New catalog features, part two

See the new blog post.

This thread picks up from another, wonderful but now rather long thread begun Monday, when we introduced the new features.

I think this is the current list of bugs and enhancements we need to do:

1. Search problem on PC FF
2. Use edit page for manual entry.
3. Upgrade debris to include extra information.
--- Add work card to the debris page
--- ISBNs after each line in the other copies thing.
6. IE5 may not be working with the new edit page.
7. Don't update review date unless the review changes.
8. Reviews not saving/display HTML correctly (catalog is different from book details page too).

The above list is things that we know are bugs/problems after the updates. We are actively working on them and going as fast as we can. Don't re-iterate problems from the above list unless we say it is supposed to be fixed.

Give us as much information as you can about the error.
Always include your browser/os. It's crazy how many problems are browser-specific.

Should the combine error message issue be posted here or somewhere else?

I think that the combining error is a different issue. Create a separate post for that and detail it if you can (even a copy and paste is sufficient). It's hard for the two of us to keep up with the hundreds of posts and find the one that we need today.

Will do.

If you view a book with a significant amount of tag data on the new Book details panel (i.e., the Book details tab on the Details page), a set of elipses is appended to the list of tags (even though nothing has been truncated). This itself is not a problem. If, however, you edit the book and save the changes, the elipses are appended to the tag list (where they erroneously become part of the last tag). The next time that you view that book on the Book details page, you will have two sets of elipses--one that is incorrectly part of the last tag and another set that is added to the end of the list, but is not a part of any tag. If you save this, the second set of elipses is appended to the tag list with the final tag now containing two sets of elipses. And so on, and so on.

ETA: IE7 on XP(sp2)

Ah..thank you for that. It is, indeed, a bug...and an error on my part, I'm sure.

Also, I would like to second the request (in the previous thread) for the ability to assign a role to the primary author. For many anthologies, I would like to list the editor as the primary author and the various authors of the poems, stories, essays, etc. as secondary authors.

Is this planned for the future?

Yes!

Indeed, I didn't notice it *wasn't* there. We have the field. Let's use it.

Chris, do the work having never been told this was required?

That feature isn't really "in the code" already, but I suppose that we could handle it that way. I think that this might be one of those things that would be better to hold off on until we can start treating all authors the same, we'll have to change things up then anyway. I'm not sure though. I'd like to do it, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

6:
If you view a book with a significant amount of tag data ... a set of elipses is appended to the list of tags
This is fixed.

Bug #7. Don't update review date unless the review changes.

Fixed.

Chris: You'll want to rip that out of a lot of the code.

>10 conceptDawg:

We have the field for it, though. That was my intent from the start. Indeed, if we start treating them the same, we'll just move it out of b— into the other table.

Maybe this is the wrong place for this, I'll repost in Bug collectors if it is, but I tried adding a book from the Japanese Amazon and I got way too many other authors (this probably has to do with non of you knowing any Japanese ;-)

Title: 日本のしぐさ70, ISBN: 4925080873. The author is ハミルアキ (i.e. Hamiru-aqui) and reoccurs under other authors tagged as 著 (lit. "work" and "short for author" or "writer"). The translator occurs as Chang, Aileen under 原著 and 翻訳 the first of these, confusingly, is short for "author" or means "original work", and the second of these is short for "translator" (literaly "translation").

8> Yes I would like that too, so I can mark the first author as editor if it really is an editor and not an author.

>1 timspalding:

9. Rename debris

15: I'm not sure that is a "bug" per-se, we are limited by what we get from the library MARC data. That is definitely a question for a different Talk thread, and especially for Casey. You might try posting a new thread titled "Duplicate authors/roles in MARC parsing?" so that it gets Casey's attention.

13: Chris: You'll want to rip that out of a lot of the code. Done.

16: Got any suggestions?

19: uh-oh, here we go...

With all due respect, right now y'all probably want everybody beta-testing the hell out of the new code, rather than suggesting a hundred new synonyms for "miscellany"

17> In the bug collectors group?

19> Uuuh, no. Problem is that is really has three roles at the moment: (1) Other copies and editions of this title, (2) Potential combinations, (3) MARC data. Separate the MARC data and something like "Combination data" might cover it.

Ok, here's a minor one (I think).

Both primary and secondary author names are now entered Last, First on the edit screen. On the Book details panel, however, the primary author is displayed First Last, but the secondary authors are displayed Role - Last, First (here's an example).

Was this intentional?

21: Yes, I should have made it clear that I was being a little sarcastic in my response due to the litany of requests regarding the debris title in the previous thread. It's so hard to show sarcasm online...everybody should just assume that I am being sarcastic whenever I speak. It's a pretty safe bet. :)

Just so I'm clear: We don't really want suggestions for the debris title in this thread.

my...um...bad

24> Ah, good thought you we're serious. I tried to joke, but forgot the appropriate similey :-) Anyway, my comment on the combination stuff/MARC records stands.

I am not very happy with the Lay-Out of the Book details Edit Book page.

I think the fields LC Classification to Date Finished should be placed lower on the page, after Private Comments.

I would prefer to have the fields Summary, Comments, Private Comments and Number of Copies higher up, directly after ISBN.

Reasons:
First of all, more logical.
Second, import data contains a lot of mistakes. Editing fields such as Author(s), Title and and Summary, (Private) Comments is more convenient if you can see them on together on the page, rather than having to scroll down.

I added a book to my library 4 hours ago, and computer has been switched off in the mean time (Browser FF). Author: Artistotle, Translator: Hugh Lawson-Tancred.

However, searching My Library, I cannot find Lawson-Tancred.

And searching the Site using the Author Box, I cannot find Lawson-Tancred either.

Probably, the Search Page should be updated to allow search for Author/Editor/Translator etc

I'm not totally positive this is due to the new changes, but it's been mentioned in Site Talk and it's bugging me, so.... we are no longer able to give half-star ratings to books. :(

Heather

Yes, you can Heather - on FF browser anyway. Need to click twice on the last star of the rating and it turns into a 1/2. There may be a problem with IE.

Oddity reported for: Your Profile>stats>multiple works link

The titles and count is correct but there's two brackets () at the end of each row. I'm fairly sure it wasn't like that before. In fact I think there used to be another field populated in those brackets. Can't recall what it was; Summary or Publication??

BTW: This upgrade looks fantastic and your response to bug reports and glitches is outstanding. Thanks!

Oops, edited to add using Firefox on Vista. tx

I have just added a book to my catalogue manually. The book is the Folio Society edition of "The Best of Saki".

http://www.librarything.com/work/details/23983824

I had two problems.

Problem 1: After clicking on submit I got the following error.

a Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/html/update.php:1) in /var/www/html/update.php on line 623

But the book was added to the catalogue. I wasn't getting this error before yesterday's upgrade.

Problem 2: When entering the book I included A N Wilson (who wrote the introduction) as an "Other author". But this still works as it did before yesterday's upgrade. I cannot see anywhere to add the role of this other author. That was true on the page where I initially added the book and on the edit page when I added the date acquired.

32

I have seen the 'Cannot modify header information' error a couple of times, too.

I don't have time to read through this all.
I use Library Thing largely to catalogue Japanese books; there's a persistent error that means Japanese books almost always combine incorrectly with a random assortment of other books. (Compounded by lots of people not taking the time to separate these messes out.)
On the old system I could click one button from the list and get to a page where I could click another button to separate my book from that list; with the new system I had to poke around for a while before discovering the debris page...which had all the wrong books and not my book. There's no way to get my book off the cluster of unrelated books without separating them out one by one - unless I click Combine/Separate works and click separate from the list there.
I know the combining error is not a high priority, but if you're rolling out a Japanese version you really need to get this fixed, especially since the new set up also makes it much hard to fix.

On top of all that, trying to separate out the book I just added (Windows XP, Firefox 2.0.0.11) gives me the following message:
SELECT books_title, count(1) AS count, source_name AS books_source, w_author AS previousauthor, w_rating AS previousrating, books_lang, w_originallanguage, lang_code FROM workalias INNER JOIN bookstack ON wa_fullcode = books_sameness_resolved INNER JOIN work ON wa_workcode = w_workcode LEFT JOIN languagecodes ON books_lang = lang_code LEFT JOIN sources ON books_source_id = source_i WHERE wa_workcode = 4456614 AND books_lang NOT IN ('und', '') GROUP BY books_title COLLATE latin1_bin, books_source ORDER BY if(books_source LIKE 'Amazon%', 2, if(books_source = 'Manual Entry', 3, if(books_lang 'eng',if(books_lang = w_originallanguage,4,5),0))), count DESC
Unknown column 'source_i' in 'on clause'

Either some MARC records disappeared during the update, or they were never saved in the first place: When I got to acopy of one of my Minna no Nihongo books and the click debris and show MARC records I get a "No MARC records in the system."

edit: maybe I should rephrase: do you save the MARC record when the data on a book is obtained from Amazon?

