ultb tag, NOT

There are about 104 ultb tagged books that aren't. Those Combiners have been busy. Please check your catalog. You can do a search by enter tag:ultb in the search textbox. It is at the top of your library listing. then click search. When the listing is returned click the "Shared" column. The number of people you share with will come up to the top. If you share the book it isn't ultb ;-)

Or you can go to the Group Library search and search for the tag ultb. Then sort by Shared again. The problem with this is everything looks like it belongs to KCGordon. Sorry about that mate. It is a know error in the system that abbottthomas pointed out yesterday.

Since you don't have to tag ultb you don't have to fix it either. But, it would be appreciated!

Oh and I am trying to find a kinder and gentler guide to combining. So far no joy.

Of course it isn't just the combiners - people are adding new books to LT every second.

If you don't liek any of the current combining tips, the easiest solution is possibly to just post on the 'please fix this book thread' in the Combiners! group.

Point well taken!

Sorry, I really do like and admire what the combiner do. I usually enter a book, discover it is a singleton or unique. I doubt search the author. find multiple copies with different ISBN. (That still amazes me I mean really ISBN aren't unique, which is stupid because I use to work in a bookstore, and know better.) But sometimes that doesn't happen. I mark the book ultb. Then when I come back a couple days later do a tag sort on ultb and find the a couple of book s magical combine with 20 or 30 other users. I mean how did that happen! Its like magic. I certainly hope that the combiners like using the ultb tag to find targets.

I have had a couple of bad conversations with some combiners, I should stop letting that color my opinions. Your right, thanks for calling me on that.

The tips are nice but, is there a wiki thing page anywhere target not a combiner but more casual users?

3>

Doing what you're doing -- searching the author, finding multiple copies with different ISBNs or slight title variations (punctuation, spacing, leading "The") is really what I'd say most combining is (and I'm really glad to see you're doing it -- every combiner helps, and it means the books that really ARE unique, rather than just uncombined, stand out more).

Translations, completely different titles between US/UK editions or re-issues, versions with different authors or without authors listed, may be more difficult but to be honest they're a much smaller fraction of the total combining that gets done. Other than in a few special cases (titles that are the same work but don't share either an author or an ISBN), the technique isn't any different from the straightforward combination you've been doing -- it just takes a little more research to determine whether they're the same.

By the way, the automatic combining has been flaky lately; doing what misericordia is doing, and just doing a quick check of the author before tagging your books ULTB after you enter them, is probably a good idea. It seems like almost everything initially shows up as a singleton these days. (Rule of thumb: With over 30,000,000 books on LT, if it's in English and you bought it new in a regular, non-specialty bookstore within the last ten years, it's probably not a singleton!)

Thanks Lorax it's good to know my basic steps are correct. Here are two examples of books that I recently added that I failed to correctly combine.

Basic windcraft: Using the wind for sailing

The first book is by Watts, Alan. There are 107 books by Alan Watts. It seems to be a common name. Now it shows two books with exactly the same title and ISBN for Basic windcraft. Is that odd or part of the flaky combining? The other persons book shows up as entered in 2006, so all I can figure is I missed it. Any advise on authors with really common names or long lists of books?

The other book is Beyond the Milky Way, Galaxies, Quasars and the New Cosmology Vol 8 it has an author of Thornton & Page Lou Williams (editors) Page. If you go from the works page to the author page, at http://www.librarything.com/author/pagethorntonamppagel, there is nothing listed. I don't get this one at all.

It doesn't look like the touch stones are working for this.
The book is at:
http://www.librarything.com/work/1223956/book/38638893

Thanks for your comments.

5>

Your first example is probably part of the flaky combining and separating -- recently, some people have been finding that whenever they edit a book in any way it separates out from the pack.

The second was a bit more difficult -- books by multiple authors are often hard to handle, because people have them entered differently. In this case, I had to combine different versions of "Page and Thornton" with each other. Some copies of the book are also listed just as by Page. It's possible though very tricky to combine books that don't have either an author or an ISBN in common. The usual version involves HTML hacking, and I generally leave that to the experts. In this case, I cheated a bit, since neither author is prolific -- I combined Page with Page and Thornton long enough to combine the books, then separated them again. The author pages are a little behind.

