Allow "Add to Your Books"/"Add to wishlist" by using an existing Work-ID

Hello,

it should be possible to add a work that already has a work-ID on LT:
Add to your books page:
- by ISBN, EAN
- by LT work-ID
- add manually

In some cases I've already the Work-ID, example work: http://www.librarything.com/work/23995675
When I'm on this page i can press two buttons: "Add to Your Books"/"Add to wishlist"

I will be redirected to the Add-a-Book-page and it forced me to use an external service. However, this behavior only allows the addition of works that are listed there.
It will fail, whenever the book was added manually and/or is not listed anywhere. This will happen at least with almost every rare antiquarian book published before ~1968; or with works published as part of other works, like my linked example.

I've to add the book manually. When I'm done I have to go to the author's page, looking for another entry of the same book, just to combine them again because there was a typo…

I hope I was able to explain the problem of unnecessary additional effort.

I'm not a "combiner": I earned the badge by cleaning up my own manual mess.

Thank you.

Please see this thread for existing discussion of this:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/248001

Thanks for adding this thread to an overview of other suggestions.

If you are adding "rare antiquarian" books, you're presumably concerned with edition-specific details, in which case the generic work would be totally inadequate. I'm bewildered, though, at your assertion that no libraries available as sources hold books older than 1968 - that's certainly not the case in the US, where the Library of Congress and university libraries certainly have older editions (you just need to add date and/or publisher to your search, rather than relying solely on title+author), and I can't imagine that there aren't decent European sources as well.

>1 xuprtn:

This will happen at least with almost every rare antiquarian book published before ~1968

What data source are you using? I've had success for slews of pre-1968 books. As >4 lorax: says, the LOC and university (and other) libraries are excellent sources. Two examples: the LOC is where I found my 1714 L'Iliade and the Italian National Library Service had Riflessioni del signor Nicole sopra i principali punti della religione e de' costumi from 1769

Other good sources for old books (depending on subject matter) are the British Library, Oxford University, and Folger Shakespeare Library.

Hello everyone,

@lorax/@Crypto-Willobie
"I'm bewildered, though, at your assertion that no libraries available as sources hold books older than 1968" (Sorry, I don't know how to create a proper citation here)

No, that's not the problem, but at first I've to find a source I can use. If I'm on a particular work-page it should be possible to add the same work based on its work-ID just by using a one-click-solution without the extra step "search for it again".
And that was my intention for this thread:
- before I found something suitable, it is often faster to create the entire book completely manually.
- but then there would still be the problem that there are books that are not listed at all (small publications, unknown authors, etc.) — but they are listed already on LT

@lilithcat
Most books published after 1968 are using the ISBN system, that's why I mentioned the year 1968 here.

~

If I had to estimate I would say 400 of my manual entries are redundant (I'm not the only one on LT with the book). These would have been a fine example for a real one-click-solution.

Browsing on an author's page, watching the list of his works, remembering that I've the book too, clicking on it's work page, click "Add to your library"…
Whoops, sorry, not found, change the source library, try again, change the source library again, and again… Oo

Maybe you think I'm kind of crazy, but:
- 400 manual entries × (60 seconds for each manual entry + 60 seconds for an optional work combination afterwards) = 800 minutes = ~13+ hours.

Yes, the reason is time.

Here are my stats:

(I'd tried it! Really!)
8 Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (GBV)
3 Südwestdeutschen Bibliotheksverbund
1 Deichmanske Bibliotek
1 KOBV - Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund Berlin-Brandenburg
1 Library of Congress
1 German National Library
1 Harvard OpenMetadata
1 Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund SWB
…
645 manual entry
…
(books using ISBN)
398 Amazon germany books
335 Amazon.de books
94 Amazon germany all media
83 Amazon.com books
42 Amazon.de books, music and movies
3 Amazon.com all media
3 Amazon.co.uk books
2 Amazon uk books
2 Amazon germany books, music and movies

The books with only one or two members, it might be worth your while to check how they entered it.

Seeing as much of my library is Austrian books, I entered a lot of it manually back before we had any Austrian sources. If you want accuracy, that doesn't take much longer than using a source. If you are adding older books, Amazon will give you lousy data. That takes a lot longer to fix than entering from scratch.

I think I'm confused, then.

If you don't actually care about editions, and any old edition (not just the "rare antiquarian" one that you yourself own) will do for adding to your catalog, then your "one-click" generic edition solution would be fine. (It's not really one-click though, because you still have to search for the title on LT - and if you're already doing a search with the intention of adding the book you find, why not just do the search in Add Books to begin with?) If, however, you do care about adding your own "rare antiquarian" edition, then you'd need to edit this "one-click" generic edition anyway, so doing a search in a library would be much preferred. I'm not familiar enough with German-language sources to recommend one in particular, but you've *got* to be able to do better than Amazon.