Member descriptions of works

When we released the new work page, members were quick to notice the old "Member Descriptions" had vanished. They were right. In fact, there was some miscommunication about this, and I failed to make a final decision. So I want to put it to you, and get your feedback. I know @AbigailAdams26 has thoughts too.

First, @knerd.knitter is going to bring them back as an uneditable field for now. At a minimum, we will provide a way for members to get their descriptions.

Here's the problem with member descriptions:

1. Some are member written in the truest sense. That's great, although I hesitate to use them anywhere central, because they're ultimately one opinion and of unknown quality.
2. A LOT of them are cut and pasted from somewhere else. The text there generally comes from the publisher, but not necessarily so. So the provenance is unknown and the copyright is dicey. Together, this means I don't want to front them. And they aren't really MEMBER descriptions at all.
3. Some are posted by authors directly. These can be excessively promotional.

In other words, we have a "member descriptions" field that's a grab bag of true member descriptions and text pasted from elsewhere. While LibraryThing isn't legally liable for copyright infringement by members unless we refuse to take things down after a legal notice, we try to do better than that here. To this I add that publisher-provided promotional copy is generally understood to be fair use, but, for example, if someone copied a book's description from 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List that would almost certainly NOT be fair use.

The legal and provenancial (a word? a word now!) issues have soured my on the field, at least as it is now. But… I don't know what to do. Either way my apologies for the work page going live without a definite solution to this problem.

Help!?

My two cents: I have many, many old, obscure and out-of-print books in my catalog, and I try to add descriptions for them. I do sometimes use publisher descriptions, either taken from the book's own dust-jacket, or from advertisements I find in other books, usually through Google Books. These are usually quite old, and in the public domain, but I have always assumed that even if not, if they come from the publisher it's OK and fair use. Many others, I write myself.

There are so many older books that don't have decent descriptions, and I'm always glad when I come across one someone else has contributed. I assume they're likewise glad to see mine. I've added many of them at this point, and would hate to lose them.

We could perhaps just split the field:

1. Member descriptions. Written by members and no one else.
2. Publisher descriptions. Cut and pasted without modification from a named source.

I'm worried about the legality of #2 though. While we're not liable for what members do, it's one thing to have it happen and another to make a field for it. It's rather like how people say Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road did no harm—HE didn't sell any drugs! But, well, he did make sections of his website labelled "Cocaine," "Heroine," etc. :)

While I've always thought that member descriptions should be for descriptions written by members, I do see the benefit of using the description from the book cover or other promotional material when no other descriptions are available. Perhaps there could be a check box when adding a description to mark it as either member written or copy/pasted and with a space to say where it's taken from (like with published reviews).

Hmm. I understand the difficulty now. And I have seen plenty of descriptions that are just copied from the publisher/marketing, which always feels less than useful.

But with the PD books, especially the ones that are fairly rare/difficult to find, like i dunno Grace Harlowe with the Red Cross in France (1920), links to digitized copies are a really nice thing the description field has been used for.

Perhaps a compromise would be a dedicated field for Hathi Trust, Archive.org, Faded Page (Canadian), PG, in the Get Book section, with some kind of verification of the url.

ETA: I'm not very observant. 🤦 There is a links section for the Work. That would be where the PD sources should go, yes?

Book covers have questionable copyright status too. I think that if it is clear that the description comes from the publisher (usually from the backcover) so that nobody claims a copyright, there is no intellectual property issues. After all, it's all publicity for the book.

Why hold this field to a higher standard than any other field on the site? You don't proactively police reviews for copyrighted material, right? Or disallow reviews entirely on the grounds users may put copyrighted material into them?

And the descriptions you are allowing -- Haiku, Five Words, etc. -- could just as easily be copy and pasted (plagiarized) material as a general description. And users will always do an end run anyway. If they want to copy and paste a description they found elsewhere, they'll just pick one of your cute little headers at random and paste their text in anyway.

By segregating them as member descriptions, you are offering a de facto caveat emptor to site viewers, but you could certainly include an explicit disclaimer that the material is not editorially reviewed and offer a flagging system for complaints as you do with other functions on the site.

I always thought the definition of "Review" was broad enough to include "Member description," and I've never been in any way tempted to populate the latter.

I am very active using the "Descriptions" page to help make sure that the work descriptions are suitable and legible.

>6 .mau.:

I think less so. Covers—thumbnail covers, not covers resort on t-shirts—are necessary to show what a book is. You can take a photo of a t-shirt and put it online if you're trying to sell the shirt, not make money off the image. Publisher descriptions are in aid of the book, but they aren't the book.

