App unusable, multiple bugs

The app is unusable, and using the desktop in a different room from where the bookshelves are is unrealistic. The desktop is also buggy.

1.App crashes every time I tap the hardcover dropdown in the book edit screen. This is preventing me from adding any more books unless I want to go back and edit every single book again. With hundreds of books, that's not an option.
2.Account has 147 duplicate collections that I cannot clean up. I deleted almost 250 by hand yesterday and recreated 20 collections. Only two of those collections actually had a book in them. That second batch of 20 collections was duplicated server-side into 147. I am not deleting all of those by hand, especially if they're only going to multiply again.
3.When scrolling up the long edit page to reach the save button, the app sometimes throws me back to the previous screen and all edits are lost.
4.Sent multiple support emails. One response from a staff member who misread the situation and told me to do the same manual deletion that already failed. No follow-up after I replied three more times about new problems.​​

Which app? iOS or Android?
What about using the Librarything on the phone or tablet browser? Should work better as those edit pages have been optimized for all screens.

>1 miniaturehome: FWIW, the app is only really useful when adding books with ISBN because you just scan the barcode. Pre-ISBN ones, you're better off adding them on the LT site, even if you're using a mobile device. Just log in into the site on your mobile device and use the mobile view, it's been updated and you won't have issues such as the save/cancel button being off-screen. It will float in the same position while you scroll.

Also, using the site for these books will give you more control over the sources used and you'll have less to edit. Search in OverCat and a few library sources you think are likely to have your books/editions, using multiple parameters, eg title, author, publisher (with commas in between) and you'll often find your exact edition or one close enough that minor edits are required.

The app is overdue an update and overhaul, but there's no timeline as of now that I know of, just that it is on the roadmap. LT is small team, so development takes time.

When I'm looking at your collections, there's only 2 (beside the default 'your library'), so perhaps you mean something else. Anyway, staff will eventually respond, but perhaps some of these tips might help in the meantime. Also, if the duplicated things are not collections, clarifying and providing examples and your setup would speed up tracking down the issue.

>1 miniaturehome: Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out and sorry for the trouble! Happy to help.

The app is rather limited right now, I agree with SandraArdnas above. We are working hard on an updated one—but that's not very helpful for you since you're cataloging now! You can use LibraryThing's web version on a phone, without using the app; just open it in your phone's browser. Honestly, that works alright but things are a bit small in that view. It might be worth borrowing a laptop or tablet from someone, since you mentioned your desktop is in a different room from your books and you'd rather not walk back and forth.

I'm going to go through each of these points and see if we can identify the bug, and resolve the other issues along the way.

1. App crashing — this is an issue we are aware of and will be resolved with the new app's release. The crashes usually occur when editing a book, so (as SandraArdnas suggests) we recommend using the app if you want to quickly add books with the built-in barcode scanner. The rest of your cataloging, we recommend you do on the web version of LibraryThing—on your phone browser or another device's browser.

2. Collection duplicates — I'm happy to help delete collections for you, but before we do that I want to understand how this came to pass. It sounds (from this and your emails) as though added a few collections but many multiples of each collection appeared. You spent time deleting them, then added more collections and experienced the same issue. Does that sound correct? Please let me know if I've misunderstood.

It sounded in your emails like you created collections in the app. Did you get there by navigating from a book page > edit book > edit Collections > Collections Manager > Add Collection > Save? Or did I misunderstand, and you added your collections on your computer/using the web version of LibraryThing?

Some troubleshooting questions for you: (A) What page are you on when you create a collection? (B) What are you clicking precisely to create them? (C) At what point do you notice the duplicates? I tried to reproduce this issue a few times and was unable to do so, so your carefully listed steps will be a huge help in preventing this from happening again. Once we know how to stop it from just happening again, we can help get rid of your duplicates!

3. App navigation — Again, I recommend doing edits on the web, not the app. Sorry that the app is outdated, but hopefully it won't be too long till we have a modernized one!

4. Email response — We do our best to reply to emails within 24 hours. After you clarified and expanded on the issues you were experiencing, Abigail connected with me to try and troubleshoot the problems. I took over your emails from Abigail since you are using an iPhone (which I also have). I'm sorry I didn't get to your emails sooner, but I'm glad we were able to touch base here within 24 hours of your previous emails.

