possibly prejudicial "additional") essays and works could and sometimes do stand alone, although that is a perfectly valid reason as well."

I know you do. Stay very focused on that statement because it represents the crux of why we currently disagree but may yet still come to some closer agreement. If I didn't believe that I would have abandoned this interchange long ago. To see how we might achieve that I'm going to break down what you just said into some implicit component steps (at the risk of possibly putting some opinion or words into your mouth, so I'll apologize up front for that now, because that is NOT my intent - besides, the dial on your new whiz-bang intent-o-meter should indicate that anyways!). What I hope to achieve by doing this is to establish an area of disagreement that is somewhat smaller than the one we currently appear to have.

(1) You accept as a basic premise that "social difference" is an important criterion that has to be handled in any kind of discussions such as the one(s) on your thread or the conversation we are currently having.

(2) The reasons for you adopting that premise is because (and I quote you) "Tim has tried to create a structure into which the mess can be fit, with 'the primary aim being to connect people', not books. The 'social significance' is the defining purpose of the work structure."

(3) When you made the statement in (2) at the start of this interchange, it almost converted me to believing that the very subjective "social significance" criterion must of necessity be used along with, or even instead of, other more objective criteria for making combine/spit decisions. After all, you cannot connect people socially without employing a few "social significance" criteria along the way, can you? However, the more I have thought about this as we have had these interchanges, I now cannot accept that premise as being true. I explain why below.

(4) In contrast to you, I would contend that ALL that the LT system CAN and SHOULD do is report "connections" between the various books catalogued in people's individual libraries. LT members will connect to other LT members based on the "social significance" they INDIVIDUALLY attach to those reported "book connections" and NOT by any "social significance" divined for them by the LT system (nor by any "social significance" divined on their behalf by combiners or splitters that are manually cleaning up what the LT system cannot do automatically).

(5) Each LT member's books should be matched up ("connected") in the most objective fashion possible ... what "social significance" each LT member then puts on those reported "book conections" will vary from one LT member to another. "Social connections" will result due to the "social significance" that each INDIVIDUAL puts on his or her reported "book connections" ONLY AFTER those connections have been made and reported by the LT system.

(6) Building "social significance" into any of the processes that the LT system uses to establish "book connections" is a recipe for failure because each INDIVIDUAL LT member sees the "social significance" of his/her "book connections" quite differently. Programming "social significance" into the LT system is as equally futile as trying to program "taste" or "intent" or "representative opinion" into the LT system. Because you can only program deterministic processes NOT processes that have no correct solution.

Are you still with me? It is pointless me expounding any further on this if you strongly disagree with anything I've said so far. Not only that, I need to get some sleep here!

Later.

Unruly42

posted by Rule42 at 12:41 am (EST) on Feb 24, 2009

how do you know when you've reached a consensus in ANY discussion on a message board
"I couldn't find the discussion ..."

You completely miss my point. I have no desire to waste my time looking at that previous thread because any consensus you or anyone else felt it achieved is purely in your head. Unless, as I sarcastically suggested, your PC monitor screen turned yellow and started flashing at some point (to indicate that a consensus of opinion had now been achieved), or unless the thread was moderated and at the end of the discussion a vote was taken, tallied by that moderator, who then distributed the results to all participants, you CANNOT possibly claim that a consensus was reached. At least you cannot do that as long if there was some posted contrary viewpoints on the thread. If every post said the same thing and agreed with all the other posts then I guess you could claim a consensus, but I highly suspect that that was not the case.

Just because, say, the last 3 posts all said "A" does not mean that all the people that had previously posted and argued "not-A" (or even "B" or "C") now all agree with the "A" point of view ... they may have just got bored, come down with flu, gone on vacation, or like Os, gone back to focus on making a living. MB discussions rarely achieve consensus (except in the minds of those that wish to think that their viewpoint prevailed)! Furthermore, as I stated in one of my posts, even a thread consensus still doesn't mean a whole lot within the realms of combining - since everybody on LT is a librarian and the number of participants on the thread was probably only 20 or 30 people at best; as knowledgeable as they may be as combiners, they are still merely spit in the wind when it comes to the whole populace of possible combiners.

all the Group (C) owners have to do is remove the ISBN from their ISBN field
"This suggestion in particular Os objected to. Alas."

