Claimed Venues in need of editing

On a semi-regular basis I stumble across a venue that needs editing -- but because it has been claimed, it can't be edited.

Example: http://www.librarything.com/venue/2515/International-Center-of-Photography-Museu...

This is not a bookstore. It is a museum gift store that sells some books. Claimed by a member who joined in 2009, and who appears to have had no involvement with the LT site since.

Example: http://www.librarything.com/venue/14455/Greater-Victoria-Public-Library-Nelly-Mc...

Name of venue is misspelled (it's Nellie, not Nelly).

Can the LT staff do anything about these and others?

I've complained about this before. I don't think venues should be allowed to be "claimed" any more. Quite a few individuals who "claim" venues have no vested interest in LibraryThing. When these people don't return to LT after "claiming" a venue, some of our best venues can no longer be edited. :(

I know this is not a solution to your problem but as a workaround couldn't you just add a duplicate venue with the correct information?

>3 bernsad: I was thinking of that, too! But I don't want to make work for someone if they're wind up inadvertently retaining the inaccuracies...

>2 SqueakyChu: I agree, SC. The point of claiming a venue should be (presumably) to care for it. if a claimer hasn't done anything with their page within a specific time-frame, it should revert back to "common property".

Should we collect them here? Maybe if we create a running tally of them they might eventually be addressed?

Or maybe we'll discover there are only a small handful...?

> 4

I only view few of them. Once I list a venue, I don't often come back to it.

The two or three of us alone would never identity the vast majority of them. Perhaps the "claimers" should need to reclaim their venues yearly (a renewal) or lose control of them. That would be my suggestion.

You should put your observations and suggestions about this issue onto the RSI (Recommended Site Improvements) group where it will more likely catch Tim's eye.

> 3

I hate duplicate venues and doing "clean-up" work. I would not like to see their numbers increase.

>5 SqueakyChu: Fair enough, I guess it's a matter of what irks more, duplicates or inaccuracies.

As the person who added the the ICP store, I object to the dismissal of the venue as "a museum gift store that sells some books." It's not *some* books -- as a photography museum, the majority of what their store sells is books and prints, which makes it more of a "book store" than most museum gift stores. If someone wanted to buy a photography book, it's actually a pretty good resource. I made this determination as a person that walked by it on a regular basis.

> 7

Until we LT "editors" can update the "claimed" entries to our liking, I think it's important to add "comments" to ensure that others know why we feel such venues truly belong on LT Local.

>7 lampbane: Hi lampbane. It's not a dismissal, just a matter of personal preference. I think of museum stores as selling a variety of items -- not too far off from department stores, campus stores, Goodwill, and some religious and new age stores. Books may well form a significant part of the inventory, that's absolutely true.

You raise a good point, though, as it's a very grey area. Must a store possess a minimum inventory percentage in books to qualify as a bookstore? Must the inventory span a certain number of categories? Should it be listed in the Yellow Pages or on Yelp in the bookstore category? Smell like books? Sell bookmarks? Have a resident cat? ...Sorry - now I'm just day-dreaming... ;-)

Here's how I typically look at it: If I'm in a new town looking at Local for guidance on bookstores, I want the Bookstore category to guide me to nearby venues that would self-identify as traditional bookstores -- so I use this as my criteria when deciding how to identify a venue in Local. I use the "Other" category to identify venues that sell books as part of their inventory, or sell no books, but host book-related events.

I haven't visited this specific venue. I did look at the website, and saw categories for everything from cameras and apparel to jewelry and stationary, and even kids' toys. Hence my off-the-cuff comment. Then again, I could describe big book chains like Barnes & Noble and Chapters / Indigo the same way.

> 8 I hope that all venues being added to Local are either sources of books, or are hosting events related to books! I agree, a comment may help illuminate situations such as the one we're discussing.

Needs a street address but can't be edited:
http://www.librarything.com/venue/3567/The-Booksmith

> 10

Send private message to Booksmith_in_SF and ask that the page be edited?

