New Work Page! (Continued) - not for bugs

This thread is a continuation of https://www.librarything.com/topic/368002.

There is also new thread (https://www.librarything.com/topic/368058) for bugs related to the new work page that I'd like us to try to use so that this thread can be more for reactions in general instead of individual bugs.

=====

Blog post: https://blog.librarything.com/2025/01/new-work-page/

Some sample links:
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
James by Percival Everett
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy
Go to a random book in "Your Books"

As posted on the blog, the major changes are:

"LT2" — Work pages join most other LibraryThing pages in being consistently formatted, fully "mobilized," and accessible.

Your Books — The "Your Books" part of work pages is much improved, with better editing and the ability to choose which fields you want to see.

Quick Facts — We created a "Quick Facts" section on the right, with some of the key details, including publication year, genres and classifications. It works something like the info boxes on Wikipedia pages.

Side Bar — Besides "Quick Facts," we've improved the right side panel with a popularity graph, a links section, author info and an improved share button.

Reviews — Reviews are now displayed and sorted better, with reviews from your friends and connections first. After that, we're sorting reviews by a quality metric, incorporating thumbs-up votes, recentness and member engagement. Ratings have also been added to the reviews section, in a section after full reviews. Altogether, we think reviews will prove more useful and interesting.

Sections — All work-page sections can be collapsed and reordered by members, and a special "On This Page" area lays out what's on the page, with links to jump there.

Classification — We fronted something LibraryThing is best at—library data—by giving classifications a prominent place in "Quick Facts." Work pages now also include a "Classification" page with detailed information and charts about the work's tags and genres as well as positions within the library classifications DDC/MDS, LCC, and—a new one—BISAC, the classification system used by publishers and booksellers.

Member Info — Hovering over a member's name now pops up a quick summary and preview of their profile page, much as hovering over a work pops up a summary and preview of the work page. We're testing this out here, but will expand it across the site.

Helper Hub — The works page now has a Helper Hub, listing everyone who's contributed to the work, and a separate Helper Hub page, listing contributions by type.

Member Descriptions — A new type of member description field has been added on the “Community” page which includes the current haikus, but also has added options for adding five word descriptions, emoji descriptions, and “bad” descriptions. As enough of these are added, they will be included in TriviaThing!

Speed — Work pages now load faster.

As I said in the post, most of the credit here goes to conceptdawg and knerd.knitter—a lot of work.

Let us know what you think, what questions you have, etc.!

BUUUGGGGG or problem ???

Aïe Aïe Aïe

Horror :

it seems personnel data (every) for some my books enter and completed yesterday) desapears ... include personnal commentaries (the worst cause of time and searches)
(Concerne CK too)

500/600 datas

Exemple

https://www.librarything.com/work/28620886/279968867

https://www.librarything.com/work/33536512/book/279969283

https://www.librarything.com/work/23927377/book/279969559

https://www.librarything.com/work/33536598/book/279970074

Resume here (config B : enter date 2025/01/29 : https://www.librarything.com/catalog/JMK2020

???

>2 JMK2020: I need to know what specific data on which of the works is missing.

On traditional Chinese site, the (primary, secondary, original) language lists shows the site language "traditional Chinese (正體中文)" which is not support in the book data.
It appears to function the same as selecting "Chinese (中文)".
Please remove the "traditional Chinese" option.


The same issue is also on the simplified Chinese site.

I just started a new thread (https://www.librarything.com/topic/368058) for bugs related to the new work page that I'd like us to try to use so that this thread can be more for reactions in general instead of individual bugs.

>4 HsuBattery: Can you clarify, and maybe post in https://www.librarything.com/topic/368058, what the problem is. Are you saying it's duplicated? I think that's intentional so it shows the one you have selected at the top but it's still within the list; it's not really a bug.

> 402 It should be going to the Members section lower on the page.

It doesn't when the number of connections is (shown as) 1.

Probably relatedly, the number seems to be consistently one too high: probably "1 connection" is shown when there isn't actually any connection to show, and that's why it doesn't work.

(this a duplicate from the original thread, I figure it's better if further discussion is here.)

>6 knerd.knitter: It doesn't when the number of connections is (shown as) 1.

Can you tell me what work you're seeing this on? If you look at one that has more connections, does it work?

>8 knerd.knitter:

All works, it appears, that none of my connections have. Terror på Planeten Pandor is a random example.

For works that at least one connection have, clicking does take me to the Members section, but the number of connections listed is seemingly consistently one less than reported at the top.

So Bookfinder.com, owned by Amazon, is gone from Quick Links, and "Create Quick Link" doesn't work?

>9 AndreasJ: Thank you; I will look.

>10 jasbro: Bookfinder.com, owned by Amazon, is gone from Quick Links

When I go, for example, to this page: https://www.librarything.com/work/19391233/quicklinks/278255323 and put in Bookfinder in the search bar, I get results. Are any of those what you're looking for?

> 381 from previous thread...
@GraceCollection
Noted that: Especially on the 'edit book' page, where, for example, 'Lexile measure' has jumped down from being next to classification to now having its own row
If you look at the layout on the previous edit page you'd clearly see that the lexile position was a bug, not a feature. It wasn't supposed to be next to the other items...and was the only one in the classifications that was. Simply a bug on the old page.

Nearly ALL of the edit page is laid out exactly as it was before. With the exception of very few things like this where we fixed bugs in the previous code or changed positions because of logical reasons.

with huge boxes so that fat fingers can't miss
This also means they are easier to hit with a mouse too.
Remember that not every person in the world is as able-bodied as you. Accessibility concerns are not "mobile-only" as many here would have everybody believe. One of the main tenets of LT2 is increased accessibility.

In addition to this the old page had ZERO response to different desktop sizes, meaning some people on some desktop screens were having to do a lot of horizonatal scrolling. We've alleviated that completely with LT2 also.

Am I missing it somewhere - where did the "permanent link" link under a review go in the review list on the work page? (I use it often to refer to specific reviews).

Never mind - figured it out - you can click on the date under the review to get it now. That's not very intuitive... but at least it is there.

I have just catalogued a newly acquired book (which has no stated publisher nor date of publication, and I am apparently the only member of LT with a copy, in case those things are relevant) and I want to upload its cover. However, the "Covers" option in the left-hand side panel is greyed out. Why is that? What do I do?

>15 ocrhdlg: It means there are no covers yet so nothing to look there apparently. Still clickable despite it looks like it is not:) So click on it.

>16 AnnieMod: OK, thank you. I have also just noticed "Go to the Covers page to change your cover" in the central panel. Doh. Sorry..

>9 AndreasJ: For works that at least one connection have, clicking does take me to the Members section, but the number of connections listed is seemingly consistently one less than reported at the top.

Okay, I think I fixed this. Check now.

Greyed out left-side navigation
Yes. I thought we had done away with this distinction before release but apparently we did not. We'll discuss it in a few minutes, but I think we should do away with the greying out of navigation items. It's confusing because they look unclickable.

>1 knerd.knitter:

You might want to put “NOT FOR BUGS” in the topic title.

I don't know if this is a bug or what, but the editions page is formatted oddly.

When working full-screen on my laptop, here is an example of what I get:

https://www.librarything.com/work/17126/editions/279992752

What I think is happening is that the "author" column is set to be flexible, depending on the size of the page, but the "title" column is at a fixed width. This is unhelpful, because the differences usually show up in the titles, which can be quite long. The author is usually pretty short, and does not need all that extra space. Toggling author off does not help, because the title column stays at that width no matter what else is showing.

I'm still feeling my way around the new work page, but I think it would make sense for Primary, Secondary and Original languages to be next to each other in Your Book Information.
Also, and I don't know whether that is feasible, but I'd really like to be able to choose several languages for each of those three items. It's not so very rare that a book has several original languages (the Bible would be one of those books!), or several primary and/or secondary languages. For example, I recently read L'énigme du nom propre : muammo which contain poems originally written in Chagatay, poems originally written in Persian then translated into Chagatay by the author, and translations of all them into French : that's two to three languages on each page. It would be great if this could be recorded accurately on LT.

>21 AranelST: I've made another tweak to the column definitions for that table that should improve that. It should be available in a few minutes.

>14 AnnieMod: I think the date-as-a-link is a convention from various social media sites that's fairly widespread now, but yes, not necessarily intuitive!

>414 AranelST: ArlieS in previous thread

Per one of the developers, the extra space is "more modern", and possibly more usable on mobile. (I wouldn't know; why would I use a virtual keyboard and a tiny screen for any task involving lots of text, not to mention lots of typing, unless I was so unfortunate as not to own a any kind of personal computer?)

This is kind of offensive. I've mentioned several times that I use my phone only, can only use my phone. I have a disability that prevents me from using a desktop/laptop, and I struggle with a tablet.

The LT2 pages are fantastic for letting me use the site almost like I did before I became disabled.

Also, I hate to break it to you, but a lot of young(er) people prefer using their phones or tablets when they're not at work. I have several friends* who loved the idea of LT when I described it last month, but who ultimately chose Storygraph for their book cataloguing for 2 reasons: accessibility on their preferred screen, and reading challenges.

* I am 40 and my friends are similarly aged or older, a few outliers are in their late 20s and are historians who would get a lot of use from LT's cataloguing features.

Where has the "add to workbench" and "view workbench" gone?

Ah, you hid it so we have to go to the helpers hub and tell it again to shew it on the overview page. Should have guessed it would be something like that.

>25 DuncanHill: Yep, the value of this setting was lost in the transition and you need to set it again... :)

>18 knerd.knitter:

Yes, it seems to work now. Thanks!

>24 keristars: I'm sorry that it offends you that I declare I have a different way of using the site, and didn't consider the case of someone who couldn't use desktops for reasons other than financial. Or perhaps the offence is declaring that not being able to use a desktop is "unfortunate".

I'm glad the new page works better for you.

And yes, I've noticed that many youngsters love their phones. I can't imagine what they see in those phones, but their kink is OK, except when they demand that I share it.

I cannot type accurately on a virtual keyboard, and auto-correct fails to improve the resulting spelling and punctuation. (For everything it fixes, there tends to be something else it un-fixes.) It's also a horrifically slow process.

I also have few intuitions for mobile user interfaces, and generally have to painfully decode the UI for any mobile app I use, re-decoding it each time it's updated. This is not fun, and can be a massive time sink.

I won't be trying the LT website on mobile, or retrying the LT app.

And I'll continue to complain about desktop breakage, including failure to use desktop advantages - forcing people to all use what to me is a lowest-common-denominator.

Except for a subset of browsers (Safari on the iPad comes to mind), browsers generally correctly declare whether they are running on a desktop/laptop or phone/tablet. I've never been a web developer - my fighting weight is merely basic html - but I know it's possible for web servers to use this info to show different versions of pages to viewers on small-screen-virtual-keyboard and large-screen-physical-keyboard devices.

Coding LT2 (or maybe LT3) this way might be easy, or might be prohibitively complex. (I'm not a web developer.) But IMO it's preferable to breaking the desktop.

Meanwhile, I'm not asserting that this update has broken the desktop, though I really hate the new calendar input, complete with the annoying mouse-based date input method. (Fortunately, while I can't get that thing off my screen, I can still bypass it and type the date, so it's just a minor annoyance.)

But I _am_ asserting that I'd need to be a paid developer or tester to motivate me to even try out the site on mobile.

Edit book

Go to the Covers page to change your cover.

Thanks for adding an extra step. It was far too easy to edit the cover before.

But some editors like things to be easy. Would it be possible to change the cover from the edit book page to help them out?

>28 ArlieS: I don't know where to begin with explaining how what you said is offensive to both other disabled people and people who don't own pcs, but are interested in using LT. I assumed you were using "unfortunate" to mean "poor", but of course that word has a patronizing condescension when used that way.

Moving past that, you are wrong about how webpages determine what to show. They use viewport sizes - how big is the window?

You can drag the sides of your desktop browser in and out to see how it responds. LT has done this with the logo for a long time, even before LT2 was in the works. When wide enough, it would show the full LibraryThing logo. At narrow widths, just an LT, and at the very smallest, just an L.

Many desktop users who need very large zooms will end up seeing the "mobile" view simply because the number of pixels displayed in the viewport is analogous to most mobile browsers.

It's possible to assume that narrow window = virtual keyboard, but that's not guaranteed.

Until I had to put my laptop into storage, it was one of the touchscreen capable ones that I could (and did!) use in tablet mode with a virtual keyboard, even though the screen was as large as my desktop monitor at work.

Conversely, when I did a lot of book entries a few months ago, I used a bluetooth keyboard connected to my phone.

Finally, the date entry is a bug. You can still type the full date, just don't use hyphens. 20250130 and 2025/01/30 both work to enter today's date, and one of the developers said it's on the bug list. You've been told this several times.

>28 ArlieS: And yes, I've noticed that many youngsters love their phones. I can't imagine what they see in those phones, but their kink is OK, except when they demand that I share it.

Oh, it's not just young people. The overwhelming majority of all users are mobile these days. Desktop users are a dying breed. A site that caters to desktop users to the exclusion of mobile users has lashed itself to a sinking ship.

(No, I don't get why people prefer phones either. But it's a fact that they do.)

I just got a new Windows desktop, and other than the full-sized keyboard and display, and mouse rather than touch-screen, it might as well be a phone. It's designed to keep everything in the cloud, and it's not even transparent about that. It has built-in camera and audio, but no onboard optical drive.

>31 anglemark: It's kind of difficult to sit on the couch with the tv on and do computery things on a desktop. ;)

I honestly think for a lot of people who work on the computer all day, using a phone or tablet for hobbies helps it feel different to work. Plus it's easier to pick up or put down, and is a lot more (erk) mobile.

>3 knerd.knitter:

I had written the following post BUT don't spend time on my case and this case.... I'm starting to doubt my manipulations (and/or my brain, which is more serious ;-) ).
However, I have the traces in my PC's memory and the annex pages consulted for several books
Mystery.

In short, forget this. I'm going to fill in again.
If it comes back I'll let you know.

Sorry
Thank you

nb: I confirm, I like the new version (with the unchangeable CK bugs: 1st publication date and date of birth/death author and/or accent ;-))

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

https://www.librarything.com/work/33536512/book/279969283

Etude sur Malraux et le roman
de Évelyne Lantonnet

Basic
- i changed whishlist => Transit + Your Library

Publication
- Média (made change)
- Publication : Paris, Ellipses, cop. 1996 => Paris - Ellipses - DL : 1996

Physical Summary
- Pages / Dimensions / Weight (completed / errase)

Languages
- Original (French)

Date
Date Acquired (2025/01/26)

Item comments
- Private Comments
Links internet / Achat / Resume / Auteur and Metadatas
(See here for example for other book )https://www.librarything.com/work/33535171/book/279951255 )

Identifiers
- Barcode 9782729846336 desapears

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I completed his with

https://www.chasse-aux-livres.fr/prix/2729846336/etude-sur-malraux-et-le-roman-e...

or

https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb35845839q

>29 DuncanHill: Editing the Cover takes an extra step
YES. This is a stop gap because we are working on a larger update dealing with covers. We wanted to release the new work page before completing that Cover project. So this will be fixed soon(ish).

>29 DuncanHill: Would it be possible to change the cover from the edit book page to help them out

There are intentions of adding that to the edit book page, but it requires some more work.

>35 conceptDawg:

In two weeks, I assume?

Speaking different devices, am I the only one regularly using LT on a laptop? Most commonly plugged into a proper keyboard and monitor, so functionally equivalent to a desktop, but sometimes on its own too.

(I also access the site on the phone often enough, but that's because its always at hand - I always prefer the laptop when it's available.)

Okay, I’ve added a few books and have a few more thoughts/opinions.

The change regarding covers is quite frustrating. Clicking on the cover image and having it take you back to the Overview page is not intuitive. Having it take you to covers would be. I want editing added books to be as smooth and easy as possible it’s just not because of that.

A small thing regarding actually adding cover images: can we change the wording from “Upload a Cover” to “Add a Cover”? I momentarily panicked that you’d got rid of the ability to add a link but then calmed myself because I realised you’d never do that voluntarily and so clicked what I could, and lo and behold there it was. To me, uploading means adding a file of some kind from my own device, not adding a link to a file someone else has stored.

Something that’s always annoyed me, and which keeping happening in LT2, is that when I edit a new book and click save, I’m automatically rerouted back to the Add books page. If I change covers and then edit the book and save, I get to stay on the book page. While it annoys the h*ll out of me, I could make peace with it if I was only rerouted back if I left-clicked the Edit books link. But it happens even if I right-click and open in a new tab. Can you pretty please take me out of my misery?

>35 conceptDawg: fwiw, I like the extra steps. (link to a related post about it)

I love that on a page with hundreds of options, I can tap the one I think i want, but not lose it if I scroll further (just in case!). It's still highlighted, so when I scroll back up I can finish the workflow.

Disability issues

I regret the heat of this discussion because frankly I think you both have a point. Making LibraryThing accessible is important and was one of the main reasons we upgraded the page. At the same time, we are in control of the design, not forced into something terrible by mysterious accessibility forces. So blame us for what you don't like, don't blame accessibility.

We understand some members don't like the design changes. We have pulled back a bit already on some of our designs, like the recommendations section—a design decision that had nothing to do with accessibility. We have just met and will be making a few more changes to tighten things up. But overall the design is the design. The most fundamental change is the font size, and it's not going to change. LibraryThing's old font size was common in 2005. People had different screens then. We're not going to stay in 2005 just because people have gotten used to it, not when a visitor coming into LibraryThing would feel like they'd stumbled into a 2005 forum of ham-radio enthusiasts. Not when a visitor would feel like they need a magnifying glass.

So, tell us what you think about the design. Tell us what parts you think could be improved and how, on mobile or desktop. But don't blame accessibility and understand that we're not going to stay forever in the past.

>14 AnnieMod: Never mind - figured it out - you can click on the date under the review to get it now. That's not very intuitive... but at least it is there.

Yeah. It's a feature of Twitter, Facebook and some others. It feels… on the edge of being a standard. But I understand it won't always be known to people

have just catalogued a newly acquired book (which has no stated publisher nor date of publication, and I am apparently the only member of LT with a copy, in case those things are relevant) and I want to upload its cover. However, the "Covers" option in the left-hand side panel is greyed out. Why is that? What do I do?

We had a meeting and have committed to some changes here:

We are re-enabling all links on the left.
We are showing (de-hiding) all the sections.

Give us a little time to get the change out.

>22 Dilara86: I'd really like to be able to choose several languages for each of those three items.

This is a sensible feature request for the future. The problem is not UI, so I can't just turn it on; the problem is the data doesn't allow it.

>37 AndreasJ: I use LT on three different devices: my phone, because it’s almost always with me and I can check LT whenever I like (checking if I have a book while at a bookstore!), my iPad because it’s my primary internet surfing device when I’m at home, and my work laptop (we don’t have desktops, only laptops that - when we’re at the office - are plugged into a hub connected to a screen, mouse and keyboard (and more)). Some LT things are easier to do on the laptop (adding books because it’s easier to switch between different tabs/windows) and some are easier on the other devices.

I am one of the people who don’t have a home computer (either laptop or desktop) because my old one is near death and can’t be used and I have my work laptop with me most of the time anyway.

>41 PawsforThought:

I sometimes use LT on my tablet too, but that's usually a case of doing something else on it and darting over to the LT tab to do a quick check of something - I rarely pick it up for the purpose of doing something on LT.

