Go directly to a specific member's book details from work

This has probably already been suggested, or there might probably some way to do this and I'm missing it.

Here's the situation. Right now I look up a book (in this case, Rice Boy by Evan Dahm). It lists it as being owned by five members. I can click on editions and see the different title/author/isbn lines. But what I really want to see are the full details each member has entered for the book.

I can look under "Recently added by" (and click All members if I wish) and it gives me name. It seems to me there's a lot more labor involved in getting to the book details. Here's how I'm doing it:

Click on a username
Click on Your Library (or All Collections, if they have multiple ones)
Enter Rice Boy or the ISBN in the Search box hit enter
Click the found result
Click the Details link

Wouldn't it be much handier to just get from the works page to the book details for each user's copies? I understand if it's not something indexed and cached, so I'd be fine if it was a button that ran the query and took you to a page with the results. Then each link there would take you directly to the book details for that user's copy.

Am I the only one that would find this handy? It would really help in figuring out a lot of things, from adding more obscure books to figuring out combining questions.

You're not the only one, brightcopy. I've been missing this option too, for the same reasons.

YES, what a good suggestion! I'm embarrassed to say I haven't even had the patience to figure out the "path" described by brightcopy... Many a time when I'd loved to check on the member-book-details to see if there's any help for this-or-that combining issue -- and have settled for using google instead.

Sometimes, when adding a book and seeing all the members who have that book, it would be quite fun to see what data they have entered for their copy. But to go through all that longwinding clickety-click-path...

I think this would be great!

People who own non-ISBN books have often entered a lot of compensating information in the publisher details or comments, which would be very helpful to others if they could only find it.

You can get the details in someone's catalogue from the author page, but this is only useful if an author has a small number of works such as this one. Yes you need to click through the members having any books by the author, but it doesn't take much time to find one that has the specific work that you are looking for. Click on the number beside the member name not the name itself to go directly to the entry in the member catalogue.

For some books that will be very useful. Thank you.

Yes, thanks, kathrynnd! I didn't know that the numbers beside the member names worked as a link like that.

Both the request in the OP and Kathryn's hint are great ideas.

Agreed. More links to details = good.

Great suggestion, brightcopy. I'd love to have this.

Hi Kathynnd!

Many, many thanks! I also had no idea you can click the number next to the name and get to the individual work. This is very useful for me. I don't think it is well known.

greetings from Vienna, John

Well, darn, you learn something new every day...I didn't know that "click on the number" trick either!

I also would like to be able to easily see an individual members "book" info from their name being listed on the "work" page - mainly from a Combiners! standpoint ( people often include pertinent info - Vol #, date, etc. - in non-public fields - comments, tags, etc.). Anything that helps me identify what an LTer meant when they catalogued an item a certain way helps me get it combined with the right work.

>11 johninvienna: - PS. I clicked on your profile link just to check something out technically - and found that, although we each have around 2000 books catalogued we share only ONE - and that is NOT one that I would have expected - ain't life strange?

I got tired of waiting for this to happen, so I created a Greasemonkey script for it:

message 23 here

#5 Your workaround doesn't work for me. When I click on membername in either author or title, I just get the members profile page and have to do a search for the work in the members library. Am I missing something to bring me directly to the work or to the list of works by an author?

Edited for clarity! My current method is the one noted in #1

14> Don't click on the member's name, click on the number in parentheses right after it - it only shows up on the author page, not on the book page. For instance, for Rice Boy, go to Evan Dahm, look at the "Top Members (Works)" section just under the list of works by that author, and click on the 4 in "brightcopy (4)" (the first member on the list). You'll get the four books by Evan Dahm in brightcopy's catalog.

Did that help?

#15 I never noticed that the number was a hot link! Amazing how complex and rich this site is. Now I wonder what else I have missed this past year. Thank you jjmcgaffey.

Many things, I'm sure - I (re-)discover stuff all the time. Heck, we've surprised Tim a few times, IIRC! ("Oh, right! I did do that." he says...)