Whats the best way to input periodicals into LT?

- How do you do it?

Maybe we could reach some conclusions about best pratices on periodicals from which all could benefit in the end?

I did it by hand but that takes a long time. See my "Academic Journal" tag.

This is a problem that's under discussion in other threads and groups. Entering by hand is so tiresome that if I have more than a few issues of a periodical I use the Comments field to list them. It's completely inadequate, and people are innovative about what they call their magazines, so it can be hard to figure out who's got what.

#1: Best practices to one person is not the best practices to another person, especially here on LT.

We cannot tell someone that they should enter their periodicals one certain way. They may want them to appear in their catalog in a different way, that conforms to how they store or access their magazines.

We could suggest, but since tone in communications online is extremely touchy & difficult to gage, then someone would probably get offended.

Besides, many people don't read anything but how to enter their books, magazines, videos, audios, and perfume bottles on LT... and even then ... ok, I won't go there.

But those who are compulsive about how their works appear in their library (& I include myself in that) want things to be listed correctly & combined with other identical works correctly would like perfection in data... but people are not perfect... except a few here.

Of course, the only correct way to enter BOOKS on LT is MY WAY!! (that statement should be taken as extreme sarcasm & not treated seriously.... although it is a good idea!)

4>

I am STILL annoyed about that blasted perfume catalog. It's garbage and should not be allowed.

I haven't entered periodicals yet, but I'll probably tough it out and enter them individually. If I had complete sets, I might do them by year - APA Journal 1989, for example.

It's definitely a good question. I've been trying to think about how I use periodicals-do I usually want to go back and find just one issue, or am I more interested in looking at a whole year at a time or what.

Personally, I think I usually look for specific articles, so for me, entering individually and tagging for article topics will probably make the most sense.

#4 "best pratices" can arise from "I do it like this because so and so" and you think "yes, nice, that fits my bill" or "well, so and so is not my thing, I rather go like that because of this and that". I better like to see trends arising from "natural selection" than stiff impositions that become cumbersome in the future...

Here are some examples of how I catalog my periodicals:

National Geographic

Sky & Telescope

Make

WIRED

Craft

and

The Exploratorium

I try to always tag the entries as magazine and add a tag for the articles in the issue. This is pretty time intensive, but I don't have 100s of magazines. I usually do a couple of searches to see how other people have cataloged similar periodicals.

I have noticed people tend to combine Scientific American into one giant entry, the few who have it must have many issues. People with Make and Craft have pretty good method, but I think that is because you can buy them off on Amazon. I have found a user who bundles all of the individual Sky & Telescope periodical into a single volume number.

I think the best rule of thumb is search and see if anyone else is cataloging the particular periodical and try to match it. If no one else is cataloging do what you think best. If you have all issues in a volume bundle them into that.

I have a couple of catalogs I have kept in my library over the years. I think I'll add them catalog them. They sure are important to me.

Here's my example:

National Geographic

I originally searched the LIbrary of Congress online catalog by the ISSN to find the entry then used the information found there to search for the magazine by the exact title/publisher in the add book box.

ETA: Library of Congress online catalog. http://catalog.loc.gov/ When searching by ISSN include the hyphen in middle of the number, ie for National Geographic search 0027-9358.

Would it make sense to use the CK Series box for magazines? Has anyone tried it? Would it be unending torture if you had over, say, 100 issues of the same mag?

I used to keep every issue of every magazine, but I got over that. I have some craft magazines that have lots of interesting articles I like to refer back to, though, so I want to keep track of them.

Would someone explain to me why a perfume catalog is a problem?

not a perfume catalog... perfume bottles... the catalog was of perfumes... not books or "bound printed matter"

Would it make sense to use the CK Series box for magazines? Has anyone tried it?

http://www.librarything.com/series/National%20Geographic%20Magazine

OK'd by Tim soon after the CK series feature debuted.

11> Yes, that's why I was annoyed!

#13: I should have marked that post. It was a response to #10 who asked why a perfume catalog was a problem!!

When I get upset by items/dialogs/disagreements, I frequently have to calm myself & repeat "skittles, you don't have to look at those things... just because one newbie has (non-book item) in their catalog, you don't have to DO ANYTHING..."

lorax, when things come up that I disagree with, I don't help with that problem. I don't combine tags. I try to ignore non-book entries. I put my OCD tendencies away in the box along with my temper.

