Flash-mob! Catalog Graham Greene's Library

Starting today, let's see how quickly we can catalog ~2200 books from Graham Greene's library!

See the flash-mob wiki page for all the necessary info; use this thread for discussion/problems/&c. Have fun!

Thanks to all those who've cataloged some today! Still plenty of sections, so if you want to help out, jump in!

for anyone thinking about it : this is a super easy one to do. The entries we're working from are easy to work with, no badly scanned pdfs with too many abbreviations. ;) and Overcat is making it a dream. Put in author, word from title, publisher, year and it's been right there for all 50 I did.

Most are even accessible by ISBN.

brilliant! didn't even think of that. I'm a bit suspicious I'll get the wrong year, but I'll try it.

Yeah, for anything pre-ISBN (early '70s or so) it won't work, but for the later stuff it should work fine.

Oops.

So, now I'm myself again.

That was fun! Cataloguing, yeah!

:-)

I want to help but I don't understand this instruction: 4. If there are comments in the book record under "Local note," adapt them to the LT record ("Signed by Greene" &c.). Look over the previously-added books to get a sense of this.

I found a book that has been added which does have comments under Local note, but could not find anything in the LT record that corresponds.

Sorry - that just means add what it says there into the Comments field in a way that makes sense (see the catalog for examples).

Got it. The catalog view was different so I didn't see the comments section. Thanks.

Yeah, I've set the suggested style to display that now.

Have there been extra books added? I was trying to do my section 1051 and there's suddenly totaly different books there. Have I done something daft?

Just having trouble logging in with the log in information. Not accepting it for some reason.

>14 barpurple: Other people may be adding from their sections at the same time ...?

>15 Wabbit98: You mean you're not able to log into the Greene account? Or something different?

Sorry for the short replies; internet's out so I'm typing on the iPhone.

# 14-16 - That would be me but I did entirely different sections, so it shouldn't be a problem. The books show up in the catalogue on LT, of course.
#15 - login is "GrahamGreene" (without the blank between Graham and Greene that is mentioned on the wiki-page). The rest worked fine for me. Have fun!
ETA: I've fixed the login on the wiki. I hope that's OK?

Someone else has also been doing part of the third group - which I started then stopped last night. #367 has been entered (and I think wrongly - I put in the cased edition, they apparently put in the paperback. Though it's the same ISBN according to Add Books) before I did. I also put in the comments, which are blank on the other person's entry. Someone trying to be helpful...I guess.

>18 GrahamGreene: - 367 being Slavov, Mr. Lampedusa has vanished?

Whoops. Excuse me. I think maybe it was mis-sorted for me...I went through the steps in the wiki and got a completely different book for #367 (and #366 now matches the last one I did). Never mind.

The one I re-entered was Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Almost at the End. I still think my entry is better - but one of them definitely needs to be deleted.

Yeah, to all: the URLs to the results may not "stick," so beware of that. Make sure the total results are 2518 at all times, and that you're working in reverse chrono order (if all else fails, check the first authors of your section and the next section so you know you're in the right place). Someday OPACs will have decent permalinks ...

Updated to add that I've reset the URLs again, they seem to be working at the moment but they only seem to last for twelve hours or so.

Boy, am I glad I stopped last night when I did. The first lot, last night's work, was all easy - ISBNs with an occasional question as to edition. The next bit - what I've just done - I had 3-4 manual entries, including one that doesn't exactly have an author...I put the only person mentioned in the author field as a contributor, since it says "textes de Jean-Luc Chalumeau, et al...". Stopping again - hopefully the next lot will be easy again.

>22 GrahamGreene: - Heh yeah I found that too, I'd get a good stretch and then suddenly have a slog through four or five, then back to smooth sailing again for a while.

My last one - LT actually had a bug on it. Manual entry of Bernard Shaw & Max Beerbohm at Covent Garden - as I hit Save it occurred to me that it has two authors (contributors), not none. But when I went to edit it, it's not showing up in GG's library. I can get to it from Add Books - aha, I can edit it straight from there. But clicking on the title on Add Books gets me to a work page with one member, Graham Greene, owning the book - and the green & pink plus buttons. It doesn't show up either by searching or by sorting in Your Books either.