We had a meeting and will be making some changes. Please have some patience as some of these will require a lot of work. (It's weird, but there's often a weird gap between how easy a change LOOKS and how easy it is to DO.)

A few of them are:

1. We're tightening up some UI elements. For example, the blue "Your Book Information" box will be getting thinner. I won't list more such changes because they're all provisional on @conceptdawg doing them and seeing whether in fact the design still works.

2. We're bringing back the "Edit book" link on the left. Members missed it. The Edit Book/Book Details pages will once again be separate, without a toggle.

3. We're not going to dim or disable any of the pages on the left.

4. We're not going to hide any sections. The choice you'll have will be between having all empty sections at the bottom, or having them interleaved. The former will be the default.

5. We're moving Touchstones up near Abouts on the community page.

6. We're looking at adding back the "Will I like it?" Give that one some time.

7. We're going to show more of each review before a "see more" link.

8. I'm moving the helper hub actions back to the main page always.

9. The main cover on mobile/narrow is getting smaller.

In case you haven't looked recently, we have already made a number of changes:

* Tags were removed from reviews
* Recommendations covers are now smaller
* Only one row of recs is shown
* Author duplicates are now supressed/downranked in recommendations again
* Member recommendations have been changed slightly. The covers are going to get a little larger too.
* Media Reviews became Published Reviews again.
* Similar libraries is back in "Members"
* Some bug with talk discussions was fixed, so you'll see it now always (when appropriate)

We are aware of a number of bugs. Some of the more important ones that don't need to be reported again:

* Date-entry
* Author list displays at the top of the page
* The magnifying glass will be back on the main cover

When I started using LT in 2006, I didn't even own a smartphone.

At this point, I access the site on my phone slightly more often than I do on my desktop. I prefer to compose reviews on a desktop where I can type proficiently, but it will happen that I have time and ideas when I'm elsewhere, and then my phone will serve. More than once, I have used my phone to catalog newly-acquired books while riding the train home.

Wrt the point about responsive webpages in >30 keristars:, I often use a narrow window for LT on my desktop so that I can see it open next to a document I'm composing.

keristars (#33):

"Desktop" in this context is generally understood to include laptops.

>44 paradoxosalpha: We generally say "web" vs. "mobile" but that's also confusing.

More than once, I have used my phone to catalog newly-acquired books while riding the train home.

I love that. Better than TikTok, I say ;)

>35 conceptDawg: >36 knerd.knitter: Thanks.

>40 timspalding: "Yeah. It's a feature of Twitter, Facebook and some others."

Which is why it crossed my mind to click on that date and to even notice that it is clickable :) I think it is more because on other pages (Catalog for example), we still use the old way so the site feels inconsistent and even though I know it is a new build and all that, I still do not want to think of two different ways to do the same things on different parts of the site.

PS: There are dateless reviews from that issue a few years ago - not sure that I can dig out a valid example now but can someone check the DB/code and make sure these are somehow link-able as well.

>46 timspalding: We generally say "web" vs. "mobile" but that's also confusing.

Yeah, my attributions were the actual hardware. Both are on the web--I access LT on my phone via Chrome, not the LT app. And I use my phone around the house for various reasons, including lying in bed reading books--which feels like the opposite of "mobile."

I guess a more clinical distinction in my case would be Windows versus Android.

Changes just pushed:
-No more graying out left hand nav items
-Making empty sections always show at the bottom of the screen instead of hiding them behind a button
-Clarifying the wording on the option on the Customize View page for showing empty sections at the bottom
-Made Helper Hub so it should show on the right by default, but moved below Helpers

>39 keristars: Oh yes. I'm not saying remove that step. Just remove the extra popup confirmation dialog that asks "Are you sure?"
We'll still have to have that step if it's an ISBN connected to Amazon data though (though in reality I think we could just do that step too, without asking).

>37 AndreasJ: FWIW, all LT staff use laptops. Some of us with external monitors. So we aren't mobile-first users ourselves, though we all use LT on our phones too, of course.

ALL development of new features for LT happens in a "desktop first" mentality. All of it. I didn't even make any mobile-specific changes to the work pages until 2 days before we released it, and we've been working on it for months.

So desktop users are still our main focus. But we'd be complete idiots if we weren't also thinking about mobile users. The majority of our traffic comes from either mobile or app users now. The app accounts for around 40% of book adds by itself.

This is brilliant, well done all, it’s a real step forward. I’m mainly a mobile (iPad and iPhone) user and the whole experience is light-years ahead of what it used to be. Let’s be honest, the previous design was antiquated by any modern standard, on the phone it was barely usable tbh.

It must be disheartening to work so hard on something and then have people complain that it no longer looks like it did twenty years ago. The level of entitlement in some of the comments frankly astounds me. It seems like the naysayers are the most vocal, so consequently the feedback is hardly balanced and I wanted to try and redress that a little bit.

i say move with the times, you can’t please all of the people all of the time!

Keep up the good work.

>53 simon_carr: We are not complaining about it not looking like it used to! We are saying that the changes have made it more difficult for us to use.

>38 PawsforThought:

can we change the wording from “Upload a Cover” to “Add a Cover”? I momentarily panicked that you’d got rid of the ability to add a link

Yes! I just had that panic attack as well!

We added an Edit Book link back to the left side navigation on the page.

>38 PawsforThought: >55 lilithcat:

You're right. I'm changing it.

Infinitely more inconvenient for review writing and editing, especially if your catalogue is private, with things like dates and word counts virtually gone. I'll get used to it, of course, as I've become used to so much crap on this site. The place is still worth it. But with a couple of rounds of such "improvements" more, it might well cease to be. What a pity that would be!

>54 amanda4242: This! This right here.

Team, thanks for making all these changes in response to user input. I generally hate the LT2-ification of pages, but it's so rare and precious that devs at least listen to users like me, even if we disagree.

I still want information density and words over graphics. I understand you have to update code or it will die. I still don't like it, but thanks.

>59 reconditereader: I still want information density and words over graphics.

Yes! And it's not just because I prefer words to pictures: I live in a place where I can't get decent internet so more pictures means a significantly longer loading time.

>55 lilithcat: We are not complaining about it not looking like it used to! We are saying that the changes have made it more difficult for us to use.

Can you summarize what's making it harder to use? I want to understand you better.

>58 Waldstein: Infinitely more inconvenient for review writing and editing, especially if your catalogue is private, with things like dates and word counts virtually gone. I'll get used to it, of course, as I've become used to so much crap on this site. The place is still worth it.

How is it more inconvenient for review writing and editing, and how would your catalog being private have anything to do with it? I'm honestly curious what your thinking is.

>58 Waldstein: Or, and I know this might come a surprise given your comments, it's quite possible that the lack of the word counter is nothing but an oversight that we can add back in. Again: over 70,000 lines of code were changed for this. Occasionally we make human mistakes.

As for dates, which dates are virtually gone? Sorry, not understanding that.

Thanks for the rest of the comments too.

>62 conceptDawg:

We are fixing a bug with dates. This has been said several times.

>62 conceptDawg: The bug is that they are a little unwieldy to input via keyboard only. Not that they are "virtually gone."

Re CK in view mode, I see that the change has been pushed already to have line breaks, rather than semicolon, between quotations, but I'd much prefer if everything followed the same principle, characters, places, even first words have several entries if there are different translations. They do not necessarily need the divider line between them like quotations, just a line break everywhere where it exists in edit mode, the same as on author pages.

Here's a side-by-side comparison:





If you go right down it, information density has not changed considerably.

* We now have an "On This Page" section, so you can see what sections there are. Don't like it? Minimize it.
* Recommendations and tags take up only slightly more room.
* The LT author thing has been turned into a tiny marker
* You can now see the publication year.
* You can now see the LCC
* You can now see the DDC/MDS
* You now get info on the author, and a pic.
* Genres have moved from a bunch of bars, which don't say much, to a list that's higher up.
* Quick Links has become Find It. We made it smaller. I think that's correct.
* You now get a popularity chart.
* We removed mentions (touchstones). If there were Abouts, they would be in there, but touchstones are pretty meaningless stuff. They don't indicate anyone is talking about a book; mostly they indicate at some point in the past someone listed it in the books they read. Not important enough to have at the top of every page.
* We removed "author authors," which is a link to authors that occur on some editions, but not the work level. No big loss here.

I don't think someone from the outside would look at this and say the new page is low density. It's STUFFED with information. It's just different.

Thank you for all the hard work and for listening to the users and making adjustments accordingly. Like >57 knerd.knitter: said, it's unusual to be listened to as a user.
Case in point: my primary online bookshop recently redesigned their site and initially had a "Hey, we're trying out a new design, tell us what you think" message on the first page. So I did - I said what I liked and pointed out some things that were really bad from a user point of view. Got a thank you email back. I wrote them a couple of more times to mention a couple of things I felt were fairly critical (the new design made it very difficult to find things that weren't brand new or on promotion, loading time on ipad was - and still is months later - like loading times were in the 90's, etc.). They still pushed through everything - zero changes. I'm now looking for other places to shop because it's genuinely difficult for me to use their site.

>61 timspalding: (Should be >54 amanda4242:, not >55 lilithcat: there)

I'm actually having trouble seeing it well. All of the white is hurting my eyes, and the light grey lines are making it hard to see where one thing ends and another begins.

When I have CK open in edit mode I have to scroll forever because long sections aren't truncated any more. In the old version, even when I was editing a specific section, I would have to click show more to see all of it. (Does that make sense? I'm not sure how to explain this well, but if you look at CK for The Iliad you should understand what I mean.)

All those added pictures are making it take way longer to load. Granted, I'm having this problem because I have crap internet, but it would help if there was an option to show member recommendations as a list and if I could turn off the author pictures.

There's all this repeated information that adds to the sense of clutter. It would really help if we could remove modules, like we can on the home page.

Just so this isn't all negative, I do like the link section and that work relationships are in columns.

Example of edit page. Old vs New.


As you can see the new form elements are bigger, therefore easier to see and they are larger hit-targets for a mouse or finger tap.
BUT. They also take up LESS space than the old form elements because there is LESS WHITE SPACE IN THE NEW DESIGN between form elements.

I don't know how people can possibly argue with this given the example.

We've made some bug fixes that moved some items to their own lines, like Lexile, and Number of Copies. We've added a section at the top for a future Cover upload. And the section headings are slightly bigger. That makes the new form slightly longer. But after all of that the ENTIRE page is only about 300 pixels bigger on the new design. The form elements themselves take up less room and are tighter packed than the old design.

I just want to understand what the pain points actually are.

>69 conceptDawg: But all the fields are now white, so there is more white.

>44 paradoxosalpha: Have you tried using a browser that puts tabs in split screen?

Before I had to stop, I was using the split screen option (and tab stacking) with Vivaldi all the time. It was so useful to have LT on one side for editing, and the LOC Authority Control site on the other, or whatever I was using for research. And it has a built in notepad that I used for quick copypastes, without having to switch windows or have multiple windows up.

I really miss that sometimes... the desktop browser is such a dream for research projects.

But what made me think of it is that the side-by-side would probably use the narrow site layout, which would be pretty awesome, giving more room to the research tab while still being easy to use.

>45 lorax: yeah, I was trying to make a joke about the two uses of the word. Guess it failed. :)

>69 conceptDawg: Technically less whitespace, but more white overall. The new header bars are a lighter shade of beige to my eye, almost invisible it I'm not wearing my glasses. There are fewer background boxes to group information/fields.

I'm not really bothered by it, but that's probably where the too white is coming from.

>54 amanda4242: This! I find editing tags to be much more difficult now, especially with the pop-up list of recommended tags that I can't always get to go away.

Hi! I don't have time to read through this whole thread. Can you put back the link to BookCrossing once a BookCrossing ID number (BCID) is entered into each book's information? Please, please, please!

>40 timspalding: "It's a feature of Twitter, Facebook and some others. It feels… on the edge of being a standard. But I understand it won't always be known to people"

Well that accounts for it making no sense at all to me. I don't use any "social media" with an algorithm that decides what to show me, other than simply doing what I request.

>68 amanda4242: Ah. The loss of those CK (see more) toggles is an oversight. I'll see about adding those back in.

And you CAN see recommendations as a List, albeit not member recommendations. It's definitely something we could consider. Although on most works there a really aren't that many member recs for that to be a worry. Only the most popular works have more than one or two.

I get what you are saying about repeated information, I think. We are repeating author information now. What other things seem repeated and cluttery to you?

>43 timspalding: "2. We're bringing back the "Edit book" link on the left. Members missed it. The Edit Book/Book Details pages will once again be separate, without a toggle."

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

>74 SqueakyChu: Yes, that was probably an oversight.

>74 SqueakyChu: BookCrossing link
Ah. I didn't even realize that was gone. I don't use BookCrossing so none of mine had that data. I don't know if any of us at LT use it, to be honest. But we'll check on that.

>77 ArlieS: Edit book on the left nav menu
It's already back.

With regard to explaining the pain points, it would be really helpful to have access to the old style of page at some URL like https://www.librarything.com/testserver/

I currently keep running into things that I used to be able to do easily and routinely without thinking about them. My remembered way of doing them no longer works.

If I have time and energy, I embark on the needed research, and maybe find that it's still possible, just different. The experience that first time is either "xxx no longer works" (maybe it does, but I didn't find it) or "xxx takes ten times as long as it used to" (I spent the extra time hunting for it).

Once I've found all the things that were moved, and determined which ones are gone for good, and then done them a few times without needing to hunt for them, I'll have some idea of how long each common task *now* takes.

But by then the old system will have blurred in my memory. And as things currently stand, I can't check.

So I'll just have a vague memory "the new thing is slower", even if it's actually faster.

The same is true if I'm simply not seeing something that's still there, but larger or smaller or differently coloured than it used to be. I'll eventually find it, but by then I probably won't realize that it's basically where it always was.

And of course this all gets more complicated, in that the new version is a moving target.

--
For example, as part of adding a book, I habitually check whether LT knows it to be part of a series. I used to be able to do that from the edit book page. Now I have to go to the overview page to see that. Since I'm in the process of editing my book and maybe modifying my cover, this involves an extra click or two. Legitimately slower, but it'll probably feel trivial once my fingers are reprogrammed to look in Overview rather than expecting the information up front in all of the views including edit.

But this is my latest stage in the process of adding a single book, a task I started 2 days ago. It's not finished yet - and I've once again today spent at least as much time as the whole process used to take me, including posting about issues encountered.

So the overwhelming experience, because of the changes, is "this is now incredibly time consuming". Of course this is my first attempt to use the new pages, and it's changed repeatedly during this process.

>80 conceptDawg: Thank you.

>81 ArlieS: For example, as part of adding a book, I habitually check whether LT knows it to be part of a series. I used to be able to do that from the edit book page. Now I have to go to the overview page to see that.
We can show the series at the top on subpages. We currently show it on the Overview page but not on any subpages (trying to make them tighter, you see). But that could/should be reverted. I tend to like uniformity across pages, but we all make concessions.

yeah, I'd also like to see series information somewhere up top. It used to be on the right side and it is such a vital piece of decision making.

>79 conceptDawg: Ah. I didn't even realize that was gone. I don't use BookCrossing so none of mine had that data. I don't know if any of us at LT use it, to be honest. But we'll check on that.

Like lending, it can be default on—it will only show if the member uses it.

yeah, I'd also like to see series information somewhere up top. It used to be on the right side and it is such a vital piece of decision making.

To be clear, it's up top now, just only on the main page. And also it was never on the right side! See above >66 timspalding:

It wasn't? I have a muscle memory of moving my eyes to the right to see series info. Where is it now??? ... going to look. This is crazy.

Ok. Now I see it. Jeez this is nuts. Everything seems all over and will take a lot of getting used to.

So I'm going to try to get to know the pages better. Can you make the links up top look like links? Members, Awards and Reviews are clickable it seems. I'll have to see what else is.

>23 conceptDawg: I've made another tweak to the column definitions for that table that should improve that. It should be available in a few minutes.

Thank you! It's much better now! :)

I have noticed an anomaly between 2 displays for the same block.
This is for the private comments section

This concerns
- the book sheet (individual) with my display choices (1)
and
- the display in table form (my books, my library/library / Choice E with private comments in the last column) (2)

In the 1st case (1), spaces and layout (line entry) are not taken into account

Having noticed this, I added CSS tags (in my private comments, in the individual sheet...
So the display is compliant

EXCEPT that in the table (2), there is an accumulation between the CSS tags and the classic layout. Which doubles for example the spaces / line spacing)

Example (Individual sheet)
Adhesives in the modern world // Marina Lewycka
ISBN-EAN: 9782848930909 // 2024-11-05

https://www.librarything.com/work/8260591/book/279624188

Private comments
INTERNET LINKS https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb42396868d 23.00 e https://www.decitre.fr/livres/des-adhesifs-dans-le-monde-moderne-9782848930909.h... https://www.amazon.fr/adh%C3%.... etc, ec

=> Everything is displayed in a row without spacing in the individual file (1) / But the table (2) is correct:
https://www.librarything.com/catalog/JMK2020
Adhesives in the modern world // Marina Lewycka
ISBN-EAN: 9782848930909 // 2024-11-05

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Another example following CSS addition

https://www.librarything.com/work/2736579/book/279970424
Lucien Leuwen. Volume 1 /// ISBN 2080703501 // 2025-01-26

Individual display compliant (1) but display in summary table 2) which doubles with formatting and CSS

???

What to do?

Otherwise, apart from a few bugs and modifications, I really appreciate the new version since it went online.
Well done everyone

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I didn't put any image hoping to be clear and imagining that you have access to my account (fr) and my pages.
If not clear, tell me for precision

>79 conceptDawg: >85 timspalding: How do I turn the BookCrossing link on? For me it's still only a number today and NOT a link. Am I looking in the wrong place? I'm looking at the subtopic "Identifiers" on the Book Details page. The link was always on the Book Details page prior to now.

:(

As an FYI, I've only been regularly using that BookCrossing link for 19 years (since I joined LibraryThing in 2006).

Please help me turn it back on. Thank you.

P.S. Wow! I love the Friends and Connections reviews which follow my own. That is terrific and so appreciated!!

We have one or two more sections to go until we get a dark mode then?

>13 conceptDawg: If you look at the layout on the previous edit page you'd clearly see that the lexile position was a bug,
I'm not sure how the fact that this was a bug is supposed to be 'clearly seen'. Having smaller objects next to, instead of on top of each other has been a design choice I've seen plenty often and which has been helpful to my workflow.

Remember that not every person in the world is as able-bodied as you.
I am disabled, but thank you for assuming. Accessibility for one person, as I have found in my lived experience, can make something inaccessible for someone else. A wheelchair-user can't use stairs, but ramps can be impassible for some people who use canes. A water fountain, sink, etc. which is at perfect height for a wheelchair-user might be impossible to use for others who don't have the mobility to bend down far enough. High-contrast digital pages which help those with impaired vision, can be a problem for those with photosensitivity or epilepsy. Captions which help someone with hearing impairments are of no help to someone who is blind.

Choices are what is best for accessibility, because there is often is no one universal feature or standard which helps every person.

In addition to this the old page had ZERO response to different desktop sizes, meaning some people on some desktop screens were having to do a lot of horizonatal scrolling. We've alleviated that completely with LT2 also.
This is a great thing, and I'm glad it's something you've been able to do with this update.

>91 SqueakyChu: P.S. Wow! I love the Friends and Connections reviews which follow my own. That is terrific and so appreciated!!

Thanks. We think it one of the main improvements too.