I've been doing my best to combine books in my library with the ultb tag and I've noticed a couple that became twos without my doing a thing -- either combiners or new adds. (They are now tagged ultbnomore.) Isn't it convenient to have a tag like that, lorax, to focus your attention on?

You mention leading "The" --- I would add that any "unique" books with subtitles are worth a look. Not only the presence or absence of a subtitle, but a difference in punctuation (,;:) or spacing can trigger a "different title" in LT.

Still I'm surprised how many candidates for combining stubbornly remain unique.

I see how I jacked this one up. I entered a bunch of junk as the author. I have changed my book to say the following.

Author Page, (editor) Thornton

other authors Page, Lou Williams editor

I fixed this stuff and now it links fine.

You know I think a lot of people have an idea of a library and a static thing. It's a huge pile of unchanging books.

But here in the brave new world of Library Thing it is dynamic very very dynamic. Each day a flood of new books and opinions come flooding in. What was once a strange and unique book in a couple days in common place. A book that is popular and highly rated one day, is junk the next... Million little pieces.

This group is beginning to appear to be much more at the front of that flood than I had ever realized.

Super Massive Hit list of ultb NOT! Books.
Silver Metal Lover 466/7
Pocket world in figures 233
Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making 138/2
The phantom menace : illustrated screenplay 67
Bonsai - Pocket Encyclopedia 58/1
The French market : more recipes from a French kitchen 49
Duden Stilworterbuch Der Deutschen Sprache (Duden 2) 36
Collins Complete Cat Owner's Manual 27
El Diego : Diego Armando Maradona 26
The trial ; and, America ; and, The castle ; and, Metamorphosis ; and, In the penal settlement ; and, The Grea 26
The new candle book : inspirational ideas for displaying, using and making candles 24
1001 facts about wild animals 12
Harold Bloom 20th Anniversary Collection Poets and Poems 10
The Aeneid of Vergil, Books I-VI, Selections VII-XII, with an Introduction, Notes, and Vocabulary, The Lake Classical Se 9
Understanding ADHD : attention deficit hyperactivity disorder 8
Astronomy : an introduction 7
Economics : principles, problems and policies 7
The really hairy scary spider and other creatures with lots of legs 7
Cinema year by year, 1894-2003 6
Bonsai - 101 Essential Tips 5
Elemente Chemie 5
Growing cacti and succulents in Australia and New Zealand 5
Australian gourmet traveller : seafood 4
Babar Goes Camping (Magnet Books) 4
Bad Mood Bear (Red Fox Picture Book) 4
The complete book of sports cars 4
Home! : the Evonne Goolagong story 4
Inside the Business Enterprise: Historical Perspectives on the Use of Information (National Bureau of Economic Research 4
Lucky Garfield 4
Mistero Della Sedia a Rotelle (Letteratura) 4
5th Virginia Cavalry 3
Analog science fiction/science fact. No. 614 Dec. 7, 1981 3
Better blood pressure : a new program to relieve hypertension 3
The big guitar chord songbook : the seventies 3
Children's Atlas of the World 3
The 'Clio'. Penguin Fiction No 486 3
Companion Dictionary of the Bible 3
A crocodile to tea 3
Dad and Dave 3
Diet and Weight Control (Health and Healing the Natural Way) 3
Germany from Empire to Ruin, 1913-1945 3/1
A history of the United States 3
Le meraviglie dell'Umbria = The wonders of Umbria 3
Modern Australia in Documents Volume 1: 1901-1939 3
Nepal : a traveller's guide 3
Norway's Resistance Museum 3
Record breakers - The living world 3
Reshaping Australia's economy : growth with equity and sustainability 3
The story of flight 3
Teach yourself biology 3
This is my life! : there's more to life than biff 3
Up from Under 3
Adorable Garfield 2
Anne de Guigne 2
Anne de Guigne 2
Bananas in pyjamas holiday book 2
Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (Hippo books) 2
The British Museum and Ancient Egypt 2
Death in other words: A presentation for beginners 2
Death in other words;: A presentation for beginners 2
Derbyshire (Penguin Guides) 2
Gleanings from Long Ago 2
The great Possum Creek bushfire 2
Herbs for Better Living 2
How did the fire know we lived here? : Canberra's bush fires January 2003 2
The joy of wine 2
The metaphysical passion; seven modern American poets and the seventeenth-century tradition 2
The New Grünes Gewölbe 2
Organisational behaviour : concepts, controversies and applications : Australia and New Zealand 2
Out of time, out of place; Henry Gregory and the Benedictine order in colonial Australia 2
The pottery book : the way of clay : a comprehensive guide 2
Pulse and Fourier transform NMR; introduction to theory and methods 2
RUPERT ANNUAL 1950 - ADVENTURES OF RUPERT 2
Sleepy Garfield 2
A textbook of physical chemistry 2
A Textbook on Mercantile Decoration: Foot, Hand, and Head Covering, Men and Women's Furnishings, Handkerchiefs,Linens. 2
A Textbook on Mercantile Decoration: Miscellaneous Merchandise, Decorations, Collection of Artisitic Displays,Illuminat 2
The third book of humorous stories 2
A Visitor's Guide to Mycaene, Argos, Tiryns, Nauplia and Epidaurus 2
The Wampanoag Indian federation of the Algonquin Nation; Indian neighbors of the Pilgrims 2
War economy and crisis 2
With the Flag to Pretoria - a History of the Boer War of 1899-1900 - Vol. I 2
With the Flag to Pretoria - a History of the Boer War of 1899-1900 - Vol. II (Vo 2

