"Add to your library" - commas instead of semicolons

When I use the green plus sign "Add to your library" from a work page to add something to my catalog, the full title (punctuation intact) in placed in the search box. This means that at least half the time, the first search fails because there is a subtitle, which most of the sources place in a separate field. And since the search is entered automatically, there is no chance for me to edit the field before the search is run.

Could it be programmed to automatically replace any semi-colons with commas, so it is searched as a separate field? I know it's a minor annoyance, but it *is* an annoyance, and seems fairly easily fixed. And it would reduce the load on the servers, since I (and others) wouldn't run nearly as many searches.

Do you mean "colon," not "semi-colon"?

>2 Katya0133:
I was about to ask that, too.

Indeed. I have no idea why semi-colon came out of my brain instead of colon. The rest of the argument still works ... if only one could edit thread titles.

I've seen quite a few cases of subtitles separated by semi-colons, so it should probably handle both.

>5 r.orrison: Interesting. Can you point to one, as an example?

As for the original post, I think it's a good idea, if it's not to much work to code.

No, sorry. Searching titles for ; or : just gives me an error.

I've found that older books are frequently cataloged in LOC with a semi-colon separating the subtitle. I don't know how often this makes it through to the primary title on LT as there are also often colon separated edition titles.

On the main idea, another option would be to cut off anything past a colon or semi-colon and add a comma and the author's last name. I think this would return even better results for most books.

Also, other punctuation (like apostrophes, quotation marks, etc.) can cause problems and the search works better with them removed.

>8 eromsted:

Well, just removing the subtitle would result in way too many hits in a lot of cases (e.g, the book that inspired my post: The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the Modern Man - "the score" would give entirely too may hits - 596 on LoC).

However, substituting a comma and author's last name would be a vast improvement over even the full title - especially in cases where there is no subtitle, and many hits on the identical title, like a lot of fiction.

8: Agreed

"cut off anything past a colon or semi-colon and add a comma and the author's last name...other punctuation (like apostrophes, quotation marks, etc.) can cause problems and the search works better with them removed."

5,6 The book I entered today has both.

Krippensymbolik: auf den Spuren der Weihnachtskrippe; (Symbolik - Brauchtum - Geschichte)

That's the way it came from the source, except that the () were actually square brackets, which had the touchstones trying to load.

Adding the author's last name would be a big help, period, I think.

Agreed - much better retrieval results that way.

Shamelessly bumping my own thread.

But I still think automatically changing all punctuation to commas for the "add to your library" function would be a great improvement.