>81 ArlieS: Once I've found all the things that were moved, and determined which ones are gone for good, and then done them a few times without needing to hunt for them, I'll have some idea of how long each common task *now* takes.

But by then the old system will have blurred in my memory. And as things currently stand, I can't check.

So I'll just have a vague memory "the new thing is slower", even if it's actually faster.

I think this is part of my problem. I'll get used to the changes eventually, and many of these changes I can already tell will be exponentially helpful to my workflow. But things have changed, and without having the old page in front of me, it's hard for me to pinpoint and articulate exactly how it's not working for me. I just know that it isn't.

>71 amanda4242: But all the fields are now white, so there is more white.

I think this is also part of my problem. I have some vision issues, and when I opened the new edit page, the first thing I could tell was 'I can't see as much information; this is hard.' Without having the old style next to me, the only thing I could put my finger on was that the text and textboxes were bigger, so I think I assumed that must have been pushing information down. And some information was pushed down! There are things which shared lines that now don't, there's (according to >69 conceptDawg:) 300 more px of space (which for the record isn't much.)

But reflecting on new information in this thread, I think the issue was the white. My vision issues push white around and make things hard to see, and with the comparison laid bare side-by-side, I can see now that that is the issue. The old layout had a lot of beige that drew my eyes to were they needed to be, and the new layout doesn't. It's high-contrast, which is great for some vision issues, but is terrible for mine.

If new colour settings (dark mode, and hopefully low-contrast and/or sepia mode) are coming soon, I believe that will solve my accessibility issues here, and I promise to keep the complaining to a minimum thereafter.

As others have pointed out, I'll have to let the changes grow on me to determine how comfortable I am with them. I was startled to see the big blue box the first time (I was on my iPad, which I rarely use for LT so I assumed it was something to do with that) but I've just discovered that I can customise it and I really like that. I also like being able to customise the layout of the page - great job! (I'll have to play with it some more to find out how I like it best.)

One question: in 'physical summary', what's the difference between 'volumes' and 'copies'?

>96 humouress: 'Volumes' is how many in a set. An encyclopaedia may have 10 or 16 or 30 volumes. 'Copies' is just having multiple of the same book (for lending, this field is functionally useless. I just make a brand new book entry).

>96 humouress: Thanks. Does it work for series? I'll go and have a look ...

>98 humouress: You could use it for a series, but the 'book' in your library would be the entire series as one thing if you did.

>76 conceptDawg: I do have recommendations set to list, but that doesn't change the member recs; I know there aren't many there, but the ability to hide even those few pictures would help pages load faster for me.

With regards to repeated information, it feels like I'm seeing the same things in slightly different form all over the place. For example: genres, DDC/MDS, and LLC are in Quick Facts and the Classifications module, and I can choose Classifications from the menu on the left. I don't know if there's a good solution, but it just feels like something that should be consolidated somehow.

>98 humouress: If it helps (not sure what information you can see on my books, but my library is public so hopefully you can view the relevant details) here's an encyclopaedia set with 12 volumes from my library: https://www.librarything.com/work/24044776/book/272423881

Is there a reason the authors field is so small when I'm editing my book? It's like two inches long while the media field stretches across most of the page.

Ooh, I like the bin icon for deleting something.

I'm a little scared of the 'combine all works by this author' link, though - I foresee lots of unrecombining ahead.

>99 GraceCollection: Ah, okay.

I posted in the previous thread last night after looking at the new work page on my phone, and I'm raising the question again because I haven't seen a staff reply, apologies if I missed it. Prior post is here:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/368002#8746679

In short, I was looking for Genre and it took me a while to find it. I saw (eventually) that it was in Quick Facts, but on mobile, Quick Facts are NOT quick; because the box is in the sidebar, Quick Facts are after all the boxes/sections with more detailed info.

Quick Facts are easy to find on desktop/laptop, but not on phones/mobile. It really needs to be higher on the mobile page, too.

If it's too difficult to put the Quick Facts higher in mobile without messing it up on desktop/laptop, can you add a link for Quick Facts to the On This Page list? (When I saw how low it was on the mobile page, I went into Customize View to move it higher, and of course it wasn't there.)
OR, would adding that link mess up the On This Page box because all the links in there are to sections we actually CAN move up or down? I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how difficult these seemingly-small things are, but it just doesn't make sense for "Quick Facts" to be closer to the bottom of the page than the top, if you're viewing it on your phone.

>66 timspalding:
I'm feeling the heading Members still could use the Recently Added By list of usernames, as can see in your screenshots comparison with the old layout, it used to be the first thing in that section, and even a very-lonely-of-information work, seeing some usernames near the top of the page, felt informative and... searching for a word... friendly? community-ish? I'm not sure of the benefit of now having an empty Members section on those work pages instead.

(Full disclosure: to even more closely replicate the old layout than you have in your images, I have moved Members section to the top of my work page and moved On This Page to the foot of my page. So that does make the disappeared info more noticable.)

When doing a bit of combining of strays, or spam fighting, Recently Added By gave an immediate link to user profiles that might be worth taking a look at, to find more strays or to find more spam. Though I know that can still be done via /social subpage, it does add a step.

Or, if I can't sell adding it back in, could even a customize option so each of us could choose which of the /social subpage info we want to appear on the main page Members section: Recently Added By – tick/untick; Your Friends – tick/untick; Your Interesting Libraries – tick/untick; etc.? If there is demand for less in that section that I'm blinkered to. Thanks! PS. It is appreciated the way all this is handled, and also interesting to hear others' experiences and use-cases of the page and the site, that is making this thread unexpectedly interesting on multiple levels.

>105 Nevov: I don't usually do more than glance at it in the normal run of things but you're right - 'Recently added by' is helpful in rounding up strays.

TBH, I've often idly wondered 'how recent is recent? - one day? ten years?' (though that can also help with combining/ not combining in ruling out strays if a book was added before a potential combination was published).

>92 gilroy: Probably just Add Books. That's next.
Technically we also have the catalog page, but the containing page is already LT2 so I think I could pull off Dark Mode before we update the catalog.

>91 SqueakyChu: BookCrossing links
Yep. Those are coming back. Just an oversight when converting the code.

>104 HeathMochaFrost: Accessing right sidebar on mobile: quick facts, etc.
Yeah. This is a general issue with the right-side navigation on mobile. LT just has way too many navigation layers to really deal with them all on mobile. So the right-side (on desktop) gets shoved to the bottom of the page on mobile.

It's a stop-gap solution, at best. And leading up to the Work page update, for the most part the content on the right-side bar has been just more content. And usually tertiary content at that. So it made sense to let it flow to the bottom of the page.

With the release of the Work page (and to some degree the Author page) more and more primary data is being included in the right sidebar. This has created the issues we are having to tackle now. And it's why I've been such an annoying arse in meetings for the last few years when I hold fast about what content goes where on a page.

But I'm working on some solutions to the right sidenav to make it more accessible on mobile devices. Until I can release it there will be a little growing pain on the Work pages.

I do like your idea of including Quick Facts in the On This Page section for mobile devices. That might alleviate some of the pain.

I'm not a primary mobile user, or dev for that matter, but just spitballing:

Does rotating the device into landscape introduce the right side-bar?

Could there be a meatball menu (or kebab menu, hamburger menu, hotdog menu... take your pick of meat menus) be implemented to sort of lightbox the right sidebar onto the screen, and then close the menu again to look at the main content?

Have you ever considered testing modifications with long time regular users before implementing them ?
I use the French LT.
- On addnew page, why are boxes for authors so small ? You can’t even see the whole name in it.
- On details page, in the commentaries, the line breaks are missing, but they are still there on the deepsearch result page
- After adding a new book to LT (one no other member has) it is now impossible to change the cover after clicking on the new book in the ‘recently added’. You need to search for it and then from the deepsearch result page you have access to the covers page and upload one. It is a considerable waste of time.

>111 thepuck: You currently need to go to the Covers link on the left menu (or the drop down menu if your screen is narrow) to add or change covers, rather than clicking on the blank cover itself.

I believe they've flagged this as on the list to change.

Not sure if it's a bug or not, but the members section halfway down the page is blank, even when the number of members at the top of the page is >1 knerd.knitter:.

Check https://www.librarything.com/work/1757675/179734443: the 6 members noted at the top of the page takes you to https://www.librarything.com/work/1757675/social/179734443, but clicking on the Members link in the On This Page box takes you to a Members row which is blank.

Incidentally, it would be useful when clicking on a member name who also has that work in their catalogue, it takes you directly to that entry, not to the member profile page where you have to search for it and identify in the search results.

>113 Maddz: but clicking on the Members link in the On This Page box takes you to a Members row which is blank

I don't see a Members link in the On This Page box.

>114 vancouverdeb: Descriptions are still there, you might need to move them up perhaps with Customize View at the bottom of the right sidebar, not sure where they appear by default. Also, check your settings Home > Settings > Other Settings > Work-page top descriptions

>115 anglemark: Can you see this?



I've flagged it with a red border.

The '6 Members' above the 'Your Book Information' header takes you to the list of members with that work, but the Members link bordered in red scoots you down the page to the expandable Members section which has no content.

>117 Maddz: You may need to enable the correct categories...

Except I can't find where to!

Ah, it's the toggle Display empty sections at the bottom on the Customize View page that makes the difference!

If I choose to have all empty sections in their default places, I get all the empty sections and I see them all in the On this page box, if I choose to put them all at the bottom, I only get two empty sections.

>121 anglemark: Yeah, I see that as well. But to my mind if there are other members with that work, then they should display in the 'Members' section??? Otherwise, why bother with it?

>74 SqueakyChu: Can you put back the link to BookCrossing

This is back!

>114 vancouverdeb: These have been added in a read-only format to the descriptions page while we work out how to handle them going forward.

>113 Maddz: the members section halfway down the page is blank

So, a couple things: the 6 members wouldn't necessarily be included in that section; it's all the members who have ever added it, and they might not all be included in that section.

The other thing is, you are seeing that section in the On This Page because you have all sections showing, so you'll have links to all of them, whether they have data or not.

>105 Nevov: >106 humouress:

Recently Added By has been added back in.

>81 ArlieS: I habitually check whether LT knows it to be part of a series. I used to be able to do that from the edit book page

Adding this back in!

Design question: On the old page for Common Knowledge, there use to be a universal History button, where you could see all the recent changes to all of the CK fields. Now it seems the only history button is field specific.

Was this on purpose?

>108 conceptDawg: Thank you so much, Chris!

>123 knerd.knitter: Thanks, Lucy!

Sorry if someone already asked this but, is there any equivalent to the feature where we listed characters, first and last lines et al?

>130 LynnB: That's the common knowledge section. It's probably on view mode. Click on the Edit button in there and you can enter details there.

>90 JMK2020: Since I can't see your private comments, can you check for me if this is fixed? I think it should be.

It is no longer clear where to add “other authors”. I stumbled on it by accident; I would not have expected it to be in the same place as the Bowker bio of one author.

>111 thepuck: On details page, in the commentaries, the line breaks are missing

This should be fixed now.

>121 anglemark: If I choose to have all empty sections in their default places, I get all the empty sections and I see them all in the On this page box, if I choose to put them all at the bottom, I only get two empty sections.

This is because when you have them at the bottom it only shows you ones that you can edit/add information to.

I'm hoping this is the place for changes to the Add Book Page (that comes up when you chose to add a book manually) as I coudn't see another topic for it.

Anyway. It would good if the option to show all media persisted or could be chosen as a default. Wehn I'm adding things manually it's most often things that are book-like but don't have an ISBN i.e. pamphlets and zines.

>128 gilroy: On the old page for Common Knowledge, there use to be a universal History button

Not on purpose! Adding it back in.

>109 conceptDawg: I do like your idea of including Quick Facts in the On This Page section for mobile devices. That might alleviate some of the pain.

This is a good idea indeed—just on mobile.

- On details page, in the commentaries, the line breaks are missing, but they are still there on the deepsearch result page

As Keristars noted, you click on the covers link. It's on the left, but also the edit page has "Go to the Covers page to change your cover" prominently at the top.

>133 lilithcat: I'm hoping this is the place for changes to the Add Book Page (that comes up when you chose to add a book manually) as I coudn't see another topic for it.

No, sorry. This is just about the work page. You can start a new topic if you want to make suggestions.

I've made changes to the author line at the top of the page, which should solve some problems members brought up.

>139 timspalding:

The bug I saw with main authors not appear certainly appears to be gone.

>50 knerd.knitter: "Made Helper Hub so it should show on the right by default, but moved below Helpers"

Having moved the 'Recalculate' and 'Workbench' lines to the work page, they appear under 'Helper Hub'. Having both titles 'Helpers / Helper Hub >' and 'Helper Hub' on the work page looks and feels clumsy, and while 'Helper Hub' may mean something in the context of the LT database structure, it means nothing in the context of adding a book.

Could you not just get rid of the header 'Helper Hub'?

On the old work page 'Recalculate cover' and 'Recalculate title/author' generated a grey label at the top of the page confirming that it had happened. The new work page doesn't. Would it be possible to have some sort of indication that something happened. Thanks.

>142 Cynfelyn: Would it be possible to have some sort of indication that something happened

That is a good idea.

>127 knerd.knitter: I habitually check whether LT knows it to be part of a series. I used to be able to do that from the edit book page

Adding this back in!

Thank you. I'm happy to see this back, as well.

I miss the "your other editions" on the edit page.
With large collections, it's helpful to know if you are adding a duplicate

>136 tallpaul: That page has been changed too? *sigh* I've only added one book since the recent change, and it was one that had a recognized ISBN, so no need to add manually.

I'm not looking forward to having to relearn that process too, after first decoding it.

If they have broken the persistence of show-all-media, I'm with you on wanting that unbroken.

Ditto if they've broken it on the edit book page (I haven't checked). I have a lot of weird media, and someday I'll go back and fix books I added as "paperback" before I discovered LT would give me more accurate options, though not by default.

>145 jamesabg: I hadn't noticed that was gone, but I agree - I want to be conveniently able to notice duplication, and conveniently find other examples of the same book in my library - particularly when they are NOT the same book, but LT's auto-combining algorithm thinks they are.

e.g. suppose LT has decided that "Long title: volume 1" and "Long title: volume 2" are the same work. I added "Long title: volume 1" without issue, but when I added "Long title: volume 2" the add page warned me it was a duplicate.

My work process in that case is something like:
1) see (bogus) duplication warning on "add book" page after adding a book.
2) fumble around trying to find WTF LibraryThing thinks is a duplicate, to get its book (and work) numbers from the URL.
3) do a books-in-LT search (i.e. not my library) in a separate window to see how ugly a mis-combining mess LT has made in this case. Most likely, lots of other people's copies of the same workS have been miscombined, while others have escaped this process. There can easily be 3 or 4 LibraryThing works.
4) *If* the mess appears to be something I can handle, go to the relevant helper pages to uncombine my books, and any others obviously combined in error
5) then go to the relevant helper pages to combine books that need to be combined after the separation above.

This one's comparatively easy - searching my library for "Long title" will find both books. It's not always that easy, hence the need for an easy-to-find link to the supposed duplicates.

>109 conceptDawg: I do like your idea of including Quick Facts in the On This Page section for mobile devices. That might alleviate some of the pain.

>138 timspalding: This is a good idea indeed—just on mobile.

Over 17 years on LibraryThing, and Tim and Chris said that they like my idea!! I can't express how much joy this gives me, thank you!

But seriously, I think having a Quick Facts link in there would be the next best thing if you can't move it further up the page on mobile --- and yes, I get that it's the right side bar thing, definitely a challenge. Thank you both for "thinking inside the box" this once, I appreciate it!

>148 HeathMochaFrost: You should send me an email with all your ideas on the regular. I'm available for affirmations!

>141 Cynfelyn: I'd rather "Helpers" be removed if that were the case. Being able to quickly click and add to workbench is handy. Having to go into a separate helper hub page for that is more clunky, especially if you're working with a lot of stuff (i.e. setting up Series or Awards pages).

>68 amanda4242: CK items and "show more" in edit mode
When in edit mode on a work that has lots of items within a CK field (like Characters). It now has a "show more" after the first few. This matches what it did before the update.

>151 conceptDawg: Thanks! There's a bug that I reported on the other thread about CK when using Lorax style that may be related to this change? https://www.librarything.com/topic/368058#8748177

>152 amanda4242: yeah. I should get to that one in the next few minutes.

Actually, already fixed.

>148 HeathMochaFrost: Quick Facts jump link for small screens
A jump link to Quick Facts should now be in the On This Page section.
It should only appear if the right-side nav has been moved to the bottom of the page.
Thanks again for the recommendation.

Since the release of the first version of the changed pages, you appear to have changed the date input format from browser-local, to 2024-10-31, and then back to browser-local.

You've also gone from popping up a calendar to click-to-enter, to getting rid of the annoying (to me) thing, to restoring it.

The one thing worse than a bad user interface is one that's different every time one tries to use it.

I can't become accustomed to the new user interface if it keeps changing. Worse, I'll subconsciously stop trying to learn it, "knowing" subconsciously that it will be different tomorrow, and different again the day after tomorrow.

On the edit page, why is the check box for "private book" in the section clearly labelled "System", which otherwise contains Member, Entry Date, Book ID, and Data Source?

And while I'm being curious, why is that section called "system"?

The section otherwise looks like a repository for things the user cannot change, that are set automatically.

>136 tallpaul: I've verified that the option to show _all_ media types no longer persists on the edit book screen, not even with the same book.

Maybe having it always start in the short form is more convenient on mobile, but it's not what I want.

Please fix this.

It would be nice if I could reorder the sections on the "edit book" screen.

If I had control of this, the order would be Basic, Publication, Dates, Item Comments, and then Languages, followed by Classification, Identifiers, and system.

My logic is simple: I always set or check the first four, sometimes care about Languages, and never modify the other three.

>35 conceptDawg: I don't like how, after adding a cover, it doesn't take you back to the Edit or work Page? That is very frustrating as the first time it happened I was just waiting for it to take me back (like it used to). Now I have to re-search the book by title to work on it some more :/

Not sure if this has already brought up, but something annoyed me and I found out what it was:

On a page like this:
https://www.librarything.com/work/33539117/reviews/279997274
the SAVE button is on the right hand corner of the Review box.

If I press Edit Book I'm brought to
https://www.librarything.com/work/33539117/edit/279997274
and the SAVE button is now on the left hand corner.

And I'm using Chrome on a linux box, in case that matters :-)

I'm also a bit tired of having to expand my review and comment sections each and every time.

I can easily live with the above annoyances, but maybe others have the same feelings about it?

Overall I like the changes a lot, so thanks for all the hard work.

>160 bnielsen: If I were in charge, review would not be in "edit book" at all. It would have its own page. Probably there would be a button to take you there in the clump on the lower left, with Overview and Edit Book and the others.

Then review could give a reasonable amount of typing space from the moment the page was opened, without annoying the large number of people who don't write reviews, and in particular don't write them as part of the process of adding the book.

>161 ArlieS: Clicking on Reviews in the left hand menu does something similar (it still just gives me one line of text so I always have to expand it). It also has a Featured / Recent / Thumbs selection which for a book like https://www.librarything.com/work/33539117/reviews/279997274 gives me almost the same display for all three choices.

