Mass
import seems to mostly be solved these days.
However, mass
editing isn't. There's Power Edit, which is fine for what it does but really doesn't do all that many things. There seems to be a nod in that direction with CSV import, but not really, as it's all centered around ISBN numbers - which breaks both when the book in question doesn't have an ISBN, and when you have more than one book with that ISBN. Or if the ISBN is what you want to change.
Just for an example - I've started to enter book dimensions (height, width, thickness, pages) as tags, but have now decided it makes more sense to put that data in a comment field instead. So how do I do it?
Being a programmer myself, my obvious answer is to hack together a script. But how would I interface it?
What's really needed is a feature based on LT's book number. I could envision an API somewhat like the following:
1. Lookup API:
http://{librarything}/{somewhere}.php ?book=1234
-> some encoding (probably either XML or JSON, but whatever seems convenient to LT) for all the data LT has on that book (that is, nothing on the work, or on Common Knowledge)
2. Edit API:
http://{librarything}/{somewhere}.php ?book=1234&set_title=My+corrected+title&...
for changing selected fields.
Obviously, there'd also need to be some way of making sure you can only work on your own account.
To be clear: the exact form of that API is pretty much irrelevant to me, as long as the functionality is there. The above is just to demonstrate what I think that functionality should be.
Oh, and how to find the book numbers? They're in the .xls download. (Also in various URLs, of course, usually accompanied by the work number - which is changed by combining.)
Edited because LT damaged the pseudo-URLsMessage edited by its author, Jun 15, 2009, 7:16am.
Or allowing you to mass edit comments in Power Edit.
That wouldn't solve this one, nor most of the others I've encountered over time - doing this by hand counts as cruel and unusual punishment.
