Read but not owned

Any progress on implemeting the read but not owned category? Any word on this?

Cross-post: other post at .../talktopic.php?topic=16835

Well, in RSI I asked when this was coming. In the other post, I asked what people do in the mean time, or how they handle it.

As far as I recall there is absolutely no progress on this, nor likely to be unless Tim has a fundamental change of heart. He has posted more than once (I recall an early blog post and a more recent post in the groups here) that he believes that all book characteristics are best handled by tags.

This seems to distinguish books from people as the current trend seems to be to provide check-boxes for people but no tags.

Ahh! That is so frustrating! It seems like something that members really want. I have come across this topic in message after message. If so many LT'rs want this, why not at least consider it? I know when I first joined LT, it was the first thing that I noticed missing that I really wanted. Come on Tim!

I must admit that I've never understood why people want this so much. What's the difference between having a tag that reads 'owned' or 'unowned' and any other way of distinguishing? That's a serious question, btw... I keep thinking there's something I'm missing, but no one has ever really explained it.

Because to me it does not fit the definition of a library. What if your town library only had a list of books that other people had read and could tell you about? Lot of good that would be. A list of books you read once, but didn't buy is not a library, it's a reading history. Different things. Maybe if this was ReadingListThing, that would make sense to me. Of course, people are free to do what they want, but the fact that LT has XX Million books cataloged is farcical.

>6 antqueen:

First, I have just over 580 books in my library. If I added things I read but didn't own, that number would skyrocket. I don't have a couple thousand books. I don't want my catalogue to think I have a couple thousand books.

Second, the books I don't own I have either been willing to part with over the years or never bought in the first place. I would never, ever give away my favorite books. Book X wasn't worth enough to me to keep during a move, but Book Y will be with me forever. Book X came out and I was interested so I borrowed it from the library, but Book Y was by my favorite author so I purchased it right away. A friend lent me Book X but I liked it so much that when I saw it at a used book sale I had to have it myself. There is a big difference for me between owning and not owning the book. I want to be able to use LT to keep track of all my reading, including things I didn't like that much and therefore didn't keep, and that should be taken into account for recommendations.

If you go to used book sales, you will see the same books over and over again. Dozens of copies of The Bridges of Madison County, scores of copies of Bonfire of the Vanities. Doesn't it mean something that half the people who bought these have given them away?

What edition of The Crucible did I read in high school? Does it matter? But for the book I do own, it does, and I always make sure to get the best publication information available.

I just don't see how any of this is less important than a wishlist. My wishlist works fine on Amazon. But they're not very good for keeping track of everything I've read. LT would be much cleaner, but I end up using Amazon instead because at least they have the capability to rate something while not indicating that you own it.

#7/#8 - Exactly!

6>at least they have the capability to rate something while not indicating that you own it.

For reasons mentioned above, and others mentioned in the multitudes of threads on this topic, I would love a feature (beyond tags) that would allow me to keep track of "read but not owned" books. However, I would be appeased (at least for a little while) if I was able to rate and review books that were not in my library.

Tim has at least been considering it within the past month, in the collections thread: You know how date started, date ended and so forth are under an "advanced options" tab at the bottom of the edit-books screen. How many collections-proponents could be split off if "not owned" were added as a boolean there.

but the fact that LT has XX Million books cataloged is farcical.

That is an excellent point. And it works the same way with member count. Because of a failure to add features that members are consistently asking for, single users are creating multiple accounts to deal with the issue (main account, an account for read/unowned, account for wishlist, etc.).

Making it even funnier are statements like "Bigger than Harvard!". I wonder if Harvard counts books they wish they had.

Just for the record, I don't particularly care whether there is or isn't a checkbox, I'm just trying to figure out why people want one so much.

#7: I think that's the most common explanation I've heard, but it's what I've never understood. I'm not a library. I don't provide books for check-out, certainly not to the public and rarely even to friends. Why compare me to one? You and I may be at opposite ends of this... I wouldn't use owned/unowned checkboxes because tags are far more useful (read:flexible) to me, and you (if I understood your post) wouldn't because you wouldn't want to have the unowned ones in your catalogue to begin with.

#8: I guess I can see that, though it isn't a distinction useful to me personally. I'm not sure what you mean by your catalogue thinking you have more books, though... if I saw that you had 580 books tagged 'owned' out of 10,345 books total, then I'd figure you owned 580 books. Your Crucible example is interesting... The edition? No, I don't care. But then, I don't care about that for the books I own either, with a very few exceptions (translations, mainly). I do, however, care that I read it.

