full import from one library to another

Hi --

I'd really like it if we could actually do an export of ALL fields from one LibraryThing account, and then fully import them into another LibraryThing account.

For years I kept my daughter's reading list in my own account, which made sense when I was reading to her. Of course, she's been reading on her own for about 6 years, and I have been meaning to import her reading list to her own account. We are talking thousands of books, and I bought an account for her just for this purpose.

Unfortunately, when I finally sat down to do the import, I rapidly realized that the "import" is set up to import from various non-LT sources into LT -- shelfari, goodreads, whatever. It has only a limited number of fields, so I lose all kinds of data that I have kept on my kid's reading for her -- critically, for instance, reading dates, private notes, source, acquisition date .... Also, on import, apparently LT just uses the ISBN and pulls all the main data from a new source (amazon, LC, LT). So all the corrections and specifications that were done in the original file are now missing.

For the record: The fields in "Universal import" include: ('TITLE' 'AUTHOR (last, first)' 'DATE' 'ISBN' 'PUBLICATION INFO' 'TAGS' 'RATING' 'REVIEW' 'DATE READ' 'PAGE COUNT' 'CALL NUMBER') -- Everything else is lost!

And everything in *all* the fields is over-written with newly-pulled data from amazon, LC, or LT.

It seems that the major problem is the lack of functionality on IMPORT. Maybe don't do it through import, and simply offer a "dupe this account ideally by particular criteria such as collections or tags into another account" would be the best way to handle this.

Here are more threads on the topic:
* http://www.librarything.com/topic/309419 (July 2019)
* https://www.librarything.com/topic/305071
* https://www.librarything.com/topic/290737
* https://www.librarything.com/topic/272639
* https://www.librarything.com/topic/260411 (several different suggestions on this topic in one long thread)
* https://www.librarything.com/topic/219575
* https://www.librarything.com/topic/208174

Oh, yes, please! I want a unified library for our house, and my husband's older 600 tomes are already in the system with all the corrections, if only we could merge them more easily.

Totally agree. Currently it's just unprofessional. Umlaute (ä,ö,ü etc.) are not displayed properly either. At his stage imports are a waste of time and avert non-English speakers.

Actually, Umlaute generally display well. Sometimes imports need correcting, but even that is rare.

There are different ways to code umlauts (and other diacritics), and LT generally copies entries from external sources, so it takes a lot of combining. But beyond that, they are usually not a problem.

Same goes for ligatures.

If your library wasn't private we could probably combine some of your entries into the proper works. This always takes manual help when each book starts being entered. It takes longer for non-English entries because it takes longer for there to be a good group of entries, and fewer combiners feel able to deal with them. However there are several combiners who are comfortable in German.

Good sources for German include Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund, Südwestdeutschen Bibliotheksverbund, Österreichischer Bibliothekenverbund (for Austrian Books) Don't use Amazon.com, and only use Amazon.de for recent books that aren't in the library sources yet. Amazon has its own entries working fairly well now, but the quality of the data of their 'partners' ie used book dealers can be very poor.

Brand new books won't be in OverCat, but if you are also entering books in English it is probably the best all round source. There are probably still a few bad entries in OverCat from the days when we were trying to get German sources working properly. It took some experimenting to figure out how each library was coding. In such cases try the library again. The new import should be OK.

>3 Littke: What >7 MarthaJeanne: said. And if you want to let us at your library, we'll have it tidied in no time.

There's no solution to this problem is there?

I thought the whole idea of LibraryThing was to catalog collections, but if you cannot import ALL FIELDS then it is pretty much junk. Well, if you have an existing library; if you only have one book or ten books then it would not be an issue. But who has time to manually input tens of thousands of fields of data? I don't.

I tried to use the universal import the other day and 137 titles out of 200 made it into my library. Then I exported that to finesse the existing data using more data fields, deleted the existing on LT and re-imported. That time LT recognized and imported 200 books, but then subsequently lost 36 books. I have no idea where they are. I'm sure the missing titles imported do not have ISBNs, but I can fix some data just not all... if I could find them. That said, it still did not import / fill all the fields I had completed second time around - fields that were exported.

Long story short, importing 200 books was a test and it didn't work. I have notes on books that need to be imported as comments, and it would take years to do so manually. Importing comments / private comments as a field, or any other field, should not be a problem.

Anyway, if you ever figure out how to import data that works please let me know. Thanks.

Many of us have individually entered libraries of thousands of books, so it's definitely do-able even without a functioning import. Unfortunately, LT has no interest in improving the import situation - I've been complaining about it for years (started an RSI four years ago here) to no avail.

Thanks, but... yeah, that doesn't really help me. Maybe that's why Tim Spalding only has 1,645 books in his library, it's way too much work for him to input more into LT.

I have to admit that with 2,375,000 users I'm surprised that more people don't care. And as I said before, I thought the whole idea behind LT was to catalog collections, like whole collections. If getting whole collections into LT is NOT doable then, well, what's the point. I get the whole social side etc, but it seems like the starting point is YOUR LIBRARY. Sorry, but that's frustrating.

I already have all or most of my books in a database so as it stands now I would have to redundantly and manually input information into LT. I can't foresee ever having the time to maintain TWO databases of my books. And as far as I know, LT isn't user-friendly in that respect either as you cannot simply move / scroll from Book 1 to Book 2 while in the edit part (instead it is link, link, link, link, link).

Oh well, I gave it a shot...

>11 Picathartes: You can edit almost all book fields directly from your catalog, so there is no need to move from book 1 to book 2 when editing.
When I first joined LT I added all of my books individually. Did it take a few weeks? Yes. Was it worth it to have a comprehensive and detailed catalog that I can easily add to for the last 13 years? Absolutely.

It IS doable. We have DONE it. What it isn't is as easy as it should be.

And it's not that people don't care, it's that we have largely given up after four years of silence from the developers.

>9 Picathartes: I'd venture to say that most people here didn't already have their entire libraries catalogued in some outside format. Some did, but most didn't. So the ability to transfer every last jot and tittle of already-recorded catalogue info and annotation is not the core of what LT is about. I guess it would be nice, but it doesn't make LT useless that you can't do that.

>11 Picathartes:

And I maintain two databases. I wrote a Selenium script to "manually" input my books from the data in my database. So it can be done and there are people who do it.