Universal Import files—and now web pages!
Universal Import is now truly universal. It accepts both files and web pages. I've successfully tested it with:
Let me know if you end up drawing books from a site I haven't mentioned. I'm keen to add it to the list.
- Delicious Library, Readerware, Book Collector
- Amazon (Wishlists, Listmania, past orders), Barnes and Noble, Booksense
- Bibliophil (export or URL), BookCrossing, Reader2, Listal, What Should I Read Next
- Home-brewed text files
- Mumbling ISBNs near your computer, rotary telephone or toaster
Let me know if you end up drawing books from a site I haven't mentioned. I'm keen to add it to the list.
posted by Tim at 3:56 PM
26 Comments:
Holy smokes! I guess people are into the import feature. The queue is now over 3,000 books long. I'm running extra batches to keep up...
The cue currently contains a lot of EANs as well as ISBNs. I thought it would screen them out, but it doesn't. I added the ability to parse EANs (UPCs) when you upload a file.
Unfortuantely, those of you who added a lot of EANs will have them fail. If the file also had ISBNs for each, they won't fail, so you should be in good shape.
The queue is now up to 6,000. At present, coming off the queue is perfectly random, so someone with 10 books will see as much progress as someone with 3,000. Clearly this isn't fair. I'll work on it soon. For now, blame the queue hogs :)
What about half.ebay.com? I have a huge inventory there that I would like cataloged. Thanks.
I was just wondering if there is a way to search, another users library? I saw that you can search all the other users but what if you're in another users library and just want to search that library?
Just curious
Kyrie
I just got a library thing catalog and I was wondering if there was a way to move specific books up and down in your list. I would very much like a way if there is not. I would like to organize my series-es in order of number not alphabetical order or the order you added it. Up and Down arrows would be so wonderful.
thank-you.
gypsychick
It looks like there's a problem with the import. The user "laurion" (who I noticed because my profile said he shared over 600 books with me) has 10-12 copies of almost all books in his catalog, which looks like a lot like something hiccuped.
I was looking at my profile today and added a few books, the loaded my profile again, suddenly a new person appeared on my "Users with Maisy's books" list ...not just appeared, but went to the top out of nowhere.
I went to their profile and saw that we only share 9 books. They have multiple copies of each of those books, which is a grand total average of being 11.222 copies of each.
Not just that, they signed up on the 24 of Sept. and added a few books, then loaded everyone of the rest of their 4,000+ books today, as the dates go, and as well, most all the books are in multiples.
I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, but it's worth knowing if it's a bulk upload glitch, as well as seeing if it's something that can be altered in how it appears in the "users share this many books with you" sort of way. He only shares 9 with me, but it says "101" which I find is a skew of the actual stats.
I do have a couple of books that I have two copies of loaded in my catalog, but I note that in comments on each second, and they are few are far between and I don't wish for my numbers on someone elses comparison of books shared list to be inflated.
I hope you can do something about this sort of situation. My Librarything username is Maisy.
Yowza! I did a test import of about 60 records, (a text file of only ISBN's) and they all got imported multiple times too. Hmmm.
That said, I am *so* happy that you have added this feature. I have a few thousand more books to import.
QF
Hey, is there any interest in an actual group forum for Librarything users? The comments think is kinda neat, but seems cumbersome, and very hard to follow if you're a third party.
I think the universal import is a very blunt instrument. I have a large collection where something like half of all books are pre-ISBN. I have it all catlogued in Readerware and yet your Swiss army approach throws all this research away and more.
Isn't there an XML layout for books? Couldn't you get Readerware to code up an impoter for you?
By the looks of it you have catered to book people but not to collectors - which edition I have - whether it is a first or not, whether it is signed or not are all important to me.
BTW - the amazon site has numerous mis-spellings in its titles as well as other errors - I know this from experience.
Thanx for listening - one day I'll pay up
selfnoise - there's a LiveJournal community for LibraryThing @ http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=librarything and an RSS feed of this blog too (which can be commented on). You don't need an LJ to participate (it takes anonymous comments or OpenID) but they're free if you do want one.
Hmmm, that should be LibraryThing but the URL got crimped. Let's see if the HTML works instead.
It's good to know there's an LJ community, but that doesn't seem quite the same, especially for those who aren't into LJ. I still think it'd be neat to see a forum or something of that nature.
Two general opinions re: LT capabilities -- 1) If there's no category, create a tag; 2) If it's not right, edit it. I just replaced a ton of "(none)" entries in the LC Classification field with LCC's from another source. LT gives us a big leg up, but the data's only as good as that of the source.
Will the import do comma separated text files, if they are massaged into the right order but lacking ISBN #s?
I have a database created by someone else, and one of the fields has data that looks like this:
10059250479e9A
1005925169QkOd
1005925268ZHvG
1005925608snWu
1005923429r9XT
1005926268cSmO
Perhaps it is a unique identifier created by their software.
Steganography (noun) 1. archaic; cryptography. 2. The art or practice of concealing a message, image or file within another message, image or file.
Point of above definition is this: when I put one web page from amazon.com into the "universal import files" feature over 18 ISDN showed up into my add library. Most of these books I did not want to add to my librarything catalog. Is there a way I can see the ISDNed books (hidden or otherwise) for deleting before they are imported to my catalog?
Hey, I am very happy with this novel feature. Just want to keep some of those "easter eggs" off of my shelf.
Thanks for all of your work librarything..... :*)
Lorx (*wave* is right, something clearly hiccupped on me. I was importing a list of ~500 ISBNs exported from readerware (just the ISBNs, I only took that column), and ended up with over 4000 books. I'm slowly deleting the dupes. Besides finding out what went wrong, what about a utility to find and remove duplicate books?
I'd like to second both the request for something to find and remove duplicates, and also to remove everything and start over if necessary...
Yay! For the "other authors" field. Thanks a bunch!
Discovered another slight bug.
When editing a book, it seems to indicate it creates a duplicate in my library. I now have some books that appear 5 times as duplicate copies (in the social data) - but when I search I only get one copy.
Me again.
I don't think the bug is anything to do with the editing as I have edited a number of other records and they didn't get shown as duplicate copies.
My user id is rivkat, and I'm new. In importing my Delicious Library files, I got a bunch of bad results (books I don't actually have). I'm going through by hand and deleting, but an enormously annoying thing is that each time I delete one book, the library reloads on the first page. Since I've already got 650 books cataloged and more on the way, this is going to make doing the second half of the alphabet a nightmare. Is there any fix.
Hey. Were you using the "more options" way of doing it? (Click "more options" on the main catalog view and you get red Xs.) If so, yes it had a dumb bug. I fixed it—thanks for the heads up.
Hi. I was importing one of my Bookcrossing pages yesterday, and when I didn't see a "finished" or "done" message on the Universal Import page, I assumed it didn't work. So, I did it two more times. Today, I checked my catalog - and sure enough, there were 3 copies of each new book. Ok - I started deleting the extra ones. That worked until now - when I click the pencil and then the red x, it tells me I have a copy and that I can't delete other users' data. How do I delete the extra books?
My username is krin5292
Thanks!
I'm not clear on what url I should enter for importing my BookCrossing books. I entered the url for My Bookshelf with my user name, but it only finds one url--for a book I don't own. I just entered new books, so I know they're aren't in LibraryThing yet. Thanks!
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