Overcat, Undercat, manual entries...

The ability to add a book to your catalogue from someone else's manual entry has often been wished for (particularly, for example in the case of ER books).

We have "Overcat" for previous found library records, how about a corresponding "Undercat", or "Catspaw" that searched only manual entries. Given the worries about copying bad data, it could perhaps click through to a "please check that these values are suitable" page before actually adding the book

I think there will be a lot less bad data on this than on changed entries from sources. While there may be typos, there will not be ISBN from one book not changed when the title is changed to get all of an author's books in ...

#1 that would be superb! great idea.

Is the work on the legendary redesign of "Add books" still going on?

4>

Well, it isn't finished, so in that sense it's still pending. Is it actually being worked on? Who knows.

The original suggestion is superb, as is the prospect of a re-designed "Add Books" mode.

#1 by TimSharrock>

A member-created Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script by brightcopy is described in this Hacking LibraryThing thread. Its purpose is to take a detail page for a book and copy it to the manual entry form on LT.

To use it you would need to install an add-on for Firefox (Greasemonkey) or Chrome (Tampermonkey). I don't know if there are equivalents for other browsers that work with this script. The add-on looks at the URL visited and if it matches a pattern supplied, it runs an installed script.

(A similar idea for CSS styles is called Stylish and can be used to change the appearance of particular sites and pages to meet your needs and desires).

I have installed and experimented with the copy-book-to-manual-entry-form and it does work. It is not part of my routine for entering books, however. Any small changes in how LT pages are laid out will possibly break this script until it is updated. That is a risk with anything like this.

This would give you a working feature now rather than waiting until LT can get around to it.

James

I use brightcopy's script, particularly for books I've entered myself that I then need to enter the nearly-identical next in the series (yes, I change publication data etc - they don't have ISBNs). But Undercat would be wonderful for those books where I'd have to ferret through someone's library to find the right book, and as a general addition to LT - heck, it would overtake Amazon's popularity for new and upcoming books!

So - yes, the script for now, and (hope hope hope) Undercat for later.

bump

+1

Yes.

I'd forgotten the other name TimSharrok suggested - thinking about it now, I _love_ Catspaw. Link to Overcat (which is a pun on Underdog, I believe) without messing that up - and makes a reference to "the users are doing the work" aka crowdsourcing.

noting this one in the RSI list I'm building!

yay!

Conclusion (for now): I've noted >1 TimSharrock:'s suggestion (of having a database of manual entries, and previewing before adding) for Tim's use on copying manual entries from another member's library. Here's Tim's update on the RSI: `this should happen, with some safeguards (to prevent lazy, bad data), but not anytime in the near future.`

So, bump this one in the next year or so?

Alright! 2 weeks!

Yay! Catspaw, eventually!

>16 kristilabrie: bump

Happy Birthday to me.... Bump!

I vote for this!

Happy Birthday to me.... Bump!

Happy one-third-of-a -century-married to me... Bump

With the new redesign...maybe this one will actually happen.

I came here via talk search because it feels like I’m manually adding books that other people have already manually added every time I (infrequently) do any cataloguing, lately!

Even if I end up being the person who adds a detailed manual record, it seems like there should be some mechanism that allows others to benefit from that.

> Have you forgotten how things 'work' here?

The answer depends on how I interpret the question ;)

Just set up your own koha system on a raspberry pi or such and set up the z39.50 server and put your manual entries into it and set it up as a LT source :-)
(The suggestion is of course mostly for fun, but I think it's actually doable. I don't have a static ip4-address but otherwise I'd be tempted.)

Yes please - seconding (or thirty firsting or whatever).

>23 TimSharrock: I forgot to bump for my birthday, but then it is nearly my wedding anniversary :)

>16 kristilabrie: Maybe it could be a separate search identity (along with Overcat, LC, Amazon etc) with a warning to check the data?

Bumping again. This just became a hot topic for me. I'm trying to add a magazine collection. A substantial portion has been added to LT already as a serie (Bead & Button). I'd love to tap into that.

We're going to be updating the "Add books" page for our major site redesign (aka "LT2"), and we have this recommendation under consideration (last I checked). Thanks for your patience! We'll be sure to announce updates in the New Features Group: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/2984/New-features

>34 kristilabrie: In all kindness, what is the realistic estimate on LT2 and its promised features? Are we talking 6 months, a year, more? Or perhaps it is very very close but I don't think so. I know there's been talk of LT2 or at least deferring features until it would be done. This has been going on for years.

The reason I ask is that if it was very soon, this member might wish to wait. But if it is going to be 6+ months, it might be useful to look at some alternative workflows to get the job done and realize the benefit of having the content in their catalog.

James

Happy Birthday to me! ..... annual bump

>35 Keeline: Don't you know everything here is in "two weeks" time?

>35 Keeline: >37 gilroy: We're releasing LT2 pages almost constantly, of late (here's an update from knerd.knitter—not two, but—three weeks ago: https://www.librarything.com/topic/342889). The website is enormous, and it's something that conceptDawg and knerd.knitter (with timspalding) are constantly working on, among other bugs or LTFL stuff that is on their plate. So, I can't give you a perfect timeline of when the entire site's redesign will be complete, as there are a number of factors that affect the timeline, including unexpected bugs/issues that need to be handled which causes a dip in the project's momentum from time to time.

What I can do is ask the developers when they think they'll get to a specific page redesign, such as the "Add books" page. Would that help? Are there other pages you'd like a more realistic timeline for?

While I completely understand the frustration of waiting for something that would really improve your experience on the site, I also understand the limits of our small staff and that putting the work into an alternative workflow that will only exist for a year or so (give or take) is not going to be the best use of developer's time: they would probably rather put that time into getting the LT2 version released. I'm sorry for the wait, truly, but I know the developers are also doing their best (and putting out some thoughtfully designed work).

>38 kristilabrie: Hah! Just saw >35 Keeline: was written in .... December 2021. I read the last two posts and assumed it was recent. :)

BUT, let me know if you'd like a more realistic timeline on certain pages in the LT2 redesign, and I'll see what I can get from the developers.

>38 kristilabrie: Mine was entirely a tongue in cheek response since I put the "two weeks" in quotes as I did.