>7 villemezbrown: Actually, people do flag reviews for copyrighted material.

>10 gilroy:

And flags now STRONGLY count against sort position. We want the top reviews to be good, recent, from members actively using the site, and not junk or cut-and-pasted theft.

I am not sure I have written any Member Descriptions -- certainly not many -- but I have sympathy for those who think we should try to supply some sort of description for books with little or nothing there.

Perhaps a heretical notion: If fewer than some number of users own it (100? 200?) or if there are no publisher descriptions, then a member can add a description?

The alternative thought is, when I write a review, I try to describe a book, too. Maybe there could be something to encourage substantial reviews of un-described books?

>3 timspalding:
I use "Private comments" for everything that is personal;

So no problem with the description field

After all, except summary and or other "word for word" and authorized reprint of the rights holder, everything else is private.

nb : I authorize you to go take a private look (cause LBTh founder) in my private space. You will notice a certain wealth... It's a lot af hours and work wih never end
;-)

I can see both sides of this, but in terms of general usefulness, I err on the side of too much information rather than nothing. Often I'm the only one or one of just a couple people with a comic book, for example. Then I have not only entered the book, but a description of the issue, a cover, a publication date, etc. If it's part of a series I construct that and add a series description if one exists on the publisher's site. LT would be a lot less useful for me if those things couldn't be populated by whatever the most reliable source might be. It's already taking me longer to do all those things with the new changes you made and so adding the onus of citing and linking to where we found the information will cause me to do it less or not at all, which is a bummer.

>10 gilroy: I know reviews can be flagged -- I mentioned flagging in my last sentence. My point, which you seemed to have missed, was descriptions should be given the same benefit of the doubt as reviews. LT doesn't proactively prevent the submission of all reviews because some may abuse copyrighted material, but instead provides reviews (and covers and other functions) a flagging system where users and copyright holders can register their concerns about copyright abuse or fair use violations.

And really, I don't get how it makes sense for LT to allow the new, cute descriptions and not more general and informative ones. Haikus and Five Word Descriptions are more fun, sure, and can be monetized and/or gamified by LT as bonus features/quizzes but they too could abuse copyrighted material and would benefit from a flagging system.

I’m with Abigail, as my library has many old and obscure books. Adding Common Knowledge helps slightly, but a description field is vital both for my memory and for the next person to come along.

And >7 villemezbrown: asks appropriately:
Why hold this field to a higher standard than any other field on the site?

>5 keristars: I won’t admit here to using the field for links to digital copies. But gosh! What a great idea!

>16 2wonderY: The links were so handy recently when I was doing CK and looking up the various CampFire/Camp-Fire/Camp Fire Girls series that came out from 1914-1925ish. Once I finish my SantaThing book about girls series, I'm planning to verify whether some are, in fact, the same text with new titles/changed pen-name, because the Wikipedia page pains me terribly.

Especially with those series and similar, the links are useful as disambiguation tools as well as for potential readers. And with me using my phone for everything, the convenience factor is huge.

Since this discussion is revolving around the description, could we add a unicorn?
What about making it more of a table of contents type field as requested in this thread with lots of "please" votes:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/332959

>18 gilroy: Once in a while, the Table of Contents is the best way to describe and differentiate.
I did this for the entire Book Trails series, both the 1928 and 1946 editions.

I actually have less 'obscure' books than the average user, and I still come across very many books in my library with no description available whatsoever. I am in favour of detailed descriptions being added by members, however that comes into being. I agree that the cutesy new description categories, like emoji, five-word, and 'bad descriptions' are fun but ultimately not very helpful at all.

I may be wrong, but in my experience, most people do the simplest actions they can. So, let's say the long description field comes back:
Most users do nothing with that field. Great, we don't have to worry about them.
Of the ones that do, maybe half will have some information pulled up that's already on the internet — the summary provided by a public library (presumably not a copyright infringement), or by the publisher (information they made public as advertising for their book; I am hard-pressed to think of a reason this would not be fair use, or if it weren't, that the publisher would be opposed to the free advertisement of it being cross-posted to a site full of book-buyers) — and they copy-paste that. As established, not worrying behaviour.
If you don't have the publisher's own summary in front of you, the path of least resistance (if you're still determined to interact with this field) is to write out a summary of their own. Also not copyright infringement.
It takes a lot of steps, and would be a lot more work, to find a copyrighted summary (like one that exists within a different, already published book) and then sit down and write out each word as you read it from the book. So, from the general maxim of human behaviour (the average person takes the path of least resistance), this isn't a hugely widespread problem where half the website is champing at the bit to violate international copyright law.