I guess one reason I get confused by this is that if I want to know what books I own, I can go look at the books I own. I don't need a program for that. But I own books that I have never read and will never read... some are well-intentioned gifts that I don't want to give away for various reasons, some I inherited, some I married into, some my husband reads but I don't. I add those because they're there, but I'm far more interested in keeping track of the books I've read. Not to mention that if I read a book and think it's horrible, I want to keep a record of that so I never go near another book by that author again :)

#7 & 12: LT does have XX million books (well, items) catalogued. Nowhere does it say or even imply that the books are owned by the people doing the cataloguing. As for whether it's a useful statistic... well. As useful as most stats, I'd say :) I think the comparisons with Harvard, etc are amusing simply because this isn't a library; not only are the books not available to patrons, but they're scattered all over the world. It's comparing apples to, say, flounder.

13> antqueen:

>tags are far more useful (read:flexible) to me.
Yes, I want to use tags for this, but there needs to be an easy interface for others to browse "main tags" (owned, unowned, read, unread), and a way to exclude some of those from recs and statistics.

>I guess one reason I get confused by this is that if I want to know what books I own, I can go look at the books I own.

List management is useful when you start having thousands of books. You're up there, but not as high as others (and what I will be, when done).

#13 I guess one reason I get confused by this is that if I want to know what books I own, I can go look at the books I own.

I envy you if you can look at all your books. I've got books in so many places -- books on top of books, books behind books, books in every nook and cranny -- that I can't look at all of them easily. It was very helpful for me to enter them into LT because I found duplicates (some intentional, some not) and because, once I took everything off the shelves, I was able to move some of them around to improve the organization.

#13: Your confusing library with public library or lending library. If you have a collection of books in your house, then you indeed do have a library, especially if it is systematically arranged.

You know, this makes me wonder how many people actually own the books they input into their catalogues. I, for one, tend to use this site as a way to track my reading progress, and although I own most of the books I put in here, my LibraryThing doesn't come close to having everything I own in it.

If I put in ALL my books I'd inevitably get a ton of random children's stuff that doesn't define me too well anymore, a bunch of family books, textbooks, etc. etc. I'd much rather my catalogue were used to describe what I've read, not what I own but don't care for.

But it doesn't matter what a single person does with their library - it's what EVERYONE here is doing with it - and since everyone is doing something a little different than everyone else, there needs to be more of a way to allow for those differences...

So it seems like the problem is that people aren't just using LibraryThing as a physical cataloguer for themselves. These aren't just physical libraries anymore: for many they're the libraries in their "minds" or the libraries of their kids, etc. That's why some sort of feature that differentiates between "read but not owned" and "owned but not read" is needed.

17>and since everyone is doing something a little different than everyone else, there needs to be more of a way to allow for those differences...

Very well put, I completely agree.

I've no problem with how other people want to use their accounts. But I would love it if my way was supported to.

:shrug: Not all of mine are listed yet, especially not the ones without isbns. I have books in every room except the bathrooms, where it gets too humid. Three deep and two high on some shelves. I don't use location tags because I know I wouldn't keep them up to date. None of which is really relevant to the thread topic :)

#14, Why are tags as they are now not an easy interface? Why should there be a set of main tags, and what if someone doesn't use any of them? Why does anyone else care what I own or don't own, especially since my reasons for not owning may be entirely different from theirs? I would love to be able to get recommendations based on a dynamic subset of my library, if that's what you mean by excluding some things from recs, but as far as general stats and such I don't think this will help much even if it is implemented, because a lot of people won't use it.

#16, the quote I was responding to was, "What if your town library only had a list of books that other people had read and could tell you about?" which was indeed referring to a public library. If I can't access the books, then I don't care whether they're actually there or not.

#17, Precisely. As long as I'm not required to make a distinction, I don't care whether other people do... but I still don't understand why tags are not a satisfactory way to make that distinction, which is what I was asking about to start with :)

13> antqueen:

Originally this site was created as a book cataloging site. Physical books with properties and aspects and particulars that had to be gotten right. The database and UI is designed to handle physical things. The fact that it can be used for vaporware is incidental.

So that's how I use it - to track and manage a physical library in my house. The reason I do it is varied, but one of them is to find a way to document what I have to prevent re-purchasing books (which I've done because my memory is awful).

One thing that makes LT a PITA to use on the run (away from my computer) is what I would have to deal with if I cataloged everything I read, but don't own, too. I'd have to click through various screens and sort via tags or whatnot. That's why I don't use it for that right now, but as a refresher so that when I'm in the used book store I can maybe remember that I already own something, or that I've read something and liked it and need to buy it. I still have to jot notes and keep them with me to remember holes in my collection or books of interest.