As for a poster on the original thread, I have lost all "other authors" in my catalogue, with the exception of the one entered yesterday.

Cross-posted here - I still don't have my LC numbers back. My data is still all replaced by green data that the system has created, instead of all the numbers I put in.

This was mentioned in the first thread but I don't see it mentioned here yet.

Most (maybe all) of my LC call numbers have turned back to their green suggestive format. If I try to edit them in catalog view the display gets stuck on "Saving..." and checking the edit book page confirms that the new data did not get saved.

If I edit the LC field from the edit book page, the data is saved but the display in catalog view does not change; it remains green.

Why is the role restricted to other authors, and not available on the main author. (indeed why has the separation been preseved).

There are several books for which I think the logical cataloging method would be to enter an editor and a list of contributors. e.g. Man and his Symbols, The Skywatcher's Handbook and On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy.

This might also be suitable for fiction anthologies.

Thanks for the updates; I really like the author roles system.

This may have slightly preceded the new features, but I've noticed a change in the way the "Last, First" author field is converted into a "First Last" display. Previously, "Smith, John, Jr." would display in "First Last" as "John Smith Jr.", but now it displays as "John, Jr. Smith". To get the desired display, I have to enter it in "Last, First" as "Smith Jr., John", which doesn't look right to me.

Small inconsistency between my own library and other member's libraries: When I click on the title of a book in my own library and then go to the detailed data I get two tabs - work and book details. When I do this in any other library I only get a work details tab. I can still make the book details visible in that case by messing with the URL, but then I encounter another inconsistency (which may be intentional): data source and entry date are missing.

Just saying thank you to Tim for fixing the other authors in catalog view (old thread #61, 110, 136) -- this will be such a help for me when the new multiple author/role system rolls out for existing books. Thanks.

I don't see a mention of this elsewhere.

I just noticed that clicking on "Zeitgeist" gives a page that is empty except for the following:

Vital Statistics
Members 316,731

- fatal error (2)

>35 koffieyahoo:

I don't believe that there are any MARC records from Amazon. They don't save their records in MARC format.

>38 DaynaRT:
I have the same problems with LCCNs in catalog view. The data is back in the book details, thank god, but the catalog view displays the LCCN from the work details (ie the consensus LT number) instead of from the book details page (my number).

I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but IMO it would be useful to have the "other authors" on the data page be linked to their author pages. (I realize some may not have author pages if they were never a primary author, but others do.)

1. Spacing doesn't show up on review EDIT page - just run on sentences with no paragraphs. (last night, it also wasn't showing up on final review page but now that seems to be fixed).
2. Tags aren't getting added to already existing tags but showing up as new tags even though they have the same name.

^2 conceptDawg

With all due respect, I don't understand your lingo enough to know whether I'm reiterating one of the listed problems! ;-) Debris page? "ISBNs after each line in the other copies thing" So please don't be too hard on me if I'm reiterating!

What I do notice is that on either the "work" or "book" tab page (sorry, I forget which), I no longer have a pull-down for rating, but rather a system of click-able stars, which does not allow me to put in half ratings anymore.

Also, this is my mistake, but I was surprised when I entered info into the "work" tab page, moved to the "book" tab, and my "work" tag info was lost because I hadn't saved it. Maybe nothing can be done about that, and I'll just remember to save -- but I had this vague idea that tabs are really on the same page so moving to another tab wouldn't lose my data.

Finally, and this only happened once so perhaps it was a glitch that's already gone, but the "search" box in my library no longer differentiates between searching "books," "tags", and "all". When I put in a word, it brought up the same books multiple times even though I only have one copy of each -- I have to assume it was pulling the word from the titles AND from the tags and counting them as separate results. The word was "pageant" in my library (amysisson). It worked OK the next time, but I thought I might as well bring it up while I'm at this....

I have to admit I do find it hard to determine if any given problem I experience already has a thread going, because of differences in jargon, and also because the threads get really long, really quickly.

But I like the new look of these pages, and am really looking forward to utilizing the "author role" feature. So thanks!

I also have the LC number problem reported by several people; the data has been replaced with the green "suggestion" number, which does not sort, and in some cases has disappeared altogether in catalog view. (It remains visible the in book detail page.) Double-clicking on the field to edit and save it does not work; it gets stuck in "Saving". If I go to the book details page and re-save the number nothing on the catalog display changes -- it remains either green or blank accordingly.

(FF 2.0.0.11 on XP.)

Would it be possible to get a link to the Debris page from a catalog (similar to how we can get to the main page or the details page in one click)?

It would be very helpful for combiners.

First, tremendous thanks for the private comments and the progress on authors/roles. I'm still having some UI bugs, which I think have all been mentioned before. Like for many people, the LC classifications are not showing in catalog view, even though the data is there when looking at book details - instead the catalog view is showing either "green" LC classifications or a blank space in cases where the only one in the system is one that I entered manually.

Also, lots of problems with the edit page still. Taking the example of
http://www.librarything.com/work/details/23995417
after some effort I managed to get the correct information into the system, so that it will show when looking at book details, but it took a few tries because the edit page isn't displaying the correct information. When I look at the book details, the author field contains "Markus Neteler"; the other authors line contains "Author - Mitasova, Helena"; and the primary language field contains "English". However, when I then click on "Edit", the author field appears empty, there is no other author shown, and the primary language field says "(blank)".

As before, Safari 2.0.4 on OS X 10.4.10

Speaking of combining, if I want to combine 2 tags, it only allows me to combine with the first of the suggested tags. I can't find a way to properly combine tags, is this a bug or do I misunderstand?

On a side note, I found a Russian book in my collection, should I translitterate it, or is there support for Cyrillic in the near future?

Amendation to post 47. Those were problems as experienced on the Mac OS X with Safari. On the PC with Internet Explorer 7.0, I was able to make the tag problem go away, but the spacing problem actually gets worse. The sentences were all run-on. To single space, I had to hit enter twice; to double space, I had to hit enter three times.

On the recommendations page here http://www.librarything.com/work/2927391... there's an error message in the Amazon Reccommendations area that messes up the page layout

Oh, added a few line breaks to stop it messing this page up too much . . .
+++++
Warning: fopen(http://72.12.88.165/distributed/proxy.php?requestUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwebservices.amazon.com //
%2Fonca%2Fxml%3FService%3DAWSECommerceService%26SubscriptionId%3D0AKZRAQCPVV5WGM2JCG2%26Operation //
%3DItemSearch%26SearchIndex%3DBooks%26Keywords%3D0151010986%26ResponseGroup%3DSimilarities):
failed to open stream: HTTP request failed!
HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required in /var/www/html/inc_distributedrequest.php on line 25
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /var/www/html/inc_amazonrecommendations.php on line 51

None.
+++++
FireFox 2.0 on WinXP

Posted yesterday on the Bugs list - silly place to post a bug.

First off....the LCC thing about LCCs not showing correctly in your catalog: I'll see what I can do.

As for the rest, I'll answer by message number...

46: The eventual aim is to have other authors link to their own pages. There are technical reasons why we don't do that now....but it is the plan.

48a: The double-clickable half-star ratings will return. In fact, they still work in every browser except IE. The bug is extremely low priority right now, but it will be fixed.
48b: Not saving if you click on other tab:that's a UI issue that I'll have to think about. There are direct solutions (warning dialogs if you have changed anything) but I'm not sure that those wouldn't annoy more people than they would help. Thinking.
48c: The search box in your catalog no longer has a pulldown menu to select what you are searching. All searches now use the old "Search All" selection. We're just seeing how this works and we could go back to the old way if things don't work out. We like the fact that the new, single, search makes maintenance more efficient for us and the UI cleaner and more obvious for the members.

51: I'll have to get Safari 2.0.4 and see about reproducing your problems. I run Safari and FF all day and haven't seen the same problems that you mention.

47, 53: The spacing in reviews is something that I'm working on today. Actually, I'm reworking the review block entirely so that people can use HTML (they could do that before but we were debating removing link abilities for security purposes).

54: Amazon recommendations barfing: I'll have to check that out. I saw your previous post but have just been too busy to get to it quite yet.

Would it be possible to get a link to the Debris page from a catalog (similar to how we can get to the main page or the details page in one click)?

Yes please, even if it's just optional like the swap info column.

The LCC info should now be showing up in your catalog.

56: I'll talk to Tim about it. We have really been wanting to reduce the number of icons in the shared column, but we'll talk about.

55: conceptDawg - your answers start with message 46.

Do you have a reply to my message 32? I can add that I have just added a dummy book manually and the error/warning (my problem 1) appears to have gone away.

However problem 2 remains. But I have also added two real books today from Amazon.co.uk and they show the other authors correctly in the new form. So it looks as if this second problem only applies to manually added books.

>57 conceptDawg:

LCC info is no longer green, but still can't be edited from catalog view. (FF 2.0.0.11/WinXP)

57: Here's an idea: make it configurable like the other columns.

