Language is (000)?

Please forgive me if this bug has been posted elsewhere--I couldn't find any recent mention. But the stats in my library are showing some books where the "language of the book" is a set of numbers such as "000" or "199" or even in one case "xxx" (I don't think I have any porn cataloged, honest!). When I click to see which books these represent, I get a blank page--no listings.

There are about a dozen books this affects in my catalog. I'm happy to fix, if I can figure out what they are.

ETA: I'm not sure which category this bug belongs in.

The xxx has been reported before (http://www.librarything.com/topic/99519). They seem to result from spurious commas added by the system when editing language through power editing.

The numerical values are new I think.

Since I don't edit via power-editing, I don't think it is something I've done. But is it something I can fix?

3>

Try editing the language directly.

And really, don't get too worked up about the particular choice of placeholder. Nobody's going to think "xxx" indicates porn, it's obviously just a placeholder/error value.

It appears that my catalog has a number of books which, since they are translated, list English as the secondary language, but have their primary language as blank. So in my catalog view it looks like this: , English (secondary).

Does primary language = "original" language? Is it kosher to go ahead and list "French" for the George Sand and Flaubert titles, etc?

Well, you can do as you please of course. But that is really what the original language field is for. Primary and secondary language are supposed to be for your actual book.

Well I'm glad I asked. Original Language wasn't one of the options I had when I double clicked the "language" column in the catalog view. And since I can't really tell when I might be changing global values and when I might be changing just values for my catalog, it's a little intimidating. And I'm not someone who is normally intimidated by data.

7>

No, original language isn't an option for the "language of the book" column, because it's a separate column.

I can't really tell when I might be changing global values and when I might be changing just values for my catalog

If you look ate the column options you will see some marked CK (and then something). That stands for Common Knowledge, and what you put into them effects the entire "work" (any edition in any language). What you put into the other columns only effects your specific books.

>9 Nicole_VanK: What you put into the other columns only effects your specific books.

But don't the stats for these end up in other places? In zeitgeists and searches and whatnot? If someone wanted to find all the books in LT where the language=finnish, I wouldn't want to mess up the results by having my books inaccurately cataloged.

Mostly I'm clear about the function of CK values, and I add to it when I can and feel confident enough that I know what I'm doing. But I assume that all the data in my catalog contributes to LT in some way, so if there is something obviously wrong, I have to think it is worth correcting.

If someone wanted to find all the books in LT where the language=finnish, I wouldn't want to mess up the results by having my books inaccurately cataloged.

I don't think such a search is actually possible at the moment - could be interesting though.

I agree "original language" is CK-ish, even if it's in a different part of the system now, and I rather leave it blank than fill out something I'm unsure of.

Anyway, yes, these things do show in some places - your statistics/memes page for instance. But basically, what you put into the catalog fields for your books doesn't really effect the "work" as a whole.

I'm seeing numeric values for languages, but can't work out where these are coming from.

Clicking on the numeric link brings up a blank page.
If I click on a particular language, the list of languages at the top of the screen again implies that there are "invisible" languages.
.
I've tried searching all sorts of ways to find these, but without success.

>12 rodneyvc: I have this problem and discovered that the numbers usually apply to records that have strange or inaccurate data in the "language" field -- either primary or secondary. Especially out of place commas, such as ", English" or "English, "

Update on why this isn't fixed yet (see http://www.librarything.com/topic/107331).

Almost certainly a problem in the MARC data. Assigning to Casey.

Bump - I'd still love to find a way to eradicate these non-languages from my books.

Sounds really similar to http://www.librarything.com/topic/113898

That one was about reviews and bad MARC data. Wonder if they're related and could use a similar fix.

>12 rodneyvc: I've worked out how to deal with these odd language codes. I used power edit to set the primary language of all my books that had blank for the primary language to English. This removed the odd numerics, but added the language=xxx referred to in 2 above. Using power edit again on these books to set all other languages other than the primary language to blank removed the spurious commas. There's probably a couple in this set where the original language is French (Asterix series) but I am happy to sort these out manually.

The original bug still exists. I can't really tell which books were causing the problem, but my library is now cured!

Okay - Chris C. has made it possible to edit these away, at least:

Go to http://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/library - the weird entries now will take you to the books, rather than to a blank page, and if you set the language(s) correctly the number entries should disappear.

Let us know if this doesn't work for you!

Thanks Tim. If any of these moles resurface I look forward to using this tool to whack them!

Really glad to no longer have ||| as a language.

thanks, Chris and Jeremy - those have bugged me for a long time and now they're gone.

>18 jbd1: thanks for this. what a huge help.

Marking as fixed (see 18)