An option "Edit your review" which expanded the text to full size, would be really nice. (And of course that would make me want a "Edit your comments" too :-)

Hmm, there is a pen-icon near Review (i.e. choose Overview / Book Information and click on the pen). This pops up a window that I can't resize and inside this is my review displayed collapsed to one line. I can then expand this but have to scroll up and down inside the small window that I can't resize. That's not something I'll be using much :-)

>162 bnielsen: I'm curious to know what browser you are using.
All of the reviews inputs should be at least 5 lines tall. (as that's what the markup tells them).

ETA: It should look like this (and does on the various browsers that I've tested)

Version 132.0.6834.110 (Officiel version) (64-bit)



Maybe it's a problem with long lines? I'll see if I can make it behave better with another review. Maybe it the code just doesn't like this:

https://www.librarything.com/work/33539117/279997274

Hmm, I just checked on my chromebook and that displays five lines just as you say. I.e. this seems like a browser artifact.

Google Chrome on my chromebook says version 131.0.6778.241 (officiel version) (64 bit)

If that's the only browser seen doing this, I'll rest my case. Life is too short to go chasing browser bugs. (I've spent quite some time finding weird behaviour in Netscape and Mosaic back in the days.)

>147 ArlieS:

The system ignores everything after a : in book titles when comparing them. If the author is the same and there is no ISBN, it will combine them into one work. ISBNs are not a guarantee that they will stay separate. This is not new.

>160 bnielsen:
You're right, the save button does jump around. On the Reviews page, I see it in the middle, on Edit Book, it's on the left, and Edit Review on the Overview, it's on the right.

It should probably be consistent in location, but at least it's always that same green with a checkmark. :)

>166 bnielsen: What's interesting here is that we aren't using some new-fangled CSS or browser directions to do that. It's basic HTML form markup from the 1990s. EVERY browser should be able to do that. It's just the "rows" attribute on a textarea.

I wonder if you don't have some extension installed on your browser that might be doing this? I'm perplexed.

Oh. Maybe it's the LT style. Which one are you using?
ETA: AHHHH. That's it.
The Lorax has some very special rules in it dealing with form element sizing. That has tricked the browser into not showing that full-hieight.
I'll get that fixed ASAP.

Fixed.

>160 bnielsen: & >167 keristars:
Welcome to the internal LT religious argument over the placement of default button actions. I follow the Apple Human Interface Guidelines whenever possible. Another person at LT follows traditional Windows interface guidelines (only for this particular rule and a couple of other things, strangely). While most UI rules are pretty universal, this one is almost completely opposite.

Office politics are a lot of fun.

Author Information is not counting correctly the number of members that have an author's works.

See, e.g. Factotum, no. 23, February 1987, where the editors, A. D. Sterenberg and J. L. Wood have 18 works and members and 34 works and members respectively. I have all of Sterenberg's works and all but two of Wood's works, all single copies of different issues of Factotum. The numbers should probably be:

A. D. Sterenberg / 18 works / 1 member
J. L. Wood / 34 works / 3 members - as reflected in J. L. Wood's author page / Members : Cynfelyn (32), jon1lambert (1), RobertForsythe (1)

It gets ridiculous with, e.g. Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone, where 'Author Information' / J. K. Rowling has "263+ Works, 941,324 Members".

Thanks.

If anyone else uses the "Library Extension" browser extension, I reached out to let them know about the new work pages and they said they should get the extension updated next week.

>153 conceptDawg: Thanks!

>171 norabelle414: Thank you! I use that extension all the time.

>168 conceptDawg:

vs
>2 JMK2020: JMK2020

Thanks for problem with CSS Tag (or not)
It's perfect now

;-)

I wanted read through previous comments before posting my own comments, but there are so many!!!

Just a couple of quick looks, so far, but I really like that reviews are more orderly, with my review first, then friends.

It's nice to be able to more easily find my own if it was written a while back, and I want to share a link to my review with someone later on. I've been wanting this to be easier to find for a while now.

And, seeing friends next is great, too.

>170 Cynfelyn: Author Information is not counting correctly the number of members that have an author's works.

Yeah. This is not new, but it's annoying I know. The number is the copies. To get the number of members would require loading all the members in and de-duping them. We could cache it, but then there'd be complaints about it not updating. If we did it live, it would take a significant amount of time (500ms?) to calculate a single number on a page.

Anyway, it's something for us to look at later, but it's not new so I'm not going to work on it while we're still working on new bugs.
>154 conceptDawg: A jump link to Quick Facts should now be in the On This Page section.

Huzzah!

>150 MrKusabi: I'd rather "Helpers" be removed if that were the case. Being able to quickly click and add to workbench is handy. Having to go into a separate helper hub page for that is more clunky, especially if you're working with a lot of stuff (i.e. setting up Series or Awards pages).

I'm confused. The option you mention, adding to the workbench, is now on the bottom right of every page.

>154 conceptDawg: THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU!!!

Very quick question because somehow it's already midnight ...my goodness...

In the Find It section that links to Amazon, other stores, libraries, Goodreads, etc --- I don't see Bookmooch in there, and I know I had it in my list of preferred places because I've used it very recently. Hopefully this is one that fell through the cracks and is easy to restore? Please and thank you. :-D

I really do appreciate you all, Team LT!

>167 keristars: Yeah, I've been fixing the system's combining errors for rather a while. I know the problem isn't new, though I didn't know it specifically stopped after colons (so as to avoid paying attention to subtitles?)

Is there a list of all the characters that cause the auto-combine to stop comparing? So that I could use a punctuation character NOT on that list, to replace the more customary colon, for constructs like "Foo: volume 1" or "Foo: rides again" or just about anything so as not to have it merged with "Foo" volume 5" or "Foo: complete set"?

>168 conceptDawg: Supernice. Thanks! (I hadn't noticed that I was using The Lorax LT style. I probably experimented a bit and just left it at The Lorax.)

>169 conceptDawg: Office politics are a lot of fun. YES!

>169 conceptDawg: You write: "I follow the Apple Human Interface Guidelines whenever possible."

I internalized Apple's rules for UI in 1984/1985, as a third party software developer. When I came to work for Apple some time around 2020, I found that _none_ of what I had internalized was being followed at Apple. There may have been new rules, but they were somewhat hard to find. I now refer to the Golden Age rules, which produced a UI I liked, and the later rules - not sure when they came into effect - which produced a UI that led me to choose Android for my personal mobile devices.

So which generation of Apple UI guidelines do you follow?

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask (my brain is not taking a lot of this looong discussion on board) but I saw covers being discussed.

I take photos of my own covers, using the app, and crop them before uploading them. However sometimes (since the phone screen is smaller) the uploaded cover isn't 100% perfect (sorry - I'm a perfectionist) when you see it on the bigger screen. Would it be possible to make the cover editable for a window of time, much as a newly created thread title is editable for a few minutes after creation?

Am I misremembering? I thought in the last day or two I was seeing short bios of the author somewhere on the Work page. I was too busy to mention it here before. Now I’m not seeing it in my small sample look.
If it is there, I think it shouldn’t be. Takes up space and should remain on the Author page only.

>183 2wonderY: If we have an author bio, it goes down in the Author Information section. While I understand the desire to separate the two entirely, there is virtue in having the work page showing some information from other pages that connect to it. I think this is one case.

>184 timspalding: Then at least let us collapse these new sections so that we can get to the ratings.

Personally, ifI want author information I will go to the author page.

>185 MarthaJeanne: You can move the Author box to the bottom and move Member Reviews close to the top.

>186 HeathMochaFrost: Customize view does not let me move Ratings up where I can use them. Nor can I collapse these sections so that I don't have to look at them.

>187 MarthaJeanne: Do you mean in the Quick Facts section, which is in the sidebar on wide screens?

The headers in the main part of the page can be collapsed, so I'm trying to double check that I understand what you're describing. :)

For me all that is at the bottom of the screen, uncollapsable, un movable, and the only part of it I want to see are the ratings, but ot's a long scroll down.

>189 MarthaJeanne: Got it, that's the Quick Facts.

For some reason, I thought the ratings graph was elsewhere on the page, too. The spread of ratings can be so useful, especially if there are more than a few.

>169 conceptDawg: Welcome to the internal LT religious argument over the placement of default button actions.

...do you need an office chaplain? Unfortunately I would be bad for the job because I would be unable to avoid taking sides. (The correct answer is obviously to use the Windows guidelines, because more people use Windows. I'm very sorry.)

Mainly, though, I just want to say that I'm tremendously impressed with how the folks at Library Thing do both design and customer service. I did customer support back when the idea of hiring people to work remotely to do customer support was new and strange, and it seems like a lot of the lessons we learned in those days have been lost (or more likely, thrown out by people who only value saving money). It is refreshing to see customer support done well. You are all doing an excellent job, even by my very high standards.

I tried using the site to edit some stuff on my phone, and it was very, very good for a site with this much complexity. I even tried combining a few editions, and it was all very doable. I am not as fast at typing with my thumbs as with all ten fingers, so I am unlikely to ever switch over to mobile full-time, but mobile is now a viable backup option for me, and that's a huge step.

>189 MarthaJeanne: Is that on a mobile screen? For me, I've got the ratings chart (which is clickable to expand to see the half-star ratings) in the sidebar near the top on my laptop screen.

By the way, is there any way to make it more obvious that it's possible to give half-stars as well (effectively making it a 10 star scale instead of just a 5 star scale)? I've seen a few reviews that say 'if only I could give it half a star more' ...

>192 humouress: I've seen a few reviews that say 'if only I could give it half a star more' ...

I have too, but I know that some of those were just ported by the reviewers from other sites that may have lacked the half-star capability.

>191 AranelST: Mainly, though, I just want to say that I'm tremendously impressed with how the folks at Library Thing do both design and customer service. … It is refreshing to see customer support done well. You are all doing an excellent job, even by my very high standards.

Hear, hear! LT customer service is the best I think I’ve ever come across.

>194 PawsforThought: It's not just "customer service", but the idea that we users are truly an integral part of this website (in a good way)...which still makes it my favorite site on the web...after 19 years. Seriously.

>195 SqueakyChu: Absolutely! I couldn’t think of a better term than customer service.

>181 ArlieS: I follow the generation BEFORE the desktop OS was called Mac OS. So first generation OS X, which in turn, mostly relied on the well crafted System 7 design guidelines. I feel like they mostly got them right when they were all writing in Pascal. heh But in all seriousness, I find that Apple has mostly abandoned all semblance of following the HIG in most of their modern software. xCode is an atrocity, I'll leave it at that. But for the most basic rules, like where to put buttons and how to organize them, the HIG is still the word.

>182 humouress: That is something that we could consider.
I've long wanted to include an image editor when uploading images and covers. Nothing crazy, just the ability to crop, etc. So it's not an unwarranted request. But I can tell you it's not happening in the next couple of weeks or anything. :) But it's on my personal wishlist too.

>195 SqueakyChu: Well, you're not wrong. Our members really ARE an integral part of the site. In fact, I think every one of the developers would agree that the members are THE integral part of the site.

Whenever we release a new feature or page update we absolutely know that it's going to have a visceral reaction from some members (we can probably list them before we release).

But we also must continuously try new things to advance the site. It simply can't be the same site it's been since 2005. Sometimes we get it perfect on the first try. Most times there needs to be some tweaking because we didn't think of every permutation of how people are using a feature. And every once in a while we realize that we should just scrap a feature because we were way off, but that's pretty rare.

We not only accept members' ideas, we need them. We want them. So keep bringing ideas. We won't use every one of them, but we certainly will consider all of them. We have a document for this release that has EVERY comment/idea/request from all of these threads and we've gone through all of them....even if we haven't been able to answer every one.

>191 AranelST: because more people use Windows
Lots of people do lots of unfortunate things. :)

I'd think more people use Android than either Windows or Apple these days.

Why are you retreating from Library of Congress Subject Headings, as your blog post says? BISAC is certainly not granular enough, and is designed for booksellers to sell books, anyway.

New topic: editing reviews.
I just used the "pop-up way" of editing one of my reviews. I.e. clicking the pen icon near Review after choosing Overview.

https://www.librarything.com/work/6052/262249956

When I pressed save I just got a spinning symbol (might easily be a network problem on my side of the connection) and after a while I just aborted the saving of the edited text. My point is that I'd much prefer having an editable text and being able to save the text and stay on the same side rather than each and every time be redirected to another page (where there typically is a link to reedit the text, but it annoys me having to use two clicks every time plus having the risk of losing my edits if something goes wrong).

This is just a minor annoyance and I hope someone can point me to an obvious workaround that I've missed somehow :-)

(Clicking Ctrl-A Ctrl-C before saving is not a good workaround since that requires even more clicks :-)

>198 conceptDawg:
>199 conceptDawg:

what else is on your personal wish list? ;-)
This is to arouse desire
;-)

I have some ideas and wishes (already mentioned vs historical space (cursor) and mapping (geographic space).

Perhaps more feasible: the transformation of the author identifier into a unique authority reference specific to LBTh (Non ISNI, VIAF....)
Perhaps then this would avoid confusion and mixing of homonyms and sometimes random assignments of works.

I mention this because Whether it is the LoC, DBE, BNF, isni, IdRef... when I look at an author with homonyms and try to identify (CK) and make it reliable, it is common for the said ISNI, BNF... to contain many confusions...
I send them the information but the reactivity is precarious.
....
Also, from my LBTh author CKs, I create, complete or corrects wikidata (this leaves a trace with the sources) then creates the link between LBth and WKD...

Ex: Paul Smith
https://www.librarything.com/author/smithpaul

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I saw Babelio** (French collaborative site on books) had pushed all its authors into WDT Arrrrggghhh !!!! .... The problem is that Babelio is not reliable but they have a link...

**: I tested and abandoned this site (which does not offer the resources and the possibility of reliability of LBTh without counting the advertising aspect

>198 conceptDawg: Darn - so not in the next two weeks then :0/ But I'm glad it's on your radar :0)

Ooh - I like the 'title sort character' feature and the little green box that pops up to confirm you've saved your edit of something.

I'm fussy that the book our members ('patrons' in LTSpeak) look for on the shelves will look like the picture they see in our TC catalogue. This also helps visually oriented people who remember what they're looking for when they can't remember the title or call number. I've learned to avoid using other's pictures as they cannot carry the same markings, wrinkles, smudges, whatever that our books might have. And when someone can't find an overdue book in their home, I send them the picture. It works to get the books found!

Today I added 2 new books and uploaded their scans. And I discovered there is no way to tell which of our cover pictures are actually ours. I also ask all our cataloguers to check that the pictures for our books already in our catalogue are OUR scans. That isn't possible now.

Would you please put back that magnifying glass thingy that brings up the picture of the cover with the picture's details and origin in the window? Or find some other way we can identify the pictures' sources and know ours are either fair dinkum or need new scans done?

Thank you.

Having for the first time occasion to use the new cover uploading interface, the immediate reaction is that it's slow - there seems to be a lot more clicks to achieve the same thing.

Well, I guess you never know what's going to happen when you get up in the morning.
Having been massively busy for some weeks, I got back on LibraryThing yesterday morning, and found myself on the new Works page when I started to catalog. I am a cataloging librarian and wish that I could find some "at-home" MARC record page, but have never had the time to really look for one. So LT is my fallback.
And, as is always the case, progress must be made. So things have to be upgraded, enhanced, enriched, etc.
I guess this new look is ok. It's just disconcerting. And they STILL don't have one of the things that I want, which is an edition field. But of course, that's because they subscribe to that atrocious FRBR basis, one of the worst ideas to come down the library pike in decades.
Sigh! Some 7500 books in, it's way too late for me to change now, but I wish they would give an option for plain, ordinary MARC records, for people like me.

Sorry y'all, it was late so I didn't realize we were in a new thread. Here's last night's post from the old thread:

For the recommendations section, when I click to show it in list form, I don't get to see all of the recommendations (on the main screen or when I click into Complete Recommendations). I'm looking at The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and there are maybe a dozen more recommendations I can see when I look at the covers view instead of the list view. Should there be a 'Show More' button for the list view? My preferred format is to see it in a list, and it's not clear to me that it wouldn't show the exact same titles as the cover view.

>207 VicRML: Would you please put back that magnifying glass thingy that brings up the picture of the cover with the picture's details and origin in the window? Or find some other way we can identify the pictures' sources and know ours are either fair dinkum or need new scans done?

This is coming back soon. Monday, I suspect.

>209 Kathleen828: I guess this new look is ok. It's just disconcerting. And they STILL don't have one of the things that I want, which is an edition field. But of course, that's because they subscribe to that atrocious FRBR basis, one of the worst ideas to come down the library pike in decades.

Every field you have is for your book alone. It represent the exact edition you have. You can now change which of the fields youw ant to see on work pages--you could have it list all edition-related fields! What are we missing here? Is it just that LibraryThing lists other members and their data (like reviews, tags) who have the same work, not the same edition of the work?

For most things, I think connecting at the work layer is better than connecting at an edition layer. I'd rather be without the latter than the former. But there are certainly some edition-specific features that would be convenient to identify through connections across individual book records.

Note that I don't expect the creation of an edition layer in LT or feel like it is severely impaired without one.

What's happened to common knowledge? All the people in books I've listed over the years? Is that feature gone now?

Never mind - found it

I'm cautiously approving the new workpage, although I still have to hunt for things (but that will get better as time goes on).

What I still can't see is the links to any other editions you own. I don't see any option to customise that in any menu. Has that gone for good? It was really useful when I added an ebook to immediately see if there's also a print edition in my library so I can immediately check it to see if it can go to Oxfam.

I'm also not sure about the interface for selecting letters for the sort character - it looks very clunky to me.

>215 Maddz: I'm also not sure about the interface for selecting letters for the sort character - it looks very clunky to me.

I think it would help if there was a way to collapse after you've selected.

>215 Maddz: I panicked and went to look.

It’s still there just below “your book information”

Your other editions
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
Candlewick (2013), Edition: Ill Rep, Hardcover, 256 pages
Collections: Wishlist, just added
The Wind in the Willows (full text)
by Kenneth Grahame
Breslich & Foss, Ltd.
Collection: Wishlist
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
Chronicle Books (2002), Hardcover, 208 pages
Collection: Read but unowned
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
Candlewick (2013), Edition: Ill Rep, Hardcover, 256 pages
Collections: Read but unowned, just added
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
The Folio Society (2006), 264 pages
Collection: Read but unowned
The wind in the willows
by Kenneth Grahame
New York, Golden Press 1968
Collection: just added
The Wind in the Willows (Usborne Illustrated Originals)
by Kenneth Grahame
Usborne (2012)
Collection: Read but unowned
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
Ariel / Henry Holt, 1980 (1980), Edition: 3rd printing, 216 pages
Collection: just added
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
Templar Publishing
Collection: just added
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
The Templar Co. (2008), Edition: 1St Edition, Hardcover
Collections: Your library, Childrens
The Wind in the Willows (Rackham illustrations)
by Kenneth Grahame
New York : Limited Editions Club, 1940.
Collections: Your library, Childrens

>216 amanda4242: I'm also not sure about the interface for selecting letters for the sort character - it looks very clunky to me.

I think it's worth making it a pop-up.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/368057#8749047

Hello again! I had asked about adding Bookmooch to the Find It section, and I'm just bumping the question to ensure someone sees it.

Aside from Bookmooch not being there, that page looks pretty good! 😃 Thanks again for all your efforts!

>217 2wonderY: Duh! It might help if the book I was looking at had another edition instead of me thinking it did! In my defence, I originally started that series in print, and only got rid of the print editions fairly recently once I managed to get all of the ebooks...

Actually, is there a reason the other edition box isn't dynamically sized? It looks very cramped in comparison with the your book information box. It looks as though the publication details should be a single line if possible.