Why alas? Maybe this is a case where Os has to suck it up?! I never actually bought his argument; I just never bothered to post in order to disagree with it. See what I mean about consensus? Because I, or no one else, countered his argument you appear to think everybody else agrees with his stance. Os is quite willing to create a whole slew of "virtual books" (that completely screw up his book counts plus quite a few other pieces of data) so as to obtain correct work connections, yet he vociferously objects to compromising an entry in the ISBN field for a very marginal case. It's not as if the ISBN fields of all his other books are perfect. Any book he owns published prior to circa 1970 doesn't even have an ISBN, plus there are a few snafu cases (as someone else posted on the thread) where the same ISBN has been incorrectly assigned to different books. There is no reason why Os, or someone like him, could not treat the Group (3) special situation in the same manner as he has to treat the many-books-with-the-same-ISBN special situation should he happen to own one of those affected books.

The simplest way of "divining the intent" of Group (B) owners versus Group (C) owners (in the case of NCEs) is simply by the presence or absence of the ISBN. Why let one vociferous poster screw up such a straightforward solution? As I showed you in one of my prior PMs WRT the "Annotated Alice", there is no correct authorship of certain "gray area" books. All of the "authorship" permutations I listed (plus the many more left as "an exercise for the reader" plus some more bizarre ones I didn't even address) are valid entries for those 3 books. A few of those permutations are going to be a lot more frequently encountered than others, nevertheless no single one of them is exclusively correct (despite the fact that Os claims LC is clearly the only correct author for them). Since when was Os voted King of LT and given divine right to determine such matters? Personally, despite arguing for the case that MG is the sole author (in order to counter Os) if I were to catalogue my two editions on LT tomorrow, I would probably attribute their authorship as follows: "Martin Gardner (annotator), Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel (illustrator)."

Just as there are "gray area" books with no single correct authorship, there are similar "gray area" books with no single correct title, so IMO using the title field in order to "divine cataloguer intent" seems like a seriously flawed solution for quite a few books. Furthermore, how are the vast majority of the Group (B) and Group (C) cataloguers of an affected work that are not privy to your (or any other) thread in the "Combiners!" forum going to know how to enter their title in exactly the very particular way that Os (or possibly someone else later on) was laying out for them? Most NCE owners will not even know there is a combine/separate issue for the NCE title they just added. Whether it automatically gets lumped in with the crowd or automatically lumped in with other NCEs, it will still show a connection number. How is anyone immediately going to know that that is the "wrong" number?

The only NCE owners that will even get to read the DN (that explains the nuances between the different recommended ways of entering NCE titles such that the owner's intent may be correctly divined) are those LTers that BOTH notice, after cataloguing their NCE, that it has zero connections AND that actually care enough about that fact that they wish to connect their zero-connected book by immediately going off to the Editions screen in order to get their copy properly combined. IMO it does absolutely no good putting up a DN telling any potential combiner to honor carefully crafted title entries if the people that actually own and catalogue those books don't even know that they are meant to so craft those titles in a certain way in the first place. The whole process appeared very flawed to me.

Exactly the same argument can also be applied to the ISBN field, but at least the ISBN is a single piece of data; it's one of the pieces of data presented in the Combiner screen individual line entries so that it can be immediately compared with the DN instructions on the "confirm" screen by the potential combiner; and its presence or absence is a simple binary flip-flop (and information encoding does not get any simpler than that!). Also, I'm personally fussy about how my book titles appear in my LT catalogue but I don't really care whether the ISBN field is present or not (because many of my books predate ISBNs). Finally, as explained above, ISBN fields are sometimes incorrect (and need special handling) for other reasons.

Later.

Unruly42

posted by Rule42 at 10:49 pm (EST) on Feb 23, 2009

Well, this is taking up too much of my time and energy too. :( But let me do you the courtesy of responding to a few things you said ...

"I think we're broadly in agreement on most of the issues, although I don't feel as strongly as you that this needs to be won."

I think we are more in agreement than most folk posting on your thread - we mostly disagree over our approach to resolving the issues (you used the plural and I concur that there is probably more than one fundamental issue here; the question should NCEs be separated or not just happens to embody, or perhaps trigger, multiple issues). You take a relativist approach to the discussion (viz. every opinion is valid, we can all agree to disagree) which I think is fine, and it's also my own approach for purely subjective issues (as per my first post #86 on the thread). However, I don't see all the issues as being subjective like you do; I see only some of them as being so. There are aspects of the debate that have arisen that I feel are fairly objective and can thus be solved by a more logically reasoned approach.

That, I believe, is the cause of our main difference(s) of opinion. By putting the "social significance" factor up front you feel that all the issues are subordinate to it and therefore subjective, and thus relative. That was also my opinion when I made my first, somewhat cynical, post #86 on the thread. However, as I participated in the discussion, I began to feel that there are aspects of some of the issues raised by the NCE debacle that are much more objective and can thus yield to logical reasoning and a definitive answer. I would never try and apply logic to an obviously subjective issue such as is Titian a better painter than Velázquez. Probably no amount of impassioned reasoning would convince you of my opinion that Titian is the better of the two artists if you similarly believed that Velázquez was the better painter, or vice versa.

