Changes to Add Books functionality

This is, I hope, a place to move the discussion of the decreased functionality of Add Books that was started here. Let's try to convince Tim that removal of data is not an improvement!

So my thesis is that it's the information density of the record that people are looking at (depending on what they're cataloging) not specific information that is gone.

Well, definitely the specific information of which source an Overcat record originated from is gone. I also know there used to be more data hidden behind a "More" link, but because I took it for granted I can't say with 100% certainty what was there. Some format stuff that's been moved elsewhere, but it really seems to me that there was a lot there.

>2 aulsmith:

Agreed, but on the assumption it will be more useful to Tim and the development team to have specifics, I'll list the data elements I found most useful for the purpose of confirming a specific edition (manifestation) of a work when I add a book.

Source
Publisher including Location (e.g. London)
Publication Year
Editor(s) / Other Author(s)
ISBN
Format -- I think this used to be provided, but perhaps only as part of Description?

Preference for providing the above data elements even when blank, rather than hiding. It allows a ready comparison of each alternate entry, to see which is more complete and/or more relevant to my specific copy.

To be clear, confirming a specific edition isn't the only "function" that additional information supports when a user adds a book: we might want to list those, as well. To start:

Ensuring most complete information for an entry
Selecting from a preferred source over others, when multiple are available
Ensuring that a specific data element is included, e.g. LCC
Preferring the original publication edition over later editions / reprints (even when it doesn't match one's own copy)

ETA correction (LCC not LIC)

>2 aulsmith: There is a large amount of information that is gone. It doesn't matter to me at all that the information is there after I've gone to the bother of adding it based on guessing. I'd like to hear in what way this is "better" since to me, it seems not as good as just manually adding it.

BTW, Mr Spalding, I'm about to run away for several hours. As far as I'm concerned, @lorax speaks for me (whether or not that's desirable from @lorax's view is a a separate issue, for which I hope to be forgiven).

Please put it back the way it was. It worked great. I liked it very much.

I'm begging. Have pity.

>4 elenchus: If I had to pick data from the old More link, it would be:

Translator - I know it's linked to ISBN but you'd be surprised how many libraries don't have it (or don't export it). It's a pain to have to find it through Google or LC.

I definitely want LCC. I sort my books by LCC, so I try to make sure I have one for every book. I prefer to know if I'm getting it up front rather than having to check and correct the records later.

For pre-ISBN books especially, more complete publication and physical data can be needed to know whether you are adding the correct edition.

And then, as aulsmith said, it's just nice to know whether you are getting the most complete record possible. For instance, all else being equal, I would choose a record with LC subjects over one without.

I'm also going out. Carry on.

>4 elenchus:
What elenchus said. Not all the Click for More Info is always of use but you can't tell until you see it.

I've just been populating a Publishers Series, the New Adelphi Library, issued by Martin Secker in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the titles in this series were also issued by Secker in other formats during the same general period. Previously the More Info when clicked would tell me if the entry I chose was or was not the New Adelphi Library edition. But no longer. I've had to outsource my research for this LT series.

I would also like the data back! Getting the best for my purposes of the available choices is important.

Okay, look at how it is now. There is a lot of confusion here between missing data and an error in the "more" option.

So look at it now, fresh, and tell me what's missing if anything.

Is the more option no more?

I wish the results from KB.nl would include the year. But this is better than it was.

So, what we did was move most of the "more" into the regular area.

Our current plan is to give you EVERYTHING—every single piece of data on offer—in a new, less conspicuous "more" option, while maintaining the current, bulked-up data that's visible without a click.

I feel in my bones that, if we'd given members other fields, they'd now be angry about our removal of those--that is, that there's nothing very special about LCC. (It seems to that many members use DDC too, but since we never gave DDC there in the first place, nobody's complaining about it's removal.)

>13 timspalding: I don't understand how this is different. I don't see a "More" option, and I don't see the information I used to see. I pulled out a book I'd been waiting to add (Fahrenheit 451) and added the year (1979) as a differentiator in the search. I don't see ANY of the extra data that should (and probably is) there, including pagination.

When I chose one of the records, it's really NOT correct (it says 190 pages, mine is 180, for example). This is not what we had before. It just isn't.

Some people will be more focused on ways that show how well populated a source is, others will be more interested in the edition information.

ISBN/City/Publisher/Year usually is enough for edition information.

