Editing Sort Order on books you don't own
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1hipdeep
Is it possible to edit the Sort Order field on a book you don't own? The field is only on the "edit your book" page, so it feels like the answer is no... but what if I added a book to my catalog, made the change, and the deleted the book from my catalog? Would the change stick?
The particular use case is that a fair number of books starting with the word "I" alphabetize by the second word... so "I am" sorts to A, "I can" sorts to C, etc. I enter a lot of awards data, which now can be sorted by title, and that reveals these cases.
(I've been working on the NPR Books We Love which has 7 examples just on the first page sorted by title, if you want to see it.)
The particular use case is that a fair number of books starting with the word "I" alphabetize by the second word... so "I am" sorts to A, "I can" sorts to C, etc. I enter a lot of awards data, which now can be sorted by title, and that reveals these cases.
(I've been working on the NPR Books We Love which has 7 examples just on the first page sorted by title, if you want to see it.)
2MarthaJeanne
Can you give us some examples? It sounds to me like a bug if I is ordered as if it were A.
3lilithcat
>1 hipdeep:
The page you linked to does not appear to be sorted by title and I can't see a way to change the order to see that.
The page you linked to does not appear to be sorted by title and I can't see a way to change the order to see that.
4MarthaJeanne
I've made a bug report, but I doubt that fixing the bug will fix all the back cases.
5gilroy
>3 lilithcat: If you click on the heading "Work" then scroll down, you'll find a block between Alligator Candy and Amanda Wakes.
6hipdeep
>2 MarthaJeanne: I would agree that this is probably some kind of import bug. It doesn't apply to all books starting with "I"; for example I, Robot sorts correctly. (Which may only mean someone fixed I, Robot some time in the past.) Thanks for filing the error (even if it doesn't fix the old cases).
Though just for the record, my hypothesis is not that "I is ordered as A" but that I is ignored, the "sort order" field is probably set to "3", and "I (anything)" is ordered as "(anything)".
(For the sake of completeness, what I'm calling the "sort order" field is not actually labelled. But if you go into your "Edit my book" page for any book, at the end of the line with the title on it there's a dropdown with a list of numbers that lets you sort which character to sort by. Very useful for ignoring punctuation or A, An, and The. Or I suppose books using a roman numeral I to mean "volume 1".)
Though just for the record, my hypothesis is not that "I is ordered as A" but that I is ignored, the "sort order" field is probably set to "3", and "I (anything)" is ordered as "(anything)".
(For the sake of completeness, what I'm calling the "sort order" field is not actually labelled. But if you go into your "Edit my book" page for any book, at the end of the line with the title on it there's a dropdown with a list of numbers that lets you sort which character to sort by. Very useful for ignoring punctuation or A, An, and The. Or I suppose books using a roman numeral I to mean "volume 1".)
7Nevov
>6 hipdeep:
If it helps any to mention, it is possible to add 'Sort character' as a column in one of the display styles for Your Books.
The settings menu is: https://www.librarything.com/settings/display and the Sort character is within the Bibliographic submenu of Catalog Fields.
That doesn't address your main question about the awards page, but may still help you if you're altering data in your own books.
If it helps any to mention, it is possible to add 'Sort character' as a column in one of the display styles for Your Books.
The settings menu is: https://www.librarything.com/settings/display and the Sort character is within the Bibliographic submenu of Catalog Fields.
That doesn't address your main question about the awards page, but may still help you if you're altering data in your own books.
