Upgrade update
My promised upgrade is still in the works, and growing in scope by the minute. It will include:
Update: The widgets are fixed. Sorry about that. 2:07pm EST.
- A work structure, with work disambiguation
- Better-looking book pages (social info, book info, editing), with multiple covers and the ability to tap into others' manual covers
- Deeper, tweakable book recommendations
- Edition-by-edition purchase links, going to an expanded selection of booksellers, with OCLC "Find in a Library" too
- LCCNs and Deweys for most books
Update: The widgets are fixed. Sorry about that. 2:07pm EST.
posted by Tim at 6:05 AM
21 Comments:
Ooh my OCLC links (maybe) helped :D
Up, up, & away...
Deweys for most books? "find in a Library"? Multiple covers, and so much more? Just what I wanted, you shouldn't have! What a list of great upcoming changes -- I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas. Thank you, LT, & have a great weekend, you deserve it.
I'm really curious to see what it turns out ... ! :-)
language -- You're not the only one with badge bugs. When I click on one of my 5 book titles, I get directed to the LibraryThing page with this message:
Error: Work does not exist.
Now that I know there's an upgrade going on, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with that.
Looking forward to the improvements, (and thanks for all the hard work)
Laura
Language: Thanks for the heads-up on that. I fixed it. Yes, it does have to do with the upgrade...
Wow! The features keep coming! Thanks!
Tim, I reasonably expect to be able to backup my hard work. Why don't the comments export to CSV? That's not acceptable in my view.
Are you planning to add boolean logic to the search functionality? This would be especially nice when search tags.
Thanks! Great website!
Okay, now. Sorry.
Hello, hello? Still not seeing comments in the export. All the fields are empty.
Okay, I'll look at the comment field.
ratings would be nice in the export too
dogzballz
Nice surprise, the numbers in the shared field on the catalogue page are correct, no more ghost users of unique books anymore. Thanks
Kathryn
All of it sounds great --- but I am still left wondering about the ability to (1) import and export in BibTeX and/or Endnote format and (2) a system for articles? Wouldn't a merger with CiteULike be great?
holy crap, yeah, if you could interface with endnote - especially the "notes" field - either to store those notes or import them to or from endnote, that would be awesome.
otherwise, what about an output style that gives the book info in MLA or CMS format?
i LOVE this site.
This a fantastic thing - I love it! Thank you :)
All these changes are wonderful! Thanks, Tim.
The only thing I'm holding my breath for - above all other improvements/features, however desirable or fun they may be - is the ability to export book data and then reimport with a minimum of faff.
I know you're doing repeated backups now, so this isn't as essential as it once was... but let's just say it's a security blanket that would make me very happy indeed!
Hey Tim, email to your librarything address keeps getting returned (
timspalding@librarything.com>: connect to
mail.librarything.com[66.181.3.219]:
server dropped connection without sending the initial SMTP greeting
) so I am posting this as a comment:
I'm exporting my data to a CSV file and I'm noticing that some fields
are missing. Most notably, date started and date read, and the cover image
link. After last week's events I would really like to use this as a backup
and if the covers were in there, I could also create my own blog widget
displaying the books I want. Is there another way to get at this data?
Thanks for the postings about the CSV export. The long and short of it is this:
1. I am spending today devoted to another topic. LibraryThing has only one programmer—me—and barring serious system-wide problems, I need to set my schedule. I plan to bring out the new features tomorrow or Monday, and that will take some nose-to-the-grindstone work.
2. I would like to offer a better CSV export, including all fields and fixing the returns problem for PCs (it works on Macs, because of differences in how line-breaks work).
3. I don't think a true and full CSV export/import is going to happen. LibraryThing is a moving, changing entity. I make weekly changes to the database schema. If I allowed users to export and reimport CSV files I would need to an ever-expanding set of filters for LibraryThing data, embedded versioning data, etc.
4. In place of that, LibraryThing has the ISBN import. I can also add other imports that *use the existing retrieval system.* By this I mean that it could use the source field together with the ISBN/LCCN/ISSN fields, so books were brought back from the same place and using the same global unique identifier as they went in. This would bring the data back entirely, except for any changes users made to it. That's something I can look into, but about the best I can do.
Thanks for the response on the CSV report, Tim. I know you're prioritizing and the new 'works' feature is wonderful. And it doesn't need to include everything, but date-started and date-finished and date-acquired are important. I've started using LiveJournal to post comments and just link to them in LT because I already have a backup of LJ (using RSS).
Tim,
I like the "Work" implementation a lot. I just want to mention a small bug introduced, apparently, by the new features: when I use the pencil to edit a recently added book and then click "Submit," I get a whole new "Add Books" page, INCLUDING a new upper frame (the one with the navigation bar), below (rather than replacing) the existing upper frame/navigation bar.
Also, since I'm thinking of it (but this is completely separate from the current beta features): given that the beginnings of ISBN numbers can (IIRC) be used to identify publishers, one additional "fun statistic" would be to generate a ranked list of publishers represented in a user's library.
thanks again -- Patchen
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