If our catalog view page or profile page had another tab that led to a list that was distinguished in some way would solve those issues. One for OWN and one for VAPORWARE. Whether or not you make those distinctions is up to you, but for me they are huge and the lack makes LT less than useable and less than ideal.

>I would love to be able to get recommendations based on a dynamic subset of my library.

Yes. that. And being able to say "I read this, I liked this, and I want to buy it", "I want to reeeead this" without having to go to another site.

>I still don't understand why tags are not a satisfactory way to make that distinction

Tags work fine as distinguishing, but entering nonowned or nonread books can mess up recommendations or statistics of "what you have". Not to mention the searching problems from 20.

6: My reason for not wanting to use tags to show books I don't own is that It confuses the whole thing.... If I go through my catalogue there are both books I have and books I don't have... I also like to keep my tagging to a certain-degree minimum, and to have tags "not owned", "wanted (ie wishlist)", "not totally sure if I want or not"..... that just seems stupid to me.
I would much rather have some sort of wishlist option, seperate from my catalogue so it doesn't interfere with the Suggester stuff.

17 These aren't just physical libraries anymore: for many they're the libraries in their "minds" or the libraries of their kids, etc. That's why some sort of feature that differentiates between "read but not owned" and "owned but not read" is needed.
Completely agree there.

Heather

22: I would much rather have some sort of wishlist option, seperate from my catalogue so it doesn't interfere with the Suggester stuff.

Those of us who are suggesting tags require there to be something that affects recommendations and statistics, (include/exclude), not just tags are they are.

#21
> "Tags work fine as distinguishing, but entering nonowned or nonread books can mess up recommendations or statistics of "what you have". Not to mention the searching problems from 20."

Ah, statistics for your library. I thought you meant in general, like the "total number of books" stats or whatever.

Searching problems from 20... You mean knowing whether you own it or not when you're in a bookstore? I admit, I've never tried to access LT from a portable device so I don't know how well that works. I'm not sure how a checkbox will help, though, or how two lists based on a checkbox are different than two lists based on two tags.

#17 & 22: "libraries of their kids"... this is the main reason why I don't think an owned/unowned boolean value is as useful as something more flexible, and why I wouldn't use it if it were there. It's not as simple as whether I own it or not, because while technically I own my husband's books and he owns mine, and while there is a huge overlap, some books are very definitely either mine or his. I own them, but I certainly don't want recommendations based on them.

#lots: So many people mention the suggestions. But would you rather be limited to an owned vs unowned distinction there, or would you rather be able to get recommendations based on any set of books you want recommendations on? Sorry... one of my top 2 wishes for LT. I'll stop proselytizing about a tangential topic now :)

I have yet to hear Tom venture an opinion on how hard it would be to produce suggestions based on a subset of your catalog based on any set of tags. It could potentially be quite expensive computationally, while a simple bisecting of your catalog into those books that you want recomendations on vs. ones that you don't could be something that is cached and might be more feasible.

I think I'll throw a wrench into things: How might one enter only those books that they actually own into their libraries, but a) have some way to keep read-but-not-owned books off their suggestions lists, and b) factor those unowned books into those same lists?

>26 AnnaClaire:

One way would be if you were allowed to rate books you didn't have in your library. If you rated something, it should stay off your suggestion list, because you've clearly read it (or at least experienced it in some way). The way things are currently set up ratings aren't factored into the suggestions, but I don't see why they couldn't be, especially in terms of "count this rating only if the book isn't in the library".

#13 I guess one reason I get confused by this is that if I want to know what books I own, I can go look at the books I own.

I have books in four U.S. states/cities and at least one foreign country because I travel so much. I keep track of where each of them is by tag.

But I would love to have a way, though preferably not just a checkbox, but a way (much like the A,B,C buttons) to flip from those I own and those I've only read so that I know whether a) I've already bought something it's just in one of the many other locations, b) I've read it, and didn't like it enough to buy it.

It can be done with tags at the moment, but it's complicated and kind of a pain. Plus there's the issues #20 brought up...

I'm OK with tagging. But, there are a lot of good points above. There does seem to be a logical need in differentiating between owned and unowned at a fundamental level; something not accounted for by tags.