Of course, there are always edge cases, but this is why we have flags, no? If I was just desperate to violate copyright, I could still do so in the review field or even on the talk page, but I would be flagged, and my violation would be removed.

Ultimately, I don't think it's fair to remove an incredibly helpful part of the website in response to fear that a select few people might use that feature to violate copyright. Any feature that includes the ability to type freely can be used to violate copyright, and I don't think that would be fair justification to remove the entirety of the talk feature, for example.

Can publisher descriptions be copyright violation when cited as such? They are used everywhere, from book selling sites to libraries, as I'd assume was the intent of publishers when making them. Is there reason to believe they are not fair use by default? Honest question to those with better understanding of law in this since I'd expect it's not much different to using covers. They are also copyrighted, but used freely for the purpose of presenting the book.

Either way, there's no reason members should enter those when there's a description of the work already present, so the issue is only relevant when there is none. Personally, I'd like if member descriptions when there is none would actually surface as the 'Book Description', rather than just reside on their own and not feature in work pop up boxes and such. If the publisher or book jacket description is not fair use, then that will be the guideline regardless whether it's the only description available or not. Assuming the member descriptions will remain as they were, a kind of standalone CK field, offending ones would be deleted as they are now.

I'd like to add my +1 to unicorn wish for a dedicated ToC field. Failing that, what is the stance on entering those in member descriptions for things like compilations of essays and short story collections, especially when by a variety of authors. I find them more useful as an overview of what to expect than most descriptions in such cases.

I think the solution has to be to add it back, but under two different categories—member descriptions and publisher descriptions. The latter would clearly state that it's for publisher-provided descriptions, not from third parties.

The new descriptions have another major change--they're not part of the CK system. This means they're not a single fielded Wiki, but can have metadata hanging off it, like a field for the provenance of the review.

We're going to have a struggle getting everything into these two categoires, though.

>18 gilroy: Seconded. I recently added a 3-CD Louis Armstrong compilation to my library, and found it was auto-combined with multiple different compilations with the same title. I split them appropriately, and added a disambiguation notice and description to the various versions which were the complete track listings, so the description ended up as a de facto table of contents.

It would be so useful for anthologies too! It's easy to see the various authors, but without a ToC you can't see the various titles.

>22 timspalding: I think this is reasonable. Thank you, Tim.

>22 timspalding: So in this format, a member would not be able to put in a publisher description? It would have to come directly from the publisher? Or do you mean that a member could enter the publisher's description in that category? It seems highly unlikely that many publisher's would be updating their back catalogue here.

>25 saskia17:

No, it would be the member adding it.

>26 timspalding: Thanks for the clarification!

Possible bug? As far as I've checked, the Book Description is not showing on any of the books in my collection. Not the Members Description, just any description at all. For example: https://www.librarything.com/work/10178021/book/119319057 - showing no description, however: https://www.librarything.com/work/10178021/descriptions/119319057 - the descriptions page clearly shows it has one.

>28 saskia17: You've probably turned on the option not to show descriptions for books in your catalogue. It's somewhere in site settings I believe

ETA: Home > Settings > Other Settings (under Your Books) > Work-page top descriptions

>29 SandraArdnas: Thanks! Not sure how I managed to do that. All good now.

>23 Maddz: I have similarly entered track listings for the disambiguation of thousands of classical music recordings that I have re-combined. I know that the site is primarily for books rather than for recordings, but I would hate to lose all those years of work.

I second the request for a dedicated table of contents section.

>22 timspalding:

I agree that it will be complicated to sort everything into publisher or member descriptions, but I think this is a good idea.

I hope it will be possible to up- or downvote member descriptions, or (better yet) flag as inapplicable to that work.

>18 gilroy:, >19 2wonderY:, >21 SandraArdnas:, >23 Maddz:, >31 kleh:, thanks for ya'll's affirmations. I wasn't aware of the TOC RSI, but I'll certainly take a look at it now.

I'm one of the frequent Combiners! who often (mis?)used the old members' book description CK field to list contents, typically referenced in a disambiguation notice (each of which now directs incorrectly to a non-existent "book description" field), since (a) I find distinctions among similarly-titled collections to be among the most challenging separation/combining issues, and (b) particularly with stories, work-to-work relationships often lack much of the content that I'd otherwise link. No doubt that's "ultimately one opinion and of unknown quality," but I want to understand the differences among editions before I choose one for our library.