1. I'd like to have a "back" button also at the bottom of the list.
2. What is the sorting order of the entries? In my Wilhelm Tell example, a 1907 "Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund SWB" is sorted in second place long before the bestselling 2003/2004 Reclam one.
3. One of the most helpful little pieces of information to identify the correct edition was the mention of "2 vols." or "4 vols."

>13 timspalding: Tim, So, are you intimating that henceforth, all 5XX field info will be viewable and downloadable as well when adding books, cds, movies? If so, that would be a helpful feature, though I am not sure it would be to everyones taste. For myself, more info is generally better.

Tomorrow we're going to make all the data that we're using visible.

The horizontal formatting is fixed (thank you), and the source is back (thank you), but I still don't see the "More" option. Is what we're seeing now the way that you intended it?

Yes. Most of the "more" was moved out of hiding is now visible. Page numbers, LCC, LCSH, and a few other things—including series which isn't ever used by LibraryThing!—were removed. Tomorrow we will add it all back in, together with every other piece of data that LibraryThing uses in the add-books process, hidden under a little gray question-mark.

Incidentally, we took the publication year out of the top line. But it wasn't new information. It was just a four-digit search on the publication info that is now present.

>20 timspalding:

Tomorrow we will add it all back in, together with every other piece of data that LibraryThing uses in the add-books process, hidden under a little gray question-mark.

Thanks.

>20 timspalding:
"a few other things—including series which isn't ever used by LibraryThing!"

You mean LT didn't automatically use it to populate a pre-determined field, I assume.

That doesn't mean such information when offered by a library source wasn't used by LT members to inform and perfect their entries.

>20 timspalding: Thanks very much. I'll hold off adding any more books until then.

:-( It's tomorrow, but when I went to add a book (A B C of the Telephone, by James E. Homans), all I see for information is the following (I replaced the square brackets with parens so as not to have touchstones):


A B C of the telephone by James Edward Homans

N(ew) Y(ork) T Audel & co (c1904)

Paper Book
from Library of Congress


When will the rest of the information become available?

>14 Lyndatrue: Ok we added a question mark that appears on hovering on the result row. Click that and you get basically a data dump of what we know about the result. Some of the data is raw from the data, some of it is processed by our code (e.g. Format).

Let us know if you have problems or questions.

>25 ccatalfo:

Thank you! Data! Beautiful, beautiful data!

I don't know why LT staff are always surprised when users complain about data that was previously exposed being taken away. But I'm very happy we got it back this time.

From the other topic: https://www.librarything.com/topic/192984#5208113 by @ccatalfo

>14 Lyndatrue: Lyndatrue: Ok we added a question mark that appears on hovering on the result row. Click that and you get basically a data dump of what we know about the result. Some of the data is raw from the data, some of it is processed by our code (e.g. Format).

Let us know if you have problems or questions.

Screenshot:

Now that is truly better than it was!

Yes, great, thanks!

>27 timspalding: I am now deeply ambivalent. My firefox (where you are whitelisted with Adblock), doesn't show the question mark. I logged in via Chrome, and it's there (and quite beautiful, and thank you VERY much for giving it back to me). I know that hovering works over on XKCD. I'm going to try disabling Adblock Plus to see if that works.

BRB

Nope. I'm going to log off, and log back in, and see if that helps (yes, I'm grasping at straws).

ETA: I logged off, cleared things out, and FF still doesn't show the question mark. Internet Explorer does, though. :-(

>30 Lyndatrue:

It shows up for me with Firefox (38.0.5) on OSX. (It works on Chrome too, which is my usual browser, but I fired up FF to check.)

Edit: And I see we crossposted with your edit. You're using Windows, so knowing that it works with OSX isn't very helpful. Sorry.

>30 Lyndatrue: Hhhm we'll take a look.

>30 Lyndatrue: Working for me Windows 8/FF latest update

>32 ccatalfo: I'm using FF 28.0, though (and Win7). Later FF simply gives up too much information. Heck, if I thought I could still make it work, I'd be using Mozilla 1.1.17 (which I did for years and years).

I can see the question mark using FireFox 39.0 on Windows.

ETA: It really is too much to ask, especially of a small outfit like LT, to support every version of every browser.

>34 Lyndatrue:

I think you're probably out of luck with a browser version that old.

