[Questions] Copying a manual add

Hi,

Just learning LibraryThing, which looks like it could be a really nice tool to manage my collection + wishlist :)

Trying to add a cute zine that I got at a hacker convention a few years ago. This: https://wizardzines.com/zines/strace/
I see that user E38IndyPLZines has already created a work for the zine, at Spying on Your Programs with Strace, by manually importing it (understandable, since the work is not for sale and perhaps not in any LT "sources").

I can't figure out how to "add" this work to my collection. If I press on "add" it prompts me to select a source - and none work, which is the reason why E38IndyPLZines had to manual add in the first place. I have an option to manual add myself, but that essentially prompts me to re-enter all the information that the other user had inputted themself. Is there a way for me to just add by copying all the information they manually added with? Am I misunderstanding something fundamental about how LT handles works?

Thank you in advance

You can only automatically add books to LibraryThing from sources, so the Add button just tries to find that work in a source. There's an Add Manually button at the bottom of the Add Books page, open the manual record you found in another tab and copy and paste the information from there into the form.

It depends on how comfortable you are using browser extensions. There's a script available for GreaseMonkey/TamperMonkey that allows you to press a button on another record and it creates a manual entry page with the basic information completed, and all you have to do is press save.

It's not perfect or complete (e.g. it doesn't include other authors), and it's a toss-up as to whether you need then to manually combine your new entry with the existing entry, and you will need to update to include your specific book details, but it's a huge timesaver when, say, you are entering a magazine series as individual issues (start with #1, get that right, then clone that record to create #2 and so on).

>1 mommyferina:

You seem to understand the setup fine, and as you have determined through experience "LibraryThing is not a source." The functionality you are looking for has been requested since the Dawn of the Thing, and Tim has been clear that it's not forthcoming. So you can use a workaround like >3 Maddz: Maddz proposes, or just go manual.

In any case, especially for books without ISBNs, you'll want to take that step of manually combining with the existing work in LT. If you're not sure how to do that, the Combiners group will help.

Thank you kindly for the answers! From what I understand LT is making a choice of not taking user-inputted information as authoritative, which seems like a fine stance even if it will lose some extra time for niche works every now and then :)

Yeah, that's about the size of it.

there is a longstanding update request which has not been actually rejected... maybe one of these decades... https://www.librarything.com/topic/160793#4351706

>5 mommyferina: I think you're the first person I've seen to accept Tim's decision as reasonable and you're explanation of it is better than Tim's

>8 jjwilson61:

I agree -- both with the explanation and with jjwilson61's assessment of the explanation. :-) When put in these terms, I think it a reasonable choice. Though I wish it were easier to make manual copies of my academic journals. But I've developed a trick even for that: Open two windows, one with the old entry and one with the new, and cut and paste everything except the volume number. :-)

My expedient for that is to use the old-fashioned library approach of a single record for all numbers of a journal, with the numbers specified in the comments field.

>10 paradoxosalpha: Well, that depends if you are checking for missing issues or whether you are lending out individual issues.

>10 paradoxosalpha: >11 Maddz:

Or if you want to write reviews or keep track of individual editors and other work level information. :)

>12 AnnieMod: Exactly. For the most part, I'm getting old issues of folklore journals, because folklore studies have "evolved" away from interest in traditional folk songs, which is my area. So what I'm doing is collecting older journals -- and very often I'll get a one-year or two-year collection, of which I only care about one or two numbers. I don't actually tag individual issues "interesting" and "uninteresting" :-) -- but I do need individual tags to know which ones to look at on particular topics.

>5 mommyferina: I have to smile at this a bit since LT does accept Amazon used book data which is notoriously bad with "ratty" coined to describe the bad data.

A well-edited member entry, whether completely manual or copied from a data source, is possibly more reliable.

I have used the "LT Add Books" extension in TamperMonkey on Chrome for many years. Often it is exactly what I need to duplicate one of my own entries when a variant edition is added. I don't use this for ISBN-era books so that data will not be contaminated. More often I have a 100-year-old book that I am working on.

When someone asks for this specific need, such as duplicating a periodical entry (which does not have issue-level ISBN or ISSN), using LT Copy Book is the best way to handle a power user's interest.

James