A case in point: I was in the midst of reviewing and refining editions of Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief when the LT2 work page convulsion happened. (Yes, I'm also in the will-have-to-adjust-but-not-at-all-happy-about-it camp.) In the case of the Penguin Classics edition touchstoned above, the TOC, like each TOC that I've researched and entered before it, used to appear at the bottom of the main work page but is now buried obscurely at the bottom of https://www.librarything.com/work/33513772/descriptions - with absolutely no means for me (or presumably anyone other than the LT professionals) to edit it further. (As an aside, I had already edited this one a couple of times, both for corrections and to delete the "BR" break commands auto-inserted between my "/LI" and "LI" list commands, the latter deletions to no avail.)

I should still be able to complete my current review, separations, and recombinations for this work with only reference to the TOC data, once I get through the remaining 400± posts in the New Work Page! talk threads (it's taken me four days to get that far) and a few weeks' more retraining myself on work pages, but I had prob'ly two dozen or more similar projects in various stages of attack that I'll likely have to abandon if we don't get some reasonably similar functional utility. And, if it's not in the same context, there's no telling how I'd ever find and retrieve all the TOC data that I've added periodically over the last seventeen plus years ...

>1 timspalding: Does it matter, or help with copyright issues, if the source is given? I usually note where I got it. Most of my descriptions are from Amazon, and I generally say so. I suppose that most of those are from the publisher, anyway. Since we are allowed to take cataloging information and covers from Amazon, I have supposed that descriptions are also fair play. My second most common source is from the book jacket, but does that violate copyright?

I was also putting in tables of contents, if it wasn't too much too much work. Sometimes I took them from the Library of Congress. Since those are paid for by the government, I would assume that's o.k. LoC may have a pre-publication table of contents, so it's needs to be checked against the actual book. Otherwise, if they aren't too long, I took them, or a condensed form of them, from the book. I've also begun noting the format from which I took it - ebooks often lack indexes, but if that's all that I have to work with, I don't necessarily know if the paper copies have one. If I have access to the cataloging for paper copies that tells me that it does, I can make a note.

I was also putting in things like age and grade recommendations, since I think that information was more available..

So, things that I spent hours and hours and hours doing are gone.

I know the cover servers are going crazy now, but any idea on when we can add publisher descriptions again? Another low-copy, non-library item I've just cataloged is in need of one.

Erm.

>36 Bookmarque: Never?

>35 PuddinTame: The text on a book flap or the description that a publisher writes is copywritten material to the publisher/author. It's licensed to libraries and other places as part of the sales contract.

I am very upset that book descriptions are no longer available. When I look at someone's library and want to learn more about a book, my first step is to check the description. These descriptions are essential for enhancing the user experience and fostering a sense of community among readers.

There are many times when I find myself being the first to add a review for a novel, and I often notice that the description is missing. I take the initiative to add a description along with other relevant information, such as the publication date, original language, first line, last line, dedication, epigraphs, and classification. I do this in hopes of enriching the reading experience for other members. However, without a description, this additional information often fails to spark interest.

I would like to see descriptions categorized into two types: Member Descriptions and Publisher Descriptions. To be transparent, I have never read a Member Description on LibraryThing in all the years I've added books to my library. Whenever I check the "Member Description" (if available), it usually seems to be a cut-and-paste job that mirrors information found on Amazon or Goodreads.

>40 FerneMysteryReader: They are still available. Maybe the default location is no longer at the top, though that would be a strange change. Check if it's lower on the work page and, if so, use Customize View at the bottom of the right side bar to move to the top. Otherwise, check your setting for showing descriptions Home > Settings > Other Setting > Work-page top descriptions

Member descriptions are gone for now until they get a through redo

>40 FerneMysteryReader:, >41 SandraArdnas: Member descriptions may be in limbo (purgatory?), but I don't think they're yet completely gone. For example, if you go to Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief, click on "Descriptions" in the left-hand column, then scroll past "Book Description" and "Library Descriptions." "Member Descriptions" should show at the bottom of the page - here, it's a list of contents that I added for reference. But there's no attribution to me as the contributing "member," and there's no way to edit the information therein.

>42 jasbro: Either way, I wanted to point out they'll be back with more features, but probably not within days

99% of descriptions are still there. What's missing are the member descriptions, which are… a mess and not very common. We are debating about them in another topic. Perhaps you were looking at a book without any?

>44 timspalding: Do you expect there’ll ever be a way, even eventually, to identify the member descriptions that I contributed? As noted above, I was regularly using the member description field to list contents that distinguish similarly-titled works, or where LT doesn’t (yet?) have separate work entries for all the contents. Maybe I was putting it in the wrong place all along, but I’d be glad to move them to a more appropriate field rather than lose all the time, effort and results of my research and documentation.