>57 conceptDawg:

Well that's why I said optional. No one has to ever see it unless they want to. :)

1.3: Is "combine other works by this author" seems missing.

And incidentally, LT seems to forget I came from a specific book (and, indeed, I own that book) here:

http://www.librarything.de/work/65681/edit/24000048

- go to work tab, detail tab vanishes.

ETA: doesn't want to let me change a cover, either. Probably the same cause.

ETA: Possibly a caching issue - now it works. Why it was so slow with *this* book and none of the others ...

>57 conceptDawg: My LCC numbers are back the way I entered them. Thank you muchly for that (yay!). I am, however, replicating fleela's problem (#59) in that I can't edit my LCC data from catalog view. I'm using FF on XP.

Never mind the pulldown menu in the search box on my catalog, nothing happens no matter what I put in the search box - I mean Nothing, Nada, Zip; no search of any kind takes place.

Using Windows XP & firefox.

Just tried a search with IE7 & it worked, so it must be something with firefox.

Sorry about that. I have LCC working in the catalog for in-place-editing (IPE). All of these database changes means that we've had to change many, many of our code files to reference new tables and data columns. Thanks for being patient while we iron out the kinks.

>65 conceptDawg: Yes! Working for me now. Thanks!

Thanks!

>156 timspalding:,158,165 of previous thread

Do I understand this right, that HTML coding previously allowed will no longer be retained in the Comments field? I have quite a bit such coding, not just "a href" but underlining, italics, & bold--all of which is still there *as long as no changes are made*--but any edit at all on the edit page zaps it all away (even the italics, etc.). I really don't want to lose all this.

68: That is NOT correct. I'll work to get HTML coding in long-format fields working again from the book-edit page. You can still do it from the catalog, I think.

>65 conceptDawg::

Thanks for the quick fix! It works just fine now.

69: Whew.

I MAY have solved the search problem on the PC version of FF. I say may because I don't have my PC handy right now so can't test it. Let me know if it is, in fact, solved. Or not.

Two questions:
Now that you are adding new fields to the catalog, wouldn't it be a good idea to let go of the seven fields in a display limit and change to a horizontal scrollbar with as many fields displayed at a time as each user wants to?
If not, it would be necessary to add additional display styles maybe, in order to be able to use all of these new fields, no?

I am very pleased to see all those new fields coming, especially the private comment field. However a lot of the fields you have planned to introduce are of no use to me and I am sure to many others too, although every user might find different fields useful.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a couple of fields which each user could name to his liking.

Anyway thumps up for all the good work :-)

>72 conceptDawg:

Nope. Still can't search with FF.

73: While I do provide input regarding these kinds of decisions, they are ultimately beyond my pay-grade. :)

74: Thanks. I'll have to look at it later tonight when I have my PC around. So much for the "shot in the dark" approach.

Hi Chris & Tim. May I reiterate a bug I reported in the earlier thread that didn't make into your checklist and wasn't discussed yesterday?

Whenever I go to the edit page for a book, the author field comes up empty (even though there's clearly data in the author field in my library). This is true on a first edit, and it's also true if I add the author, save the changes, and then return to the edit page. But, again, it's not just that my changes aren't sticking, it's that the author info appears to be dropping out from the very first edit.

Today's update: this still happens in Safari 2.0.4/Mac OS 10.4.10, but NOT in Firefox 2.0.0.6/Mac OS 10.4.9.

Thanks again for everything!

I have an issue that I haven't seen mentioned here before.
I've entered a poem in the comments field of this book
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bnielsen&deepsearch=hobbitten
I entered it as
first linesecond lineetc
In the catalog view it is displayed without the spaces in the beginning
of every second line. I don't really see the need for trimming spaces willfully entered by me, but if someone seriously needs this feature I can live with it.
In edit view however, the comments are displayed without spaces and without linebreaks, which I hope is a bug. If I then is so stupid as to touch the comments field and press "save" the line breaks disappear.

Markell: Sorry about not putting it on the list. I could have sworn it was in one of my posts here. No matter. It IS on my list.
Just to let you know that you can download a more recent version of Safari for free. You're running Tiger, so I assume that you have the machine resources. I don't really care. Just making sure that you know the resource is out there. :)
http://nightly.webkit.org/

77: That bug is on my list and is mentioned in post 55.

Thanks Chris. Yeah, I'm taking the opportunity to update FF and Safari on both my machines. I hate FF 2, but oh well. Oh, for the simpler days of Mosaic...

Off topic, but I couldn't resist....Mosaic....ahhh, Mosaic. Those were the good ole days. I actually have a Mosaic sweatshirt that I got at a Supercomputing conference back in the 90s sometime. Good times.

Another issue with the Debris page:

Under "other copies and editions of this title" it now shows "{Title} by (X copies separate)"

That is, the author's name is not actually shown along with each individual title, it just says "by" with no name, making it seem like all these titles have no author filled in. I'm finding this confusing for combining purposes.

>57 conceptDawg:
The LCC numbers are back in the catalog view, thank you.
But now I've noticed a more subtle problem. I put extra spaces in my LCCNs to make them list in the correct order, i.e. HQ{4 spaces}3 .L4, HQ{3 spaces}90 .R4, HQ{2 spaces}900 .D6, HQ{1 space}1445 .S8. It was always convenient that the multiple spaces only showed up as one space, but still sorted correctly.
Now all of my consecutive spaces seem to have been reduced to a single space. Consequently the ordering is wrong. I tried to put spaces back in a few records and they didn't seem to stick.

Thanks in advance for your attention

> 82 Crap. Yes, same here. I thought I had checked that earlier when the data was returned, but you are absolutely right - all that spacing that I put in is gone, and the LCC is, as a result, back to sorting incorrectly.

Chris has been shouldering the work today. I have an enormous amount of "business" to attend to today. (Someone has to do it; we have no "suit" here.) Here are a couple quick comments.

> 15 koffieyahoo on Amazon Japan data problems.

I checked the Amazon XML. That's how they're sending it to us. I don't think there's any other way we can handle it than as they send it.

> 23

I think we should always list authors in First Last format, unless the user requests it otherwise (eg., in a catalog) or for clarity of edits.

> 27

"I would prefer to have the fields Summary, Comments, Private Comments and Number of Copies higher up, directly after ISBN."

Well, I just got a very angry letter from someone who thinks we're embracing the social too much by moving reviews and tags up above ISBN and etc. Basically, there's no order that won't irritate someone. I'm not sure how to resolve that issue.

> 28

"However, searching My Library, I cannot find Lawson-Tancred."

Good point. Right now it's not searching the other authors. I'll add that.

> 35

"edit: maybe I should rephrase: do you save the MARC record when the data on a book is obtained from Amazon?"

If you get it from Amazon, we do not get a MARC record for it. That said, we are not showing MARC records at all right now. We're moving them all to another system for space reasons—we're sitting on the data of the British Library right now, so give us a week or two to get it settled.

> 40

"I've noticed a change in the way the "Last, First" author field is converted into a "First Last" display. Previously, "Smith, John, Jr." would display in "First Last" as "John Smith Jr.", but now it displays as "John, Jr. Smith". To get the desired display, I have to enter it in "Last, First" as "Smith Jr., John", which doesn't look right to me."

Okay, that's interesting. I'll look into that. I think you should be able to do it your way.

> 46

"I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but IMO it would be useful to have the "other authors" on the data page be linked to their author pages."

Yes, good point. We're going to get that working soon. Right now some would fail because they're not yet "authors" in the full sense.

> 75

"73: While I do provide input regarding these kinds of decisions, they are ultimately beyond my pay-grade. :)"

Feh.

> 76-78 Author vanishing in Safari

Chris: What the heck is that about?

> 82

"Now all of my consecutive spaces seem to have been reduced to a single space. Consequently the ordering is wrong. I tried to put spaces back in a few records and they didn't seem to stick."

Sorry, that was intentional. We've had a lot of weird results from stray spaces. In HTML two spaces looks like one. Sorting was the main problem. People would complain about something sorting wrong and we couldn't figure out why until we looked at the raw data and saw extra spaces. It never occurred to me that a user might intentionally insert second and third spaces to force a particular sort order.

I'm afraid the solution is for us to make sorting *work* for LCC, not to allow extra spaces which, most of the time, will just be inadvertent and lead to puzzled emails about the issue.

Reviews, comments, and private comments can now have an assortment of HTML in them via the book edit page. You can also use returns/line feeds/whatever you want to call them to space out paragraphs. It will handle that correctly.

Allowed HTML tags:
cite, pre, br, b, i, u, a, em, strong, em, u, strike, ul, ol, li

That should be enough for even the craziest reviewers out there. No image tags.

Okay, catalog searching now works for secondary authors. I'm hoping it doesn't slow thing down a lot.

T

84: Basically, there's no order that won't irritate someone
So true. And thank you for so often listening to majority around here, it is really appreciated.