>11 SqueakyChu: - I may! In the meantime, I am going to keep collecting them...

Title of venue is duplicated but can't be edited to fix it:
http://www.librarything.com/venue/11331/Biblioth%C3%A8que-publique-de-Westmount-...

Here's one that is defunct but no one can close it because it was claimed:
http://www.librarything.com/venue/7330/Evanston-Public-Library-South-Branch

Two venues were deleted today because they were closed. I restored them but can't mark them "defunct" because they are claimed (as it turns out, claimed by the deleter). I did leave a private message asking the person to mark them defunct, but again, this points to the bigger issue...

http://www.librarything.com/venue/6283/
http://www.librarything.com/venue/6271/

Galaxy Bookshop has moved but can't be updated: https://www.librarything.com/venue/19433/Galaxy-Bookshop
The person who claimed it cataloged six books in 2009 and presumably has been absent since.

Here's another one. Street address is incorrect but can't be edited because venue was claimed: http://www.librarything.com/venue/85618/Village-House-Of-Books

I'm guessing that, because the venue couldn't be corrected and searched for at its correct address, it resulted in the addition of a duplicate venue with the correct address: http://www.librarything.com/venue/85618/Village-House-Of-Books

Here's a new one, and a bit complex, too. These are duplicate venues:

http://www.librarything.com/venue/95906/Marshall-District-Library
http://www.librarything.com/venue/60124/Marshall-District-Library

Today someone deleted one of the records from the database as a duplicate.

I was curious as to why a combination was not proposed (yep, sometimes I'm nosy!), so I restored it. Turns out, at some point, the user proposed that the two venues be combined. This proposal is still visible on each of the individual venues. However, the proposal for combination no longer shows up on the Local Helpers home page.

Compounding the issue, the user claimed both venues in the past, so no one can edit them and propose a combination.

Each record contains information not found in the other record, so a combination should happen.

Can anything be done, short of asking the person who claimed the venues to manually combine them on his or her own?

starfishian,

I'd like to see a "last updated date" on these venues. I think that if a venue manager does not update the venue within a certain period of time...say yearly...she/he should lose that privilege. What do you think? These claimed venues always frustrate me.

Sounds like a very reasonable suggestion, SqueakyChu!

I'll go post this idea in the RSI group.

As I mentioned to >20 SqueakyChu: in her RSI, you can subvert the "claimed" venues by using the venue edit URL:

http://www.librarything.com/venue_edit.php?venue=###

I do this regularly to fix the catalog URLs and the events URLs. I've already fixed the Montgomery County Public Libraries (MD) venues.

>15 r.orrison: Updated the venue

>21 lesmel:

I don't understand how you use the venue edit URL to override a claimed venue.

>23 SqueakyChu: You can replace the ### with the venue number in that URL in >21 lesmel:. That should give you access to the address, description, URLs, etc. The one thing you won't be able to do is add photos.

Thanks! I'll favorite your message so I'll remember how to do it when the time comes.

>1 starfishian: Corrected the Nellie McClung name in the venue.
>10 starfishian: Added the address and phone number. Tweeted them that their IndieBound ISBN link is broken.
>12 starfishian: The name isn't really duplicated as much as it is written to be as findable as possible. French and English in two variations. I did add search URLs and the lib-web-cats number.
>13 starfishian: Marked as defunct. Added the CAMS branch.
>14 starfishian: I'm waiting to hear back via Twitter about the Livingston campus bookstore. The New Brunswick campus bookstore is already marked defunct.
>16 starfishian: Village House of Books has an up to date address based on their website.
>17 starfishian: Looks like the Marshall District venues are both marked as combine.

Amazing, lesmel - thank you! I'm really excited. I had no idea there was a secret link (as you could probably tell by this thread). Thank you for fixing / addressing all of the venues mentioned above.

Are there more venues to edit? There an established thread for venues needing updates? If not, maybe this should be it! :)