>1 timspalding: Are things in private comments subject to copyright concerns, since they are not publicly available?

>5 keristars: It seems to me that what you are saying assumes that descriptions aren't added until after the LT contributor has read the book. I add items that I haven't read yet, and sometimes never intend to read, and I add publisher/marketing descriptions because I think that it is more helpful to other people than having nothing.

>16 2wonderY: This is a very good point. I have just been adding something, and where did I get the author short biography? it was included in the marketing information. Is that a breach of copyright? I would otherwise have to copy it from the author's website (if available) or from the book unless the author is famous enough to be in Wikipedia. Are the former breaching copyright?

Added: Where else could we get this information? I had to go to the author's blog to verify that he is male and Polish.

>47 PuddinTame: That's not what I'm saying at all. I said that copying the marketing descriptions always feels less than useful to me, and I meant exactly that: they are less useful than descriptions which aren't duplicated from other sources.

But I didn't say "it's useless". I phrased it exactly how I meant it, and for how I use LT as discovery or for memory jiggering.

>49 keristars: I didn't say that you did say "useless." I am merely pointing out that I think they are worth putting in, even if some find them "less than useful."

Lucy and I will look into bringing this back, bifurcated into member and copied next week.

>46 PuddinTame: Are things in private comments subject to copyright concerns, since they are not publicly available?

No, but even if they were, how would anyone know? :)

>50 PuddinTame: How about downright spammy? (See Good Grief, More Peanuts! and related titles. And those are publisher descriptions straight from Bowker!)

>52 LazloNibble:

""A facsimile edition of the very first Peanuts Sunday strip collection containing the best daily strips from 1952-1956 and including the very first Sunday strip."--Page 4 of cover.

Spammy?

>18 gilroy: I had been putting those in the member description field as I figure that it is in fact a description of what is in the book, as is a lexile number and recommended reading levels. I have no objection to a separate field for it, but I have to ask: if using the description of a book that is on the jacket is a violation of copyright, is copying the table of contents also a violation of copyright? How about adding a book jacket, whether we pull it from the internet or scan it?

If a source like Amazon lets us use their cataloging and covers, couldn't we also assume that they let us use their descriptions?

If a source like Amazon lets us use their cataloging and covers, couldn't we also assume that they let us use their descriptions?

Amazon's API no longer delivers book descriptions, and hasn't for many years. We get ours from Bowker.

LibraryThing is protected from what members do, if we follow certain DMCA rules. But, no, I don't think Amazon want's people copying their book descriptions. Most (99%?) are from publishers, but I believe Amazon writes some of them. They would not want their work elsewhere.

>53 timspalding: I think >52 LazloNibble: was referring to one of the other publisher descriptions that got pulled in from a library - it begins with "America's most beloved comic strip, Peanuts, is now a major motion picture produced by Blue Sky Studios. Now you can collect the first ten original comic strip collections, published by Titan Comics!"

(that made me want to say "good grief!", lol. and I'm glad we can give it a thumbs down so it doesn't show as the primary description)

>56 keristars:

HA!

>1 timspalding:

I don’t think blurbs, publisher descriptions, etc. have any place in a section labeled “member descriptions”. That should be exactly that. And there is a different section for publisher descriptions.

>51 timspalding: Pretty please - trifurcate it and add an explicit Table of Contents field.

Another related issue (maybe it's part of the same issue) is that sometimes the official real (not member) descriptions are just completely terrible.

Very often the descriptions are full of marketing hype, and don't contain a summary or anything useful about the content of the book. (Also I cannot begin to describe how annoyed I am every time it starts with "HTML". That is not a description.)

This is especially the case for descriptions of pretty much any Bible, because Bibles tend to be sold based on the color of the cover, or the size of the print, or other differences which are not differences at the work level at all. There are many very popular Bible translations with at pages and pages of descriptions, and absolutely all of them describe a particular edition using blatant marketing language. Voting cannot fix this because there are not any "descriptions" that are at all useful.

Member descriptions at least provide the opportunity to include some actually useful information.

And many of these books are very popular, with thousands of members using them (or at least they would be, if anyone got around to combining the purple glitter large print edition with the green camo thinline edition and the navy leatherbound gift and award edition).

>59 Maddz: I would second a ToC field. Thanks!

>60 AranelST:

That's why the Descriptions page attached to each work allows for flagging, upvoting, and downvoting of descriptions. I use this system a lot, and so far I have rarely if ever encountered a book with an awful description that didn't have a better one available.

(I consider the Bible a lost cause with respect to work-level description.)

>61 jasbro: I would second a ToC field. Thanks!