I like having the reviews and tags before the ISBN, since reviews and tags are things I'm interested in (usually don't give a second thought to ISBN unless something is screwy), but that's just me.

A update on FF on the PC and search. This is working for me. However, what is not working properly is IE search.

On Firefox I can either click search or hit enter. On IE I am forced to click search.

As to field order on the edit page, let me suggest that instead of agonizing about single fields, apply some basic rules. (For one, that way you have at least a hint where to stick the next field.)

As we all know, Amazon data has often a number of errors. So, make the Amazon data fields go near the top, so they're more visible. (And please put the various author fields *together*!)

Put the social fields below that as sort of "next important". And the private fields at the bottom.

This leaves the data fields that aren't Amazon fields, about which I have no opinion. (Not least because I don't really know which those are under the new scheme.)

15 & 84 > Yup I understood that from Casey when I cross posted in Bug collectors on reccomendation of conceptDawg Show Affinity. It's okay, since I usually go to the edit page anyway when I add a book whiping the fields is not such a hassle.

35 & 84> I understood that too (offtopic: what is the relation between MARC and Z39.50? The last of these is used by amazon isn't that so?)

41> What about this?

89: Regarding field ordering....
I know that you feel like you know exactly how the fields are supposed to be ordered. EVERY person does. And nearly all of them are different. That's the problem. We just aren't going to make everybody happy here. I don't think it's possible. Even Tim, Abby, and I had different ideas about what went where.

As it is now, the most commonly edited fields for the vast majority of members are at the top. These are rating, tags, review, and author information (all together). After that it is items that frequently need changing when dealing with Amazon. Many members just don't care that the Amazon data is wrong. The expert users (who happen to be the most active here in Talk also) will definitely want certain items further up on the list than novice users. But novice users outnumber the expert members by orders of magnitude, so maybe we should cater to them. We also have to be mindful of the fact that the expert members are the ones that make LT what it is, so maybe we should cater to them. It's a fine line that we have to walk. We try our best.

All of that said, fields are probably going to get moved around a bit especially as we add new ones.

90: The problem of disappearing tabs should be solved. It was a complicated logic problem where the page was confused. It has to deal with things like: is this your book? Is this a private book? Is this in a private library? Are we even looking at the book tab? Do we even need a book tab for this work? Etc. Regardless, it should be correct now. If you have more problems then feel free to let me/us know.

91> Nope, problem I described persists, i.e. seeing the details of some other persons copy is still not easily possible.

Example: I go to Tim's library and click on his copy of "1688 : a global history", when I go to the details page I only see the work details, but not the details of Tim's copy, which I can still see by changing the url from this to this.

Give me a link to one at which you are trying to look.

See above - edited 92. Maybe browser is important: Linux /w Firefox 2.0.0.2.

Ah....the first link that you sent is a link to a work page. Notice that there is no book ID in the URL. So it is just going to show you the overall work information.

The second link is a link to an individual book. So it will have that book's info in addition to the overall work information.

All of that being said, I just fixed a problem with the URL rewriting on the server. It was losing the book information if you clicked on a title from the catalog (it was always working correctly if you clicked straight to the details or edit page using the icons on the right side of the catalog). I think this is what was throwing you off in your example above.

If you're still having problems, let me have it.

95: we're getting somewhere. It now partially works as I expect. Now, I do the same clicks as above, then click e.g. member revies and then click details again. The details of the specific copy I was looking at are gone again (similar URL problem I guess).

In addition to this: if I look at the details of a book of another member and I own a copy which fall under the same work as the book of the other member, then I get an "Edit book" on the left side of the screen, but when I click on it I just get the details of the other member's copy. I would expect no "Edit book" on the right side in this case. Okay, that maybe a bit vague... I can give you an example later when I'm online again. Going off-line now for some dinner.

Yes, we do a lot of URL rewriting. It's probably getting munged somewhere. I'll have to go through and figure it out. Double-plus not-fun.
I'll have to get to it tomorrow. I'm drained.

The second thing is definitely a bug. I'll have to rework some of the work page code there.

>84 timspalding:

"Now all of my consecutive spaces seem to have been reduced to a single space. Consequently the ordering is wrong. I tried to put spaces back in a few records and they didn't seem to stick."

Sorry, that was intentional. We've had a lot of weird results from stray spaces. In HTML two spaces looks like one. Sorting was the main problem. People would complain about something sorting wrong and we couldn't figure out why until we looked at the raw data and saw extra spaces. It never occurred to me that a user might intentionally insert second and third spaces to force a particular sort order.

I'm afraid the solution is for us to make sorting *work* for LCC, not to allow extra spaces which, most of the time, will just be inadvertent and lead to puzzled emails about the issue.

Does this mean that all that time I (we?) spent inserting those spaces so the field would sort correctly is out the window? I.e., you're not going to restore that data? Getting that data to sort correctly was a seriously time-consuming project, and frankly having the ability to use the LCC data the way it's intended to be used is a far more important aspect of a *library catalog* to me than just about any other feature on LT. When can we expect this fix to take place, since it's obviously not a "bug fix" associated with this new author stuff?

^98 Just in an effort to understand (not that I'm involved, just curious), would you be willing to post an example of where you might have added an extra space or two, and how it affects sorting?

Sorry to be dense. It's just frustrating that I only understand about 20% of any given site-related topic, and I want to understand more about how this all works.

>98 philosojerk:

I second the exasperation expressed by philosojerk. I'm also trying to imagine the conditions under which my spaces could have caused problems for others. The only thing I can imagine is that people were trying to sort by LCC using the green numbers derived from other users' data.

But even without people like me putting in extra spaces this could never yield a correct sort. First, because of the underlying problem that I was fixing with the extra spaces. Second, because source libraries are inconsistent; some put spaces in the LCC and some don't. Similarly, my now reduced spaces will still sort improperly with LCCs without any spaces.

Unless LT takes over and finds a way to standardize LCCs from diverse source material, the only way to get a proper sort is for individual users to do the work. There is no reason to penalize users who have done that work in order to create a non-fix for users who have not.

>99 amysisson:
Take a look at my message 82. All LCC numbers with only 1 digit in the first numerical section should come before all with 2 digits before all with 3 before all with 4. However, this will not happen in a basic alphanumeric sort -- unless you put in extra spaces.

>99 amysisson: amysisson

The best way to explain is with an example. Go to my catalog, view C, and sort by LOC numbers. Go to page 2, and scroll down to near the bottom. About 2/3 - 3/4 of the way down, is a book by Marcia Baron. That book has LOC number B 2799... The next one, by Isaiah Berlin has LOC number B 29... A couple below that is a book by Hegel that has LOC number B 2928...

LOC numbers are actually numbers in that first slot (numbers later on actually are alpha-numeric), so that B 29 should be way higher in the list, before even the B 105's - because 29 is a lower number than 2799. Instead, it is sorting alpha-numerically, so it is looking at the B, then at the 2, then at the number following it. By inserting spaces (it would look like B*space*space*space*29 and B*space*2799 and B*space*space*105) we were able to get around the fact that LT sorts alpha-numerically.

I suspect I did a horrid job of explaining that, but I tried :x

>100 eromsted:
I'm probably just being dense, and I know it wouldn't look as elegant, but couldn't that be solved by putting a bunch of zeros in front instead of spaces (so it wouldn't mess up whatever Tim says it will mess up, which I can't say I understand either)?

i.e. wouldn't 0002 sort before 0034 before 0673 before 1234? Or am I missing something?

Chris, thanks for your hard work - I can do a search in my catalog view now. Yay! ;)

^101: philosojerk

You explained it fine. Now I get it! Thanks.

>102 Margalioth:
I suppose I LT insists on taking away my spaces, I could replace them with zeros. But the main point is that I don't want to re-edit thousands of records that I have already worked on.

Also I suspect that putting in zeros would only make things worse from LT's perspective. I speculated above (message 100) as to what the problem with the spaces might be, and if I'm correct then zeros would be just as bad. In fact they would be worse, because if LT ever decided to create a uniform system it could be much harder to eliminate those zeros than to eliminate the spaces.

Finally, the spaces really were quite elegant, as you put it. Since multiple spaces display as a single space, we got a uniform appearance while still getting the correct sorting.

>91 conceptDawg:
I suppose it is not possible to create expert user's view? The things that are now called debris could be on that view, too.

I really liked being able to search tags from the catalogue. Having to go to the tags page in annoying, partially because I don't like having to load another page in order to use the page I was already on, and partially because I hate looking at the tags page--if we had the option of displaying our tags as a vertical list rather than a horizontal mess it wouldn't be as bad.

I believe the change to the spacing wasn't made because other people got upset at the spaces you added to your own LC call numbers -- I think it was done because extraneous spaces can get imported in lots of fields and cause general weirdness. That's the impression I got from the posts from Tim/Chris, at least. If that's right, why not strip the spaces from all fields except the call numbers?

108 > that's kind of what I was wondering...

Using spaces within LCC numbers was a workaround that was needed becauses a standard alphanumeric sort will place 20 before 3.

