So tedious to add book titles-or am I missing something?

Hi: I just joined but am finding it tedious to add books. For example, I searched my favourite author Alice Monro and I wanted to click on several of her books spanning several pages at the same time. Instead I can only click on one title and there is no way for me to go back to the list of her books unless I search her name again. Am I missing something?

Nope, that's how it works - you get one addition per search. Multiple selections have been requested often before, but so far not implemented.

1: Yep, one at a time. All 4,955 entries. Some of us are probably slightly insane. I don't even own a cuecat.

Actually, if you adjust your attitude correctly, it can be a great pleasure! I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering books I'd forgotten I had, and saying "Oh, that's where that is" and "Gee, I should re-read that." I'm almost done entering my non-fiction (3,500 plus), and about half way through the fiction, and still having fun!

You might find it go quicker if you do get a Cuecat (it's a barcode scanner), and if you happen to already have your books in a spreadsheet, you can do a bulk upload. (But where's the fun in that?)

I was thinking the same thing. I loved cataloging all my books. And I, too, did it one by one. A cross between a voyage of discovery and a trip down memory lane.

Same here. Plus it forces you to think about the correct edition and information.

I have to agree with 4-5-6. And yes, I know we're mad.

This is a book cataloguing site, after all. If you hate cataloguing your books you just might be in the wrong place. There's no time limit, though - you can take as long as you want over it and join in the chats and games while you're at it - maybe then it'll start to seem a bit more appealing.

ETA - Yes, you can add me to the weirdos who thoroughly enjoyed every minute.

Another mad one here, so agreeing with 3-7 :) I'm thoroughly enjoying giving in to my Inner Librarian :D

Ha! not only did I do my 2000 entries one by one, I did almost half by manual entry! ;P

EDT: can't spell...

Me too, it was easier to do manual than correct amazon ;). But I did have all information in an offline software database (Bookpedia) so it was a case of copy/paste. I did enter all 1000+ books manually into Bookpedia though (it has import, but I like my own data as opposed to Amazon...)

I, also, manually entered my library ... did about 500 books a month for several months, but got 'em in.

I guess some folks have a lower threshold for "Tedium"!

 

I created an export file from my Access DB and uploaded all, but those lacking ISBNS >300 and

It might be nice to have a checkbox beside each hit, so multiple selections could be added at the same time, like say eBay search?

Here's a little secret. You *can* click on multiple titles. Sure, after the first click all the others grey out, but you can still click on them, and they will each be added. You can click until the results screen comes up.

So --

Search on AUTHOR NAME.
Click, scroll, click, scroll, click, etc., until all the ones you want from that first screen are clicked and/or the results screen has gone through.

Though doing it that way makes it awfully likely that you'll get 'some random edition' rather than the one you actually want. Me, I mostly enter books by ISBN so I only get the one proper (99% of the time, anyway) item.

And while it's not fast, it's a thousand times faster than any other method I've ever used - LT enabled me, for the first time, to actually finish cataloging my books before I added so many new ones (and discarded old ones) that the catalog didn't relate to reality any more.

I need to add half of my books manually (books in Bulgarian (no Bulgarian source at all), magazines, comics..). Even like this I would not call it tedious. I think I entered most of the English ones for a few hours based on ISBN (mainly taken from the Amazon order history). And then started moving through the boxes, adding the missing ones and correcting the already added ones. Now if I stop starting to read the books that I find and had forgotten about, I might get them in faster but it's the part of the cataloging that I had always loved - getting surprised from a book I had not seen for ages and had forgotten about.

I'm one of those that enjoy manually cataloguing the books one by one, to make sure each field is detailed how I wish it to be.

However the OP made a good point, it would be nice when adding books if the default search on author name (for example) 'stickied' the search so that if I was adding similar books, I could just hit search again without having to retype the previously entered search parameters. My browser does remember the previous search - so it's not a lengthy step. But I understand from previous talk posts that not all browsers do that.

Yeah, I'm pretty much nuts too! I just love entering my books! The first few days after I joined LT were just wonderful. I couldn't get enough of it. I enter books by ISBN to get the right edition. And no, I don't own a Cuecat.

May LT never allow multiple inputting of books! Sacrilege! This thread has inspired me!

One By One

One by one
is how it's done
One by one
is much more fun

especially when you scan and upload every bookcover!

its not redundant
nor repugnant
doing it one by one

One by one is the best wayyyy
One by one makes you happy everydayyyy!
So go on all you LTers and playyyyy
Doing it one by one
having fun until you're done
and may being done be a long, long ways awayyyy!

.

>EF, Love it!

20: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/One_by_One

#20 — brilliant! :)

thanks fanny! The muse simply overwhelmed me this morning. And thank you, infiniteletters, for wiki-ing it! Will I be receiving royalties soon?

>24 absurdeist:, in the form of herring, perhaps?

yes herring and...something else that goes nicely w/herring, I've heard. Oh no no no it's too early for that!

1: You've now learned that LT threads often go off into their own world very quickly, but not too much about how to search books efficiently. You do have to do them one by one, but there are three pretty quick searches that will take you a lot less time than searching by author.

- ISBN (as someone up above already pointed out)
- LC card number
- title (or author/title)

There are two things you have to decide before you get too far along. Do you want library data? Do you want the proper publisher/date/pages info?

These are somewhat mutually contradictory. Libraries generally only collect hardcovers, so the ISBN search for a paperback usually only works on Amazon.

If you want both, you usually have to search a library by LC card number or author/title and then change the edition information.

If you don't care about the edition, you can search the libraries and not change the information (I just delete the publisher info and write "paperback" in the publisher field).

If you want the correct edition but don't care about the library data, use the ISBN search on Amazon.

The ISBN is the number above the barcode on most modern books. It can also be found in the Cataloging-in-Publication data on the back of the title page. There are not ISBNs on older books (sometime in the 1970s).

The LC card no. is in the Cataloging-in-Publication data. It's usually in the lower right hand corner. On books published before 2000, it is the last two digits of the year, a hyphen and a number up to 6 digits. Example 99-5678. After 2000 it's a four digit year, there's no hyphen, and they're zero filling to make the second number alway 6 characters (Example 2004005678)

Title by itself works pretty well. When it gets too many hits, use author/title with a comma inbetween (melville, moby dick)

(Edited to correct punctuation.)

Generally I would agree with aulsmith but a couple of points.

1) Pennsylvania Access and ILCSO are very good sources for recent paperbacks, especially but not only, trade paperbacks.

2) The University of California can be good for old sf and fantasy paperbacks.

Also Access has a lot of books for children, including many Scholastic paperbacks and picture books.

I guess I'll join the pack. About 400 and going.

#27

I've only used LCCN with an LOC search. Does it work elsewhere? It's mostly useful (for me) for books published 1950-1970. Older books are mostly an author and title search. And serials are not easy.

LCCN also works for British Library. (Both British Library and Talis Union Catalog have a good number of older British paperbacks.)

If you go to the trouble of preparing an input file, you can batch upload. I'm not sure that preparing a file is less work, though.

31: It depends on how the individual library's Z39 server interacts with their integrated library system. The data is there most of the time, but whether it can be searched and bring back good results is iffy. I haven't tried to use LCCN too much outside LoC, but I think University of California worked and maybe New York Public Library.