A number of those were books that I had tagged - and at the time of tagging (a week or so back) they did not appear to be shared. On checking again yesterday, suddenly a large number of my previous ultbs were suddenly shared, some by large numbers. I have fixed (most, if not all) of my now not ultbs, but it does require regular checking to see if anything has changed.

Weetab -- that would be because combiners have discovered the usefulness of the "ultb" tag in finding orphaned copies of non-unique books. :)

lorax -- Handy, ain't it? I've been using it for that purpose myself.

It can also be fun just to go to random libraries and sort books by shared. Unfortunately, lately I've been trying to go through all of my books and checking their combined status—I'll probably be finished in the spring at this rate.

Hit list for Not ultb for 12/22/08.

Looks like some double enteries...
Shattered Audio 503/5
Life in Mexico: The letters of Fanny Calderón de la Barca, with new material from the author's private journals 30/2
Collins Complete Cat Owner's Manual 27
Antique Quilts & Textiles: A Price Guide to Functional and Fashionable Cloth Comforts 23
Two-For-One Foundation Piecing: Reversible Quilts and More 17
Beethoven Und Seine Zeit 7
Elemente Chemie 5/1
Roads from Bethlehem: Christmas Literature from Writers Ancient and Modern 5
Shelter from the Storm - Power Pack & Cloak and Dagger 5
Babar Goes Camping (Magnet Books) 4
Inside the Business Enterprise: Historical Perspectives on the Use of Information (National Bureau of Economic Research 4
Mistero Della Sedia a Rotelle (Letteratura) 4
Overtures Coriolan Op. 62 and Egmont Op. 84, with a biographical note and an introduction by W. McNaught. Or rather, wi 4
William Golding: The Man and His Books - A Tribute on His 75th Birthday 4
5th Virginia Cavalry 3
The big guitar chord songbook : the seventies 3
The 'Clio'. Penguin Fiction No 486 3
Companion Dictionary of the Bible 3
A history of the United States 3
Le meraviglie dell'Umbria = The wonders of Umbria 3
MENU Backen von A-Z 3
Modern Australia in documents Volume 2: 1939-1970 3
Norway's Resistance Museum 3
Up from Under 3
Anne de Guigne 2
Anne de Guigne 2
The Baking Book 2
Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (Hippo books) 2
Begegnungen von A bis Z. 21 Erzahlungen 2
The British Museum and Ancient Egypt 2
Death in other words: A presentation for beginners 2
Death in other words;: A presentation for beginners 2
Derbyshire (Penguin Guides) 2
Dictionary of Clocks and Watches 2
Gleanings from Long Ago 2
The Ivory Cat 2
The Ladies' Home Journal, January 1917 2
The Ladies' Home Journal, January 1917 2
The metaphysical passion; seven modern American poets and the seventeenth-century tradition 2
Minoan Crete - An Illustrated Guide with reconstructions of the Ancient Monuments 2
Motorcycle Ridercourse Riding and Street Skills: Student Workbook 2
Mrs. Beeton's Complete Book of Puddings and Desserts 2
Mrs. Beeton's Main Course Cookbook 2
Needlecraft Magazine, August 1922 2
Needlecraft Magazine, August 1922 2
Needlecraft Magazine, May 1922 2
Needlecraft Magazine, November 1922 2
Needlecraft Magazine, October 1922 2
Needlecraft Magazine, September 1922 2
The Papers of William Hickling Prescott 2
Pulse and Fourier transform NMR; introduction to theory and methods 2
RUPERT ANNUAL 1950 - ADVENTURES OF RUPERT 2
Study guide/solutions manual for Jones's Organic chemistry 2
Teach yourself science : the universe, matter and life 2
A textbook of physical chemistry 2
The Wampanoag Indian federation of the Algonquin Nation; Indian neighbors of the Pilgrims 2
War economy and crisis 2
The world of physical chemistry 2

