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1prussia_cove
When I added books manually I made several mistakes, but as I tried to change the titles or to delete them nothing happened. The titles are still there, also the fact that I added them, but I can't do anything about them (only try to add them to my library!), they are no longer in my library even if it seems so.
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496632 should be deleted, as should http://www.librarything.com/work/10498569.
And I tried to change title: http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579 , but the original title (Jakobs stege : Coeckelberghs litterära tidskrift) is curiously enough still here: http://www.librarything.com/author/coeckelberghsren?
I have probably made an awful mess of everything, but can something be done about it? It seems so silly not to be able to make changes or to delete obvious mistakes completely: do wrong titles or authors names stay for ever once they are added?
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496632 should be deleted, as should http://www.librarything.com/work/10498569.
And I tried to change title: http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579 , but the original title (Jakobs stege : Coeckelberghs litterära tidskrift) is curiously enough still here: http://www.librarything.com/author/coeckelberghsren?
I have probably made an awful mess of everything, but can something be done about it? It seems so silly not to be able to make changes or to delete obvious mistakes completely: do wrong titles or authors names stay for ever once they are added?
2brightcopy
There are a number of ways to edit your data.
To delete a book, click on the book (like those first to links you posted). Once the page loads, there is a "delete book" button on the right of the "Book information" section.
As for your question about changing the title, I think you're just coming at it from the wrong way. You DID change the title for the book in your library. Take these two links:
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579/book/65362748
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579
The first link is the link to your "book." The second is the link to the "work." These are two concepts on LibraryThing. A "work" is the general term for a piece of writing, no matter which edition or printing you have. A "book" is what each individual person owns in their library. You can name your own "book" whatever you want, but the "work" has a name independent of what each person calls it.
The way the work gets its name is through a process of LT looking for the most common name for it among all the many copies people have in their own library. This process can sometimes take time to refresh. Of course, this process is more successful on books that a lot of people own.
But basically, you don't have to worry about what name the work has. If your book has the right name when viewed in your catalog (using the Your books) link, that's all you should worry about for now.
Also, this is the Bug Collectors newsgroup. It is for reporting flaws in the LibraryThing software. You just seem to need a little help in using LT (we all do sometimes!). So you should post your questions to the Welcome to LibraryThing group. This will help us keep track of which questions are about how to use LT and which ones are about bugs in LT that the staff must fix.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
To delete a book, click on the book (like those first to links you posted). Once the page loads, there is a "delete book" button on the right of the "Book information" section.
As for your question about changing the title, I think you're just coming at it from the wrong way. You DID change the title for the book in your library. Take these two links:
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579/book/65362748
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579
The first link is the link to your "book." The second is the link to the "work." These are two concepts on LibraryThing. A "work" is the general term for a piece of writing, no matter which edition or printing you have. A "book" is what each individual person owns in their library. You can name your own "book" whatever you want, but the "work" has a name independent of what each person calls it.
The way the work gets its name is through a process of LT looking for the most common name for it among all the many copies people have in their own library. This process can sometimes take time to refresh. Of course, this process is more successful on books that a lot of people own.
But basically, you don't have to worry about what name the work has. If your book has the right name when viewed in your catalog (using the Your books) link, that's all you should worry about for now.
Also, this is the Bug Collectors newsgroup. It is for reporting flaws in the LibraryThing software. You just seem to need a little help in using LT (we all do sometimes!). So you should post your questions to the Welcome to LibraryThing group. This will help us keep track of which questions are about how to use LT and which ones are about bugs in LT that the staff must fix.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
3prussia_cove
I don't think I have made myself clear: I have deleted tons of books before without trouble, the problem here is that although I deleted the works
http://www.librarything.com/work/10498569
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496632
as the titles were wrong, no such works exist, they still appear and seem to be owned by me.
When I click on the book I don't get access to the delete book button, it looks as when you look at someone else's books, and when I look in my library they are not there.
This is not a big problem, I just find it very strange.
But thank you anyway, I'll post my question to Welcome to LibraryThing instead.
http://www.librarything.com/work/10498569
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496632
as the titles were wrong, no such works exist, they still appear and seem to be owned by me.
When I click on the book I don't get access to the delete book button, it looks as when you look at someone else's books, and when I look in my library they are not there.
This is not a big problem, I just find it very strange.
But thank you anyway, I'll post my question to Welcome to LibraryThing instead.
4jjmcgaffey
When did you delete them? There have been several server problems recently, and when the caches get behind sometimes you get zombie books. It should clear within 24-48 hours - though I've seen them hang around for a week. Try just ignoring them for a while and see if they go away on their own. (which isn't much of a 'workaround', but is worth trying none-the-less.)
5prussia_cove
I deleted them yesterday. But I'll do as you suggest: try to ignore them for a while and hope for the best. As I said, it is not a big problem, just a bit annoying.
Thank you!
Thank you!
6stortemelk
Another take on the problem: it's a combining/separating thing :-)
As I find myself unable to explain the several peculiar ways LT has to automatically combine, or suggest to combine 'real' works and zero-copy (deleted) works and what combining/separating can do to deal with problems, I'll just try and work on those 'jakobs stege' works in your library and see what I can do.
As I find myself unable to explain the several peculiar ways LT has to automatically combine, or suggest to combine 'real' works and zero-copy (deleted) works and what combining/separating can do to deal with problems, I'll just try and work on those 'jakobs stege' works in your library and see what I can do.
