New Add Books data sources

We've added six new non-English Amazon sites as data sources you can use in cataloging your books—specifically:

- Amazon.in (India)
- Amazon.it (Italy)
- Amazon.com.br (Brazil)
- Amazon.es (Spain)
- Amazon.com.mx (Mexico)
- Amazon.cn (China).

Full details on the blog.

In the past, data from these Amazon sites was unavailable to LT. We're happy that's no longer the case!

Let us know if you have any questions or trouble using these sources.

Update:

Initially, we only had books data from these new sources. We've now added music and movies data from all but one of them (Amazon Brazil doesn't have this data). So you can use Amazon India, Italy, Spain, Mexico, or China to catalog your books, music, and movies!

More data sources are always welcome. Especially the Amazons -- such a wealth of (often reliable) data.

Thank you!

Bravo! Amazon.in is going to be particularly helpful.
Hope we can get some of the others I've suggested as well, particularly a few Latin American ones.
Even just https://www.librarything.com/topic/224207 and https://www.librarything.com/topic/224206 would go a long way, and those should be easy enough to configure.

Thanks!

>3 davidgn: Thanks for the suggestions! I'll point them to Chris C, who handles our z39.50 sources.

Will amazon.nl also be added?

>6 Petroglyph: If it's available. As mentioned in my OP, some Amazon sites don't make their data available for LT purposes, and there's not a lot we can do about that. Each site is different/independent, in that regard. But if we can tap into it, we should.

No, it's still not open for API access. I don't see it talked about anywhere, but, also, I tried using the API patterns for it, and it didn't work.

>8 timspalding:
So it goes. Thanks for trying!

Update: You can now use Amazon.in, Amazon.it, Amazon.es, Amazon.com.mx, and Amazon.cn to catalog your music and movies, as well as your books! Initially, these new sources were books-only, but, now that we've got everything working smoothly, we wanted to make sure to bring in their music and movie data, too.

Amazon.com.br does not have music and movie data available, unfortunately, which is why weren't not able to offer that as a source for those items.

>2 Petroglyph: Trying to decide if that last part of your comment was meant as sarcasm or not... Could be read either way...

>11 gilroy:
It was entirely sincere. No sarcasm at all.

(I realize that this reply could be read as sarcasm, which would make the original comments sarcasm, too. I don't think there's anything I can do to prevent an escalating chain of meta-sarcasm, so I'll refrain from even trying. You'll just have to accept my claim to honesty.)

Uh huh.

>12 Petroglyph: No worries. Some of us don't like Amazon data, some do. I just couldn't tell which way the comment went. You say it's sincere, I'll take it as such.

>14 gilroy:
Ah, now I understand: the ratty data thing. And to think that I added (often reliable) to specifically hedge my way around that! Yeah... 20/20 hindsight and all that.

(To be perfectly explicit: I take the view that partially incorrect / messy but editable data is preferable to no data at all, especially for under-represented languages and the like, which this update is aimed at capturing more of. Ye gods, how this thread-derailing aside drags out.)

>15 Petroglyph:

Personally, I think that wrong data is worse than no data. No data requires someone to enter correct data, and they can choose not to enter particular fields if they don't feel like it or don't know the right data; wrong data can just sit there, forever wrong, possibly without anyone even knowing it's wrong. If someone asks you directions and you don't know, do you just make something up because a wrong answer is better than no answer?

>16 lorax: If someone asks you directions and you don't know, do you just make something up because a wrong answer is better than no answer

I have been told that's exactly what is done in some countries.

(I'm in agreement with you, though. I think no information is WAAAYYYY better than wrong information.)

>16 lorax:
I'm sure we can agree to disagree ;) I have no intention of rehashing the pros and cons of partially-ratty / partially accurate data all over.

(That smiley means no sarcasm intended. At all!)