More than a year ago, I found an LT catalog that was just weblinks... useful weblinks... the LT member wasn't spamming or commercializing... and I reported it to Tim &/or Abby. They allowed it. Ok, good. Ok, fine.

I just "slide with it"... and stay off my soap-box.

LT is set up for cataloguing books and is easiest to use for that purpose, but I can't think of any reason to discourage other applications. A non-book catalogue does the rest of us no harm. In fact, to the extent that an additional user improves the site's long-term viability, it is to our benefit.

And who knows - someday an organized record of perfume bottles might come in handy.

15>

A non-book catalogue does the rest of us no harm.

I beg to differ.

Do a search for Good Omens (which is a popular book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, with thousands of copies on LT). The majority of results will not be the book, in any form, but instead bottles of perfume -- listed with an author of "Good Omens".

This makes LT's data look like disorganized crap. That harms the rest of us.

In fact, to the extent that an additional user improves the site's long-term viability, it is to our benefit.

A free account with no meaningful social connections can't possibly help the site.

And who knows - someday an organized record of perfume bottles might come in handy.

That may be, but LT is not the place for it. There are many things that might be useful, but LT is not and should not be all things to all people -- I'd rather have it do one thing well than many things poorly, and becoming a "catalog all your random crap" site is, IMO, doing the latter.

16:the problem is that it's a function of how the search works. After all if you search for all quiet on the Western front you'll get a lot of stuff that's already been combined into the larger work. So getting rid of the perfume catalog won't necessarily make the site look any cleaner.

17>

Well, yes and no.

I think that entirely deleted objects (I'm not going to dignify them by calling them books) might be treated differently from combined objects, and that at any rate the system does, eventually, catch up.

16> If the perfume fancier is a poor cataloguer, that problem stems from his carelessness or ineptitude, not from what it is that he has chosen to catalogue. Plenty of book catalogues on LT are messy, too.

As I see it, the purpose of LT is to be useful. The more people who find it useful, the better. If some of them find it useful in different ways from me, such is the diversity of life.

16>At first I thought you were just wrong, however your example does make a strong point. I original thought your issue was with entering a "perfume catalog" as oppose to this Good Omens objects? Your right they sure aren't books. Being in a private library, why can it even be seen. (No don't answer that, its off the point, I'll figure it out later.) I now assume you would have no problem some one entering a actual printed perfume catalog. But I am assuming this. Would you oppose that?

Where to do personal draw the line between, can we say "things you would find in a library" and "random crap". How would you enforce that line?

20>

I wouldn't have a problem with people entering a printed catalog of any form -- it's when they start entering things that aren't printed matter and aren't allowed by the courtesy of "commonly held by libraries" (CDs, DVDs, etc) that I get twitchy. It's not that I don't think cataloging collections of other things has merit; it's just that I don't think it belongs here. I think the line for what should be here is "common sense". Would you walk into a library you'd never been to before, and expect to find shelves full of perfume bottles? No? Then don't enter them here. Would you expect to find, say, maps? Then go ahead.

The public libraries in Denver and surrounding area have CD's and DVDs that can be checked out. I am not so sure about other places. I have not walked into a library where you could "check out" a perfume bottle. However, I have been in libraries that stretch the line between Library and Museum. For example Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library has "personal and professional papers, publications, photographs, works of art and other memorabilia of distinguished African Americans from all walks of life". Now I am not sure but, that "other memorabilia" may have perfume bottles. If they do have them, they do have them cataloged.

Oh and I know they have some periodicals ;-)

The Cleveland Public Library has one of the world's finest collections of chess sets.

I have posted before that I think that LT would benefit from a feature that allowed one to select a "work type" (periodical, anthology, etc) that would have some standardized fields to help organize data common to those work types. Whether or not this data is importable - standardizing the Title/Date/Volume/Number info would help with searching/combining efforts.

Specifically with re: to periodicals we also have this thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/50637#916179
(My contribution is message #11)

After reading and pondering this thread I though I would try the "Series" approach with a periodical I came across with a small number of entries on LT.
Cobblestone: The History Magazine for Young People

I first searched for all the Cobblestone entries and entered the series for all of the ones that I was fairly certain actually were the magazine. I separated entries that contained multiple volumes as one work. I then combined all the duplicates and put (Vol #.#) order numbers where I could discern them -the results can be seen here: (scroll to bottom to see the ones with volume numbers)

http://www.librarything.com/series/Cobblestone%3A+The+History+Magazine+for+Young...

