social etc field: how did you find out about this book?

I routinely use my "private comments" field to note how & when I heard of a book. This is particularly useful because I add a lot of books to my "interesting" list and it's not always immediately apparent later on why something was interesting .... Anyway, the longer I'm here on LT, the more the references come from other groups, or other people's libraries, or other people directly.

I would personally love a field dedicated to "how did you find out about this book?". Sure, the "private comments" is fine. But "how did you find out about it" has the potential to be so much more -- it has the potential to map out social interactions among users around books. Ideally there could be something like a drop-down including things like:
* LT User {pick or specify}
* LT thread {navigate - god, that would be sweet - or paste in URL}
* LT User's library {pick or specify}
* Referenced in book {pick or specify}
* LT recommendations {pick special sauce or whatever}
* Other _______________

And of course wouldn't this be fun for researchers? including LT staff?

Sorry for redundancy -- I know I've seen this kind of suggestion here before -- and it even cropped up recently in some other thread -- but I can't remember if it was in RSI, and I think it deserves its own thread. Wherever it cropped up before, they described the social networking utility, I think.

Anyway, it would be nice to be able to track (credit, blame) other users / threads for one's acquaintance with a particular book, or the trigger that caused one to finally read it. But it would also be useful in terms of following cites to particular books -- hey, Tim, there's another possible source of revenue: Create the much-desired "Book Citation Index" and sell it to campuses for tenure decisions ....

-- lquilter

OOOOHHHHH!!! I would looooove this!!

I have a wishlist a mile long (that is duplicated over at BookMooch), and at least once a week (not exaggerating) I'm finding something in it that I can't remember *why* I was interested in it. It's especially difficult when the LT or Amazon entry for said book doesn't have summary info.

I would love a seperate field for this, but yunno I think I might start right now in the comments section (oh great, another thing to tie me to this computer-chair!)

I love this! It would be so much fun and would generate a lot of really interesting data too.

I had mostly given up on the idea of using LT's wishlist feature when it eventually comes, but this might just make it worthwhile....

I think this would be awesome! Like Heather, sometimes I have trouble remembering why I pegged a book. I never imagined I would have a TBR list this long though - LT has really changed my reading habits.

I've used the tag LT-inspired for some time now. http://www.librarything.com/tag/LT-inspired

When using that tag, I usually make a note giving more precision. eg from talk thread, LT suggestor, LT recommendations, reviews or spotted in so and so's library etc.
The note is in comments or private comments depending on what is identified.

It serves the same purpose as the above recommendation. Not saying it's what everyone would wish to do, but it's a workaround in the current set-up.

Note: If a social field was set up, it'd probably need to have a fair amount of free text space... :-)

I just use, Chance Buy or recommended as tags, but it's an area I would love to expand. This could be so useful. And I think it would generate a load of interesting meta-data for researchers.

Has it really been a month since lquilter first suggested this? I think it's brilliant. I've tried the private comments and started tagging my recommendation sources, but the more I think about it, the more I'd really love a dedicated field for this info. Consider it bumped.

Heck, I'll bump it. My private comments field holds the data but doesn't let us do anything with it.

this is such a great idea!! And indeed it could generate not only a lot of interesting data (e.g. how many people bought a certain book because they saw it praised in The Polysyllabic Spree or in Book Lust?) but also more interaction between users. For example, ltquilter mentions * LT User {pick or specify}. It would be great if you would get a notification (such as the one for Interesting Library add) when another user adds a book to their library/wishlist based on your recommendation. That would be even cooler than getting thumbs-up for your reviews - I mean what's better than making other people interested in reading a book? :)

I would love this! Currently, I just use a tag - boLT (because of LT). But I've added SO many boLTs that I can no longer remember from whence they came. Nor did it occur to me to make even cursory notes in private comments. Wonderful idea, lquilter!

A lot of mine would say LT. It would be cool to find out how many.

... I was wistfully thinking about this again and someone brought up the private comments field, which I primarily use for this "where did you find out about it" data. So I thought I'd bump it.

This is definitely one of the top improvements that I'd like to see.

Same here, I think it's a great idea!

I think this deserves a bump. There's just so much potential here....

A month later, and I still think this is the best suggestion out there....

Seconding the bump - I use tags on my wishlist account but delete them once I move the books over to 'owned' ... I'd love a field to keep the data.

Bumpity bump bump.

I was going to start a new thread asking for a CK "Works cited" field, but this is decidedly more awesome.

Six months later, I still think this is the best suggested improvement out there.

... and i'll bump it, since it came up in another thread again recently.

Bumping this since they're planning to add new fields soon....

I'm new here, and, actually, I thought there would be links so I could access my books that were listed here to read them here on my tablet (stupid, eh?). However, I think a "Where did you find this book?" feature would be great, especially if it had links to the book source so others could get it as well. It would make finding ebooks, or paper books, so much easier!

That field exists now. It's called the From Where field and you can find it on the edit page for a book or add it to the columns displayed in Your Library by using the cog icon next to the letters. It was only added a few months ago though so you may find that its not filled out very often.

