Adding Several Similar Books Manually

My library is such that I often have to add books manually; either there's no ISBN *or* Library of Congress number, *or* whatever number the book has isn't recognized by any search source I've tried.

Today I'm adding 5 in a row - volumes 1-5 in a series. Same authors, same publisher, same media, similar titles. The only real differences are the precise title, and the publication year.

This isn't the first time I've added a sequence of books manually, having several common fields - and had to retype everything. (Or keep a copy of the desired field values somewhere else, and cut-n-paste each one individually.)

I very much want some means of either duplicating an existing book into the "add book manually" form (https://www.librarything.com/addnew.php), or even better, having "save" on the "add books manually" form *not* erase that form and taking me back to the main add books screen (https://www.librarything.com/addbooks), where I have to scroll to the bottom, click the "add manually" button, and then retype everything. For an even more perfect UI, add a button on the "add book manually" form to clear all content, in case of adding a series of totally unrelated books.

Thanks for considering this.

>1 ArlieS:

Knowing examples of the books might lead one to find one of the 6,000 data sources which include them. You don't have to look up a book by its number (ISBN, LCCN, etc.) even though that is an easy route. You can search for items like author, title words, and publisher words like this:

Montgomery, Avonlea, Grosset

This would pull up listings for Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery that were published by Grosset & Dunlap. It is more specific than listing all of the variations that are out there.

As far as data sources go, since my books are mostly from the U.S., I start with Library of Congress. If that fails, I look to OverCat, the LibraryThing database of records imported by other members from libraries. If a book is very new, I might use Amazon as a source. When a book is from another country, I look for sources that are relevant to the book. OverCat is one you should try for many books.

Although it is very unlikely that your request will become part of the LT system (it has been requested many times before), there is an unofficial way to achieve it. To do so you'd need to be willing and able to:

• Install a Chrome plugin called TamperMonkey or a Firefox plugin called GreaseMonkey. This allows you to run custom Javascript code on web pages with particular URL patterns. In this case a book detail page on LT.


• Install a script for this plugin called LT Copy Book. The script takes most values from a book detail page and copies them to an empty Manual Entry form on LT. This can be edited before adding to your catalog or it can be edited afterward.

There is a group called Hacking LibraryThing which has occasional posts about ways to use LT beyond what is officially available. This script is one of the better products of this group.

The script will let you find a listing in your own or another member's catalog and copy most of the fields to the form to effectively duplicate the listing.

Otherwise, the standard behavior of the green "Add Book" button is to do a title search which rarely comes up with useful results if there are many copies.

James

Alternatively, you can use the import feature to import from CSV. Use Excel (or your favorite alternative) to create a file based on the sample.

>2 Keeline: My older books were mostly purchased in Canada, so they come from a mix of British, American, Canadian and French publishers. I use Overcat for my first search. When that fails, I have alternates for each of those countries. But they too often come up empty.

I'll take a look at the Hacking Library Thing group, and the LT Copy Book script. It sounds like a good solution. (Though I'll probably have to upgrade whatever ancient version of Firefox I have on this Mac; I haven't used it in rather a long time.) Thank you.

>3 IrrationalDM: You know, I'd completely forgotten that feature existed, if I ever noticed it at all.

When I joined library thing 8 years ago, I imported the books I'd already catalogued in my previous system, but I did so using a simple-minded method that extracted ISBNs and added the book if the ISBN was recognized - unfortunately without any of the other info I'd recorded about the book.

I either missed that CSV import was possible, or chose not to take the time to convert my existing records to CSVs. Or perhaps CSV import is a new feature, that didn't exist in 2014.

Or, if you're comfortable with doing so, use the GreaseMonkey/TamperMonkey scripts to 'clone' the initial record. That 'clones' a book record (yours or another member) by pre-populating a manual add form with some (but not all) fields from the book details page. Tweak as you see fit, and then hit the add book button.

It saved me a great deal of time last summer when I was adding comic book series as individual issues not the trade paperbaxks.