On such an aesthetic topic we would just have to agree to disagree. There is no right answer. We might enjoy the encounter of the discussion and hearing each other's opposing rationale for holding the opposite opinion, but neither of us would be swayed to change our own taste based on such discourse. And that seems to be where we are with this discussion. We appear to be arguing taste. I feel there is both an objective and a subjective basis underlying the surface issues and accordingly I would like to resolve all the objective ones so as to confine the area of disagreement to just the remaining subjective issues that I'm quite happy to agree to disagree over. If I give you the impression that I feel the issue "needs to be won" then that is the drive that you see.

I really don't want to force my taste onto you or anyone else, but I feel that in applying a relativist approach to all of the issues that have been raised in the debate you (and similarly some other folk too) may be applying a broadbrush relativist approach to some issues that could actually be resolved quite objectively. That relativist approach does indeed apply to many of the inherently subjective issues being discussed (which are ultimately a question of taste, nagging feelings, opinion, call it what you will) but when it is also applied to the few objective issues being discussed here it will render no determinate result for those too; when in fact they could be consensually resolved. So those are the areas I feel can and "need be won" (those are your words; mine would be "consensually resolved").

For instance, I believe that counting constituent works in books is a pretty objective process that everyone could pretty much agree upon if they are all singing from the same sheet. There are, of course, some gray areas and edge cases that might need thrashing out (or even agreeing to disagree over), but for the most part, breaking down a book, ANY book, into its constituent works should be as simple a process as recognizing them and counting them. IMO that is something that is pretty deterministic and very programmable (Turing computable).

However, in order to be able to count works the same way we all first need to agree upon what exactly a "work" actually is, and conversely, what it is not. The current definition of "work" on the LT Wiki page and Combiner screen sidebar is very vague, with the consequence that everyone has their own understanding (= opinion) of what a "work" really is, with the consequence that "work" is reduced to being a rather subjective concept. If LTers (perhaps yourself) view the concept "work" as being subjective then they (you) are entirely correct in applying a relativistic approach to it whenever that concept is broached. Thus if I say a literary essay is a "work" I cannot fault you if you respond by saying that that is just my opinion. Unfortunately, there is no progress that can be made from such a nihilistic standpoint.

OTOH, determining what the "social significance" of those respective works are AFTER we've all identified them (if we can ever do that, which I believe we can) is a completely different kettle of cod. That IMO is a highly subjective concept and I don't want to touch that issue with a barge pole. Because there is no right answer to it and we all will just have to agree to disagree. My approach to that issue is every bit as relativistic as your own. Actually, that's not quite correct. You are quite happy to venture onto that slippery slope and make pronouncements such as "NCEs have more social implications than ..." that I'm simply not willing to make. That most certainly is one of the key differences in our approach to this discussion.

It's not that I don't have an opinion like you on the "relative social significance" of NCEs, or any other works for that matter, it's just that I appreciate that that is all it is, and that my opinion, like AHs, is something everybody else has too. Whatever my feelings about the "relative social significance" of NCEs versus similarly titled works is just my opinion, or my taste, and I do not wish to shove my taste down other people's throats in the same manner that some other folk wish to do.

So my current take on the most important issues raised by this NCE debate are:

(1) Everybody should be able to catalogue their particular copy of a given book any way that they wish to.

(2) (a) The LT system should only establish objectively similar book/work connections. (b) The social interpretation and relative significance of those reported connections should ultimately be left for each individual to determine.

(3) It should be possible to establish an objective method of scanning a book and unanimously determining the number and nature of its constituent works (in exactly the same manner it is possible to lexically scan a written sentence and unanimously determine its syntax and possible semantic meanings).

(4) Given the present vague, open-ended definitions of basic LT concepts such as "work" and "edition" it is not currently possible to achieve the goal of (3).

(5) LTers are confusing and conflating the merits of both the relativistic approach to cataloguing in (1) and the relativistic approach appropriate to the very subjective nature of (2)(b) with the merits of a relativistic approach to resolving (3) versus a more deterministic, objective approach.

Those 5 points above are probably all as pithy as Tim's definitions of "work" or "edition" etc., so I probably need to explain each of them in more detail lest you interpret their meaning incorrectly. That, however, will have to be the topic of a separate PM.

Later.

Unruly42

posted by Rule42 at 10:37 pm (EST) on Feb 23, 2009

Thanks for your response. I too need to keep this short.