>36 lorax: (and >35 jjwilson61:), I'll probably just start using Internet Exploder. It's not like LT is an evil site (it's one of THREE that's white listed for Adblock, and the other two are most certainly NOT financial institutions). Still, I can hope. Maybe it's something simple...

ETA: I'm just enormously grateful to have the data back.

It's not a userscript?

>38 JerryMmm: Nope. I run zero of those things. I may even let my FF update (as long as I can avoid the Flash), but not any time soon.

I'm overwhelmed with trying to keep the 100+ temps from taking out my perennials (most of my lawn is already done for, since I chose to spend the irrigation allotment on my garden beds, and give only a token amount to the lawn.

Can we have some way of accessing the data on touchscreens? Something that is only available through hovering is not tablet or mobile friendly.

>40 SylviaC: it works on my android phone, but I need to click on the book first before the question mark appears.

>41 JerryMmm: Ah, that works on my iPad, too. I didn't try that with my test book, because I didn't actually want to add it to my catalogue. Wouldn't it be simpler to just have the question mark there all the time?

>42 SylviaC: yes. :)

@timspalding ^ ?

>43 JerryMmm: >42 SylviaC: Done - the data-details icon should always show now, not only on hover.

Ta!

Just to confirm, this only works on overcat?

>44 ccatalfo: Thank you!

>45 JerryMmm: Works on all the sources I've tried.

>44 ccatalfo: Since I can't figure out how to get to the source for the part of the page that has the data in it (on Add Books) there doesn't seem to be any way for me to understand what it is that's broken. I don't want to update FF and then discover that it's one of my paranoia settings that's blocking it. It seems that it's the only part of LT that is broken for me, and I'd really like to understand why.

I don't add books that often (I end up with complicated problems more often than not) and it being the middle of summer, it's unlikely that will change for the time being. I can just use IE when I want to add books, but I want to understand what's broken, at least.

Then Koninklijke Bibliotheek .nl must be an exception :(

It also looks different.

>49 JerryMmm: Hhm, I will look at it.

>49 JerryMmm: Ah, you're right -- I will fix that.

ETA: sorry, didn't get to today. Will try to tomorrow.

>49 JerryMmm: Ok should be working now: Koninklijke Bibliotheek add books searches should be showing the data details section and also be much closer in appearance to the other addbooks searches.

Overall, I like very much the shading which sets off each entry from its successors in the list of returned data.

Could this be used on the result set when clicking the link "Or choose from x alternate records from y libraries"?

Looks better, thanks.

I have to say though that the extra info behind the ? is not helping much, it's basically the same info as the short form. What would really help is a publication year. KB does display it when searching in their own catalog on opc4.kb.nl

>54 JerryMmm: Yeah I agree, I'll see if we can grab any more data.

I think there is a problem with the order of the results when adding a book. Obscure works are coming in at the top, way ahead of popular books and bestsellers. Incomplete entries are sometimes listed before more complete ones for the same book. I never used to have to scroll through several pages to find what I want when entering popular fiction.

>56 JackieCarroll: which source(s) are you seeing that on? And what's an example search term you've seen it with?

>54 JerryMmm: Ok I've got the date coming in- that was in the data but in a different spot than we checking. It should be showing within the add books search results as well as being added into the book data when you add the book.

I'm not seeing the question mark symbol in IE or Chrome.

Chrome Version 43.0.2357.132 m

Instead I seee a broken picture but can still click on it.

IE 11.0.9 see an x and but can still click on it to display full data.

Thanks for adding it back.

>59 wifilibrarian: For what it's worth, I'm running Chrome as well with version ending in .134 m and I'm seeing the question mark when I searched for "Plants of Glacier National Park" both at LoC and Overcat. I'm running WIN7 Professional with a screen resolution of 1366 x 758.

Putting the full data preview under the question mark is working fine for me. Thanks.

One small issue. Library subjects in the full data preview seem to be missing part of their display formatting so they all just run together. It's a bit hard to read as is.

>61 eromsted: Ah that's no fun. Will take a look.

>25 ccatalfo: Ok we added a question mark that appears on hovering on the result row.

Everywhere else a question mark means help text. I think it's confusing that it mean "more data" in this one place.

Agreed. What should it be?

A button labelled with "more"?

I would agree that 'more' is typical. I've seen just an ellipsis.

Why not just the more text like before?

"More" or a + character. Or an ellipsis.

The right pointing guillemet: » — Chrome uses it to indicate overflow on its bookmark tool bar