I would agree that this would be useful -- extremely useful -- for non-fiction. I'd personally also like a check box or something to say if a book has an index. Both these would be very helpful for deciding about non-fiction. So I'm in favor.

But the large majority of books actually owned are fiction. Does a TOC help with that? I don't think so, generally. So do we want a feature that doesn't add anything for most books? I dunno.

Also, how do you format the TOC? Particularly for books that have chapters, and sub-chapters, and sub-sub-chapters?

(I stress: I like this idea, but it needs to be done right.)

>63 waltzmn: Actually, a ToC would be extremely useful for anthologies, but in general probably not so useful unless there's been some controversy and a couple of chapters been deleted.

The number of times I've scratched my head over whether I have an anthologised story or not...

Re non-fiction, a ToC would be useful to see the difference between editions: is the new edition a cleaned up version of the previous one, or is it a revision? If edition 1 has 16 chapters on topics A, B, C and D, but edition 2 has 20 chapters on topics A, C, D, E and F then it's obviously revised (topic B having been discredited in the meantime).

>59 Maddz:

If a TOC field would stop people from cataloguing short stories that have not been published on their own, I would be very happy indeed.

>65 lilithcat: For an ebook anthology or an online magazine, it is easy enough to split out the content you want and just catalogue that.

Admittedly, what I think happens is that people don't then use the work-to-work relationships to indicate that the split out work is actually an abridgement of the complete work. I do try and use the contained-within relationship, but that's not always obvious.

>66 Maddz:

My point is that people should not catalog an essay/article/short story that has not been published separately.

>67 lilithcat: Why not? How do you define published? An author providing an ebook on their page - is that “published”? What if someone has it as a separate file on their eReader - there is at least one plugin out there that creates eBooks from any web page for example. Or if they want to add a review or notes to a story but do not want the whole book/magazine or the story is online?

There had never been a requirement in LT for something to be published separately in order for it to be cataloged. The only restriction has always been that people should not catalog stories just to build ToCs in the relationships - but other from that…

Having or not ToC won’t stop people from cataloging in the way that works for them. I won’t stop adding individual stories so I can add a review even if there is a TOC feature for example )in the cases I really want to add a review).

>67 lilithcat: I used to agree with you, but having seen how much people want to track pages/words read, I think discouraging entry of individual pieces isn't the way.

We have Charts & Graphs that include some tracking of works read, and if you buy an anthology for a specific story, you would want your graph to show that you read the story, not the entire anthology.

Maybe I would think differently if we had a way of marking only a subset of the work as read, for included essays or "X number of pages before DNF", or whatever.

(This reminds me that I should catalogue the stories I read on websites that are also published in magazines, because I keep wanting to remember the title/link/when I read it.)

>64 Maddz: Actually, a ToC would be extremely useful for anthologies, but in general probably not so useful unless there's been some controversy and a couple of chapters been deleted.

I hadn't thought of this (I wasn't thinking about anthologies), but I agree.

I also grant the point about different editions.

What I was thinking about, though, is the lack of accurate book descriptions. I am very tired of reading a book description that makes a book sound like non-fiction, and then get it home and find it's historical fiction -- or, in one case I know of, an historical fabrication. Or, at minimum, that it isn't really the book that the description is selling.

Having the table of contents isn't an absolute cure for that, but reading ToCs and indices has saved me some expensive mistakes. So that's why I'd like the ToC, if it can be done in an effective way.

If it serves other functions for other people, so much the better.

Another plea for a dedicated Table of Contents section.
It would have many uses, including disambiguation, and for describing the scope of the work.

Please don't ignore those of us who catalogue mainly non-fiction.

>62 paradoxosalpha: That's why the Descriptions page attached to each work allows for flagging, upvoting, and downvoting of descriptions. I use this system a lot, and so far I have rarely if ever encountered a book with an awful description that didn't have a better one available.

That has not been my...

>62 paradoxosalpha: (I consider the Bible a lost cause with respect to work-level description.)

...oh, that explains it. The good news is that once I am done cataloging my Bibles, I'll probably stop noticing this problem, and eventually I will forget about it, and then it will no longer annoy me. (But like, someone is wrong on the Internet, ugh.)

>72 AranelST: ...oh, that explains it. The good news is that once I am done cataloging my Bibles, I'll probably stop noticing this problem, and eventually I will forget about it, and then it will no longer annoy me.

Well, as long as you don't go from Bibles to The Canterbury Tales....

Most popular old books have utterly tangled editions. Things that are in copyright are usually better. (Yes, Bible editions are copyright. But the Bible isn't, which is the problem there.)

