Question regarding Touchstones

Hi Everyone~

Must a title be catalogued in at least one LTer's library in order for the Touchstones feature to work for that title?

If not, what are the parameters that cause Touchstones to recognize titles?

Yes, they are tied to site search. There are ways to get them to work if search doesn't find them, but those are also tied to the LT work. And what a touchstone links to is the LT work. Without an entry there is no work to link to.

Thank you, MarthaJeanne! :)

>1 Polite_Society: In order to touchstone books when adding events for book launches, I have created a collection named "Force to show in events" so that I can add the book to LT if no one else has added it to their library. I exclude this collection from being used for suggestions, etc.

>4 rodneyvc: : What's the process for excluding a collection from suggestions?

I have a 'collection' in my library labelled W.I.S. (Written in Stone) that I use to add authors/titles/book cover images for those dear departed whose works aren't catalogued on LT; not that I'd want to exclude them from being suggested, though.

>5 Polite_Society: On the Your Books tab, or anywhere else you can select the collection, go the collection drop-down and the last choice is Edit Your Collections. Click on that and open up the collection you want to edit and uncheck the Include In Recommendations option.

>5 Polite_Society:

Uh, if you have them in a collection on LT, they're cataloged on LT.

>6 jjwilson61: Thank you! (Sheesh, been here ten years and still don't know half the features! Shame on me!)

>7 lorax: Yeah, you'd think so, but it doesn't occur immediately or even overnight.

Before I start a new topic, do any of you happen to know how frequently LT does a complete update?

>6 jjwilson61: I think they'd still be excluded from your recommendations though.

>9 Polite_Society: For recommendations? Usually 2 or 3 days but it could take up to a couple weeks.

>5 Polite_Society: What @jjwilson said in >6 jjwilson61:

My understanding was that "exclude from recommendations" meant not to suggest books for me based on the contents of this collection.

>9 Polite_Society:

No, I can categorically state that it happens immediately, because the definition of "Catalogued on LT" is "Someone has it in a collection on LT". So you're clearly using "Cataloged on LT" to mean something different, like "Shows up in a search" or "Shows up in recommendations" or "Works for Touchstones" - what exactly do you mean when you use the phrase?

If you think about it in terms of an old card catalog, then if something is cataloged then you'd be able to search for it, so I can see someone blurring that distinction between something being "cataloged on LT" and having it in the search indexes.

>13 lorax: I mean that a work and author not previously catalogued on LT but catalogued by me just prior to posting on Written in Stone that an author has died does not immediately activate Touchstones for that author (or the title I catalog for him/her). Sometimes Touchstones don't ever 'turn on' for such, even after weeks of having been catalogued in my LT library.

>14 jjwilson61: In this particular instance, all I'm interested in is having Touchstones function for newly added works/authors who've not previously been catalogued by any other LTer.

Touchstones won't work normally until search has updated, however you can force a touchstone. Type the work number and :: in front of the title to force it. To find the work number, look at the URL of the work page. If there are two numbers you want the first one.

Is there a way to force an author touchstone?

>17 MarthaJeanne: Very useful info re: the :: force! (Just discovered it works on Amazon's search, too!)

So I guess my question is, how often does LT's search update?

>18 jjwilson61: That is an excellent question! Hope somebody knows the answer! :)

>18 jjwilson61: You force author touchstones the same way, except you use the author name as written in the author page URL (usually lastnamefirstname format). So \\shutenevil::Nevil Shute\\ forces Nevil Shute. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for split authors, so you can only use the author name without the split number to go to the disambiguation page.