A few more points from your emails:

5. Adding books — I see you were struggling to find add-books sources that were a good match for your book data. You mentioned Library of Congress. We are working to improve that add-books connection, but for now the best way to search their records is using the book's ISBN. There are many other sources to pick from (nearly 5,000) so you may wish to try another source besides the Library of Congress. Whatever source you pick may not have the book data exactly as you want it, but after you add the book (via the app's ISBN barcode scanner, or via the Add Books page on the website) it's normal to go in and edit as needed on the website, assuming you feel the need to update the book details beyond the source you've chosen.

6. It sounds like some of your edits, including to tags, aren't saving. Try editing on the web version and see if you still have trouble. It's much easier to reliably click the Save button on the web version of LibraryThing.

I believe this covers all the concerns you brought up, but please let me know if I'm missing any important pieces or context. I'm most concerned about the duplicate collections, so any detailed steps you can provide are very useful. I need to be able to replicate the issue to solve it. If you'd like, I can also try signing in as you to try to replicate it on your account. If that would be easier than writing out the steps you took, please at least share the browser and device type you were using to create Collections so I can replicate your steps as closely as possible.

The other main takeaway is to avoid using the app for cataloging work besides the initial add-book scanning function. Until we release an improved app, the old one has too many issues to help in a large cataloging project.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. I'm sorry it's been such a frustrating start with LibraryThing, but I hope this response is helpful. I look forward to identifying the source of the Collections bug together to prevent that from happening again.

>4 ZephCraven: Thank you for the reply.

1. The problem with using the browser on the phone is that I can't read it. The print is simply too small and when I try to zoom in, the screen jumps around. I hadn't thought about it, but I could probably try using the browser on the iPad. I usually only use that for my weaving software, so it didn't occur to me that I even have an iPad.

2. I initially created one collection and then added a book just to see how the app worked. It was a simple barcode scan of the book I was reading. That collection was never duplicated. I then created almost 20 collections from the app the next day, with no books in them. I'm not sure if I added the first book before or after they multiplied. But then I suddenly had approximately 250 collections. I deleted them by hand, which took at least an hour. I deleted them on the desktop browser, even though I had added them initially with the app. Then on the desktop browser using a link I found in the Help section that went directly to the collections page. I recreated the initial 20 collections on the browser. At first it looked fine, but when I opened the app to add more books, I discovered I was back up to 147 collections. Since then, I have added books to a total of three collections. Some books were added on the app and some were added from the browser, manually.

3. I am not sure if there is a way to take photos of the book covers with the browser, particularly if it's on the desktop rather than a device. I have found it faster to just take my own photo then to go searching for the correct cover after the fact. When I'm more experienced, I may change my mind about that.

5. I'm using primarily the Library of Congress, but I have used overcat and Amazon, depending on what the book is. The problem with the sources is that they will not give me any results if I put in both title and author, much less publisher. The sources do not tell me what it is until after I click on it and add it to my collection. Then I discover it it's the wrong one. When I am trying to add an Oz book to my collection that was published in the early 1900s I do not want an audiobook or an e-book or a cassette. But I can't tell that's what they are until after I click on them. The portion of my library that I am currently documenting is a large collection of books ranging from approximately 1900 to 1950. Therefore, none of them have ISBN numbers or barcodes. That is why I have had to enter so many manually. And just a note about another bug, I did scan a barcode last night for a novel that was published within the last year or two and ended up with a German language sheet music score. The barcode was the one actually printed on the back cover, not a sticker that had been stuck on. I have had several barcodes that have not worked in spite of the fact that I have scanned very few of them so

6. The tags, it turns out we're not saving because I didn't know there was a save button. I hope that the save button in the app will behave itself. Once the app is modernized and be visible no matter where you are on the page without scrolling to the top. The odd thing was that other things I had edited were being saved.

I will try the browser on the iPad and see if that is better. My biggest concern is also all of the duplicates because it is hard to add my book to the correct collection when I have a list 147 collections long.

>3 SandraArdnas: At the time you looked at them there were two collections that actually had books in them. But there are multiple duplicate empty collections. So I'm not sure what you're looking at. I tried using the website in the browser on the phone, but I can't read it at all. As I stated in my longer answer below, I just remembered that I also have an iPad. I can try the browser on that. I only use that normally for my weaving app so I tend to forget that I have it.