Also, if you know what a book is, you don't have to read the description. :-)

>63 waltzmn: I haven't used member descriptions so much for non-fiction as for fiction, so I appreciate your suggestion of that additional utility.

Regarding fiction (and literature generally), I would again refer folks to my member descriptions for various editions of Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief, which were pretty significantly jumbled when I started down that road. I've about decided we want The Best of Lupin: Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief (Vintage Classics), which - if my research is accurate - anthologizes twenty-two stories from five Arsène Lupin collections. (The formatting of my member description there is a bit corrupted from what I entered, but I'm not able to edit it for attempting a fix. The bullet points originally lined up with each story title that follows; now it looks like they're separated by a hard return. Go figure ... ) Another member's prior disambiguation alerted me to - and helped me separate - the thirteen-story Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief (Penguin Classics) anthology; and when the LT2 work pages struck, I was reviewing and verifying an enormous "work" that seemed to mostly, but not entirely, contain the original nine stories in Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar {nine stories; 1910}.

I also have an going project of sorts for Wilhelm Ruland's Legends of the Rhine and The Finest Legends of the Rhine. Thus far, I've identified four distinct variants, but research suggests it's a constantly shifting target. In particular, maybe look at my ToC "member descriptions" (yes, there's more than one) at https://www.librarything.com/work/19731/descriptions/169504068. I *think* the unicorn-with-wings-rainbows-and-sprinkles that I'm looking for is the "2nd improved and enlarged English Edition," which seems to hold the largest number of tales (if memory serves, maybe 93?), but as I recall, a near-contemporary variant omitted a few of those in favor of others. (Insert eye-roll emoji here ... ) I need to beg, borrow or steal multiple more copies, but I'm finding many online booksellers are extremely reluctant to count stories, even pages, much less to share ToCs.

>73 waltzmn: I'd LOVE to have somebody tackle The Canterbury Tales! And Gulliver's Travels while we're at it. On the latter, I was kinda proud of myself picking it from a high school reading list because Dad already had copy at home from his youth. I didn't figure out until 3/4 of my way through the departmental, multiple-choice test that Dad's copy included only three of four travels. I maybe made a 78 on that test, partly because I occasionally guessed right on the last quarter of the questions. That's when I learned (the hard way) that many "young reader" editions are abridged.

>74 jasbro: I'd LOVE to have somebody tackle The Canterbury Tales!

Yeah, well, when I tried, people kept messing with it. If someone put me in charge, so it could be done right and people can't break what I do, then maybe....

The biggest problem with the Tales -- as with the Bible, or the Iliad, or anything pre-Gutenberg, is the manuscript base. This, at least, doesn't come up with Gulliver's Travels, no matter how hacked up the editions are.

So I have about twelve copies of things that someone or other has called "The Canterbury Tales" and lumped. And I can't stop them! But they aren't the same things to anyone who is half a scholar. I won't try touchstones because it's hopeless, but I have among others:

The Variorum Chaucer photographic facsimile of the Hengwrt manuscript, which is generally regarded as the best manuscript but omits, e.g., the Canon's Yeoman's Tale and has other small defects.
(Some volumes of) the Variorum Chaucer edition of the Tales, which basically prints Hengwrt but with marginal readings from many other manuscripts and a heavy critical commentary; if they ever finish the series, it will be in about a dozen volumes
(Some volumes of) the Manly-Rickert edition of the Tales, which has a text of the tales which is only partly based on Hengwrt but with far more readings in the margin and a multi-volume introduction but no critical commentary
The E. Talbot Donaldson edition of Chaucer's works, with a lot of reader aids but not much commentary and still a different text
The various editions of the Robinson/Riverside Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with still a different text, a much reduced apparatus of variants, and more commentary
The Neville Coghill modernization, which seems to use yet a different text and commentary

That's six different editions (not all I have), no two of which have the same Middle English text (although the two Variorum Chaucers both use the Hengwrt manuscript as far as extant) and four of which have different apparatus of variant readings, plus three different substantial commentaries. Yet we see various versions of them get lumped.

The only cure for this, I genuinely think, would be to have one "manager" of a particular work, who could have the last word on separation/combination.

And even then, we'd likely have problems, because the way I read the rules would split more than what LibraryThing thinks is right (in a book with an apparatus or commentary, the apparatus should count more than the text).

All right, I descend from my hobby horse....

>74 jasbro: I *think* the unicorn-with-wings-rainbows-and-sprinkles that I'm looking for is the "2nd improved and enlarged English Edition,"

...I have clearly been working on Bible editions too much, because it took me a moment to realize that you were using a metaphor and not talking literally about an edition with a unicorn on the cover.