"In short, no."

In which case I have to assume you do not accept that all real world non-fiction "works" are also "LT works" (where a "work" is any piece of creative written output that can stand alone). That is, although any rationale person in the street when asked if a critical essay, or a piece of journalism, or even a comedic piece in Punch, is a "work" in the same manner that a fictional novel or short story is a "work" they would reply in the affirmative, yet that same basic concept of "work" that we all inherently understand for some reason does not carry through to the "LT universe"?

Because that is the only way you (or anyone else) can answer "NO" to my question. I can accept that viewpoint if someone could justify it rationally instead of just pouting, stomping their feet and yelling, "Just because!" at me. Perhaps you could be so kind as to do that for me?

I want to respond to some of the other things you put in your PM which I will do so a little later on. However, that is the most important point I needed to respond to for right now.

Cheers.

posted by Rule42 at 9:41 pm (EST) on Feb 20, 2009

What happened? Did the thread timeout? I must have missed the pinger going off! :(

Or did we reach a consensus while I wasn't looking? I hate it when that happens!

posted by Rule42 at 10:55 pm (EST) on Feb 18, 2009

Oh, please don't apologise, it's all part of the discussion. We're simply expressing different points of view.

posted by LolaWalser at 10:07 am (EST) on Feb 17, 2009

From an early toiler, thanks for your painstaking work sorting Wainwright out.

posted by affle at 4:52 am (EST) on May 23, 2008

You said:
Love your TimQuotes page! If you make the links look like this: <a href="/talktopic.php?topic=32873">/ta... then people accessing it from other language sites won't be redirected onto the .com site.

I know that and would like to do it, but then I can't (easily) copy them to an external page and run a link checker or other tools on them, so for my own sake I'll stick to absolute links.
So I'd rather that LT handled languages in some other way. I use Oracle Collaboration Suite at work and that takes a look at the browser language settings and servers tha same url to some with Montag, some with Monday and some with Mandag etc. I kind of like that, but there's more than one way to skin a cat and LT's way is also ok (except I like absolute links).

posted by bnielsen at 2:25 pm (EST) on May 15, 2008

"people ask for in wishlists that aren't handled by a tag, such as being included or not included in recommendations"

on the wishlist thread, so as not to derail it, I thought I'd comment directly.

You can now get recomendations based off a tag - from your profile, recommendations, use a tag. I've added the tag "use" to those books I wish to have as a basis for recomnnendations. This works very well, and enables you to deselect the odd books that produce spurious recommendations.

posted by reading_fox at 4:20 am (EST) on Mar 31, 2008

A new national book with a NW connection came out last month you might be interested in. It's not mountaineering, but it did happen up in the mountains east of Seattle. It's called White Cascade. I blogged about it if you're interested. Hope you're well. We're still suffering the rain. So what else is new, huh?

posted by benjfrank at 6:48 pm (EST) on Mar 24, 2007

You were "actually surprised" I didn't have a book? LOL. I do have a bit too many, don't I? I have two other Robert Wood books, both on the Olympics, but not the one you mentioned.

I admire you determination to go from 'unable to run a mile' to climbing Rainier. I also understand that feeling when the summit looks so close. A couple years ago I took my daughter up to the Muir Snowfield and the top looked so close that she, wearing sneakers and shorts, pleaded to keep going. I had to convince her that beyond our current position it wasn't like just taking a stroll on snow.

FYI: I write a blog for my library. There's a link to it on my profile. You might enjoy two of the entries from a couple months ago. One is Seven Summits and the other is High Rocks and Ice.

What's Keswick like?

posted by benjfrank at 10:34 am (EST) on Feb 11, 2007

Thanks for the additional covers! You'll notice that I've got a lot of books on the Northwest. It's my playground. I've never climbed a peak higher than 6000 feet and never been higher than the Muir Snowfield on Rainier (how many times have you climbed it?) but Rainier is my home away from home during the summer.

The park is closed now -- if you hadn't heard -- due to severe flood damage in early November. It rained 15 inches in two days, erased an entire campground, undermined several roads, and did some damage to Longmire.

posted by benjfrank at 7:31 pm (EST) on Jan 8, 2007

That was indeed the cover of the Snoqualmie Pass book that I have. Thank you! I've been so busy entering my books that I haven't had a chance yet to scan any missing covers. There's one less to do, thanks to you.

Question: How does someone in Keswick become one of only two LibraryThingers to own a book on far-away Snoqualmie Pass? I noticed you have also have a book on Lou Whittaker, an amazing guy who lives just down the road a spell.

posted by benjfrank at 5:03 pm (EST) on Jan 7, 2007