>209 Kathleen828: LOL! Another cataloguer here. Had to laugh just a bit at your FRBR comment. I'm not a fan, either!

I haven't been on the site enough since the change to have many well-informed opinions; for the moment, it feels like coming home after being away for a month and not quite being able to tell whether someone moved your sofa a little to the left while you were away. :-)

But I do have one question: where does Quick Facts get its publication date information? I just entered a new book published in 1953 (https://www.librarything.com/work/1038187/details/280123257). Quick Facts showed it as published in 1971 until I edited the publication date field in Common Knowledge. My guess is that, if Common Knowledge is empty, it's using the publication date that appears most frequently in the 18 copies of the work in LT, in which case this isn't a bug -- but it does feel like a counterintuitive decision to me: between "publication date of most frequently owned edition of the work" and "earliest represented publication date of the work," the latter seems more likely to be what people are looking for when they look to Quick Facts to determine when a book was published. At least it is for me.

Thanks for all your hard work.

>2 JMK2020: Hi, how can I see if a book is wanted on BookMooch or PaperBackSwap? I've searched for "swap" in this and the previous topic but don't see it. Thanks.

I understand opposing implementations of FRBR, but opposing the idea in principle strikes me like opposing Linnaeus, saying that there is no such thing as a "bear" but only specific instances of honey-eating, hibernating mammals. It makes no sense to me—OBVIOUSLY books can be clustered into manifestations, editions and works!

FRBR?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_Requirements_for_Bibliographic_Records I'm derailing, but two people said it.

>226 timspalding:

Thanks.

(I still can't figure out what Kathleen228 actually wants, but that probably doesn't matter very much.)

>227 AndreasJ: I think Kathleen wants a catalogue that more resembles (or maybe entirely consists of) MARC records. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards

I personally would really get a lot of use out of fields like nature of contents, literary form, shelving location, target audience, and previous call numbers. One can only dream... sigh...

The entire list of possible fields is somewhat daunting ...

https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbdlist.html

>229 anglemark: Ah, that brings me back! (We had a very short and simple introduction to MARC at university - it's not something you need to be very knowledgeable about if you're not a specialist.)

>142 Cynfelyn: On the old work page 'Recalculate cover' and 'Recalculate title/author' generated a grey label at the top of the page confirming that it had happened

Good catch. Adding it back.

>203 bnielsen: AFAIK, the "pop-up" ability to edit a review is the same functionality from the old work page, carried over. It actually looks improved, because your newly-saved review text automatically updates on the page without needing a refresh.

You should still be able to edit the review on the actual page if you go to your Reviews page at https://www.librarything.com/work/6052/reviews/262249956 or the Edit Book page at https://www.librarything.com/work/6052/edit/262249956

Let me know if I'm missing something here, though!

>207 VicRML: As @timspalding noted (see >211 timspalding:), we're bringing that magnifying glass back ASAP! In the meantime, you can always inspect your cover/s on the actual Covers page, e.g. https://www.librarything.com/work/2853402/covers/280199280. I hope this helps.

>146 ArlieS:
>157 ArlieS: show _all_ media types no longer persists on the edit book screen

This should be resolved now.

>38 PawsforThought: Something that’s always annoyed me, and which keeping happening in LT2, is that when I edit a new book and click save, I’m automatically rerouted back to the Add books page. If I change covers and then edit the book and save, I get to stay on the book page. While it annoys the h*ll out of me, I could make peace with it if I was only rerouted back if I left-clicked the Edit books link. But it happens even if I right-click and open in a new tab. Can you pretty please take me out of my misery?

Could you explain this a bit more? Are you saying when you add a new book manually then it goes back to the /addbooks page? I'm guessing this is intentional since that's where you came from. I don't really understand what you're opening in a new tab.

>38 PawsforThought: I think that's expected behavior. If I understand you correctly, you're clicking the "edit book" link on the "Add books" page, for recently-added books, and opening the page in a new browser tab. Is that right? It's still redirecting you to the "Add books" page because all of those "edit book" links have a "?referpage=addbooks.php" at the end, so LibraryThing knows where you came from there.

>235 knerd.knitter: Given the above, I'm not sure if there's anything we can/want to change here.

>236 kristilabrie: It happens whether I open in a new tab or the current one. I don’t understand why that would be considered expected behaviour. I expect to stay on the page I’m on when I’ve clicked “Save”, not be routed back to a page I left. I want to be able to keep making edits (like changing the cover image).

I agree with >237 PawsforThought:

As a longtime user, I've grown accustomed to the "Edit book" page acting like it's a data entry pop-up, and thus closing out and navigating back on "save." But it really feels like a page in its own right once you're there, and it doesn't seem intuitive that "save" should result in any navigation at all. It's a big page with many, many fields, and it's often the case that I'd like to do a sort of intermediate save to make sure that I capture what I have already entered, but I want to stay on the same edit page for my further entry work.

>231 knerd.knitter: Seems to work like it never went away. Very many thanks.

>237 PawsforThought: >238 paradoxosalpha: That makes sense. AFAIK it's not behaving differently from before, but I see the desire to want to stay on the book-edit page if you choose to go there in the first place. Can you perhaps add something to the RSI Group, if one doesn't already exist, so we don't lose this in the mix?

>240 kristilabrie: Yeah, it’s not a new thing. I just mentioned it because I was talking about other related things.

>159 GAGVLibrary: I don't like how, after adding a cover, it doesn't take you back to the Edit or work Page? That is very frustrating as the first time it happened I was just waiting for it to take me back

Does it leave you on the Covers page? You can just click on Overview or Edit Book on the left side to get back to those. You shouldn't have to re-search.

Or am I misunderstanding? Can you tell me the steps you're taking?

>145 jamesabg: I miss the "your other editions" on the edit page.

As far as we on staff can remember, that has never existed.

I was zooming along for months adding books to my catalog. I've paused waiting for changes to get settled before trying to learn again how to input books. Maybe this has been addressed - can't seem to search nor can I find the answer. What's happened to tag suggestions by previous members? That saves so. much. time! If I'm looking at it, can someone point me in the right direction?

>159 GAGVLibrary: and >38 PawsforThought:/>235 knerd.knitter: are complementary and opposed complaints about behavior that is inconsistent between two different (neighboring) parts of the site. When you finish editing a cover, you are still on the Covers page. When you save an edit to a book, you are sent back to your prior page. I prefer the former behavior as being less disorienting.

>238 paradoxosalpha: But it really feels like a page in its own right once you're there, and it doesn't seem intuitive that "save" should result in any navigation at all

Agreed, and this has always bugged me. I usually want to change the cover after editing the book that I've just added, but you can't do that from the add books page. It feels especially weird when I've opened the edit book page in a new tab, because I was never on the add books page in that tab; why did it go there? I have learned to open the change cover page in a new tab while I'm still on the edit book page.

If you edit your book from the work page, you go to the book details page after clicking save. I think that would make sense from the add books page as well.

>177 HeathMochaFrost:
>219 HeathMochaFrost:
>223 piemouth:

Bookmooch and PaperbackSwap have been added as links you can now find from the Find It page. The other two old swap sites (Booksfreeswap and Bookswapper.de) did not seem to work anymore, so I didn't add them.

>246 r.orrison: I’ve resorted to changing the cover first and then going to edit the other information. If you go to covers first you don’t get sent back to the add books page when you’ve saved your edited information.

>246 r.orrison:

I simply avoid the "edit book" link on the Add Books page, clicking the title instead to go to the book page and then to the edit page from there. It's a click extra but so much less confusing.

I don't think (?) I've seen this talked about, but then there's also a bit of tl;dr at play here, too:

The author list at the top of the work page (let's call it the "top-level author list") does not match the list as it appears in my book details. See the images below. I have a particular order I like to the see the authors listed in (particularly with comic books) and I would like the top-level list to mirror that, as it did previously. It does not currently. I thought maybe it was sorting by role (note Spider-Woman Masterworks V4 lists Authors, then Cover artists, then Illustrators) but then Deadpool Epic Collection 4 threw a wrench in that theory (note the Cover artist appearing in the middle (?!) of the Illustrator list...)

Everything is working great now, except that loading covers is still a pain. This appears to be a known bug.

>233 kristilabrie: In the meantime, you can always inspect your cover/s on the actual Covers page, e.g. https://www.librarything.com/work/2853402/covers/280199280. I hope this helps.

I can't remember if this is new since the update, but when I upload covers myself, they don't show up anywhere on the covers page. (Except in the top left corner, where the cover is displayed.) My library is set to private, but according to the wiki, covers I upload should still be available to other users. Is that no longer the case, or is it incorrect, or is this some bug? (In one case, a cover I had previously uploaded was not available to me when I added a second copy of the same book.)

>250 saltmanz:

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll check it out. That's my code. And it's… wiggly :)

>250 saltmanz: Can you take a look at it now?

There was a problem where if you assigned the same author to two roles, only the second showed up in the top list.

As it is now, the author shows up once but with both roles. So, for example:

Deadpool Epic Collection 4: Dead Reckoning
by Joe Kelly (Author), James Felder (Author), Pete Woods (Illustrator), Walter McDaniel (Illustrator, Cover artist), Anthony Williams (Illustrator), David Brewer (Illustrator)

Note "Walter McDaniel (Illustrator, Cover artist)"

In other words, the order is the same as the one in your book info (box and edit), but condenses so that the author lists all their roles.

Are you thinking it should repeat authors?

>253 saltmanz:

Sorry about that.

>247 knerd.knitter: Excellent! Thank you so much!

Loving all the new changes I have experienced so far. So many make using the site more efficient and contribute to less scrolling.

One design flaw imo is on the cover selection page. The easiest way for me to select a cover image of a DVD for my region previously was to look for the classification rating in the bottom left corner. With the redesign the size and magnify icon background cover this up, making it impossible to select any image without previewing it first. This is made worse by many of the images loading slower thean they used to for me.

>133 lilithcat: I had real trouble finding out where to confirm other authors. (Anthology edited by Ellery Queen.) But looking for it under the single "author" i.e. editor finally did it.

So going from the book page via (Quick facts ... Link: Work) in top right corner gives this

https://www.librarything.com/work/9329716/work/280211780

and then clicking on the author gives the possibility to confirm other authors.

Can you please make "Author"/"Other Authors" text inputs on "Edit Book" and "Add Books > Manual entry" pages wider? It's only 214px wide for me on 2560px display, it's really small.

>258 Deil: Can you please make "Author"/"Other Authors" text inputs on "Edit Book" and "Add Books > Manual entry" pages wider?

This is on our list.

>254 timspalding: I like this. I'd gotten used to it repeating authors with multiple roles, but never liked it.

>256 zetetic23: Cover images are also loading REALLY slow for me (and I'm on fast internet!), sometimes not loading at all.

I opened the browser console window and there's a lot of output there, maybe that makes the site slower as well?

>261 mene: It’s been stated several times that image loading is slow. LT staff are aware.

Spent the past day exploring the new Work page on both my ipad Mini and my desktop Mac.
The good news is that I can actually use the LT website and edit books on my ipad Mini whereas the previous version was so much trouble to read/resize that I didn't even bother.

I'm rather annoyed that it takes MORE clicks to add an image now (the places to choose and add need to both be on the same visual page) . . . changing to a popup is extremely annoying! Adding clicks is never a positive IMHO. (And at this point I'm not even sure the images I added are actually there, because I don't see them . . . I know, they're working on it!)

Also seems that the process for editing a book on the two interfaces is also different, but maybe I'm just not seeing something. I my ipadMini, I click an Edit button INSIDE the blue box to edit the book (and some fields can be quick editted) . . . but I'm not getting those options in the desktop version . . . I have to click Edit Your Book in the left hand column. (Update: Whoops! Nevermind, found the edit button now. Just not as visually obvious in the desktop version.)

Like I said I'm still exploring and I do appreciate the more readable/accessible aspects . . . but please don't make any of the most basic functions HARDER to accomplish.

Thanks!

Speaking of adding images, what’s the (intended) upside of the new cover uploading system? To me it just seems slower and more complicated.

>264 AndreasJ: I'll second that.

>203 bnielsen: Now I've found a page that behaves almost as I want.

https://www.librarything.com/work/9329716/reviews/280211780

shows me my review of the book and lets me edit it and if I press SAVE (which annoys me by being at the lower right corner of that part of the screen, but never mind) I stay on the same page and can continue my edit session. This is all very fine (except for the SAVE being at the lower right corner of that part of the screen, but never mind). But the portion of the screen that displays the editable area of the review is really small. I can not drag it to fill the empty space to the right, but I can drag it to expand downwards. But when I press SAVE (which annoys me by being at the lower right corner of that part of the screen, but never mind) the editable area shrinks back to the original very small size.

It would be nice if pressing SAVE (which annoys me by being at the lower right corner of that part of the screen, but never mind) just saved the edited review and didn't reload the page (which nukes both your editing position and the dragged out area).

Another minor detail is that the edit function now trims spaces. I.e. if you type Hey_Space__Space_Hoo in a review and press SAVE, it is now Hey_Space_Hoo. I think this is a new behaviour.

>264 AndreasJ: >265 bnielsen:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/368208#n8752954

Tim put some information about it in a new thread.

>267 keristars:

No, that's not what I'm talking about. Covers are slow to load currently, but even when that's fixed, the new cover uploading system will be slower than the old one because there's more steps and clicks.

>244 AKnopp: Tag suggestions? Are you looking for the tag cloud of tags added by other members on a work page, or something else?

>256 zetetic23: We still show the quality of an image—I think even better than before—with a color-coded system. If you look at the bottom of a member-uploaded cover, the resolution is clearly displayed and if it's high-quality it will have a green banner. If it's medium-quality, the banner will be dark brown; low-quality will have a light tan (bandaid) color. Let me know if I'm missing anything here!

Is there a way to get back to what works pages USED TO look like on my android phone? I don't want the mobile site view if I can avoid it. I can't find a way to change it back or choose "desktop" instead of "mobile."

Please and thank you.

>271 ReneeMarie: Is there a way to get back to what works pages USED TO look like on my android phone?

There's a "Desktop View" button at the bottom of the screen that will zoom the page out if that's what you want.

>271 ReneeMarie: Even if you get to the desktop version, it will not be how it used to look - the work pages were updated last week.

>272 knerd.knitter: >273 AnnieMod: Thank you both, and you're both right. What I was most missing from the old screen is what's now tucked away under "Community," and now I know how to find it from both views.

It's not just LT, I tend to actively dislike most mobile site versions of Web sites.

>274 ReneeMarie: There's been updates, discussions, if any, can now be seen among Quick Facts.

I haven't read everything yet but after looking at the comparison posted in #69, I would say I don't have any complaints except I liked the slightly yellow color of the boxes that have data in them (the way they used to be) rather than white. It is just more restful for the eyes. Otherwise I think I like it!

Would it be possible to have a ‘next page’ bar at the bottom of Members’ Reviews on the Review page? I’ve set my page to show 100 reviews at a time but if there are more, I have to scroll back up to the top of the page to see the bar to be able to navigate to the next page. It would just be more convenient to have a bar at the bottom as well. (Didn’t there used to be one there?)

Cheers!
(iPad Air)

I’ve just discovered that we can sort Reviews by star ratings as well as by thumbs. Cool!

>171 norabelle414: Library Extension should be working again

>254 timspalding: I think what you've done here works for me. Thanks! :)

Is there a way to customize how I view things? For example I would prefer to have the edit book view be *my* default view as I don't find any of the newly added stuff of any value to me at all. And I would love to ditch the right hand side stuff as that is also useless. I use this to track my needlework books, kits, and patterns and all the excess book stuff is just wasted real estate for me. Also, the images are a disaster, but I think I read that this is an ongoing issue? First it takes forever to upload a jpg cover image and my covers page has images on top of images and missing images. And images show up one time and not another. Plus, you can't enlarge an image as you used to be able to do. It is obvious to me that the redo is geared to smart phone users because on my desktop all the fonts are way too large and take up too much space for stuff. This was so much more functional for me as it used to be. Now it's become mostly useless. I do hope things are fixed so I can actually view my covers and I'd love to be able to hide parts of the page I don't care to see (tag groups are of no interest to me whatsoever - even for books as are most of the other things on the overview page). I miss the clean, useful tool I liked so much. I read that there are ways to customize the work page, but there are no help entries I can find telling me how to do that. And if you are referring to the option to open or close options that's useless as the option names are still there and in a huge font. I used the old style on a smart phone and it worked fine, so I don't see the need for this mess of a redo.

How do I prevent having a manually entered pattern tagged as a film with all the stuff attached to the film? Life Is Sweet is the pattern name and it keeps showing the film classification even though I deleted what I could in edit book. I tried putting Unknown as author and unbound as media type and it still insists on attaching all the film junk to my item.

Nevermind. I figured out that I have to delete the entry and re-enter it with a different name and author. But now when I edit the book and change the author name, it doesn't change it on the right hand side panel. And I figured out I can hide the helper hub and change the font to something smaller. Just wish I could hide all the other stuff I don't want. And I figured out I can pick minimal for the main page view, but I would still like to be able to set edit book as my default home page for a book as that has the information I *want* to see.

Ah - minimal view is only for edit book which is kind of useless as that page is where you actually want to see all the information. Wish there was a minimal view for the overview page so I could get rid of all those options as I don't want any of them.

>281 kittisue: You can reorganise the order that things appear in on your Work page from the Customise menu (at the bottom of the mobile view or right hand side bar in the desktop view). So you could move extra stuff to the bottom of your screen and then ignore them.

>233 kristilabrie: Not really. The only info is the size of the thing, not who uploaded it. The who is what I want and look forward to "Monday" whatever week it's in. :-)

>284 kittisue: It sounds like you need to be in catalogue view, rather than on work page. No work-level stuff, just your data. Also, if your copy is miscombined, as indicated by being classified as a movie, it just needs to be separated from where it doesn't belong. You can do it yourself or ask in Combiners group.

>1 knerd.knitter: Will the 'will you like it?' be making a comeback? - I found it very useful when deciding which book to read first or if a book on sale is worth a try.

>251 AranelST: when I upload covers myself, they don't show up anywhere on the covers page.
We'll take a look at this. It should be appearing in the list of member uploaded covers.

>256 zetetic23: cover size obscuring a little part of the cover
You'll be happy to know that will be fixed.

>289 thenil206: Will I like it
Yes. That's returning.
But only after a brief vacation while it retools and attempts to find itself again via a yoga retreat. They are thinking about making a rom-com movie about the entire affair. ;)

>287 VicRML: The cover information is still in the cover details pop-up, including who uploaded it; am I missing something?

>277 humouress: Would it be possible to have a ‘next page’ bar at the bottom of Members’ Reviews on the Review page?

Good call! Done.

>270 kristilabrie: If you look at the bottom of a member-uploaded cover, the resolution is clearly displayed and if it's high-quality it will have a green banner.

The colored banners create another problem, though, which is that they block a significant portion of the cover. I now have to look at covers in the full-screen view all the time, because sometimes there's something in the part I didn't see which I do not want. Admittedly, this will be less annoying once the cover-loading problems are sorted, but it should not be necessary at all.

Perhaps a colored outline would be better than a banner? Or the banner could just appear under the image instead of on top of it.

When I add a book and then hit the button to edit it, I would like to see the date options, the tags I add, as well as the tags other people have added. I often don't know specifics about a book when I add it (500 on MT TBR) I don't know if a specific city, state or award is of interest in the book until I look at the other tags.