But, I wonder why users hesitate to included read-but-unowned books - that is information we truly possess and we can share. Certainly adding a rating and/or review for a book we have "read but don't own" is adding a lot more value to LT than adding a book that is "owned-but-unread".

edited to note that there are two threads active on this topic, and I was responding to posts in both threads

29> Depends on what you are using LibraryThing for. I'm not going to leave off "owned but not read" just to keep from "devaluing" LibraryThing. I need to know which books I own so I do not acquire them again, and also helpful in thinking about what to read next.

#30 just to clarify, I didn't mean to imply that anyone should leave off "owned but not read" books.

What do people think of an option to select "top/menu tags" and have them show in Tim's proposed bar?

And then on top of that, being able to include/exclude certain tags from statistics/recommendations.

That way, people could use their own tags, but still have an easy way to select certain ones.

What I'd love to do is to be able to export by tag or group of tags (yes, you can print by tag, but not export by tag). Especially since all tags for a specific book are in one box in Excel, so can't sort by tag.

Being able to export owned but not read, or read but not owned or the like would be very helpful.

Selective exporting would be heavenly, but I'm not holding my breath.

Darn. Guess I should starting breathing again. :(

In the interim, you could easily filter your exported results once exported into Excel. :)

>36 AndrewB: I think not, since all the tags are in one Excel field, right?

Yes, all tags are in one Excel field.

As Mike suggests above, that is one place a checkbox might be useful and worth doing for owned/not, if you could export one or the other shorter list.

Hmm it's been a while - but I seem to recall a wildcard ability when using filters in Excel...?

Yes, Excel has pretty good database sorting and filtering capabilities. The easiest way to pick out one tag is to select the whole data set, pick Data | Filter | Autofilter then use the drop down on the column title to build a custom filter.

#41 - Thanks! For all the time I spend on excel, I wasn't aware of the filter. How I could have used it. I've had to create an extra column, use a COUNTIF equation for each cell, and then sort on that column.

40-41> I have no idea what you are talking about :) Wildcard? Filter?

43: In Excel, go to the Data menu, Filter submenu, Autofilter subitem.

That gives you a menu on your column titles, which you can use to show certain things.

> 43 : MikeBriggs : a Filter is that ability to select a subset of the records e.g filter the dataset to show only those where the tag field contains 'fiction'. A Wildcard is the ability to use * (to represent any string) or ? to represent a single character in a filter. So fic* would find fiction, fictive, fickle, . . . and f???ion would find fiction, fashion, . . .

And the best kept secret of the Autofilter is that - on the column header drop downs - there's a sort (ascending & descending) if you scroll up from (All). So you can both filter and sort from these drop downs; and sorts are retained so that you can do multi-column sorts by doing one column after another.

To get back on topic:

I believe the answer to everyone's problems is a function that would allow you to include or exclude tags. It seems to me (I'm not a programmer) that it simply builds on the existing infrastructure of the site without changing anything significantly. Being able to create subsets by including or excluding tags will allow for wishlists, owned-but-not-read, read-but-not-owned and whatever other categorization you can think of. Plus, this feature would allow custom recommendations, which I think most LTer's want.

I would use a "read but not owned" feature, or more explicitly any way of adding works which I could exclude from suggestions and from LT's idea of what I would currently be interested in reading.

I'd use this feature for things like adding books I read as a child that have persisted in my memory (there must be a tonne I'd never remember reading) because they together add up to my formative reading experiences.... but somehow adding lots of Chalet School books by Elinor M Brent-Dyer, or Enid Blighton books, or Avocado Baby to my current (and decidedly more adult) library would be very strange to me. And there's no doubt it would screw up the library suggestion feature.

I'm not religious about having to own a book that I have read to include it in LT at the moment, but the kind of books that I would put into my current library catalogue even though I had no copy of them would have to bear more relation to my grown-up life. Sure, novels I have borrowed from the library in the last 10 years, read, and returned would absolutely go into my current catalogue (if only I'd kept a record of them!).

I imagine that there are more people who are uninterested in this idea than actually think it would be a bad idea to implement (like it would somehow dilute, damage, or complicate LT).... however I have a sinking feeling that Tim is more in the latter camp than the former.

46: That's actually a really great & simple idea! I know I would definitely use it. It would help to unclutter the tag listing of books where it always says things such as "borrowed" or "2005" - tags that don't really have any significance for other readers.

47: I completely agree with you on that - a way to add books without actually making it part of your current collection (i.e., books that define "you") would be very helpful.

Being new to LT, I'm trying to get my book list uploaded. My program has about 20 fields (FilemakerPRO), so not all of that will upload. Over 1,000 books on the list, too. Need to get it online so that when the next "big one" hits, I'll have my list available on my phone; computer may not survive another hit! I plan to use the "ratings" field on LT to indicate if I've read it or not. No rating = Didn't read it yet.