I think that this illustrates somewhat the confusion that is created by NOT having a "format" for such works. Some people enter the Title of the Magazine and the Vol/No. but NOT the specific sub-title of the issue, some enter the sub-title but don't include the vol/no and may or may not include the title of the magazine as author (all of which makes combining a nightmare).

My hope is that some minority of the owners of the issues will see the Series link on the work page and investigate and perhaps be interested enough to add the missing data and enrich LT as a whole. (Most will not, that's fine too.) I think that many people, when presented with a form, will enter the information they were going to enter anyway in the suggested format (and they, of course, are also free to ignore it and enter it any old way they like - as they do now.)

I personally have left my periodicals to the end in the hopes that the powers-that-be elect to institute a more consistant periodicals entry form. (My periodicals consist of old SF from the 1950s and 1960s - of which there are TONS of individual entries in LT - I know once I start entering mine that the overwhelming task of combining and "series" ing everyone elses will CONSUME me for months.)

Edited to Add:
I realize that not everyone wants to catalogue each individual issue of a periodical so I think that the option of a MegaWork is useful. So someone could enter. "National Geographic" - set - year: 1998" and still have it associated with the periodical series "National Geographic."

Reading The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers, I learned (on page 60) that perfume can be of vital importance to a book hunter. That ought to settle this particular dispute.

Perhaps one of December's ER books could shed some light (er, scent?) on the subject:

http://www.librarything.com/work/6833440

So back to more practical considerations. I have three periodical

http://www.librarything.com/work/6563669/book/38069524
http://www.librarything.com/work/6563678/book/38069550
http://www.librarything.com/work/6563666/book/38069501

I have cataloged them without an Author, but put them into a series. I have entered them as Title Month Year Issue Number

So the next person who comes along and enters in this same manner, which would seem to be unlikely, the new issues won't "combine" with my current issues. As I understand it, which maybe wrong, the items are "comdined" based on author. So shouldn't I add say the publisher as the author? Or would this be bad.

So say this is what I do, enter the "IGKT" as the publisher. Then if some one else comes along and adds a couple of issues but enters "International Guild of Knot Tyers" as the author. Isn't this still much easier to combine than having no author at all.

So bottom line is the key to "combining" having a valid author?

By the way I haven't found a library of perfumes I have found a perfume of libraries Hmmm Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth, a hint of wood polish and DUST.

lorax et al:

An exercise common in Library School is having you catalog a very non-booklike object, such as an ice cream stick. Non-media are called realia. Certain libraries hold realia for educational purposes. They might be kits, flashcards, collections (rocks, shells, microscope slides, etc.) or other 3D objects. Artworks and some archival materials often fall into this category.

The Anglo-American Cataloging Rules has an entire chapter on 3D artefacts (sic) and realia.

The overlap between libraries and museums means that similar cataloging methods are used for both kinds of collections. The Library of Congress has a thesaurus (collection of subject headings) for graphic materials.

So I think cataloging one's collection of perfume bottles is fine and useful. Maybe I'll do my fabric stash.

What is really needed is a media or type field so I would only get books on a search, or in recommendations etc. Better yet, that should be the default.

>28 IreneF: Perhaps you could post a couple of the guidlines for cataloging realia

28>

Cases like this are EXACTLY why I hedged my bets by saying "a library you've never been to" and "reasonably expect". Certainly there exist libraries with collections of realia, but nobody in their right mind would walk into a random library and EXPECT to find a particular type of them there.

I really wish one of the other book-cataloging sites cared about data quality, now that LT has decided to turn into Squirl. :(

31> I'm still waffling on the whole realia cataloging idea. I can see the worse case scenario of LT users cataloging their collection of Hummels, then someone else cataloging their collection of "Action Figures". Then word spreads across the net. Then pretty soon the system is swamp with stuff that has nothing to do with books or even printed material. I think this is unlikely but, not impossible.

I guess the real problem is how do you stop this from happening with out significantly change either the technical (code) and the social nature of LT?

How can you code LT to prevent realia ?

Would you start a group No realia where you hunted down those entries and ask people to uncatalog them?

Maybe the TOS needs a little tweaking?

Perhaps it is going to have to be a acceptable quirk of the whole system and should be monitor until it become more of a problem.

I still think there are interesting opinions and valid discussion on the issue of realia. But, this has sorted out grown this thread about periodicals.

29, 30, 31, 32>

OK, I'll start a new thread on realia.