I don't care about seeing the physical attributes of the book on this page.

I also think the new works page is much too beige. Not visually interesting at all once you scroll down a bit.

>293 AranelST: The colored banners create another problem

We are planning to move those.

>295 knerd.knitter: We are planning to move those.

Thank you!!! Now that I know you are planning on changing it, I can ignore it while you deal with more pressing issues. :)

>285 humouress: But they are still there. I don't want *any* of the drop down items as they are of zero use to me - even for my actual books. I have no interest in reviews or awards or anything like that. I'd prefer to hide every one of those optional lists and not even have the titles show. reorganizing them isn't useful if I don't want *any* of them. But thank you for responding. This whole change was a complete and very unwelcome surprise as it has trashed my LT experience totally.

>288 SandraArdnas: What is catalogue view? And if it's what's under 'Your books' it isn't what I want at all as that only shows part of the data and I liked the original page view that showed all the data I entered and none of the additional stuff now added on the overview page.

>297 kittisue: All of those elements were there before, they just got a facelift and some enhanced features. You can close everything in the middle pane and it will just be a list of headings and that will stick in the future. You can't close sidebars without hacking with some browser addons, but again, none of this is new.

ETA: yes, catalogue is Your Books. You can add a column for every piece of data you have there and edit directly by doubleclicking, you'll just have to spread them over several 'styles' (A-E in the top row) unless you have an enormous monitor.

I have another question. I'm looking at the Book Details page for an entry in my library and every entered bit of date is offset vertically from the title to the left, e.g. Title is followed by my title, but my title is half a line height up from the line 'Title' is on. Why? It kind of looks like someone did a bad typing job on a form. Actually, looking closer, the entered data is a whole line higher than the labels.

>294 streamsong: It has never been the case that others' tags appear when your are adding/editing a book. Unless, did you have a custom add-on for it?

If I wanted to add tags before reading a book, I always did so from the work page, and I've moved the tag section higher to make it easier with the new layout.

>300 kittisue: Which browser and operating system are you using? I just checked the desktop version of a book, and the only thing that looked off was the rating stars.

When I switched to the Verdana standard style, there did seem to be a slight offset, but not nearly as much as half a line.

>297 kittisue: But thank you for responding. This whole change was a complete and very unwelcome surprise as it has trashed my LT experience totally.

All these sections existed before. What's changed for you?

>247 knerd.knitter: Is it possible to go back to the way the BookMooch link showed how many copies were wanted / offered? I want to use it when I'm getting rid of books, to see if they're wanted on BookMooch.
I also preferred the way it was shown in the right pane. Now I have to go to Find It then search for BookMooch (it isn't displayed under any of the columns).

Thanks for listening.

>251 AranelST: >290 conceptDawg: I too have noticed (and reproduced just now on a book I just added) that a newly-uploaded cover does not appear on the covers page until I hit "recalculate covers". (It's long been my opinion that the act of uploading a cover should automatically run the "recalculate covers" function...)

I do have another complaint about the new covers bit, which I otherwise quite like, but it is rather niche: For ebooks (which is like 99% of my collecting/cataloguing now) I upload the cover of my particular book. But I don't want to spam LT with duplicate covers, and so prefer to use someone else's already-uploaded cover--as long as it's at least the same resolution as mine or better, and otherwise the exact same image. I used to compare covers by using two tabs side-by-side: one tab showing my uploaded cover (via the magnifying glass) and the other tab on the popular covers page, where I would magnify a cover and then flip back and forth between tabs to compare. I cannot do this anymore because the vertical positioning of elements in the magnified cover view is no longer absolute, so when I toggle back and forth, the images "jump around" and I can no longer do a clean visual comparison (instead I now have to magnify each cover, open each image in a new tab, and compare that way.) Is there a way to alter the positioning on the magnified cover view so the enlarged images are always in the same position on the page?

>302 keristars: Firefox 115.20 on Windows 7 and I switched to Verdana Small so things didn't look huge on my desktop. Things are offset by pretty much a whole line.

>299 SandraArdnas: I had no idea I could change the items listed in the catalogue view, so thank you. I was able to delete things I didn't want and add in the one thing I did want, so it looks better now. I don't recall the overview page having all that junk on it, but if you say so, I guess it was. I would really love for my default single book page to be the edit book page since no other page shows me what I want. And no other page allows me to *not* see the junk I don't want (I know some people want it, but it is of no use whatsoever to me and thus 'junk' taking real estate to me).

>292 knerd.knitter: Thanks!

A 'Legacy' badge has been added to authors' names on work pages for those authors with Legacy Libraries. See e.g Swallows and Amazons and Jabberwocky.

There's some sort of icon (something like a head and shoulders of a chess queen) with a bit of script saying 'Legacy' underneath. Click on it to go through to the Legacy Library itself. 'Legacy' is too small to read on a desktop; it has to be completely unintelligible on a mobile phone. Is it big enough to even be clickable on a phone?

>282 kittisue: That sounds like it's a combination problem. You could go into the editions page of the work and find and remove the pattern. If you delete and reenter, you just make things worse.

>304 piemouth: The swapsite section has been removed, so adding the site to the quick links was the next best thing. As far as having it show up, you can click the star next to it and then it will be in your favorites.

>306 kittisue: Things are offset by pretty much a whole line.

Is this only happening on one book? Can you provide a link to the page?

>175 timspalding: I'm confused. The option you mention, adding to the workbench, is now on the bottom right of every page.

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't saying I couldn't find it. The person I had responded to had mentioned having both the "helper's hub" link and individual helpers options seemed clunky and they felt just having the helper's hub link was sufficient (as I interpreted their comment). I was merely stating should anything need tweaking (which I relaly don't think it needs to, honestly), I would much rather things remain easily clickable rather than having to go to another page. I probably worded that a wee bit vaguely.

>305 saltmanz: I too have noticed (and reproduced just now on a book I just added) that a newly-uploaded cover does not appear on the covers page until I hit "recalculate covers". (It's long been my opinion that the act of uploading a cover should automatically run the "recalculate covers" function...)

I eventually did figure out that's what was going on! I can't remember if it was like that before. Maybe it was automatically recalculating previously? I'm not terribly bothered by it now that I've found a workaround, but a lot of already-uploaded covers could be duplicated by people not knowing to do that. (Does LibraryThing care about storage space for duplicate covers? I don't know, but having multiple copies of the same cover does not make it easier for users to find the one they want.)

>251 AranelST: >290 conceptDawg: >305 saltmanz: >314 AranelST: when I upload covers myself, they don't show up anywhere on the covers page.

I think I identified the problem, and I will get the fix out soon.

>315 knerd.knitter: I think I identified the problem, and I will get the fix out soon.

Oh that's amazing, thanks! (...seriously, how are you so good at this???)

>316 AranelST: Hahaha, it's her job! 💪

It's very nice, though, and imo quite unusual, that websites actually listen to their users. That seems to be unique to LT. 🤎

I'm quite happy with the changes, although it will take a while to find everything I use regularly.

Could we get the 'Add' button back in the Member Recommendations module please. Right now, it is not obvious one could add a rec and the only way to access is it to open 'Complete Recommendations' link below

On a book page you can 'customize' YOUR BOOK INFORMATION. Is there a way to re-order the items below that? (Reviews, Members, Author Info, Series, CK, etc)

>309 Cynfelyn: On an android phone what I see is that icon that means a broken image link followed by the words Legacy Library in a similar size as the author name just above it, which I can click on quite easily

>319 mysterymax: On desktop, you can use a link in the right hand column that says Customize View which allows you to rearrange the modules and an option to not show empty modules.
On Mobile, that link falls to the bottom of the page.

I have added a book to my collection "To the glory of His name : a worship event by John Lee."

The author information listed in the LC Authorities is as follow:
Lee, John, 1948- .
(Lee, John Barrow; composer, author, singer, arranger; b. 11-26-1948 in San Antonio, Tex.)

After I updated the author information in the New Work page, I don't know how/where to combine my book with other work under this author.

My book is currently under John Lee (Unknown).
May I know how to move my book to
John Lee (16)
Author of The Petra Youth Choir Collection

Thanks.

>322 ECCClibrary: On the Author page at https://www.librarything.com/author/leejohn, click on the "edit the division." link under the heading Author Division on the right of your screen. Your book appears at or near the bottom. Click on the Unknown popup and select "16", and then Save Assignments.

>312 knerd.knitter: It seems to happen on every book. Here's one link: https://www.librarything.com/work/33402282/details/278064842

>324 kittisue: That’s a new release of the browser but it’s an older base release. Still, it shouldn’t have any layout issues.
I’ll check against that exact combination of browser and OS and see if I can duplicate your view.

>323 rodneyvc: Thanks for your help!

Again, I haven't read all of these messages yet (sorry!) but I am finding that reviews on the main work page do not have a button for "this is not a review". They only have one for "report this review". Is that correct? If you go to the full review page, the "this is not a review" button returns.

>327 krazy4katz: Clicking 'report this review' opens the box with both options, as well as the cancel button

>328 SandraArdnas: Thank you! I guess I wasn't sufficiently adventurous.

>290 conceptDawg: amazing! Send my good wishes hoping it finds what it’s looking for and I’ll miss it while it gone. Looking forward to the upcoming debut!

Just popping in to say I really like the Reading Dates button in the info box for my cataloged book. So much quicker!! Thanks.

>269 kristilabrie: Yes! Exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you!

Perhaps this was mentioned previously. However, the talk thread expanded so quickly, I missed the post, if there was one.

My request reflects how the programming in the older configuration was working. I'd like to see the members' book review page show all the reviews in order of posting (most recent to oldest).

My reason: I don't believe up-thumbs or recency should influence what members see most readily. Tastes differ so widely and the habit of up-thumbing a review is not especially useful, unless one knows something of the tastes of the member (for comparison to one's own preferences).

Add more authors ???
I manually enter everything. Today I had a book with 5 authors. The only way I could find to put them all in was to choose the + sign by "another author" and then exit the book and go back into it. This is maddening. In the old version you could just keep adding authors during your original entry until you were done. Is this a glitch? Will it be fixed? Thank you.

>334 Kathleen828: The only way I could find to put them all in was to choose the + sign by "another author" and then exit the book and go back into it.

This has been happening to me, too! It worked yesterday, so I'm pretty sure it's a bug or glitch. (No one would design it to do that on purpose.)

>333 SandyAMcPherson: My request reflects how the programming in the older configuration was working. I'd like to see the members' book review page show all the reviews in order of posting (most recent to oldest).

Click the "Recent" button at the top of the review section and you will see exactly what you want, and the setting will "stick."

I manually enter everything. Today I had a book with 5 authors. The only way I could find to put them all in was to choose the + sign by "another author" and then exit the book and go back into it.

Definitely a bug. it should allow you to add authors any time. The code is the same as it was and, fwiw, I've added authors so this is probavbly a browser issue. What happened when you clicked "+"? What browser and OS are you on?

>336 timspalding:

Shit. One of us must have pushed something yesterday that broke this. Working on it!

>337 timspalding:

Yup. A bad code change at 12:03am last night. The developer was trying to give the other authors more space, but it broke the "+" button. I've reverted the change.

Has the "Members' descriptions" field been deleted?

I think that is what it was called. It used to be towards the bottom of the work page, below the CK section, and in with the Haiku description and a few other things.

What has happened to the content for those works for which the field had been used?

Or has it just been taken off-line while it is made language localisable, which, being outside the CK section, I always thought was its main weakness? Many thanks.

>339 Cynfelyn: Yes, it's gone. At the moment, anyway. See this thread:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/368010

>340 paradoxosalpha: Thanks. I'll go away and read that thread.

For the Overview page, where you can select 'Customize View' is there any possibility of adding a button that allows you to hide empty sections? Right now all you can do is have such sections automatically end at the bottom, but that isn't helpful when all of your sections are empty (on purpose) and you don't want the titles to show either.

>342 kittisue:

We had it that way, but it caused confusion and angst. While I understand the desire to avoid empty sections, I think it's better if they're there rather than confusing people.

Why are no covers displayed for Work Relationships?

There are covers displayed for Series, even though there is really no such thing as a series cover. So why not also for related works, for which covers do actually exist?

See this topic for feedback on the "new new" Edit Book page: https://www.librarything.com/topic/368340

I very much like the “Find It” link to IMDB on the work page. However the canonical title for many films has the text "YEAR film" in square brackets at the end. This means an IMDB search rarely turns up the film.

For example, the canonical title of the film Casablanca is “Casablanca {1942 film}” (it's in square brackets, but I can't use them without creating a touchstone).

The “Find it” link gives the following result, with the film nowhere to be seen:

https://www.imdb.com/find/?ref_=nv_sr_fn&q=Casablanca%20%5B1942%20film%5D&am...

whereas searching for just the title gives the film in first place

https://www.imdb.com/find/?ref_=nv_sr_fn&q=Casablanca

One solution would be to move the text in square brackets to the Disambiguation notice, which, IMHO, is where it belongs.

Other options would be to search for the book title rather than the canonical title or trim anything in square brackets from the search text.

>343 timspalding: So - people didn't understand a button to hide/show the topics? Weird. I do wish you hadn't folded on this one as unwanted topics are a total waste of space and annoying.

It's disappointing how the amount of recommendations under sections like "Special Sauce Recommendations" or "People with this book also have..." have been reduced drastically, from 60 to 20. Is there a reason for it? I preferred using them rather than the overall recommendations, which can do silly things like recommend "The Stranger: The Graphic Novel" for "The Stranger".

I have had only one seriously negative reaction to the whole constellation of changes in the new work page. Specifically: at the bottom of the associated reviews page there is now a block of ratings showing individual user names and the stars they each gave to the book. I find this ugly and unhelpful. At least it's at the bottom.

>349 paradoxosalpha: for me it's useful. I can quickly compare the ones who love (or don't) the book with my reading taste.

Is the New Work Page done and dusted now? Could I reiterate the plea to have all CK in separate lines in 'view mode', rather than just quotations. It's pretty useless having a slew of characters one after the other, separated by semicolon. Besides, author pages handle any new line in edit mode as a new line in view mode too.

>351 SandraArdnas: Similarly, when CK Disambiguation information is re-displayed at the top of the Editions page, the line breaks are now stripped out of it, making it very much more difficult to read.

Please can we have the line breaks back there too.

>352 kleh: Similarly, when CK Disambiguation information is re-displayed at the top of the Editions page, the line breaks are now stripped out of it, making it very much more difficult to read.

This is a bug; I've fixed it.

Could I reiterate the plea to have all CK in separate lines in 'view mode', rather than just quotations.

We will need to discuss this.

TL;DR

The Alternate Titles field under CK asks that we “Avoid titles already listed as the Canonical or Original titles as well as foreign-language titles available on the ‘Details’ tab.”

Where did the “Details” tab wind up?

And is it maybe time to start a new thread?

>354 jasbro: The Alternate Titles field under CK asks that we “Avoid titles already listed as the Canonical or Original titles as well as foreign-language titles available on the ‘Details’ tab.”

Where did the “Details” tab wind up?

Those titles actually ended up on the Editions page for now. Where is that text shown? It should be updated.

>351 SandraArdnas: It's pretty useless having a slew of characters one after the other, separated by semicolon.

Is it, though? A lot of information like this is presented with commas or another divider in between. Can you give an example of where it fails?

>369 timspalding: It doesn't fail, it's just unreadable enough that I'll stick to edit view if it stays like that, which is a shame since I'd prefer the more compact view mode when I'm not editing CK. Surely I'm not alone in not wanting to visually parse
"Ylla (Mrs. K); Yll (Mr. K); Nathaniel York; Jonathan Williams; David Lustig; Samuel Hinkston ; John Black; Pritchard; Mrs. Ttt; Mr. Ttt; Mr. Aaa; Mr. Iii; Mr. Uuu; Mrs. Rrr; Mr. Xxx; Father Joseph Daniel Peregrine"
or even just
"Mars; Earth; Ohio, USA; Green Valley, Mars; First Town, Mars", both from https://www.librarything.com/work/31712

>370 SandraArdnas: You’re not alone. I’d also prefer it properly separated and not a list with semicolons (though I love semicolons).

It's just a balance. Of course using returns is better in one sense, but more is also less. We're trying to provide people with a summary view that doesn't take up multiple screens.

There is a reason why play texts list the cast of characters in a column rather than a block. The work page almost always requires scrolling anyway. I realize that it's a choice and neither way is absolutely wrong, but I incline to perspective of those who object to the semicolon-separated display.

>368 knerd.knitter: Where is that text shown? When editing "Alternate titles" under Common Knowledge on a book's Overview page.

Apologies, to you and to all, for messages 355-366 above. For some reason, I couldn't tell on myPhone that my message 354 ever posted; I had no idea (until it was too late) that I in fact posted it a dozen+ times. OTOH, this reply to your message 368 DIDN'T post when I originally responded around seven hours ago. Go figure ...

>374 jasbro: When editing "Alternate titles" under Common Knowledge on a book's Overview page.

Thank you! Fixed the wording.

>370 SandraArdnas:

Maybe I’m missing something, but when I look at that link, I see everything on separate lines.

Ok. I can’t help playing the grammar princess here. Shouldn’t it be “Alternative Titles”? My apologies.

>377 krazy4katz: Well. Maybe, and maybe not: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/differences-between-alternate-and-altern...

>376 lilithcat: You're viewing CK in edit rather than view mode?

Speaking of view mode, I'd also be in favor of it not showing data from other language CK at all. It is only really relevant in edit mode. As it is, view mode habitually shows canonical title from other languages, among other things.

>370 SandraArdnas: I know that Bibles are a special case (because: impossible), but this is really a problem with Bibles, because there is someone who is really attached to giving long editorial comments on Bible names, and those are absolutely impossible to parse when they are all strung together.

(They are hard enough to parse when they are one to a line. The form being used is something like: Abraham, Father of Nations, husband of Sarah, failed the test with Isaac, "Abram". Apparently it is necessary to include debatable theological commentary, for some reason? There really ought to be a way to combine characters like we do tags. Abraham doesn't become a separate character just because one person mentions his wife and another person mentions his son.)

>378 anglemark: OK. Thank you!

>380 AranelST: Yeah, that's been going on for years. The user(s) in question seem to be affiliated with certain churches. Or, at the very least, certain denominations. It's really difficult to keep up with.

>382 Carmen.et.Error: The user(s) in question seem to be affiliated with certain churches. Or, at the very least, certain denominations. It's really difficult to keep up.

...yes. The extra information is of a certain theological slant, although I'd be willing to put money on the line that the user(s) in question would insist it's just basic default Christianity. (I try to edit out the overt supersessionism, at least, when I come across it, because nobody needs that.)

>379 SandraArdnas: I'm seeing it on separate lines in view mode, too, so I'm not sure what's going on here.

Whatever it is, I agree about keeping everything on separate lines.

>383 AranelST: I try to edit out the overt supersessionism, at least, when I come across it, because nobody needs that.

Ugh. Thanks.

>378 anglemark:

From my profile, regarding tags I use: "Alternate history is the sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy which deploys variants of historical settings (e.g. The Years of Rice and Salt), but alternative history is the field of historical speculation associated with popular revisionism and conspiracy theory (e.g. Holy Blood, Holy Grail). Unfortunately, these terms are not often used with care, and both are frequently used to describe the former case with enough frequency that the two tags have been combined in LibraryThing."