Lost over 1K books in the swamps of "Katrina." But those would have been difficult to catalog as some were signed, 1st, "not read", etc. Too many designations to list in tags.

Starting simple, this time.

But those would have been difficult to catalog as some were signed, 1st, "not read", etc. Too many designations to list in tags.

I think that is exactly what tags are for...

49> My program has about 20 fields (FilemakerPRO), so not all of that will upload.

My understanding is that the only field that will upload is the ISBN field which is used by LT to add a book from Amazon or a library.

51> You are right. Talk about a "wishlist." I'd put my comments from FMPro into LT. I can cut/paste them if I want to. Might be a good time to edit them, too.

antqueen and Bookmarque--

If we can have a "Friends" feature, certainly we can have a "I have read this work but do not own it" checkbox on the Work page that allows users to rate and review the work. I often read many works on the same subject, but I have no current method of keeping track of these books without pretending I own them.

This site may have started as a practical tool for cataloging a physical library. But since then it has evolved into a much different animal, and it doesn't make sense not to accomodate those who want to review or rate a book but cannot because the book is not physically in their possession. I would even argue very strongly that this practice hurts LT by limiting reviews and ratings to those members who've found a good reason to own the book.

Agreed Topper, those of us who want a more distinct and controllable way to manage vaporware are eliminated from the possiblilty of contributing to reviews. All I'm asking is a way to separate the real from the unreal so as to make managing my actual library easier and more intuitive. Apparently this is much too much.

#52... me, what? Not sure what you're responding to.

A non-catalogue review box wouldn't work for things I don't own because if I care enough to rate them then I want to do all the other stuff too, like mark a read-date and tag them. I like tags.

I also don't pretend I own all the books in my catalogue, and I don't assume that anyone else does either. They're tagged so I can find the ones I don't own if I want to, but so far I never have. Actually... that's a good reason for checkboxes instead of tagging for ownership. That way I don't have to ignore the owned/unowned tags when I'm looking at the interesting ones :)

Seriously though, I still don't really understand why grouping by tags isn't good enough, but I think that's simply because I don't want LT to treat my unowned books differently than my owned books in any way at all, not for statistics or recommendations or anything else. If I were using something, and it did start acting differently, I'd stop using it as soon as I noticed.

A lot of people do, though, which is fair enough.

I'd like more distinctions between groupings as well, though not in a hard and fast way and the groupings I'm interested in aren't on the owned/unowned divide. Which is why I think a more flexible system would be more generally useful than a checkbox... #46 is precisely what I would love to see.

@53, Topper:

As you say, LT is no longer just about physical libraries. Thus, many people add books they do not own to their catalogs. What's preventing you from doing as these many people do, and adding those read-but-unowned books so you can review them?

I think opening the review field to people who have no connection to the book beyond the ability to check a box invites abuses like Amazon's (especially since Tim has decided that only positive feedback on reviews is acceptable, and "this review is useless" is something that can't be said.)

I think opening the review field to people who have no connection to the book beyond the ability to check a box invites abuses like Amazon's (especially since Tim has decided that only positive feedback on reviews is acceptable, and "this review is useless" is something that can't be said.)

I don't understand - of course the review field is open to people who have no connection to the book - all they have to do is add it to their library instead of checking a box. I don't see any structural reason why we wouldn't be open to the same abuses as Amazon where that is concerned.

55 & 56--I want to reserve my Library for books I own. It's too confusing to me and everyone else otherwise and it screws up all the Zeitgeist and other cool statistics features. No--I just want a simple method to keep a list (for myself mostly but for others perhaps who are interested) to keep track of what books I've read but aren't in my Library.

Even something like a "Your Other Books" tab would be okay. But I wouldn't want the two together.

I finally gave in and started inputting books I've read but don't own. However, they're not in my library - I started a separate account for it. If this option ever happens, I'll probably transfer them all over, but this will work for now.

I use LT to catalog my physical books, but I also use it to find more books to read. To make the suggestions as useful and accurate as possible, I need to be able to rate books I've read but don't own (or still own), and books I know I have absolutely no reason to ever buy.

In the recommendations section of Amazon, you can choose to select I Own It or Not Interested along with your rating. That really makes a difference in helping to focus the recommendations I get, and that's the sort of thing I'd like to see here.

60/cabridges: Yeah, I'd like a way to have an anti-suggestion list myself. :)