Add Books search can't find books in Overcat source that Site Search can

Hello! I'm trying to add Frank Herbert: Unpublished Stories to my collection of SF. The Add Books search with Overcat selected as the source cannot find this book. Searching the site using the "Search LibraryThing" text box with the exact same text finds it immediately. Even the "touchstones" capability while editing this message can see it .. but Add Books can't. ARGH!!! Any idea as to why this doesn't work from Add Books?

After years of adding thousands of books, the clumsiness of searching and inability to add books simply by clicking the provided "Add To Your Books" button and selecting from a list of known editions is frustrating, to the point of driving me to find another way to maintain my book catalog. The above case is an example of the same problem that occurs over and over .. I can't find a book in Add Books, so I search the site and find it immediately, there's a seemingly-convenient "Add To Your Books" button, and when you click it .. you're back to the ineffective search in Add Books that can't find it.

There have been discussions ad nauseum regarding LibraryThing's unwillingness to make the Add To Your Books button actually do what it says, or even change what it says to more accurately reflect what it does (auto-search for the book in Add Books). Fine. Will you please then fix your Add Books search so that it can find books that are in your own Overcat database?

Frustrated,

Dave

Overcat does not include books sourced from Amazon. That's why it doesn't find Frank Herbert: Unpublished Stories. It appears that everyone who has catalogued it used Amazon as a source.

Closing, as this is not a bug.

Try looking for the book in any of the libraries here:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/frank-herbert-unpublished-stories/oclc/957573751&...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/frank-herbert-four-unpublished-novels/oclc/957742...

Christchurch City Libraries is one of the sources on LT.

https://www.librarything.com/work/26001755/workdetails has 2 copied listed in LibraryThing BOTH Entered Manually and so should be in the Overcat database. I want to add this book to my library but the ONLY way it appears to be possible is to manually enter it. I have never been able to find a single book via OverCat. The Add Book Search should search the books in the internal LibraryThing database, not external sources.

>4 mbernardi: Overcat only includes results from searches of library sources. Neither Amazon nor manually entered books are included in Overcat.

Add Books specifically does not search the internal database because internal data is assumed to be less reliable than data from libraries. You may disagree but that's the choise the owner of this site went with.

Manually entered information is not in OverCat. This is not a bug.

Frankly, I am glad that OverCat is not filled up with other people's idea of how to enter a book, or with Amazon marketplace garbage. OverCat data is usually pretty good.

>7 MarthaJeanne: but is a requested enhancement https://www.librarything.com/topic/160793#4351706

The RSI is for a second database of manual entries, not for including manual entries in OverCat.

>9 MarthaJeanne: so it is - I forgot the details, thanks