Universal Import added
I've added a "Universal Import" feature. After wrangling with a dozen or so different formats, I chucked the nonsense and made a single Swiss-army-knife import. Universal Import works on:
This was not done lightly. Individual filters take a long time to build and require all sorts of compromises. LibraryThing users clamoring for imports are distributed among a half-dozen applications and various home solutions. So, instead of making 5% of my users 100% happy, I decided to make 100% of my users 95% happy.
I hope you like it.
Coming tomorrow: Imports from web sites like Amazon and AllConsuming!
- Desktop applications like Delicious Library, Readerware, Book Collector, etc.
- Online services that offer exports (eg., Bibliophil)
- Home-cooked text-files, spreadsheets and databases
This was not done lightly. Individual filters take a long time to build and require all sorts of compromises. LibraryThing users clamoring for imports are distributed among a half-dozen applications and various home solutions. So, instead of making 5% of my users 100% happy, I decided to make 100% of my users 95% happy.
I hope you like it.
Coming tomorrow: Imports from web sites like Amazon and AllConsuming!
posted by Tim at 4:14 AM
8 Comments:
What happens to the uploaded book info if LibraryThing can't find the ISBN? Because I just tried it with a file containing 6 ISBNs, my import queue has cleared, and I can't see the books in my catalogue.
It would be nice if the data were added as a *manually-entered book* if the ISBN doesn't show up in any of the libraries and things.
Correction -- apparently the books are showing up, but not the tags I had in the file!
They're all in there. I checked. Sort by entry date to see them. I was a bit amazed it worked, as they were all German books. Amazon.de is better for those than Amazon.com.
If it doesn't find the books in the three libraries you specify it lists them as failed on the import page. So, one way or another, you know.
Right. It ONLY grabs the ISBNs. It doesn't grab anything else—no tags (if your program has tags, which suprises me) and no books that lack ISBNs. See the blog post and the import page for why this had to be so.
OK, I see 'em now. Odd, though; two of them were entered in duplicate and I had to delete one manually.
I left the setting on amazon.com because I was entering some German stuff recently which LT failed to find at amazon.de; no idea why.
And I don't have another cataloguing program; I just made a tab-delimited file using the same fields I got out of a LibraryThing EXPORT CSV the other week and hoped for the best. :)
In my ideal world, it would be possible to create such a delimited file and have LT grab everything in it as manually-entered data, but the setup as-is does help in reducing online time. Thanks!
I'm confused about importing. I am able to generate a file with scads of ISBNS, but when I upload the file only 10 of those ISBNs show up in the queue. Is there a limit on the number of ISBNs that can be submitted at one time?
Cheers & thanks,
Rick Brannan
(LT username: supakoo)
Hey. Sorry about the ISBNs. Send me the file (timspalding@librarything.com) and tell me where it came from?
I'm guessing it has EANs or ISSNs, but maybe there's something else going on.
Tim
Thanks! It works great!
Post a Comment
<< Home