Finding When a Book Came Out - Why Isn't this Easy?
TalkTalk about LibraryThing
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1ArlieS
LibraryThing can be very unhelpful when you want to know when a work came out. If you are lucky, someone has put it in Common Knowledge for the work.
But otherwise, even if there's only been one edition of the work, the only way to get its publication date seems to be to add the edition. Consider this work: https://www.librarything.com/work/693691 I wanted to know if it was recent enough to be worth tracking down and reading.
No dates in Common Knowledge or Work Details. No "edit your book" section, which would most likely have the info for a particular book, *if* I owned it. (Of course in that case I could look at the title page; I mostly want this information for books I do *not* own.)
The editions page informs me that there are 5 "editions", all of them with ISBN 0195179390. I.e. there's actually one edition, but the LT system somehow created 5.
But there's no way for me to see the "book" page for any of these 5 presumably-identical "editions". I can't do anything with this list but separate some of these "editions" from the work. (Not a good idea; they're obviously the same work.)
The closest I've been able to get to a publication date is looking at the dates on the member reviews; the earliest is Oct 2, 2006.
Goodreads, on the other hand, tells me "first published in January 1, 2005". Moreover, it does it on the first page I see after a search by title. (I'm not counting GR's repeated attempts to get me to login or create an account, which I closed/ignored.)
This is, of course, a fairly common case - only one edition, with the publication and copyright dates essentially the same, so the date on the edit-your-book page would have given me what I wanted.
The other case - lots and lots of editions - is much harder, because there are many dates, and it's hard to know what the user wants. Fortunately books in that group tend to have a filled out common knowledge section.
Is there any way we could make this information available to people who might e.g. be looking at a recommendation and wondering whether to acquire the book, at least for the simple (single edition) case?
Is it in fact present in some tab I didn't try? Or perhaps behind some field that doesn't show as clickable in my browser?
But otherwise, even if there's only been one edition of the work, the only way to get its publication date seems to be to add the edition. Consider this work: https://www.librarything.com/work/693691 I wanted to know if it was recent enough to be worth tracking down and reading.
No dates in Common Knowledge or Work Details. No "edit your book" section, which would most likely have the info for a particular book, *if* I owned it. (Of course in that case I could look at the title page; I mostly want this information for books I do *not* own.)
The editions page informs me that there are 5 "editions", all of them with ISBN 0195179390. I.e. there's actually one edition, but the LT system somehow created 5.
But there's no way for me to see the "book" page for any of these 5 presumably-identical "editions". I can't do anything with this list but separate some of these "editions" from the work. (Not a good idea; they're obviously the same work.)
The closest I've been able to get to a publication date is looking at the dates on the member reviews; the earliest is Oct 2, 2006.
Goodreads, on the other hand, tells me "first published in January 1, 2005". Moreover, it does it on the first page I see after a search by title. (I'm not counting GR's repeated attempts to get me to login or create an account, which I closed/ignored.)
This is, of course, a fairly common case - only one edition, with the publication and copyright dates essentially the same, so the date on the edit-your-book page would have given me what I wanted.
The other case - lots and lots of editions - is much harder, because there are many dates, and it's hard to know what the user wants. Fortunately books in that group tend to have a filled out common knowledge section.
Is there any way we could make this information available to people who might e.g. be looking at a recommendation and wondering whether to acquire the book, at least for the simple (single edition) case?
Is it in fact present in some tab I didn't try? Or perhaps behind some field that doesn't show as clickable in my browser?
2davidgn
Good observations. The way things are set up, you basically have to add it to see whatever "green-text" data there might be. Might make sense to make the (ETA: original) pub dates more visible to browsers. This might be worth reposting in https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/559/Recommend-Site-Improvements
4MarthaJeanne
You can always look at a member's entry and check there.
You can go to WorldCat or Library of Congress and see what they say.
You can go to WorldCat or Library of Congress and see what they say.
5SandraArdnas
You can also just search for the book and look at library data without actually adding it. All the data can be seen without adding the book, plus some that isn't imported into LT.