I've added the two authors (as contributors). And it has magically appeared in Your Books. I dunno - just time (though the other 49 books all showed up as soon as I entered them, manually or otherwise), or some problem with the missing author (though I entered other books without an author). Something. That may have been the only one manually entered with no author.

What an odd thing! I was entering my section of Greene's library and had the privilege to enter The unveiling of Lhasa by Edmund Candler. The local note read: "autograph: Alfred H. Burlinson, 9 Grace Terrace, Sunderland, 1910 ; stamped: Alfred Burlinson"

Alfred Burlinson was my grandfather!

The one and same? Crazy!! Go buy a lottery ticket right now.

Ooh, what a wonderful surprise!

So I just started at 1201, Graves which appeared to not have been claimed by anyone else. Unfortunately, the first two books I entered have already been entered but not in the right edition - I have checked the Burns library catalogue and it seems to me there are not duplicate books in greene's library so something is wrong - help!

>28 rdurie:. Gah. Looks like someone added them (incorrectly). I've deleted them; you should be good to go ahead now (after those you should be seeing four Greene titles followed by a Halberstam).

>29 jbd1: thanks, working fine now

# 28 - Please be careful because there are duplicate books in Greene's library (though maybe not the ones you mentioned). I came across 3 of them which I checked (e.g. Swami and friends by Narayan). They were different editions though.

>31 GrahamGreene: - Yeah the two rdurie found were not true duplicates (i.e. different editions). But there sure are quite a few multiples!

I'm often intrigued about the duplicates in members' libraries -- not just the legacy libraries. It's one of the many interesting things available on the "statistics/memes" link. Sometimes it's pretty clear cut as to the motive for duplication -- e.g., different translations, different textual versions, editorial apparatus, presence/absence of illustration, etc. But at times it's not so clear. For example, Greene has the 1960 version of Ulysses and also the "corrected" (but infamously so) version of 1986 edited by Hans Walter Gabler. That's easy enough to understand. But why 3 different editions of Henry James's The Sacred Fount? An early reviewer called this book a ""brilliantly stupid piece of work," and even James thought so little of it that he didn't even include it in the famous "New York Edition" of his collected works. Brooding over why this book seemed to have such special appeal to Greene is an absorbing, if futile, pastime.

Maybe people kept giving it to him for Christmas?

Done and I really enjoyed that, some fascinating books, even one or two I have!

>35 GrahamGreene: like others before I posted as Mr Greene without thinking! I also found myself adding his books to my own library on one occasion!

All the sections are now claimed. If you've claimed a section and need help finishing, let us know. I've got some other Legacy news to blog this week so it would be good to note the completion of this one when that happens.
Thanks!

I just went through and finished up the claimed sections, and find that we're short ~30 titles. If you marked your section done and weren't actually done, can you please let me know?
Thanks!

Strike that. Found the missing titles.

Is it safe?

Safe? :-)

Sorry, that was pretty obscure, wasn't it? I meant is the collection finished? Do you need any help filling gaps?

Heh. No worries. Nope, I just finished off the last few, so we're all set! Thanks, everyone, for your help! Blog post going up this afternoon for this and some other LLs news.

Oh, nice. Someone (Jeremy?) finished mine. Well, that was easy! :)

Yes, finished yours. I figured you had enough to do.

Do we need a link from Greene's author page to the legacy library page?

>46 jburlinson: - I wonder where that's gone wandering off to. It used to be there ... checking.

Hmm. Should reappear shortly. At some point somebody had split the Graham Greene author page, so the Legacy badge was on a (non-existent) page. Once they regenerate (I think it's every hour) it should be back.

There's now a "walk through the stacks" in Burns Library where this collection is held. Could add a few cover images...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bc-burnslibrary/sets/72157632648054831/with/843114...

Graham Greene's legacy library profile page doesn't have a comment wall, so I'm posting this here in the hope the library's Keeper will pick it up:

The comments on your copy of R. G. Collingwood's An autobiography - "1964 printing / autographed by Graham Greene / copious notes throughout in Greene's writing / annotated index at back - also written by Greene" - have found their way to the work's 'Book description' field, rather than to your catalogue's 'Comments' field, as per your other books. You might want to cut and paste it over before someone deletes it as inapplicable to the title as a whole.