It is impossible to search for this, because of the whole KJV unicorn thing, but here is an example of one that actually exists: https://www.lagunabeachbooks.com/book/9798306505206

With Bibles, at least, there is the consolation that it's not so much that they cannot be sorted out as that for most of them, nobody has done it. There is a whole specialized vocabulary you need, but otherwise it's generally straightforward.

I fondly imagine that once they have been at least partially sorted, having descriptions that describe the translation, rather than one particular cover, might help them to stay sorted. Bibles are hard to enter because often there is nothing to scan, but if you do a manual search and the descriptions all refer to editions you don't have...

>53 timspalding: When I looked, the description was:

America's most beloved comic strip, Peanuts, is now a major motion picture produced by Blue Sky Studios. Now you can collect the first ten original comic strip collections, published by Titan Comics! This book is a facsimile edition of the third Peanuts collection originally published back in 1956 by the Clarke, Irwin & Company, Ltd of Toronto, Canada. This collection of 122 Sunday Peanuts newspaper strips that ran from 1952 -1956 features many of your favourite characters, including Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Violet, Patty, Shermy, Lucy, Schroeder, Pig-Pen, Linus and Beethoven and collects together the very first Sunday Peanuts strip.

That was downvoted and the current description upvoted after I posted, but only on that title. As I post this, hovering More Peanuts, Good Ol' Charlie Brown and other early titles on the series page still brings up the "spammy" version that hypes the movie and the Titan Comics reprints.

I don't call this out to say THIS IS BAD, FIX IT NOW, but to highlight how once-trusted data sources may no longer be trustable.

>51 timspalding: That's where I am beginning to move tables of contents and publisher descriptions

>52 LazloNibble: If I find one like that, I either don't use it or edit out the spam.

So it's April and still no way to add work descriptions. Two weeks?

>80 Bookmarque: there's a section on the "Community" page where you can add a work description!

There is??! Ok. I guess I'd never have thought of that what with there being a Description section on its own. Thanks!

Ok. I've used it. It's awkward and buried. Why a whole different page? Why the unnecessary hopping around? Ugh. HTML tags seem to "sort of take" and it looks like one big run on sentence. Bleah.

I think it was a compromise, since the descriptions there are all community-contributed, and not sourced from libraries or bowker.

>83 Bookmarque:, >84 keristars: Any idea whether (a) prior member descriptions are there; (b) if so, can we edit them; and (c) for those of us who list contents, that's where we should keep putting them? Inquiring minds want to know ...

>85 jasbro: looks like the answers are:
a) older member descriptions are on the description page instead
b) no, i don't believe so
c) I would continue to put the contents there, yes!

So you can compare them -
This work has an older member description here: https://www.librarything.com/work/11356709/descriptions/

And a new one here: https://www.librarything.com/work/11356709/social/

Ok. Question for the staff - why are member descriptions marooned on the Community Island where no one would look for them? If I'm looking for what a book is about, that's where I go. I don't want to have to hunt around for this stuff. Can member descriptions please be with the rest of them as makes sense?

I think the reason they're not fronted with library Descriptions is because of Tim's explanation at >1 timspalding:

So what does that have to do with the display location? We still have the same issues, but any useful information is harder to find.

And relevant user-derived information, such as content descriptions, is not only shunted to the side but frozen in time. See >34 jasbro:

>90 jasbro: Yeah, I need to see where we landed with >51 timspalding: - I'm asking now.

>29 SandraArdnas: Thank you so much for this! I don't know how my settings got set to hide descriptions and I had no idea how to fix it.

And relevant user-derived information, such as content descriptions, is not only shunted to the side (although now editable; see >90 jasbro:), but - unless I’m looking at a mere caching issue - it also doesn’t reflect in a Site search; in which case, it does about as much good as never being there in the first place. E.g., try searching “Ron Rash Glittering.” (Hint: I don’t expect you’ll get Chemistry and Other Stories.)

>70 waltzmn: I like adding a TOC, especially for non-fiction, because it adds to the description of the item, and gives a clearer idea of what is in it, how much, and what the focus is.

There are a number of books entitled the Memoirs of Babur, for example, and it appears that some of them reprint the memoirs, perhaps with some editorial comment, and others are about the memoirs, which may not be quoted completely.

I don't think it matters that there is a variation in paging or small changes in contents between editions, because if one actually reads the work, one will use the TOC in the book in hand.

Added: This is theoretical, since I have no intention of putting anything more in descriptions. I've been in enough fights with people.