>386 paradoxosalpha: Ha! I've been reading SF for 50 years and I've never heard this distinction before. :)

>387 anglemark:

The distinction is chiefly useful because of the "alternative history" branding adopted by crackpot historians. I think sf has used alternate/alternative interchangeably from of old.

>383 AranelST: OTOH, your comment led me to double-check the title page of the trusty KJV I was given some decades ago. Depending on where you would stop, I can easily see its title being entered as either 35 words (ending “ … to Be Read in Churches”) or 42 words (ending “ … Printed by Authority”). Are those doctrinal or editorial comments too?

ETA: I prob’ly oughta check how I have it catalogued myself …

>389 jasbro: OTOH, your comment led me to double-check the title page of the trusty KJV I was given some decades ago

This is really beyond the scope of this talk thread, but yes, the original KJV title page (and many many many reprints) is full of unnecessary editorializing. However, that is what the title page actually says, so I don't have any problem with someone entering that as a title.

What I am talking about is the list of characters, places, and events in the Common Knowledge, which includes things like: Abraham, husband of Sarah, father of Isaac, we're not going to mention what he did to Hagar, "Abram" (and a huge list of Bible verse references in parentheses).*

This is...not a combination of words you will normally find anywhere in the text. (Although I would not be surprised to learn that the person composing these is basing them off the "study helps" in some edition.) And at the very best, it is clogging up the search results.

*I made this one up, if you can't tell.

>389 jasbro: ETA: I prob’ly oughta check how I have it catalogued myself …

As long as you make sure it gets combined with the main KJV, it's fine:
https://www.librarything.com/work/33097240/t/Holy-Bible-King-James-Version
...unless it is a study Bible, or contains different books.

(Ah, I see it's back to being attributed to "God". Sigh.)

So, out of curiosity (being Jewish) who did write the King James version?

>391 krazy4katz: Some humans?

>391 krazy4katz: So, out of curiosity (being Jewish) who did write the King James version?

Christians widely agree that the original texts were written by a lot of different people in different times and places, which is not something that fits in the author box very well. We widely agree that they were "inspired by God", but we really really disagree about whether that means the same thing as saying God is the author.

In practice, the convention on Library Thing seems to be that different translations count as different works. You can then credit either the publisher (e.g. Zondervan) or the translation (e.g. NKJV), both of which are much less controversial. In a (very) few cases, you can credit a specific person as the main translator or editor, but most translations are done by so many people that it's not practical.

So, the short answer is: KJV wrote the KJV. (It isn't exactly right but it does work from a categorization point of view. And, like, not even Christians can argue with admitting that different translations exist.)

>391 krazy4katz:

A committee. There’s a very good book on the subject, God’s Secretaries, by Adam Nicolson.

Well, the committee translated and edited the KJV. The source texts do go back a long way to a wide assortment of presumptively human authors. Many of the traditionally alleged authors are even named with the titles of the books attributed to them, as in the case of the gospels. (Epistles are usually named for their addressees, prophetic books for their protagonists.)

Hilariously, there have been age-long periods in which people believed that Moses wrote the "Five Books of Moses" (i.e. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) despite Deuteronomy 34 describing his death. I've never heard anyone work out how that was supposed to have happened.

>395 paradoxosalpha: I've never heard anyone work out how that was supposed to have happened.
Time travel? Ghosts? :)

>395 paradoxosalpha: Well, the committee translated and edited the KJV. The source texts do go back a long way to a wide assortment of presumptively human authors. Many of the traditionally alleged authors are even named with the titles of the books attributed to them, as in the case of the gospels. (Epistles are usually named for their addressees, prophetic books for their protagonists.)

This statement requires a great deal of care. There is no agreement on the names of the books of the Bible. I'm not even talking about the fact that the Hebrew names of the books in the Hebrew Bible are mostly just the first words of the book whereas the Greek names (which gave us, e.g. "Genesis," "Exodus," "Leviticus," and "Deuteronomy") are based more on the contents. Even the Greek names of the New Testament books differ.

For example, the Gospel of Mark, in the two oldest manuscripts, has the title ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ (no diacriticals; they weren't used in the fourth century), i.e. "according to Mark." No "Gospel according to"; just "according to." Later manuscripts usually did call it the ευαγγελιον (i.e. good message, whence "gospel") according to Mark. But there are a significant number which call it "the according to Mark holy Gospel"; the official Catholic Clementine Vulgate also adopted this title.

It gets even weirder for some of the epistles. The most complete list I have is for the Letter of James. It has (at least) eighteen different Greek titles in the manuscripts: "Of Jacob an epistle." (Yes, his name was Jacob -- or, rather, Ιακοβος, Iakobos. The name "James" is the result of a lot of strange transliterations.) "An epistle of Jacob." "Of Jacob an Epistle Catholic." "Of Jacob a Catholic Epistle." Some get strange: "Of Jacob a Catholic Epistle, (the) First" (even though there is no second epistle of James). One of them, in ungrammatical Greek, says it is "A Catholic Epistle of Jacob written to Hebrews (by) Jacob the brother of God."

The usual English names of the books are mostly the result of the early printed versions. They very frequently do not correspond to the earliest Hebrew or Greek names.

And, of course, many of the attributed authors are also wrong, or at least highly improbable (I'm look at you, The Letter of "Paul" to the Ephesians, and you, The Second Letter of "Peter." Hah.)

>397 waltzmn:

Yeah to all that, but you gotta concede even those vernacular errors (and deceits tbh) in attribution are a considerable bibliographic improvement over "God."

Thank you everyone! I thought because King James was more recent (?) there might actually be known authors. But I guess like everything else to do with the Bible, it is still a mystery. Here is what I found: https://www.britannica.com/story/who-wrote-the-king-james-bible

This corresponds with what >394 lilithcat: and >395 paradoxosalpha: say.

>398 paradoxosalpha:

You're talking about authors. I'm talking about titles. True, the titles often include the authors, but when there is an author in the title, it's frequently not the true author. :-) As witness, oh, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (Not really an authorship claim, but at least an attribution.)

I'm not really fighting you; I agree that "God" is certainly not a helpful attribution. But the only books in the New Testament that I would consider to have a probability of correct attribution greater than 50% are nine letters of Paul and the John of the Apocalypse, who is not the same person as the "John" to whom the Gospels and Letters are attributed. So that's 10 correct attributions in 27 books. Which collectively rounds off to the nearest true-or-false as "false attribution." :-)

Incidentally, were we to try to list a "lead author" for the Authorized Version, my inclination would be to say it was Lancelot Andrewes. Not that he really deserves the title, but no one deserves it more.

From a different standpoint, for the New Testament, there are two genuine editors: Robert Estienne (Stephanus) and Theodore Beza. The two Greek editions used by the translators were those of Estienne and Beza.

This would by by contrast to, say, Tyndale's New Testament, which was translated from the Greek edition of Desiderius Erasmus. The differences between those three editions are small (much smaller than the differences between the Greek underlying the KJV and the Greek underlying, say, the New Revised Standard Version), but they do exist.

On a purely practical level, if we were to consistently attribute Bibles to "God", then the author page would be about as useful as Anonymous: Slow to load, incredibly cumbersome to edit, impossible to sort. Honestly, this ought to settle the argument (if anyone ever tries to make it).

As it currently stands, my main objection is that it makes things hard to find. One day I am trying to sort the KJV Bibles, and the next day, some of them have wandered off to a different author.

The rest is all very interesting (no really, I've read it all, I love this stuff), but we're never going to sort that all out here. (...I apologize for the digression.)

>400 waltzmn: I'm not really fighting you;

I never thought you were, because I don't disagree with anything you've written here on this topic. You just went for a level of analysis that I didn't bother to make explicit--although I have read quite a bit of related scholarship, and I have come to conclusions similar to yours.

>395 paradoxosalpha:

I've been told in all seriousness that there's no problem at all with Moses writing his own death - God simply told him what was going to happen.

>403 AndreasJ:

Aw, Moses writing his own death is nothing. He at least stopped with his death. Compare Samuel, who allegedly wrote about events for something like forty years after his death. :-) (The worst of it being, the part after he died includes the so-called "Court History of King David," which is the best piece of historiography in the western world at least up to the time of Herodotus. And no one knows who actually wrote it!)

There is an interesting sidelight here, in that there is a Jewish tradition that, when Aaron died, Moses and Aaron were both summoned and shown one burial set-up, and didn't know who was going to occupy it. It would have been interesting to hear their conversation about it. :-p But were that true, then Moses could write his own death on the basis of how Aaron got taken away.

Yeah, and if you believe that, you'll believe that Ukraine started the Putin Genocide....

>404 waltzmn: And if you believe that, you must be Trump :-)

>403 AndreasJ: no problem at all with Moses writing his own death - God simply told him

Sucks to be Moses then, eh? And how early, one wonders. On the mountain?

To paraphrase what I've been told, calling them "the books of Moses" was more like labeling the genre than the author. It's a category claim, not necessarily (or at least not exclusively) an authorship claim.

One of the problems is that the cultural meaning of authorship has changed. Nowadays, we care more about which specific human being wrote which words. Historically, people obviously did care, or we wouldn't have all these spurious attributions, but they weren't so literal about it.

The idea that only the literal can be true is relatively recent, and if you read ancient literature without at least interrogating this assumption, you will make all sorts of embarrassing mistakes.

On a non-Bible-related issue:
This is my book (I don't know if you can see this, because my library is private): https://www.librarything.com/work/3573607/book/281246830

When I first scanned it in, I found it attached to a smaller work that was separate from the main one, which is part of a series. I couldn't find any reason to keep them separate (insert another long digression here*), so I merged them.

My book on the book page now shows it is part of the series, as it should.

However, if I get there from the work page, my book does not show up at all. It looks like the page for a work which is not in my library. https://www.librarything.com/work/3573607/t/Not-Quite-Dead-Enough

Also, on the series page, I don't get the green check.

...what is going on???

*I suspect that the publication history of Rex Stout novellas is not as interesting to as many people as the authorship of the Bible, but I could be wrong. Read the disambiguation if you want a clue.

>407 AranelST: calling them "the books of Moses" was more like labeling the genre than the author

Indeed, but then those who received the "Moses" attribution understood it more crudely. And did so persistently.

> One of the problems is that the cultural meaning of authorship has changed.

That's for damn sure, but the case can be overstated too. Bart Ehrman's Forged: Writing in the Name of God offers a good argument that modern readers have been too lenient regarding ancient pseudepigraphy.

>408 AranelST:

As you said, since your library is private, I can't see your book link. But possibly there's an indexing issue or something that will clear up in a bit. Can you let us know in a day or so if this is still an issue so we can investigate more?

>407 AranelST: One of the problems is that the cultural meaning of authorship has changed.

I'd call that a "true, but" comment. :-)

First, on LibraryThing, "author" should mean what moderns take it to mean. :-)

Second, I don't think that ancient authors were quite as sloppy about what they wrote as were those who copied them and attributed false names. The imprecations of ancient authors against those who mis-copy or mis-attribute are pretty dire, from Rev. 22-18-19 through Chaucer's "Adam Scriven":

Adam scriveyn, if ever it thee bifalle
Boece or Troylus for to wryten newe,
Under thy long lokkes thou most have the scalle,
But after my makyng thow wryte more trewe;
So ofte adaye I mot thy werk renewe,
It to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape,
And al is thorough thy negligence and rape.

I would be inclined to respect the original authors, not the mis-attributors.

>383 AranelST: Those items really should be entered as:
Abraham [Father of Nations | husband of Sarah | failed the test with Isaac | "Abram"]

And you'd be perfectly within reason to change any that you see to this form. This allows the CK value to be linked to other CK character entries named "Abraham" which is what the goal is/was. The other portions are "metadata" or alternate names.

That would also mean that the character list in "view" form would not include that metadata.

But I know this is a religious battle (no pun intended here).

>412 conceptDawg: "Those items really should be entered as:
Abraham {Father of Nations | husband of Sarah | failed the test with Isaac | "Abram"}"
(Square brackets changed to curly brackets).

Except that it doesn't. It creates a page with the URL https://www.librarything.com/character/Abraham+%5BFather+of+Nations+%7C+husband+...

To add the work to the character page Abraham the other stuff, if added at all, needs to be added in round brackets.

See for example the test versions of the alternative formats I've added to Rule Britannia! : hope and glory for armchair imperialists. (Sorry, yes, the latest number of a slightly Whig-history BBC/Time-Life subscription magazine I subscribed to as a child in the early 1970s).

>410 knerd.knitter: But possibly there's an indexing issue or something that will clear up in a bit. Can you let us know in a day or so if this is still an issue so we can investigate more?

Thanks, I will, assuming I remember to check! It's been about 24 hours so far.

>409 paradoxosalpha: but the case can be overstated too.

Oh, for sure! To give this discussion as much nuance as it requires, we'd have to write a whole series of books. (It's a bit ironic that Ehrman was the one who made that particular argument, though, because it's not like he has never overstated a point. This is not exactly a criticism, because it takes skill to turn our own biases into good scholarship. And we all have biases.)

>411 waltzmn: I would be inclined to respect the original authors, not the mis-attributors.

Right, but that brings us back to: who were the original authors, exactly?

And, of course, ancient writers complaining about other people misattributing is a pretty good indication that people were misattributing.

>412 conceptDawg:
>413 Cynfelyn:

I will look into using the brackets the next time I work on this. Alas, it is not simply a matter of changing the formatting of all the current descriptions (even if I were inclined to do that much work to fix a mess I did not make), because many of the current descriptions are biased, inaccurate, or just flat-out incorrect. Personally, I would be fine with just putting "Abraham"! But I can see adding a little extra info in cases where disambiguation would actually be helpful. (...it needs to be actual disambiguation, though, not theological commentary.)

Speaking of, even with the ability to put things inside brackets, there is only so much information that ought to be included, surely??? Currently, for some of these descriptions, the boxes are so wide that you have to scroll a couple of pages to the right just to find the edit button (on a widescreen monitor).

>414 AranelST: >411 waltzmn: waltzmn: I would be inclined to respect the original authors, not the mis-attributors.

Right, but that brings us back to: who were the original authors, exactly?

Well, for the cases where that aren't the Bible and aren't the subject to editing wars, that's where "unknown" or "anonymous" comes in!

Though it does raise a thought. Maybe, as well as an "author" field, we need an "attributed to" field. This assuredly does not apply only to the Bible. Examples:

-- The Testament of Love by Thomas Usk. This is a fourteenth century book by a contemporary of Chaucer. There are no manuscripts; the only source for it is in Thynne's edition of The Works of Chaucer. Where it has no authorship attribution; for long, it was assumed to be by Chaucer. So that is a work that is by Usk but attributed to Chaucer.

-- Then there are all the additions to the Canterbury Tales. So many of them that there is actually an edition of them, The Canterbury tales : fifteenth-century continuations and additions. So this is a work that is by unknown but is attributed to Chaucer.

It seems to me that this would be a really useful addition to the database for works from the manuscript era. Of course, there is the danger of abuse....

>415 waltzmn: Well, for the cases where that aren't the Bible and aren't the subject to editing wars, that's where "unknown" or "anonymous" comes in!

Have you tried to edit the Unknown or Anonymous author pages recently? I'm not sure that this is actually working. The trouble is that people do not just use these terms when the author is actually unknown, they also use it in cases where they don't personally know the name of the author. I'm not sure how to fix this, but it's basically the junk bin right now.

>415 waltzmn: maybe, as well as an "author" field, we need an "attributed to" field.

...I'm not sure if this would settle more arguments or cause more arguments, but it does sound like the kind of thing that people around here would enjoy.

>416 AranelST: Have you tried to edit the Unknown or Anonymous author pages recently?

Point taken. I was just scanning anonymous works in my collection -- Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight, Beowulf -- and they all came back with editors' names as their lead author. And the latter two are both attributed to specific but unnamed authors (Gawain Poet, Beowulf Poet). Odd that there is no Orfeo Poet, given that those three poems are noted in no small part because of their J. R. R. Tolkien connections, and Tolkien's debt to Sir Orfeo is arguably greater than to Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight though not greater than his debt to Beowulf.

So now I'm convincing myself that we also need an "edited by" field. But I know I won't get that. :-)

>417 waltzmn: So now I'm convincing myself that we also need an "edited by" field.

Well if we're playing that game, I would love to have one of the default options in the role drop-down be "Publisher". There are a surprising number of modern works where the publisher is the only thing you can find out for sure. (...or maybe this is more of a problem with church publishing houses?)

>417 waltzmn:

we also need an "edited by" field.

Why? We can add the editor using the "other authors" field.

>418 AranelST:

I would love to have one of the default options in the role drop-down be "Publisher".

That info belongs in the "Publication" field.

What >419 lilithcat: said.

If I have a work of unknown authorship and conspicuous editorship, I do not hesitate to make the editor the "primary author" in LT, albeit with the "editor" author type. I also prefer the editor as the "primary author" for an anthology.

>353 knerd.knitter: Thank you!

>419 lilithcat:

Because it needs to be easier to distinguish between, for instance, The Canterbury Tales edited by W. W. Skeat and The Canterbury Tales edited by F. N. Robinson. If you haven't done manuscript studies, you don't understand how important this distinction is. Skeat's Tales are not Robinson's are not Thynne's are not The Riverside Chaucer.

Similarly, Heinrich Joseph Vogels's Greek New Testament is not Robert Stephanus's is not the United Bible Societies.

A. J. Bliss's Sir Orfeo is not the one edited by Thomas C. Rumble is not the one edited by Donald B. Sands

In the case of Chaucer, the differences are relatively minor. But in the New Testament case, the texts differ at something like 5% of places, and Rumble's Sir Orfeo is something like a hundred lines shorter than the one by Sands (which is more typical of the usual Orfeos; it's close, e.g., to the one translated by J. R. R. Tolkien).

This is a battle that I have no hope of winning, because LT is basically designed for modern books, not books from before the era of printing, but it doesn't change the fact that these editions need more distinction than LT gives them.

>423 waltzmn:

Right, but you can put Chaucer as “Primary” and the editor as “Main”.

Also, don’t be so damned condescending.

>420 lilithcat: That info belongs in the "Publication" field.

Right, but I'm talking about the cases where all you have is a publisher. People are going to put the publisher in the author field in those cases, so why not make it easier for them to identify what they are doing?

>425 AranelST:
You can specify "publisher" as the author type. If you want it pre-populated as an option, okay--but it is likely more rare than the other author types already listed, and it would have the downside of encouraging some users to enter the publisher as a secondary author for every book they catalog.

>426 paradoxosalpha: and it would have the downside of encouraging some users to enter the publisher as a secondary author for every book they catalog.

That's fair. Mainly I am just tired of having to enter it manually so often, but that may be a function of what kinds of books I am working on.

Another option (which might be a lot harder to code) would be if the default list could be expanded with your additions, like with the media options. (For example, I added a custom one for "spiral-bound" and now I can select it whenever I want from the drop-down.)

>424 lilithcat:

I don't understand the comment about being condescending, so I'll pass on that, but the distinction between "primary" author and "main" author is not a meaningful one. In a work with multiple authors, the one who is first alphabetically is the "primary" author. Should this be so? My father's one published book was a joint textbook. Since my father's last name is "Waltz," he ended up listed second (the other author's surname began with "B"). Was his part less? It was not.

I realize this is how information is listed on copyright pages, but it's still not fair to joint authors who don't happen to be listed first.

Either it needs to be possible to have multiple "primary authors" or we need to recognize that "main authors" are generally joint authors and deserve equal credit. Either mechanism makes sense, but they are logically different conceptions -- and what I would like is not the way things are currently conceived.

