Graph of Book Obscurity?

Perhaps someone has suggested this previously. We have been intrigued by the fact that we have a few books that belong to 2000 other members and some that belong to no one else. It would be fun to have a bar (or other) graph on the statistics page like the one for dates of publication that shows the distribution of the obscurity of our books. (ie first bar shows how many books no one else has, next is 1-10, next 11-50, next 51-200, or whatever makes sense...it would probably have to be exponential to show meaningful data). From the difference between the mean and median we suspect ours would peak early and have a long tail, but what fun to actually see it! We may even have a couple peaks. We have only started entering our books so would have to keep watching it unfold.

It could also be fun to be able to compare our obscurity to others' obscurity. Perhaps a similar graph of mean/median obscurities of the entire community? And where an individual member falls on the curve, of course?

That would be cool!

If it could be done, it would be fun.

I like that idea!

Harmonic and geometric means can give further information about ones statistics, but probably require too much computation for LT.

I would like it to

As would I!

Let's face it, people: Spalding needs a platonic sugar mama (or papa... Lord Nigel, you're Old Money, now, aren't you?)...

I'll answer that as a sort of anti-Blanche DuBois:

Never in my life have I depended on the kindness of strangers.

Interesting idea. However, in order for such a graph to be completely accurate (and thus, meaningful), users would have to be sure that all of their singletons were well and truly "theirs and theirs alone", and not simply orphans due to lack of combination.

On the other hand, going into someone's library who has been either complaining or bragging about all their singletons and seeing if they can be cleaned up is so much fun! This would give a good idea of where to start.

BTW I try to keep mine clean, but have an awful lot of real ones, so it is difficult to find the few false ones that are probably lurking in there.

lol, I completely agree, MarthaJeanne! It's so satisfying.

If I remember right, I think you mentioned on another thread that you manually entered about 10% of your library - did most of those end up being the singletons? That's a lot of work. But again, I imagine: so satisfying!

There is some overlap, but no, it is not the same 10% of my library. There seem to be over 300 that are singletons, but not manually entered.

OK the Icelandic cross stitch patterns are neither available on sources, not does anyone else own them. And the German language theology, cookbooks and handwork books, especially the older ones end up as singletons. But it is really great to check lots of sources for a book, finally enter it manually, and then find someone to combine it with. Now THAT is satisfying.

Some people get thrills from such little things, don't they?

MarthaJeane - I agree with you on so many points here! It is very satisfying, if you have to manually enter a book, to then seek out others to combine it with - you find the oddest connections that way.

If I find myself visiting someone else's library (for ANY reason) I usually do a reverse-sort on shared books and spend 15-20 minutes cleaning up their singletons. I figure if I am snooping around in their stuff the least I can do is leave the place "neater" than I found it.

I know of one library that has a lot of old sci-fi "doubles" - which is one of my private combining projects - I always start there when I am in the mood for some "doubles" combining.

(My other secret combining vice is finding "non-author" authors or "mashed" authors and combining their works away from them - this will often clean up a fair number of "false" singletons.)

13>

If I find myself visiting someone else's library (for ANY reason) I usually do a reverse-sort on shared books and spend 15-20 minutes cleaning up their singletons. I figure if I am snooping around in their stuff the least I can do is leave the place "neater" than I found it.

Absolutely.

It's astonishing how many people don't ever seem to LOOK at their own libraries; you'd think that being the only one of half a million people to own the Hobbit, or Plato's Republic, might strike them as odd.

Absolutely love the idea!!!

Some people get thrills from such little things, don't they?

Most definitely. And it's nice to be in such fine company when doing so (cf. comments 12-14). Happy combining, everyone.

I have almost 800 singletons. I took a look for 20 minutes, and only found one singleton owned by someone else, Rails Across Canada. Now it is in the vousetnulautre category. Obviously I didn't look at every book.

17>

I found and combined five false singletons in your library in 20 minutes, but admittedly I was trying for speed -- sorted by descending publication date within the singletons, since later books are more likely to be shared, focusing on books with covers (again, just from experience, more likely to be shared), not cleaning up the rest of the author while I was there, and only doing one author combination.

It looks like most of yours are likely to be legit, though; the specialized train stuff and all the non-book material are probably not shared.

Whenever I get someone to join LT, I start going after their singletons as soon as they've entered a good chunk. I probably did a good dozen or so for my mother, many of which still ended up with fewer than 10 owners after I combined. And she still has some real singletons.

>19 timepiece: I started entering my dad's library over the holidays, and I know I haven't got all of his singletons combined... but he had me start on the bookcase with the most specialized and obscure books, so there are a bunch of legitimate loners in there.

#13 Portialong, If you want to combine the ace doubles, you can come to my library and have a go at mine, I've got 20-odd of the things, and have give up trying to clean them up.

Yeah, I should really take a look at my own singletons again. Okay, I have some whacky interests, but I can't believe they still run into the hundreds.

All the same, I think a graph for book obscurity would be fun.

>21 Musereader:

Found some combining to do on about half of them, thanks for the lead (smile)!

>17 vpfluke:
I found 2 in twenty minutes but I don't have lorax's self-control - I had to stop and clean up / combine authors and their work pages along the way.

If anyone wants to have a go at my library, by all means, have fun! I've already tried to do as much combining as I could, but I'm by no means infallible.

#18

Thanks for taking a look at my catalog. I am now more carefully checking books when I add them in to see if they come up as singletons (or just shared with 1-2 others). About 30 % of the books I've added in the past 2 months have come up as singletons, which seems like an inordinately high number.

Thanks also to PortiaLong

>24 benuathanasia:

I started combining in your library - and I noticed an awful lot of singletons with other copies in the system where yours showed 0 members and didn't present itself for combining.

I commented on it in this thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/52608

I am going to hold off on combining for a little bit - in case the odd behavior of your copies holds a clue to some recent combining issues...never fear - I WILL BE BACK!

>25 vpfluke: : autocombining hasn't been functioning properly - you might indeed find many of them unwarranted.

>27 PortiaLong: Hey PortiaLong, I'm not sure I know what you mean? Do you mean that it is already combined but still showing "0?" Because I found a couple like that. I entered in some Animorphs which should have had at least a hundred others in the system but came up as singletons, so I checked them out and they were combined already and the system said that there was anywhere between 50 and 90 of them, but they still came up as "0 other members" when I looked back at my library.

>29 benuathanasia: - No they were NOT already combined - when I clicked on your work in your library it showed 0 members (not even you) - going to the author page and the author/combine page and the edition combine/potentials page - your copy did not show for combining.

Clicking on the 0 until it turned into a 1 caused your copy to show in all those places so that it could be combined.

I am posting about this behavior in this thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/54690

Wow...freaky.