Fwiw, I still use comments, because I am mostly interested in how I found out about a book -- i.e., footnotes in which book, recommendation from a friend, browsing librarything, whose review. Where I got it (which library, bookstore, or friend's gift) is a lot less interesting than a map of influence, interest, and thought.

map of influence, interest, and thought

Yup, I'd still love to see this as well.

Bump. I'd still really like a way to track where I found out about a book. It would be interesting to see statistics about this, and also to see broader patterns. Looking at the last year's reading, how many of the books did I hear about on LT versus in the library or bookstore? Can we see a map of how one person in the 75 Book Challenge group raved about a new book, and led other people to read it, people who then spread it further? How effective is Early Reviewers at advertising new books, and how does it compare to Vine? There's just so much potential here.

Ooh I would also love this!!

GR has a field for "recommended by," which I've never used as I've never been recommended a book by a user. But the ability to have all those options mentioned in the OP would beat that one field by a mile! LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea!!

I'll second your Bump, _Zoe_. I was finally able to get rid of all my tags for recommenders by moving them to the (recently) new 'From Where' field. It cleaned up my tags - which was a major thing to me - but leaves me unable to use that field for its intended purpose. In a social book world like LT, this idea seems long past due.

Bump.

Bump.

Thanks, _Zoe_. I'm still using my private notes field! Even though I am adding in books like mad from other books and from user reviews and discussion threads, each of which have individual URLs ....

I'd just love to see a visual representation of books being recommended from one person to the next. Imagine one initial reader branching out to others, maybe with different colours representing LT groups....

To me I'd like to see the connections from book to book. Book A led me to Book B, which led me to Book C ...

Bump.

>1 lquilter:
+1

This is kind of a cute idea, I admit.

>36 timspalding: I'm glad you think so :)

Yaay!

It would be like the CDC tracking down Patient 0. Who was the first person on LT to have this book? And who got it from them, and how did it spread? Imagine the graphs ...

But if you add fields, could we please also have a field for local/personal shelf codes please!

Why not make this a touchstone-able free-text field. Because touchstones/talk-references can handle users and works and talk?

Hmm, I'm not sure quite what you mean about touchstones handling talk. If I want to say that I found out about a book in a specific group/thread, how would touchstones work for that?

But I like the idea of the user @ thing actually being used for something (though it might be good to change the feature as a whole to a double-@ to prevent messing up email addresses, if that hasn't been done already).

I'm very glad you're thinking about it, though :)

>42 _Zoe_:

You can use the ># format, which we could adapt. There is anyway code for it.

Basically, what you're suggesting is very complicated structured data, with lots and lots of ways it can be structured and which, I think, will cause others to request other structures. So, I counter-propose unstructured data with semantic elements.

Oh, interesting. I can definitely see potential here.

Would you be open to adding other kinds of references as well, like to Local venues? And would it be possible to develop more options as time went on? The OP also mentioned LT recommendations as a possible source, for example.

After that, a lot of the value of this feature will depend on how much we can do with the data (can I see all the books where I've mentioned a particular user? What about a particular group? Can I see a whole tree mapping a book's path from user to user?). But providing a way for us to record the data would certainly be a good start.

This might actually be enough to get me to use the LT wishlist after all these years :)

I'm also a bit concerned that having to know all the syntax and enter it manually will make the feature much less useable to the average user, as opposed to an editing interface that provided specific spaces for specific types of input, making it clear just what could be entered. The former requires first going to a help page or something to figure out what the field does, while the latter just invites immediate data entry.

Of course, I'll use it regardless.

square bracket Title
square bracket Title #page
double square bracket Author Name
username
@@group
#tag

and so on.

I mean, I would love a dedicated field for this. And I wouldn't mind boosting LT's syntax for this and other purposes.

I do think there's a fun mapping opportunity -- even if it's relatively simple -- to see connections and chains .... that would create more and interesting connections ... and could feed into marginalia

Instead of adding more syntax sugar for each of the different kinds of things that could be linked, I think a more generalized and easily remembered system would, instead of using a new special character or additional bracket for each new type of thing, come up with a syntax that means link and specify the kind of link using text inside it.

So if perhaps text surrounded by square brackets and starting with a backslash would indicate a link and inside would go \work: followed by the title of the work as with a normal touchstone. Authors would be \author:, and new things like local venues would be \venue: or \local:.

I wonder if we could have both various structured data options and an option for unstructured data with semantic elements.

E.g., could there be one particular social field for who told us about the book, one field for the group where we found out about the book, etc., but also one combined "social" field where we can use the syntax to express multiple different types of data for how we found out about the book?

I still think the average user would be much more likely to use a straightforward who-told-you-about-this-book field where they could enter plain old user names, separated by commas, like the current tag field. But there's a certain appeal to the more flexible syntax as well.

putting this in my RSI notes!

>50 kristilabrie:
yay!

my UPDATE for this RSI: this one's really cool, but we're going to have to have a lot of discussion around this one before it can be organized and implemented. Deferring for now, but noted for discussion!