Rather than return the workaround, why not modify LT so that it sorts strings containing consecutive digits in numeric order?

This can be done a variety of ways, depending upon how you are sorting. If LT is using its own sort, then it could be rewritten to treat consecutive digits as a single sortable element within the string.

If you are using a standard routine (or a non-modifiable database command) to sort the data, I imagine that you could pre-convert each of the strings to be sorted, replacing each set of consecutive digits with a fixed number of bytes that contain the numeric equivalent (three bytes would handle any number of up to seven digits). Then apply the alphanumeric sort to the modified values. (I think this would work, at least in principle -- there may be some subtleties of the sort algorithm that need to be accounted for).

Sorting would be a little bit slower (not as much as you'd think, if it is coded well). Perhaps this method could be implemented only when sorting elements from individual catalogs (so that it is never applied to extremely large sets)

Forgive me if I'm being officious, but I really believe that, whatever method used, the majority of members would be pleased if LibraryThing were to treat consecutive digits as numbers during the sorting of selected fields. Off the top of my head, in addition to LCCNs, this would also be useful when sorting by title or tags.

>110 SilentInAWay: That solution actually would not work for LCC's, because only the first number in an LCC is sorted as a number. Any numbers which appear after the first . are supposed to be sorted alpha-numerically. So while your solution may have other applications (such as titles with numbers in them), it would not solve the LCC-sorting problem unless the first string of numbers could be recognized as numbers, and any additional numbers recognized as text.

> 95

"Ah....the first link that you sent is a link to a work page. Notice that there is no book ID in the URL. So it is just going to show you the overall work information. "

Chris: On other pages if you *have* the book, even if you hit a *work* page, you should get the book. Do you see what I mean?

> 98

"Does this mean that all that time I (we?) spent inserting those spaces so the field would sort correctly is out the window? I.e., you're not going to restore that data? Getting that data to sort correctly was a seriously time-consuming project, and frankly having the ability to use the LCC data the way it's intended to be used is a far more important aspect of a *library catalog* to me than just about any other feature on LT. When can we expect this fix to take place, since it's obviously not a "bug fix" associated with this new author tuff?"

I don't know. I understand your pain here but the situation is this. As I see it you used an undocumented, clever way to get something to sort without looking wrong. It took advantage of the fact that we didn't clean the input as we should have, since HTML would never display the characters you were putting in. So, I'm at a loss. Give me a day or two to think about it.

> 108

If that's right, why not strip the spaces from all fields except the call numbers?

Well, someone above makes the good point that your edits can get sucked up into the global level and land in someone else's catalog. People are going to be weirded out by things sorting in ways that an honest look at the data would suppose was wrong.

> "Rather than return the workaround, why not modify LT so that it sorts strings containing consecutive digits in numeric order?"

Yes, that's what we should do. At a minimum, we can simply sort "as if" there were leading 0s on any numeral less than ten places long. But there are other weirdnesses, like non-standard periods and slashes.

Look, I know this is upsetting people but I want you to understand that your upsetness over this issue can't be the only thing that drives how we do this. The edits we made are a major improvement. They affect hundreds of thousands of users every week. That most of those visitors and users aren't commenting on a long conversation like this needs to be taken into account. I'm willing to consider power users 100 or 1,000 times more important to listen to than regular users, but I draw the line at 10,000.

Anyway, let me look at whether I can write a MySQL regular expression to do it right. Or, since there are a lot of programmers in our midst, does anyone else want to volunteer one.

Unfortunately, it has to be a single regex. Sorting is done in the db layer now, not in the PHP layer. I wish that wasn't the case here, but changing it would be days of work, I think.

Apologies for the tone of 112. Need to take a break!

112: Well, someone above makes the good point that your edits can get sucked up into the global level and land in someone else's catalog. People are going to be weirded out by things sorting in ways that an honest look at the data would suppose was wrong.

Okay. But if you do fix the way the call numbers sort, people would get the exact same impression, right? If you're saying that the correct sort order for call numbers looks wrong to people unfamiliar with the way they work, that will be the case whether that sort is accomplished through spacing or through a much more advanced sorting algorithm.

I've poked around. At one point I had a test script that did this in PHP. It's gone now, but I think I can find it on a backup with John's help. Maybe I can turn the PHP into MySQL regexes. I also thought of some ways to do it in PHP that wouldn't be too cripling.

111: only the first number in an LCC is sorted as a number

I didn't realize that. That just means that LCCs would have to be sorted using a separate algorithm (one that treats only the first set of consecutive digits as a number). I still think that a change to the sorting mechanism is better than re-introducing incorrect functionality just to support a workaround.

112 (Tim): I'm willing to consider power users 100 or 1,000 times more important to listen to than regular users, but I draw the line at 10,000.

So, it takes 32 power users to form a quorum?

>So, it takes 32 power users to form a quorum?

Thirty-two power users is a lynch mob, I think.

AArrggg, we'd make him walk the plank!

;)

>85 conceptDawg: Reviews, comments, and private comments can now have an assortment of HTML in them via the book edit page. You can also use returns/line feeds/whatever you want to call them to space out paragraphs. It will handle that correctly.

These fields seem to work fine, but now the HTML is getting zapped from the Summary field whenever an edit is made on the edit page! it didn't before...

I don't really mind the LCC numbers, but I have weird wishes for sorting too. A non-weird wish would be to have the books sort as they stand on my shelves and I suppose I could do that with rather sick looking tags. As it is I try to divide my wishes into a pile of things I'd like Tim to fix and a pile of things that are better taken care of by myself by using export-tab and Excel or scripting languages.
Basically one of the things I like about LT is that _I_ get to decide what the name of the author and the layout of the title of a book should be.

It's dangerous business to try and mess with the data the users have input.
Even messing with things that look like garbage and have been autoimported and never touched is dangerous, since it might have been a conscious decision by the user to leave it alone!
(Hmm, I guess I'm just explaining to Tim why doing something about extraneous spaces might get him The Black Sign rather than a medal!)

119: Proclus, can you give me an example? Or just a longer description. I took your description to mean that if you make any edit on the book edit page it is deleting the data in the Summary field. That's not what I'm seeing. Is that what is happening on your side?

>112 timspalding:

A few points.
1) I am basically happy with the recent changes, thank you.
2) If you can implement a general fix for LCC sorting that would be wonderful.
3) Until then, I would be more likely to drop the issue if I better understood how the removal of the spaces workaround helps other users. (I still don't quite get this).
4) If you do decide to work on a general fix, keep in mind that some LCCNs really do have spaces, e.g.

Economic depressions
John Arthur Garraty
The Great Depression : an inquiry into the causes, course, and consequences of the worldwide depression of the nine
HB3717 1929 .G36
Frank Latham Brown
Panic of 1893; a time of strikes, riots, hobo camps, Coxey's "army", starvation, withering droughts, and fears of "revolution"
HB3717 1893 .L18

and strikes
Leon Wolff
Lockout the story of the Homestead strike of 1892
HD5325.I5 1892 H85
David Brody
Labor in crisis; the steel strike of 1919
HD5325.I5 1919 .B7
(These are straight from the LOC web catalog. You may note that there are also inconsistencies with the periods)

The are undoubtably other types of examples as well. A general solution may be more difficult than it might seem. Oh well.

I'll let this drop for a few days and see what you come up with.

Thank you for your attention.

117: Thirty-two power users is a lynch mob, I think.

I have no problems with the LCC sorting the way it is, like books group nicely together, it's beautiful to behold. I love it! Mind you I have spent a lot of time trying to pick the right LCC numbers so that all books by Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, for example, are together. It's not just fiction though, one person's BX might be anothers FC, something I noticed when looking at the green LCC numbers sorted in order of the book detail numbers in my library view recently.

Another summary field weirdness, Chinese characters displaying oddly in the summary field.

Summary field display in catalog view, good.
Summary field display on edit page, not good.

Example links: catalog view and edit page

124: That's good information to have. I'll take a look at it.

>121 conceptDawg: 119: Proclus, can you give me an example? Or just a longer description. I took your description to mean that if you make any edit on the book edit page it is deleting the data in the Summary field. That's not what I'm seeing. Is that what is happening on your side?

It's happening with any and all books I've tried in my library. And yes, any edit on the book edit page is deleting any HTML coding in the Summary field (or at least bold, and is converting em-dashes to a strange-looking string of characters). It does it with both IE7 and FF2, though the changes show up (in list view of the library) immediately with IE7 but only after re-loading the page with FF.

Hebrew is summarizing poorly too.

I'm seeing weirdness in summary editing too. I have a book by
Hüttemeier. Entering author name is fine, but when I copy/paste
or enter the name by hand the ü is turned into the utf-8 encoding
of it, i.e. ü Here is a link to it:
http://www.librarything.com/work/edit/24039574

124 & 127: Bad text encoding in fields is now fixed.

Yes. #129 has gone away too.

