[bksvol-discuss] Re: curious about Latest books

  • From: "Roger Loran Bailey" <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 20:05:09 -0400

Let me reiterate a suggestion I made at an earlier time. I think it would be very good to institute a member generated tag system modeled on the one at Open Library. The tag could be many things and could effectively increase the number of categories tremendously. If later viewers of the metadata of a particular book deemed a tag as being inappropriate then they could remove them too. If a catalog entry was bereft of categories then a person who is looking at it could just add the categories on the spot. Then there could be a special field on the advanced search form to enter a possible tag to search for all books in the collection that were so tagged. There might also be a combo box from which one could choose from the most popular tags. I am thinking of this as an augmentation of the current categories, but I do note that Open Library uses that system entirely for categorization.



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----- Original Message ----- From: "Mayrie ReNae" <mayrierenae@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 3:27 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: curious about Latest books


HI Denise,

We are actually working on getting volunteer help with categorization of PQ
books.  And engineering staff knows about the problem too and solutions on
that front are being worked on too.

When we iron out all the logistics of how best to employ volunteers in
tandem with staff, either via this list,  or in-house to categorize books,
I'll definitely let you all know!

Mayrie

 _____

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Denise Thompson
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 12:07 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: curious about Latest books


Thanks Mary
I'm glad staff is aware of the problem. It definitely starts to impact
Bookshares effectiveness though if readers can't find books. Yes we can
check a favorite author, but that's very limiting. There's no way to know
about potential new books we might be interested in and new authors to
choose from. Isn't there some way volunteers could work on categorizing the books? With the current situation, members aren't able to take advantage of
the progress being made from publishers greatly increasing the numbers of
books in the collection. The odd twist is that when we were scanning them
ourselves we actually had more books available because we could at least
identify them.
Denise

At 10:56 PM 9/6/2011, you wrote:


Hi Denise,

You're right.  Publisher quality books are not categorized.  They're
automatically put into the collection after being cleaned up, and converted
to daisy and braille by Bookshare's conversion tools.  The choosing of
categories seems to be something that requires the human touch at this
point.

I guess the only way you could know about new books is to search by authors
that you know write frequently in a particular genre.

Staff is very aware of this problem, and we're working on getting it fixed
so that PQ books will have categories.  We just don't know how that will
happen yet.  But we do know it's a pain in the neck not to have categories
for books and want that to change too!

Mayrie




 _____

From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [
<mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Denise Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 5:19 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] curious about Latest books

Hi Folks
I'm cuious about how books are being added to the collection these days. I
have a link set up to bring up the latest books to the collection in the
categories of mistery and thrillers, romance, lit and fiction and westerns. It seems like now for quite a while we can go for days without any new books showing up. It stays the same. Yet I thought we were getting all these books added from publishers. So my question is are they just added and they aren't
given dates or I've checked a number of them and they weren't categorized.
So that's maybe why they don't show up. The new books must be being added
some where. Like for example, Alter of bones has been the book on the top of
my list and it hasn't changed since last thursday. And Justice by Karen
Robards never did show up on my latest book list. I found it because I
periodically look up favorite authors and see if their new book is there
when I know it has come out and haven't seen it yet. Justice was in the
collection and apparently came from the publisher. It was submitted by
bookshare staff it says and it was not categorized. That's probably why it
didn't show up. So if all of the books aren't being categorized how are we
supposed to find them Especially if we don't always know the exact name,
etc.
Denise



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