Duplicate ISBN issues?

I believe that members have complained that the "Duplicate ISBN" feature, on the catalog "power edit" bar doesn't work. I can't get it to break. Anyone?

Note, however, that it considers only the ISBN qua string. If two ISBNs are mathematically the same—ie., one is the ISBN10 and the other is the ISBN13 formulation—it doesn't care.

Power Edit for Duplicate ISBNs works for me (XP, FF 3.0.8)

it's me that's been waving the flag. it could be that i'm misunderstanding something, but i don't think that's the case.

this is my work multiples page. it shows 4 sets of duplicates. 3 are completely different publishing companies, and 1 is a special reissue within the same publishing company.

this is what i get under power edit: duplicate isbns. it shows nothing.

that's why i thought there was a problem. like i said in my original post (which i can't find now), it could be an issue of the wording being ambiguous and therefore i'm misinterpreting what i should see there.

hopefully this will be helpful. let me know if there's any more info that you need. oh, i'm using ff3 and vista.

not all that important but related: when it returns nothing, it should say 0-0 of 0 in the upper left instead of 1-0 of 0, which it says now.

Ah. I see. They're all different ISBNs. ISBNS aren't a work-level concept. They're an edition-level concept. All your books have different ISBNs.

0-0 of 0

Probably it should say 0, or "None" or something. 0-0 of 0 is weird. :)

3/4: Do any of those pairs have the same ISBN though?

Fixed. It leaves it totally blank now. Also, the X-Y of Z is now translateable.

>6 infiniteletters:

No.

ok... this might be completely unrelated, but i'm now getting this message

"Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}' in /var/www/html/inc_powerbar.php on line 902"

when i go to my catalog.

Should be good.

thanks for clarifying, tim. i guess it was just ambiguous wording that was the problem. i read it and thought "eh, cool... now i can get to my duplicates (which i read as multiples) without all that digging!" i didn't really consider that someone might have a couple copies of the exact same edition...

"This shows all books with more than one ISBN in your catalog. Books have been sorted and grouped by ISBN."

to me, that reads as "this shows books that you have which have more than one isbn (aka multiples), which are sorted and grouped by isbn (after being sorted and grouped by title)" but that, i guess, is because i am thinking on a work level.

edited to clarify.

11: Agreed, it would be nice to have a combined list of work duplicates, with some type of marker to indicate ISBN duplicates. Or maybe just to see work duplicates as well from power edit. :)

>12 infiniteletters:

i think linking to work multiples from the power edit: misc powers would be awesome!

i didn't really consider that someone might have a couple copies of the exact same edition...

I think the point is that not many would, but it isn't uncommon to enter books more than once by accident, which this function of finding ISBN multiples is really good at detecting.

"This shows all books with more than one ISBN in your catalog. Books have been sorted and grouped by ISBN."

maybe it should say "This shows all books with the same ISBN in your catalog." perhaps that would confuse other people....

Hmm, interesting - I have 49 duplicates listed on my statistics/memes work duplicate page. I have 38 listed on my power edit ISBN duplicates page (which I never clicked until now). Some of those I suspect are not really ISBN duplicates but ended up that way due to cover selection from Amazon or whatnot. I don't know what I would use this second list for that I can't use the first list for...(I'll have to think about that).

(One of the things that LT has allowed me to do is cut down on the number of accidental duplicates I obtain - I was forever coming home from the booksales only to find that I had purchased a book that I already HAD.)

>15 leahbird: I agree, the wording is very confusing. It should really be "This shows all ISBNs with more than one book..."

>16 PortiaLong:
I expect stats/memes duplicates because I keep Hardbacks of favorite books as well as PB copies for loaning (I'm a cynic - sue me).
I don't expect ISBN dupes in Power Edit, for my stuff these mean "same edition".

>18 kevmalone:

I do the same thing - HB for me, pb to loan (also tagged "loaner copy").

A fair number of my duplicates are actually the same book - I catalogue "doubles" as

Title A/ Title B by Author A
AND as
Title B/ Title A by Author B
(which are combined on the work page but I can sort by author in my library). So these will, of course, have the same ISBN.

The other are, well, duplicates - I accidentally acquired an actual duplicate. Usually I list this on BookMooch and one of them will be tagged "withdrawn" - with the reason (given in comments) as "Duplicate." These may or may not be the same edition - but I have to admit that I am not as fussy about correct ISBN data for books that I have withdrawn from my libary. (When we get collections these will go in the "Withdrawn" collection.)

19> Good point about Doubles - I have a very few but that has been a puzzle. Guess I'm waiting for work A "is in" work B!
Because I don't keep anything in my catalog that I don't physically own I don't have the true dupe problem

Tim - it looks like this was a misunderstanding and not a bug (see msg 3). It does look like people would like to be able to be able to select their "work multiples" as another choice under power edit - in addition to ISBN duplicates (and have the ISBN duplicates indicated in the main work multiples list) - but that would be a "recommended site improvement" not a "bug".