126 Proclus: Now handling complex HTML in summaries correctly.

Chris, did you work on the way commas work (somewhere above)?

>115 timspalding:

Tim, is this what you were remembering? http://www.librarything.com/test_LCC.php?view=timspalding

It's a link from http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=1915 and it still seems to work.

No, it works because John resurrected it 20 minutes ago from the DEPTHS of the site. It's been gone for more than a year.

See

Time really does fly, because I would have sworn that I've looked at that within the past year. Probably not though. Thanks John.

Okay, I caved and just did it. See here.

Continuing on from post 34:
The book I added that night magically unhooked itself over night.
But the book I added today was lumped in with some random stuff again.

This time the book I have is on the debris page, and I should be able to just click on separate...except it says Error: Work not found.

With regards to the long standing automatic combination error: I'm ending via bar code through Amazon.jp. Isn't there some way we could make it stop automatically combining with other bar codes? Make those suggestions for combining instead? Making the suggestions for combining accurate could be postponed indefinitely, but it would really make LibraryThing a lot easier for me to use if I didn't immediately have to separate out nearly every book I add.

One thing I just realized that wasn't a problem for the update that came before this one. For people with more than one copy of a book (for example, I have three different editions of the Bhagavad Gita) it's more difficult to reach the appropriate book details tab since there is only one tab to choose from. The previous system let you jump around on the details page, you only had to select the appropriate book from the "your library" heading. However, that heading is no longer available on the details page. It is available on the main page, so you are forced to go back and forth from the main page and the details page in order to get the appropriate book details tab.

I hope that makes sense and wasn't too confusing, I'm in a bit of a rush...

Chris: Can you add that mutliple-book selection block to the details page. I thought I made it a general feature of those pages, no?

I'm sure that you did. I'm also sure that I screwed it up. I'll fix it.

Update: Easy fix. You should see it now.

Schouette!

I have to reiterate that I hate the changed catalogue search. It's way too slow to search all and the search syntax isn't clear. I just tried about five times to find Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell in my catalogue, and eventually gave up and used the general search page. I later found that searching just "jonathan strange" does bring up a result fairly quickly (I gave up when it took more than a few seconds), but it used to be instantaneous. When I tried "author: clarke" I got an error; when I tried "title: jonathan strange" or "title: norrell" it took a very long time and didn't get anywhere. This is not an improvement.

edit: the title search finally finished while I was typing this, and found three copies. I only have one.

I'm confused. When I search for:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

in your catalog, it comes back instantly and correctly. The "title:" one did come back slowly—six seconds for me—but it finished, and with only one result. Can others confirm they're having problems like this? I'm unsure what the cause is.

I fixed the author search.

How did you even fit those in the search box? I can't get beyond Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel (which returns no results; same with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norre). Searching just "Norrell" took ten seconds but did eventually find the book. "Jonathan Strange" took 4 seconds and also found it in the end.

I tried it, no problems, you do realize that you can keep typing and scroll beyond the search box size?

The search box does not work with FF 2.0.0.11 but it work's with IE7

you do realize that you can keep typing and scroll beyond the search box size?

How? It does scroll a bit, but then stops and I can't type anymore. (FF 2.0.0.5)

I'll be taking a look at the search box a little later tonight. Hopefully I can solve all of the problems.

Thanks Chris :)

currently I have FF2.0.0.10

what fits in the 'Your Library' Search

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and friends and some more friend
(65 chars)

What fits in the Site Works search

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and friends and some more friends123456789012345678901234567890123465879012345678901234

(121 chars?)

don't know what's going on but thats what I get.

added:
I see, the catalog search box is shorter

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norre
(30 char)

The new edit page is not working in the latest Opera9.5 preview (although I don't know if it is a LT or a opera failure). Clicking on "edit" does not toggle the edit mode :|

152: Hm. I just checked and it seems to work fine in Opera 9.4 (latest release). The error in 9.5 is one that Opera needs to address (not handling javascript prototypes correctly, I'm guessing). And since 9.5 is still in beta I'm going to hold off on doing any fixes for it for now. It's a moving target.

In general, we don't "support" (ie., chase down all bugs) in Opera. It's currently about 1% of new visits, and—very distressingly—it's significantly split between five or six versions. This is unfortunately, but, given our small size, necessary.

Is there any chance, as you're adding new fields, that you could activate Series? It still appears in the tab-delimited export, so it's presumably in the database - if it were just a searchable/sortable text field, that would be great. There are all kinds of pretty stuff you could do (separate Sequence field, whatever) but just the text field would be enormously helpful. Right now I have series information in a mix of title and comment field, and can't sort on either.

If this is a bigger job than I think, skip it, I'd rather have multiple authors and collections. But if it's a quick-and-easy...please?

The problem with series is that it's a work-level concept which we get in book-by-book library-by-library bites. People are going to add books from different sources and then be angry that only 3 of the Narnia books are in the same "series."

My plan was to save the information for now, and then use it to jump-start a work-level field by providing some "hints" about it when you were on a work, drawn from the individual books.

mmmph. That's what I meant by 'lots of pretty stuff' - your concept of series is a lot higher than mine. And yes, I've got conflicts about series even in my mental lists. But it would be great to have just a sortable text field - maybe a 'debris' field? :D - for whatever the individual wanted to put in there? I don't know how much burden making a text field sortable is, but that's the major limitation on the use of the Comments field for me.

Or I'll just wait until you can get your hints set up. Thanks!

144, about single books showing up as if there were more of them: I've had that happen, when searching by tag (or comment) I'll get, for instance, three books with that tag/comment, which all show up twice; and when I do the same search a while later it's as it should be again. Still happens while I'm writing this. I'm using IE6, in case that helps.

146 &c.: The search box is 30 characters long, which is also the maximum length of a (functional) tag. When it was used for either a word (or sequence of words) in the title, or all fields, or a single tag, this wasn't a problem; now it's a bit annoying because it the search box on the library page seems the same functionality as the one on the search page (combined search), but in reality it doesn't because there often isn't enough space to get all the desired seach terms in, forcing you to go to the search page anyway.

120, and other people wishing to sort by location: I don't know if you use the summary field for anything in particular, but if you don't you could put your location info there. The summary field can't be searched (or couldn't last time I checked), but you can sort by it; and you can make the info string as long as you want (unlike tags, which can get very obscure even to the person using them because of the length restriction). Example: "literature, english: 19th century: austen, jane: 1813"

For those who wish to sort by date of original publication, one solution (besides tags, where in LT as a whole "2007" can mean anything from the year published to the year read to the year the book's about) is to use the publication field (or just the first part of it). Personally I have no particular use for a field that says "Oxford University Press (2004), Paperback" to be sortable; but when I put "1813" in front of that, the sortability becomes very useful indeed.

A question: If my library were public, I might want to use the private comments box for various things, but it's neither searchable nor sortable. I vaguely suspect that there might be a privacy problem somehow with making private comments searchable (the database would "know" what was in there, wouldn't it?); but might sortability be an option, both for comments and private comments?

ETA: Er, in order to sort date the database would have to "know" the date too, of course. (I'm not talking a lot of sense, I think. The database "knows" everything you put into LT even if it's in a non-searchable non-sortable field. I suspect I've been vaguely assuming it had a subconscious.)

156 (Tim): series is...a work-level concept

Unfortunately, it's also an edition-level concept. Examples:

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspBollingen Series
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspThe Purdue Series in the History of Philosophy
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspThe Loeb Classical Library
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspThe Harvard Classics
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspThe Modern Library

Because each of these series is associated with a given publisher, rather than a given author, the series should be entered per edition (that is, once editions are introduced within LibraryThing).

Also, is it planned for some Common Knowledge fields to appear (optionally) in a user's catalog view? If so--and if these fields are sortable within the catalog--then you may want to consider adding series fields to CK, rather than for works/editions within the database. That way, all of the convenient cross-referencing will be handled automatically by the CK mechanism (which, if I understand your plans correctly, will eventually mature into something quite powerful).

156> People are going to add books from different sources and then be angry that only 3 of the Narnia books are in the same "series."

This already happens with other fields such as publication and other authors (new and old versions); even titles when you consider all of the extraneous information that Amazon puts in. Those of us who care just edit the data to our specifications. I'd much prefer it not to be a work level field if that means I won't be able to export series with my other data.

I'd also like to echo 34> and 50> (and possibly others) for a shorter link to the Debris page.

159> That's a different meaning of the word series. Let's not conflate the two.

97>

Since, things are unchanged since Wednesday, maybe I should explain what I expect:

(1) If I click on a book in my library or on a copy I own on a main work page, then I expect that clicking the options on the left of a work page (Main, Details, Reviews, etc.) remembers that I'm viewing my own copy, so returning to the Details page should reflect this.

(2) If I click on a book in someone else's library, then I expect that clicking the options on the left remembers that I'm looking at that other persons copy, so returning to the Details page should reflect this.