7prussia_cove
My goodness, I am impressed!!!!! Everything in order, thank you!!!
8timspalding
Closing.
9lorax
1>
It seems so silly not to be able to make changes or to delete obvious mistakes completely: do wrong titles or authors names stay for ever once they are added?
Yes. Tim considers this a feature. He's probably the only one who does. You can fix your catalog data, of course, but the bad entries will be around forever, with no owners, cluttering up the database.
It seems so silly not to be able to make changes or to delete obvious mistakes completely: do wrong titles or authors names stay for ever once they are added?
Yes. Tim considers this a feature. He's probably the only one who does. You can fix your catalog data, of course, but the bad entries will be around forever, with no owners, cluttering up the database.
10brightcopy
9> Except the poster was talking about deleting from their catalog. But don't let that get in the way of a good rant. ;)
11jjwilson61
I'm unable to figure out what the OP was talking about. Was he or she really saying that the book was still in their library? If so, how did the combining work stortemelk did help? Or did it just clear itself up after some time? Or was it that the books were found when using the global search function?
12brightcopy
11> Who knows. If you look, you'll see that the two links I posted above (the work and their book) now have the same title:
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579/book/65362748
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579
Before, they had different ones. I'm guessing the automatic LT title recalculation went through. Possibly what happened is they deleted the book rather than rename it in their catalog. Then they re-added it, this time with the corrected title. At that point, this book got combined with the old one with the incorrect title. And then eventually, the title got recalculated and used their new correct title.
Or something like that.
I think it was basically just a case of LT doing the right thing once you give it time, combined with a slight misunderstanding of the difference between works and books and what it means for your username to show in the "recently added" section.
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579/book/65362748
http://www.librarything.com/work/10496579
Before, they had different ones. I'm guessing the automatic LT title recalculation went through. Possibly what happened is they deleted the book rather than rename it in their catalog. Then they re-added it, this time with the corrected title. At that point, this book got combined with the old one with the incorrect title. And then eventually, the title got recalculated and used their new correct title.
Or something like that.
I think it was basically just a case of LT doing the right thing once you give it time, combined with a slight misunderstanding of the difference between works and books and what it means for your username to show in the "recently added" section.
13lorax
10>
That wasn't clear to me, actually; the OP gives links to works that "should be deleted", which suggests global, rather than catalog, deletion. They also say the works are "no longer in my library", which again, suggested that it was global deletion that was at issue.
At any rate, if they did just want to get rd of the books in their catalog, that's great, since it's actually possible.
That wasn't clear to me, actually; the OP gives links to works that "should be deleted", which suggests global, rather than catalog, deletion. They also say the works are "no longer in my library", which again, suggested that it was global deletion that was at issue.
At any rate, if they did just want to get rd of the books in their catalog, that's great, since it's actually possible.
14stortemelk
I think what happened is: the OP edited their entry several times (fixing mistakes), then deleted and started afresh, maybe had their fresh entry autocombine with the deleted zero-copy work (as it seems to be a magazine and LT don't 'read' after the colon) deleted again. Thus creating a zero-copy work with several different editions in it that would have needed several 'rounds' of caching for it to no longer show on the author page as being owned by the OP (sorry, partly repeating what brightcopy said in 12).
So yes it was a global and not a catalogue problem, and not a bug.
I separated out the editions from the zero-copy works, combined them with their proper work where I could and checked all works on http://www.librarything.com/author/coeckelberghsren for stray editing 'leftovers'.
The OP's problem of the deleted book showing up on the author page would have sorted itself out in the end; I just sped up the proces a bit and in the proces got rid of a clump of zero-editions in a zero-copy work (pfff) that would otherwise have made it harder for future entries to get autocombined with the right work.
By the way, a book title being different from its worktitle could be ignored as suggested in post 2, but contrary to the number of members owning, I don't think the worktitle actually gets 'recalculated' as suggested in post 12, or at least not until more editions are added. A quick fix would be to set the canonical title, but it needs separating/combining, like I did, to solve it long-term.
> 1 Maybe you would like to check out the combiners group: http://www.librarything.com/groups/combiners. They have a 'Please Fix' thread where you can post requests.
So yes it was a global and not a catalogue problem, and not a bug.
I separated out the editions from the zero-copy works, combined them with their proper work where I could and checked all works on http://www.librarything.com/author/coeckelberghsren for stray editing 'leftovers'.
The OP's problem of the deleted book showing up on the author page would have sorted itself out in the end; I just sped up the proces a bit and in the proces got rid of a clump of zero-editions in a zero-copy work (pfff) that would otherwise have made it harder for future entries to get autocombined with the right work.
By the way, a book title being different from its worktitle could be ignored as suggested in post 2, but contrary to the number of members owning, I don't think the worktitle actually gets 'recalculated' as suggested in post 12, or at least not until more editions are added. A quick fix would be to set the canonical title, but it needs separating/combining, like I did, to solve it long-term.
> 1 Maybe you would like to check out the combiners group: http://www.librarything.com/groups/combiners. They have a 'Please Fix' thread where you can post requests.
15jjwilson61
Ah, the author page. There should be a big warning on that page that it is cached and they may have to wait a while, sometimes a long while, for changes elsewhere in the system to be reflected there
Also, were you separating out zero-copy editions from the work? I believe Tim asked us not to do that?
Also, were you separating out zero-copy editions from the work? I believe Tim asked us not to do that?