I removed the tag from my non-ultbs. Why is it that sorting on 'Shared' after searching for tag:ultb no longer works? That used to be the easiest way to find the multiples.

It could be that the sort order is not saved, but the search and format are saved.

I'm also finding that items are showing for 2-3 days after I remove my ULTB tag.

As a note, some ULTB tagged items *are* ULTB, and I have more than 1 copy; I am the only owner on LT at this time.

It's easy to find your *own* non-unique books -- just search your own library for tag ultb and then sort by number shared.

I found the combiners have been very busy and skillful (I hope skillful) as a number of my books have been combined with the same book -- different author's name -- which is beyond my combining skills.

muumi, as I remarked in #16, sorting on Shared after a search no longer works. I just tried it again.

I am not having any problem with selecting "tag:ultb" then sorting by Shared. (Of course I am down to 16 books.) What exactly happens when you try this?

20> I justed tried this in your library and it seemed fine. You don't have any "ULTB, Not's". So I tried the tag mooched. Wow you have mooched some great books! Anyway it worked fine there also. I searched the "tag:mooched" then sorted on shared.

misericordia and muumi, we are all correct! I tried it with Firefox 3.0.5 and clicked on Shared and what happened was precisely nothing. Then I tried it on Internet Exploder 6.0 and it worked like it used to.

I just recently got the Firefox 3.0.5 upgrade, so this must be a bug in that version.

Thanks!

That is pretty surprising. I usually have trouble the other way around. I am on Firefox 2.0.0.20. Google Chrome 1.0.154.36 works.

I just cleaned up my ultb tag - only found 2 to get rid of - one was not interesting but I am glad to see that my copy of Married Women v. Husbands Names- here:
http://www.librarything.com/work/6450763
is no longer lonely - it's such an interesting read.

Edited to add - nevermind! a miscombining if there ever was one. A person with ONE book entered THIS:
http://www.librarything.com/work/7607537
with the same ISBN

Boy It would be great if someone updated the ULTB not! list. HINT, HINT, Wink, WINK, NUDGE, NUDGE, know what I mean, know what I mean.

I'm afraid I don't quite follow you.

Perhaps I am being a little too obtuse. So here try this http://www.librarything.com/topic/54402

Even better would be
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Groups:Unique_Library_Thing_Book_Grou...

Instruction are at the end of the list.

Obviously I was being a little too obtuse.

"Squire:
(confused)
I'm afraid I don't quite follow you.

Man:
Follow me. Follow me. That's good, that's good!
A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat"

26>

I did. But note my comments - it's no longer possible to update the whole list using the list of 'members using tag ultb.' So I haven't done all of it.

Thanks! Kevinashley. Not very hard was it?

Updated the list and fix links in the Group Description for top tagger and ULTB NOT! list.

The sorting bug mentioned in #23 is fixed in Firefox 3.0.6.