(3) If I search for a book, the expect to see only work details and not the details of an individual copy (but this is open for interpretation: maybe if I personally own a copy I should also see those details).

When I look at the URLs that are currently used this is not always reflected in them (independent of you doing any rewrinting or not): In the first and second case above I see the number of an indidual copy in the URL when I'm on the main page or the details page, but I loose this number in the URL when I go to e.g. reviews. Using the example from message 92 again:

Main page & details:

http://www.librarything.com/work/8535/book/2880732
http://www.librarything.com/work/8535/details/2880732

Other pages:

http://www.librarything.com/work/8535/reviews
http://www.librarything.com/work/8535/recommendations
...

See the 2880732 missing from the URLs? Maybe you're doing too much rewriting?

Oh and if you want to know something about rewriting I'm your man ;-)

Yes, that is exactly what is happening. I just haven't had the time to get to this fix. Trying though.

Ditto message 158, re: message 144

144 wrote: "about single books showing up as if there were more of them: I've had that happen, when searching by tag (or comment) I'll get, for instance, three books with that tag/comment, which all show up twice; and when I do the same search a while later it's as it should be again. Still happens while I'm writing this. I'm using IE6, in case that helps."

Me: This happens to me too, maybe about every fifth search or so. I get double entries of each book that the search finds, even though I only own one. I'm using IE6. Then I search again and get the correct #s. A little while later it happens with a different search. No biggie, just very odd.

The search results are not part of the new edit page enhancements. You'll get better results if you create a new topic for that bug.

Mostly because each of us works on different things and we don't always look at topics that don't deal with our code (due to time concerns....we'd never have time to actually get any coding done). Mind you, I'm not upset that it was brought up in this topic, I'm just trying to make sure it gets the attention that it needs and it may get lost in the shuffle here.

Series is a higher level concept, that maybe is hard to implement in the democratic world of LT.

We've got strings of books by the same author: Harry Potter for instance with HP1, HP2 ....

We've got some books that an author wrote that are loosely strung together and which some peopl thing of together. An example that comes to mine are the Nancy Shaw sheep books.

We've got a group of books that a publisher sets up with various titles and various authors, but are organized together and frequently have similar binding or dust jackets. There may be a them of the series.

We've got books that come out in a revised editions every ~nth year, particularly true of textbooks.

We've got books that come out every year, such as almanacs. These are more like serials than a series, and some of these books will have a unique ISBN, but a common ISSN.

I'm not sure how much of this one would want to put together.

The search results are not part of the new edit page enhancements.

Does some of the search discussion (e.g., removal of the tags/books option) belong here, or should I just start a new thread about it?

I'm not sure whether you made any changes to the search box last night, but it's still taking me 5 seconds or more to get results. Searching "tag: young adult" just took 90 seconds. This means my catalogue is essentially non-functional; the site is seriously broken.

The frustrating part is that everything worked fine before, and as far as I'm concerned getting rid of the tags/books options makes the interface less intuitive anyway. Can't we just have the old system back?

There's a bug in the edit page - or at least a change of behaviour which I don't like! ;-)

If I edit a book (let's say I edit the title), and click save, any automatic text in the LC or Dewey fields is now saved with my book. It didn't used to be - it used to stay green.

This is a real pain, as now I can't tell which Dewey numbers are mine, and which are yours.

>166 vpfluke: Just a thought on series. If series were going to be introduced, I see no reason why it couldn't work well - despite the potential confusion which you rightly highlight.

If a series name could be added to any book, and series names could be combined, I don't see a problem so long as a book can exist in multiple series.

I don't think users should be able to add a work into a series - we can't edit works now, can we? But series information could be displayed on the work page if all or most editions of a book contained the same series information.

169> I like that. You could have Narnia Publication Order and Narnia Internal Order as two different series names and keep everyone happy. Would you then need to have multiple series fields in the individual catalogs?

I also like that idea for handling series.

Maybe series could be separated by commas, like tags? (Or semi-colons or those vertical lines that I can't seem to remember the name of....)

I want to be able to sort by series, e.g. "Lord of the Rings 1", "Lord of the Rings 2". Would everyone agree to putting that into the series field? If you put multiple things into the field, how would you sort by it?

It could sort by the first series listed by default, and by another series if you clicked on that series.

This would work quite nicely if series were added as a CK field for works. First of all, the field could support multiple entries (like many of the existing CK fields). Then you list the number of the book in the series in parentheses. So, for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you could enter the following two series:

Chronicles of Narnia - Publication Order (1)
Chronicles of Narnia - Chronological Order (2)

So, by clicking on the "Chronicles of Narnia - Publication Order" link on the CK page for any of the works in that series, you would get a list of all works in that series (which can then easily be sorted by Value on the CK search results page to see them listed in publication order). Note that each desired sort order would have to be entered as a separate series (as jjwilson61 suggested in #170 above).

This approach has the advantage of being able to showing all books in a series, regardless of whether you own them. It would of course be helpful if the CK search pages could somehow identify which of the displayed entries exist in your catalogue (I seem to remember Chris responding positively about this in another thread, so it may be coming eventually).

I suppose that publisher-based series (which would be more properly associated with editions) could be entered at the work level as well. On the CK page for works, you would then discover that your Penguin Classics copy of The Wealth of Nations is volume 10 in the Harvard Classics and volumes 412-13 in the Everyman's Library, etc.

Of course, all this only becomes really useful when CK data can be displayed as (sortable) columns in catalog view (another planned enhancement, if I remember correctly). The only real hurdle, I think, would be how to handle CK fields that contain multiple entries. There are quite a few ways this could be handled, it's just a matter of picking the one with the fewest drawbacks in the greatest number of situations. The ideal solution would remember the user's preferences so that, every time the catalog is sorted by that column, these settings take effect.

165> pace Dawg: I realize that this might have been better in a separate topic (in the Common Knowledge and WikiThing group), but I consider it to be partially in response to Tim's plans in #156 above). Should I also post this in the other group?

I see that issue too, Zoe, the tag: or title: type options are basically non-functional, so you are stuck with the generic search that returns everything.

As you say that normal general search is slow, too, and if it happens to you, and another much smaller account for me, it is not just a function of catalogue size alone.

The removal of the auto book add and this certainly makes LT painful to use at the moment, along with the Firefox doesn't work problem.

Thanks, bluetyson, I was starting to feel like I was just crazy.

That might be a good test, too, start a free account, add a couple of dozen books at random, and a few tags, and see how that performs?

167: Start a new topic. Again, this is mostly so that it gets the proper attention.

168: I'll check on the autogen deweys getting saved.

168: This should be working correctly now.

I can't find any response to my post #81 on this thread. I was just combining again and it's getting a bit frustrating to not have the author information on the Debris page--just want to make sure you guys have it on the list.

#181
I agree with you, but we're now at Message 182!

A note about author roles: I can't read them. That is, the drop-down menu shows only the first few letters, so I have to guess. Can this be fixed? (Could be another IE6 bug, btw; though I haven't heard anyone else about it.) If not (yet), could someone tell me what the author roles starting with "Co" are?

183>

Composer and Contributor

Thank you.

183: I'll have a look at that tomorrow. I'm not sure what could be causing the problem, seeing as those are simple words in a menu, but nothing IE does surprises me anymore.

I couldn't read all of these messages, so you may have already answered my question--if so, please just point me in that direction and I will go read.

I don't see how to give a book 1/2 a star anymore--is this no longer possible? I know you can get too detailed in those breakdowns, but I like the ability to do 4.5 or 3.5.

187 > It is a bug in IE, if you have a different browser like firefox, you just click the star again.

Ah, thanks. I am in IE, actually, so that is probably it. Although, I didn't even think to click on the star again, like I just read in the Science Fiction Fans forum. How would you know to do that?

Well the IE bug is fixed, the only way you would know is asking someone or playing with it.

I echo the request of #8 (SilentInAWay)--just now when adding a book (Vital Prophetic Issues (Vital Issues Series-vol. 5)) with General Editor Roy B. Zuck, I was surprised that despite the ability to assign roles to all the "Other Authors" (the "Contributors" who actually wrote content for the book), I could not do so for the "General Editor" who did not write a single article! So not knowing what to do, I just added to the author's name field and put for the name Roy B. Zuck (General Editor).

I'm finding it difficult to find information on books with the new book pages, very counterintuitive. I still haven't found where to click to combine books, or first to see the differently worded entries for the exact same book so that I can combine. I clicked on the "Help?" at the bottom of the page but it was shockingly unhelpful.

192> I still haven't found where to click to combine books

The list of candidates for combining by ISBN is now on the Debris page (the link is on the left hand side of the new book/work pages).

Is there any chance that Narrator could be added to the list of roles for Other Authors? I understand that a narrator isn't technically an author, but up until now I have been putting that information into the comments section which is not sortable. And I realize I can assign any role I want with the "other" option in the menu, but doing that every time (I have a lot of audio books) is going to be very time consuming.

eta: Now I see that the Other Authors (Why is it called More Authors on the style edit page?) column isn't sortable either. *sigh*

As I understand it, "other authors" will each eventually be listed on their own author pages. For that reason alone, I would avoid listing narrators as authors; otherwise, we'd end up with author pages for Holden Caulfield, Dr. John Watson, Ishmael, etc.