>6 miniaturehome: Empty collections are not shown when someone looks at your catalog. So only you and LT admins can really see what is going on in your catalog.

Bug reports had seen the duplicate collections reported before - I even managed to have one at one point. :)

So let me ask a question - where exactly did you create the collections - from the catalog view or from https://www.librarything.com/settings/collections ? The first is buggy - had been buggy for a long time. The Setting way is the better one and the easier to work in. And the App had always been wonky on collections management so I always do that from a browser.

>5 miniaturehome: 5. I'm using primarily the Library of Congress, but I have used overcat and Amazon, depending on what the book is. The problem with the sources is that they will not give me any results if I put in both title and author, much less publisher. The sources do not tell me what it is until after I click on it and add it to my collection. Then I discover it it's the wrong one....

I am very picky about certain metadata -- not all of it, and possible not the same metadata you're picky about -- and so I'm going to offer a couple unsolicited comments and suggestions, even though this is a bit of side note to your main problems with the app:
• IMO, the odds of Amazon having good metadata are so low as to make it not worth my while to use it as a source.

• I'm not convinced that Overcat is that great, either -- yes, there are lots of "picky about metadata" people here, but there are probably more who aren't. I've got some really weird books and it just seems less aggravating and more productive in the long run for me to hunt for other good sources.

• I highly recommend signing up for an account at WorldCat.org. It's free, and it gives you access to the library catalogs of a huge number of libraries all over the world. Public, private, government, specialty, you name it! The left nav bar allows you to refine your search reasonably well, although the scrolling "author" list is best consulted after you've refine by dates, media, language etc. -- it seems to have some limit of names it can display. Once you think you've nailed down your book, you can click on its title to get a listing of libraries which have it, and then click on the associated "Borrow" buttons to look at their catalog entry. (Sometimes it turns out to not be the exact match you were looking for.) Once you've found a library that has your exact book, you can go check LT's "Add Books Manually" page to see if it's one of the 5000-ish libraries you can add to your list of libraries to search, and import the work to LT.

>7 AnnieMod: The first time I created the collections from the app. The second time I use the direct link on the desktop browser from the Help section of the website. Same result both times.

>4 ZephCraven: I finally gave up and deleted the duplicate collections this morning by going to the website on the desktop pc on the edit collections page. (The browser on the ipad would not let me reorder the collections as the desktop pc did.) After deleting the duplicates, I added 5 new collections, replacing one I accidentally deleted and adding 4 new ones. Those immediately duplicated so I had 5 to 7 copies of each, mixed up with all the other collections, making it difficult to find and delete them. After deleting those duplicates, I appear to have the correct number of collections now, but the browser on the ipad is not allowing me to do everything the browser on the pc lets me do. It shows the option to reorder, but when I click the button, nothing happens.

>10 miniaturehome: Which menu did you use to work on the collection - the one in Catalog OR the one in Settings?

Settings.

>12 miniaturehome: Is there any chance you were clicking the Save Changes button multiple times by the way? It doesn't really alter the screen in an obvious way, on the settings page, so you could easily click it a few times and save a new collection over and over again.

If not, do you mind if I pop into your account and try to replicate the issue? If it duplicates the collections I will delete them — I just want to see if I can make this occur again and create a detailed bug report that I our developers can use.

Regarding the Add Books conundrum, you can actually see a good deal of info (if your chosen source has that info) under the search result's row, without clicking the title to add it to your library. You can even expand that row by clicking the "?" on the right side to see further details. That way you can adjust your search as needed before you decide what version to add. Hopefully that reduces the amount of manual editing you need, as well as the frequency of adding-deleting records!

When you scan a book's ISBN barcode, it will search for it in your chosen sources. If your sources aren't turning up good results with the barcodes in your library, try another! It should be pretty easy to switch sources on both the web and the app. Changes in either place should reflect universally across both web and app.

Thanks again!

(Using Android app oin Samsung S23)

The navigation - or lack thereof - on the app is what kills me the most. That and having to select English UK or English US every time I use the app is sooo annoying.

I keep getting to a point where I can't navigate to my collections without killing the app and restarting it. Sometimes I can't even get back to the overall catalog without restarting (and choosing my preferred English flavour/flavor).

Would love to be able to bulk update new acquisitions with the same date and source.