I enter a lot of works that have multiple equal authors, and having to demote one or more of them is frustrating.

In addition to just not reflecting reality, this skews the statistics on the graphs and charts (such as nationality and gender). I have whole countries missing from the map because the authors (in my collection) from those countries happen to have names that appear later in the alphabet, so they get listed second. (Also, at least in my collection, this affects the gender stats, because women are more likely to be joint authors.)

If I ran the universe, I would prefer to see the whole system reworked so that "main" and "primary" mean the same thing. But since of course nobody put me in charge, I imagine it would be much easier to just include all main authors in the stats.

>413 Cynfelyn: Ah! I should have used normal parenthesis there:
Abraham (Father of Nations | husband of Sarah | failed the test with Isaac | "Abram")
It works in that case: linking only Abraham
example work: Rule Britannia!

And a notice for me to not use Talk without first double checking my memory.

The question is: if we change the "View" mode of CK to exclude the metadata items (those items within parens in CK values) is that OK?

Or do those metadata items provide value in the View mode and they need to be there?

For instance, that same work has Britain (late 19 cent.) as a value in places. If we excluded the metadata in the View mode then it would show only as "Britain" in that case. It could be argued that there will always be cases where the metadata is an important distinction so we can't get rid of it in View mode.

>1 knerd.knitter: https://www.librarything.com/topic/368664#unread

>431 conceptDawg:

I certainly would prefer to keep the items in parentheses. I'm not sure it matters for locations, but it definitely matters for people/characters. The number of historical figures whose names get picked up in fiction by people who don't know who they are is... a constant irritant. I need to know if a CK character is the one I mean or is the one in MyRomanticNamedropNovel.

>433 waltzmn: This would just be for the "View" version of the data. The data would still be the same within the system and in the "Edit" mode of CK.

Think of the "View" mode as an abbreviated or simple view of the data. The idea behind it is a way to have the CK data on the page in the most readable and compact form. So in that form I feel like jettisoning the metadata from the display might be the right thing. But I am bringing it up because I'm not committed to it yet.

The "Edit" mode is where I'd expect most hard-core LTers to live, and the setting is sticky so it remembers your mode once you're in edit mode.

(And you didn't hear it from me, but there is the unintended side effect of keeping unknowing newbies away from the all-too-easy power of global editing of CK data by at least a button click to get to the Edit mode.)

I'm not sure that having disambiguation information hidden or visible in any mode makes much of a difference unless there is also a strong preference stated for putting the disambiguation information in the disambiguation (i.e. in parantheses, not just adding strings of descriptions to the main text).

If you hide it in the main view, but not in the edit view, then people who think this information must be included are just going to continue putting it in the main view, which basically amounts to spam from the perspective of anyone trying to search normally.

(This is especially a problem with Bibles, because there are hundreds, probably thousands, of separate works that almost any character, place, or event can be applied to. And that's even after all of the editions that ought to be combined are actually combined, which has not happened yet.)

>434 conceptDawg: This would just be for the "View" version of the data. The data would still be the same within the system and in the "Edit" mode of CK.

I'd still like to see it. Sometimes I look at CK entered by other people to see if I want to read a book. So I need to know if "John Brown" is the one moldering in his grave or the one who had to try to keep Queen Victoria happy... somehow... or somebody else.

Of course, that's just one person's preference. But I don't see why anyone would want to hide it. No one has to read it. :-p

>423 waltzmn: in the New Testament case, the texts differ at something like 5% of places

It's hard to tell exactly what that means. Translations differ at 100% of places from the same language, but are still the same work. IIRC, a Soviet court once found that independent translations into Russian tended to differ at about 5% of places. And certainly it depends;

"And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel."

versus

"“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”""

versus

In Gainesville, Georgia," the replied, "because there's a bible prophecy which says:
'And you Gainesville, in the state of Georgia,
Are by no means the least in the Georgia delegation;
From you will come a governor,
Who will wisely guide my chosen people.' "

> Rumble's Sir Orfeo is something like a hundred lines shorter than the one by Sands

Is this what Wikipedia calls "The Harleian Collection version of Sir Orfeo"? If there were but two versions of this poem, I would call for separation but if each editor gives a slightly different composite version of the three manuscripts, it doesn't seem rational to call for separation of less than 100 copies of Sir Orfeo into a pile of editions.

>437 prosfilaes: in the New Testament case, the texts differ at something like 5% of places

It's hard to tell exactly what that means. Translations differ at 100% of places from the same language, but are still the same work.

In the Greek New Testament, it's not hard to tell what it means -- and that's what I'm referring to. For example, in Mark 1:1, the Greek text in the majority of manuscripts reads, "(The) beginning of the evangeliou (usually rendered 'gospel') of Jesus Christ (a) (usually translated 'the') son of God." However, several very important manuscripts omit "(a) son of God." The original text is not certain here, and different editors choose a longer or shorter text. There are thousands of examples of this. In the book of Acts, where the difference between manuscripts is most extreme, I'm told that the longest printed edition is 8.5% longer than the shortest.

Is this what Wikipedia calls "The Harleian Collection version of Sir Orfeo"?

In essence, yes. Rumble has based his text on the Harleian manuscript. Almost all others base their text on the Auchinlek manuscript.

If there were but two versions of this poem, I would call for separation but if each editor gives a slightly different composite version of the three manuscripts,

That's not really the situation. It is true that that very few editions precisely follow any one manuscript -- because they are not diplomatic editions, and all the manuscripts clearly have some errors. So the texts are edited. But every edition takes one base text -- in Rumble's case, the Harleian, in Shuffelton's case, the Ashmole; in every other case, the Auchinleck.

And, believe me, it is weird for someone who is used to Auchinleck texts to read Rumble's edition.

it doesn't seem rational to call for separation of less than 100 copies of Sir Orfeo into a pile of editions.

There are a lot more than a hundred copies of Sir Orfeo. The Tolkien translation has more than 3900 copies -- and it's an Auchinleck edition, almost verbatim.

And LibraryThing does split significantly different underlying texts of the same work. I happen to have eight copies of Piers Plowman. LibraryThing lists them under six different works. Three are genuinely different -- an anthology, a Norton edition, a partial text. But three are pure, simple, unadulterated Piers Plowman:
Piers Plowman -- four of my six are copies of the "B" version
William Langland's Piers Plowman: The C Version
Piers the Plowman: A Critical Edition of the A-Version

The "A" text is much, much shorter than B or C. But B and C are almost the same length; they are closer than the Auchinleck and Harleian copies of Sir Orfeo. Yet they are separated and Sir Orfeo would be lumped.

I recognize -- I honestly do -- that any edition of Sir Orfeo, whichever manuscript it's based on, should be linked with the others. But I also maintain that there should be a way to distinguish Auchinleck/Ashmole/Harleian, as one should distinguish A, B, and C versions of Piers Plowman, as one should distinguish the Westcott & Hort New Testament from the 3% longer Erasmus or Hodges & Farstad editions.

After all, we separate abridged copies of modern novels. Why don't we do that with longer and shorter versions of books from the manuscript era?

This does call for another layer of complexity between a "work" and an individual book. And this is something that a relatively small fraction of LT users care about. Thus it might genuinely not be worth doing. But I maintain that the difference exists.

>437 prosfilaes:

...did you just quote the Cotton Patch Gospels???

For our next digression, can anyone tell me how it is that I slip into a sort-of-southern accent whenever I try to read that out loud? This is not something I can otherwise do at all. (There is a real southern accent buried in my memory somewhere, I just can't bring it out on purpose.)

>428 waltzmn: >429 AranelST:
We don't have to follow convention of one person only as primary on our own book record – we can put the author as multiple names if it matters to us that they get equal billing, X & Y; or X, Y, Z; etc. That would list the gestalt name as a distinct author in our stats and such, but no guarantee we wouldn't cause other stats or features to act unexpectedly. Blank is also an option, and then name each person in Other Authors. Just don't impose a non-conventional way of doing things at the work level as that's unfair to other users, and the next person will only put it back to standard.

>438 waltzmn: There are thousands of examples of this.

And I don't see any reason to divide works just because there's minor changes. Outside the Bible, translations aren't split, and they all have those types of differences.

There are a lot more than a hundred copies of Sir Orfeo. The Tolkien translation has more than 3900 copies -- and it's an Auchinleck edition, almost verbatim.

There's 3900 copies of an anthology of Tolkien's translations. It's not combined with anthologies of anyone else's translations, even if hypothetically, someone in the future could print those three works in one book. The only work I see that would be split if we didn't combine different editions of Sir Orfeo is that one "Sir Orfeo"-only work that has less than a hundred copies.

After all, we separate abridged copies of modern novels.

You've mentioned 5% changes for the New Testament, and a difference between 500 and 600 lines for Sir Orfeo, which amounts to 16% cuts. One claim for abridged audiobooks was 30% to 75% cut, with Fires of Heaven cut 92%. One Reader's Digest Condensed Edition crushed Jaws (278 pages) and The Kappillan of Malta (427 pages) plus A Member of the Family (232 pages) and In Darkness (?) into 575 pages, which is at least a 30% cut. Abridged copies of modern novels are profitable because they significantly cut material; nobody wants a version with random pieces cut that takes almost as long to read or to listen to.

For me Sir Orfeo is somewhere near the line, but the New Testament is not.

>441 prosfilaes: For me Sir Orfeo is somewhere near the line, but the New Testament is not.

Actually, in terms of length, I would agree with you on the New Testament. Also, the differences in the New Testament are not recensional -- that is, no one set out to rewrite the New Testament; the differences are just the result of many scribal slips, corrections, attempts to clarify, etc. But I don't think you're quite seeing my point.

It might be more useful to look at Piers Plowman for this, because I can give a much more specific example. But realize that there are examples that I can give from the New Testament, from Chaucer, and many other places.

There is, in the B text of Piers Plowman, a statement (I will modernize) "I know rhymes of Robin Hood and Ranulf Earl of Chester." This is the first mention of Robin Hood poems, and almost the first mention of Robin Hood in any form. And, given that every early story of Robin Hood is either a ballad or a romance, that first mention is important for Robin Hood scholars!

This reference is not in the A text of Piers Plowman. It seems not to be in the C text either. In other words, it was added in one revision, deleted in a second -- at least assuming that Walter Skeat's hypothesis is correct and that A was the original, B the first revision, and C the third. So: I (or any Robin Hood scholar) would want to find out why these revisions happened. For this, we really need good editions of A, B, and C. But go out and pick up an edition of Piers Plowman, at random in a bookstore. Will you even be able to tell if it's the A, B, or C version? Very likely not. (In practice, odds are that it's B. But it's not guaranteed.)

What I am suggesting is not that all editions of Piers Plowman be split. I actually don't think that is useful. I don't want to have my eight copies of Piers filed as six separate works. What I would like is that there be a way to have them all be under one work, but have some way to say that this is an A edition, this a B, this a C.

Similarly, for Sir Orfeo, I would like to have a way to know that an edition is an Auchinleck, an Ashmole, a Harleian, a composite. For a New Testament, I'd like to know if it is, or is translated from, an Erasmus/Beza/Stephanus Greek New Testament (King James, New King James), a von Soden New Testament (Moffatt), a modified Nestle New Testament (New English Bible), a UBS3 New Testament (New Revised Standard), or whatever.

This is not information that publishers generally supply, so it won't be in publishers' descriptions.

Unfortunately, because LT does not have an editions layer, it is not something that LT can easily do. But it is something that would be tremendously beneficial to those of us who are trying to sort through all these Piers Plowmans and Sir Orfeos and Gamelyns and Gests of Robyn Hode.

>442 waltzmn: You could set it up as a (pseudo-)series, with the A, B and C versions being groups within that series.

>443 Maddz:

I would never have thought of that. Thank you.

Now I just have to get everyone else to do it, too, for all the editions that are out there where I don't know which is which! :-)

>443 Maddz:

Yeah, good solution!

>443 Maddz:

FWIW, I tried to set up a series for books containing Sir Orfeo (I know that much, much better than Piers Plowman, so I thought I should start with what I know): "Anthologies Containing Sir Orfeo (Middle English and Translations)." (I can't seem to get the touchstone to work -- maybe it has to cache? -- but you can go to The Auchinleck Manuscript: National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.2.1 and get to the series that way.)

This contains every Sir Orfeo text in my library. (I think. I may have forgotten one or two.) There are many editions, but I obviously can't classify them. Sadly, I can't split the ultra-canonical A. J. Bliss edition from sloppier standalones. But I did what I could.

I'm open to suggestions, as long as they're gentle....

>446 waltzmn: I don't know enough about it to comment, but it's interesting I am top member with 0 works!

I think I would have done the groups based on the source texts rather than the language. The other thing would be to add a description explaining (briefly!) the differences between the texts.

>447 Maddz:

I think I would have done the groups based on the source texts rather than the language. The other thing would be to add a description explaining (briefly!) the differences between the texts.

I appreciate suggestions. Thank you. Obviously you have done all I can ask, but I'll comment in case anyone wants to suggest more.

I don't expect people to know the books involved. :-) I'm just trying to make a workable set-up so I can try to do this for other books in anthologies.

It seems to me that we need both to clarify what is Middle English versus what is a translation and what is the source text. But I also thought it important to clarify which texts are part of an anthology and which are standalones. Trying to do all that... I was trying to limit the number of groups. If you think I should have more, I can do more.

I didn't know you could add descriptions. I'll have to find that....

>247 knerd.knitter: I don't see any swap sites listed when I go into the Find It 'more' .e.g. here: https://www.librarything.com/work/224519/quicklinks/281579316

Getting used to the new pages, with a little quibble.
The Find It section in the sidebar shows first a link to Amazon. When I click 'more' it nicely shows me other independent choices. why not help people make more use of Indies by giving them top billing? e.g. I think IndieBound should show on sidebar.
............Just found your 2009 post on Amazon policy requiring solo billing. Aargh!!
If you removed them from the bookpage sidebar, would it be OK for them to be just one of the list of bookstores?

>448 waltzmn: To add a series description: click on the 'Edit series' button in the top of the right-hand column. That opens up a menu; 'Descriptions' is the 5th item on that menu.

You can add as many groups as you like, and create as many sub-series as you like: GURPS

I worked on that series a couple of years ago when I was having a big push on logging my RPG books. It's not the most complicated; for that you'd have to look at something like mainstream comics.

>450 Maddz:

Thank you.

>449 juniperSun: I don't see any swap sites listed when I go into the Find It 'more' .e.g. here

Did you find the two I mentioned? You have to search for them. Then you can favorite them and they'll always appear on that page.

Similarly with independent bookstores, if you favorite them, they won't appear on the right side of the page, but if you go into the Find It page itself, they'll always appear first.

>449 juniperSun: Hmm, maybe put them in a separate section, labelled "monopolistic assholes requiring solo billing" or similar. Somewhere that only those who really love amazon would know to look.

>1 knerd.knitter: Hi, I catalogue a LOT of old books so almost always add new (to LibraryThing) records and scanned images of books that I have acquired. My main focus is on books by Ralph Connor and I have added hundreds of scans for Black Rock in particular. I find it more time-consuming to add pix in this new worksheet (more steps and having to scroll down to actually load the photo after reading the blurb). Also significant hang time waiting for the record to load. Plus, while checking the images already loaded to see if I or anyone else has added the image of a cover for a book I have, the quality of the images is poor -- downright blurry in fact -- and the scans are cut off at the bottom by the numbers you use to indicate the quality of the images. I would prefer to be able to actually see the whole image clearly without having to click on and magnify each image. Not as much of a problem for Black Rock but check Black Beauty for instance and there are huge numbers of duplicate covers. You want to see the whole thing to see which to choose.

Also, can somebody please tell me how to get the language of the work to default to English? I can change to French if I have to but would prefer not to have to set it each time.

And, perhaps because I come from a library background, I LOVE LCSH, and use these subject headings in a different catalogue where I catalogue books for a small rural library. Please do not discount the value of standardized and universal subject headings. You can add other terms but library classification and subject analysis has stood the test of time.

>454 dewasus1: I'll let @knerd.knitter respond to the first few comments about the form and load time, but I can comment about the cover display issues.

1. The image quality: some covers CAN be blurry because they are just terrible quality covers. Many of our older covers are less than 500px tall and that tends to look blurry on today's computers/screens with higher resolutions. If there are higher quality covers they will have a green banner on them. Those should not look blurry to you. If they are, let us know and maybe there's another reason you're seeing blurry covers.

2. The covers page is in constant change right now. You'll likely see the size banners move or change in the next few weeks.

3. Obviously, it should default to English if you are on the English site. Are you using the French version of LT? If not, then it could be a bug.

4. We are SERIOUS about library sciences here at LT. I mean, it's in our name. We like us some classification systems.

>454 dewasus1: I am also looking forward to seeing those banners at the bottom go away.

For what it's worth, sometimes the cover images are blurry because the covers people upload are blurry. The colored banners just indicate the size.

For what it's worth, almost all covers I see on the cover page are blurry until I click the magnifying glass to enlarge, even very high quality images of 2000pix or more in one direction. I don't terribly mind as I assume that means the page as a whole is loading faster. However, when I click the magnifying glass or select one as a cover to use, that view (either the lightbox or the image in the top left) is fine quality.

>454 dewasus1: Also significant hang time waiting for the record to load

Do you mean on the Change Cover page or on the Overview page?

>452 knerd.knitter: I finally noticed the 'search' line at the top of the page. I was focusing too much on the provided boxed categories, opening them up & doing a ctrl-F to find bookmooch etc.
So now I can find swap sites using that search bar, but I don't see anyway to add them as favorites from this screen. I guess I'll have to search each time I want to use them.

>453 ArlieS: I like the way you think.
I'm also another person who prefers desktop views and hate all the extra scrolling the updated screens require.

>459 juniperSun: I don't see anyway to add them as favorites from this screen If you click the star it will be added to your favorites.

>461 knerd.knitter: Nice, thank you. Not only does it show up on the 'more' screen, everything I favorite shows up on my Overview right column!

The whole rationale for how the ratings chart in the right sidebar is handled eludes me. I don't like having to click to expand and contract it for one thing. And when it's contracted, some ratings don't necessarily show. Example: To Marietta from Paris. If the chart is contracted it shows two ratings for 5 and one rating for 4. But if the chart is expanded, suddenly an additional rating for 2.5 shows up that is totally ignored in the contracted chart. So to be sure to get an accurate picture of the ratings you always have to expand the chart. Why not just always show it expanded? And why leave out some ratings in the contracted chart?

>463 lizzy50usa: it should not be excluding them. I will look into that.

>463 lizzy50usa: >464 knerd.knitter: Fixed.

>463 lizzy50usa: ... how the ratings chart in the right sidebar is handled eludes me. I don't like having to click to expand and contract it ...

I too would prefer having the ratings just displayed in the expanded state. At least on the PC, there's plenty of vertical space to accommodate it and it would simplify the UI/code a bit.

In the consolidated view, the half-star values are rounded up. To my mind a 3 ½-star rating has more in common with a 3-star rating than a 4-star rating. If you do keep the consolidated view then a suggestion:

Blur the ½-star counts. Divide the ½-star value count and assign half to the next lower star's count and half to the next higher star's count. This would better summarize how users assign ½-stars - some because it’s a bit better than the lower star and some because it’s not quite good enough for the higher star. The current assumption is that all the ½-star ratings were almost good enough for the next higher star.

Again, though, the simpler solution is to get rid of the consolidated view.