This might be a good idea for a new Common Knowledge field, however...

I mean narrator as in a real human reading the story aloud for a recording, not a fictional character. Common Knowledge wouldn't work, I need that info to show in catalog view.

I assumed fleela meant Narrator as in the person reading the book for audio?

I've looked and haven't been able to find the answer to this question anywhere, my apologies if it's already been addressed...

Has there been any indication from Tim et. al. of when we're going to see all the new features rolled out to all books? I've been itching to get all of my book editors, contributors, etc. entered in, but the new author system is still not available for the vast majority of books in my collection.

198: I've got the same itch. I might actually have some time off work around Christmas to get this stuff input too. I can't wait to put authors in for all my anthologies!

196, 197: I mean narrator as in a real human reading the story aloud for a recording, not a fictional character

oh...um...yeah...um...I mean...um...duh!

I don't know where my head was at -- I didn't even think of audio recordings -- in fact, in that sense, I agree narrators should be listed as other authors. (You'd think I would have figured this out when you wrote that you wanted to sort by narrator).

I know that Tim or Chris or someone has said that other authors will eventually be treated more like primary authors. To handle sorting by "other author" on the catalog page will be a trick, however, since there are multiple entries in that field. This may sound crazy, but would it make sense to display duplicate entries of a book when a catalog is viewed sorted by a field that can contain multiple values? So, if a person were to sort by "other author," the book would appear separately for the illustrator, the author of the introduction, the narrator, etc. It would take a little getting used to (since the number of displayed entries in the catalog would no longer equal the number of displayed books), but it would seem to be the least tortured way to handle sorting by multiple entry fields.

Note: this bridge will have to be crossed one way or another when (if) CK data is added to the catalog.

Are narrators for audio books part of MARC records?

> 201 I'm pretty sure they are - in a 700 field.

>202 HeathMochaFrost:

Interesting. In our local library consortium, narrators/readers for audiobooks seem to be collected in the 511 field. (I'm not a librarian, so I have no idea what the difference is)

I went to the Library of Congress site, and it looks like a good number for MARC records is 511: http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/nlr/nlr5xx.html
This page (MARC 500's) links to the rest of the record numbers.

200> Another way to handle sorting with the Other Author field would be to allow columns in the catalog to represent sub-fields (for lack of a better term). Thus I could set up a view of my catalog where the Narrator subfield of the Author field was in column three, and sort on that.

205:

There are quite a few ways in which Tim & co. could chose to handle this--each with it's own disadvantages, unfortunately.

The method that you've suggested has the advantage of being one of the least work-intensive to implement (as well as being a savable catalog setting). The main problem that I have with this approach is that it really only works well when each of a book's secondary authors is assigned a unique role. Although this may serve fleela's immediate needs (sorting audiobooks by narrator--#194), it may not be flexible enough to serve as a general solution. For collaborations, collections and anthologies, which often have multiple contributors with the same role, this approach would be less useful. Another disadvantage is that a different approach would have to be developed for CK data, where multiple entries in a field are typically not associated with sub-categories.

It comes down to picking one's poison.

There's only one thing I'm reasonably sure of -- when they begin to develop support for sortable, multi-value fields (such as the "other authors" field and many of the CK fields) within catalog view, Tim and Chris will probably duke it out, each championing a different approach. Although the faithful are occasionally treated to small glimpses of LT's own version of Celebrity Deathmatch, most of the time this dialectic takes place in private. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they've already gone a few rounds over this issue...

Re: 201ff

I had forgotten the 511 field - for Participant or Performer, according to vpfluke's link (Thank you!). A lot of note fields (the 5XX) are free text, or at least not nearly as structured as most of the other fields. When I think of authors, I think of 1XX and 7XX. I've recently been listening to Sissy Spacek's narration of To kill a mockingbird, and verified that my local library lists her name in both a 511 note and a 700 field - selected copy & paste follows:

LDR:
01484nim 2200433Ia 4500
001: ocm70916016
003: OCoLC
005: 20060919081304.0
007: sd fsngnn---ed
008: 060816s2006 mdunnn g f eng d

100: 1 $a Lee, Harper.
245: 10 $a To kill a mockingbird $h sound recording / $c by Harper Lee.
260: $a Prince Frederick, Md. : $b Recorded Books, $c p2006.
300: $a 11 sound discs (12 hrs., 30 min.) : $b digital ; $c 4 3/4 in.
511: 0 $a An unabridged performance by Sissy Spacek.
700: 1 $a Spacek, Sissy.

The 700 makes the name searchable in an Author search, while the 500 would only let the searcher find Sissy Spacek with a note or keyword search (depending on the library's catalog program). I think reading for 12 hours should justify the listing as "author." :-)

ETA: "sound recording" isn't a work, those are brackets in the MARC record - sorry for the wacky touchstone!

Adding that I realise this is fairly minor on the priorities, but my bug from Post >31 ryn_books: is still not fixed.

I think it was a result of the blanking/generation from the summary field?
Whatever field has gone missing (summary or publication) - it did help me understand the differences between my multiple copies.

That's why I'd find it useful to have it fixed.

*************
Oddity reported for: Your Profile>stats>multiple works link

The titles and count is correct but there's two brackets () at the end of each row. I'm fairly sure it wasn't like that before. In fact I think there used to be another field populated in those brackets. Can't recall what it was; Summary or Publication??

unless it's just my firefox browser?

>208 ryn_books: The titles and count is correct but there's two brackets () at the end of each row. ....unless it's just my firefox browser?

I'm seeing that too, in IE6/XP.

In fact I think there used to be another field populated in those brackets. Can't recall what it was; Summary or Publication??

It was the publication info.

I'm also seeing the () in IE7/Vista.

208: Same in Safari and Firefox.

As for the Profile->stats thing: Can you post this in a new bug-collectors thread? It's not directly related to the book/work pages and I'm just afraid that the bug will get lost in this thread while I'm away and/or fixing book page related bugs.

Thanks, christopher.

I didn't read all the threads about the new book page, so maybe this has been mentioned before.

I have a lot of audio books. If the narrator's name is available when it is imported to my library, there is a line designation for the narrator. But if I have to add the narrator's name, I have to use the designation "other." I get a pop-up notice but nothing happens when I click on it to allow the pop-up. Am I supposed to be able to type "narrator" in the spot where "other" appears? If not, can we add narrator to the list?

Thanks.

213> it should pop up a javascript dialog box where you can type in the "other" designation. It sounds like your browser is blocking that from appearing (someone had a similar problem but it turned out they had javascript totally disabled).

Thanks! I played with it some more and found that if, after I click on the temporarily allow pop-ups, I add another "author" line, I get the prompt for filling in "other." I leave the first line blank and it disappears when saved. Wonderful!

I see a lot of other things being worked on - new search stuff, statistic bars, etc - What ever happened to getting the "other authors" system rolled out to all books?

The new search stuff and statistics bars have come about because of speed issues. If we didn't work on those things and speed up those pages then none of us would be able to use the site right now. We're just growing that quickly right now. We've been doing a LOT of refactoring and reengineering to squeeze as much performance out of the system as we can. It's been a full time job for all of us for the past few weeks.

But your reminder is noticed and we'll get to the other authors as soon as we can. It also has to do with formulating a good plan to deal with the new data vs. the old data, etc. Tim's on top of that, I think.

Yes, the new data vs. the old data issue is super important to me; I don't want to lose all the information I already put into the Other Author field, because I would then have to go through ALL my books all over again to add the info in the new system. I guess that's what Tim's on top of!

I was just wandering around on Alfred Bester's author page and there is a nice list of "Books by Alfred Bester" and I thought, hey, wouldn't it be nice if they were sorted (or could be sorted) by their rating and of course have the rating show up at the right of the listed book?

That way, when exploring an author's page I haven't read any book yet I could more easliy choose what book to pick

I like that idea except that you would need to know how many ratings were involved. A 5 by one reader isn't as reliable an indicator as a 4 by 100 readers.

You are right. You could have the stars and at the right of them in parenthesis the number of users that rated this book:

The stars my destination **** (4.23 / 337)

Where "4.23" would be the average. "337" would be the number of persons who rated the book.

One feature that I miss from the old catalog pages is the ability to immediately see all of the authors that people have chosen for their books. The top of the page only shows the author that I have entered. When I'm actually trying to find the book via the author page, if my author lost the lottery I have to go to the debris page, check to see which other authors are there, and open another tab to search LT for that author before I can get to the information I'm looking for. We used to be able to just click on one of the authors at the top.

edited to add:
Thanks to koffieyahoo I have found this information on the "Work details" tab instead of at the top of the page. Nevermind.