Can't open my library!!

Hello everyone.

My name is Pedro, a computer science student from Portugal who has a thing for books. You can read more in my profile.
So, I'm kinda new to this website and saw many people commenting on how poor was the data about portuguese books. I saw it for myself and I saw there was quite a demand for portuguese books and the means to search them were already on this website. The problem was the amount of books missing.
With that said, I thought of helping everyone by getting huge amounts of data trough my scripts and feed them to library thing, which made me get *over 50.000 new books in portuguese*.
Now, 1 week after this work my library has almost 500.000 books, which makes it the biggest library on librarythings by far :D

The thing is: Personally, I don't want that. I don't win anything by having this is in my library, but i thought by putting them in my library that would put new books with at least one member, as I was afraid they would not get added if there were no members to them.

So I'm here to ask two things:

1. Is it possible for any developer of this website to wipe my library, but making sure the books stay in the database for everyone (including portuguese people) to enjoy and have a easier life?

I don't want to cause trouble to the website performance, as I get many fatal errors while trying to move around the website inside my account.

2. For further reference can I search ISBNS and add them to librarything without adding them to my library? If not that would be very sad :(

From the LibraryThing terms of service: https://www.librarything.com/privacy
- LibraryThing is for your books—books you own, have read or want. It would not be appropriate to fill your LibraryThing catalog with all the books in your local library or Project Gutenberg.
- Except by permission or through an authorized API, you may not add to or query your library automatically. See our APIs.

It does seem like what you're doing is against the terms of service.

If you would like to improve Portuguese data on LibraryThing, I'd suggest something like:
- Suggest Portuguese sources for LibraryThing to pull data from (when users add books to their library, they are added from outside sources, not from LibraryThing itself)
- Add more information to Portuguese works that are already on the site, such as publication date, characters, locations, original languages, credited translators, etc.
- Help translate the site into Portuguese (head to https://pt.librarything.com/ and hit "Traduza!" in the upper right corner)
- Use the site as intended, to catalog books you own, have read or want

A few notes in addition to what >2 norabelle414: already said.

1. If the book is NOT in someone's library, it becomes a zero-copy work (which essentially means that it is not findable and usable by almost anything but if the data is bad (mixed ISBNs, badly formatted titles and so on, it becomes a nightmare when it combines to something else)). So if your library is wiped, the records for the books will be gone; the works will remain as zero-copies or inside of bigger works if they combined.

2. LT is not a repository of book records someone found online (or somewhere else) but a combination of its members' libraries. You CANNOT add a book into LT directly - you add it to your library and that makes it part of LT. So you won't be able to search for ISBNs and add the to LT without having them in a library (and adding and deleting regularly is a problem - see the above note on zero-copies).

In addition... LT cannot be used as a source when someone adds a book. Even if you add every Portuguese book under the sun, someone who wants to add the same book CANNOT use the record. We are not like Goodreads where you find a record inside of GR and add it to your library and where they try to list every edition under the sun. LT does not even have editions layer - if you open a book record, it may not even mention what language it may be in (for example) and you cannot find a list of all editions of a certain book. Here all books are either found in an external source or added manually. The Work is a combination of all versions of the same book added by someone. That's it.

I understand that you thought you were doing something good but before you start doing things like that, spend some time on the site you are about to attack/spam (despite your protestations, your work can be actually defined with either of these terms), read the terms of service of the site (you agreed to them but you apparently never read them when you joined) and understand how the site works before you start doing things and messing up with the site data. You do something like that in a real work situation, you probably are going to be looking for another job at that point. Just saying. :)

PS: https://www.librarything.com/topic/344095#7928916 - if this import was yours, then you also made everyone's life very hard over the weekend. If it was not you, then add that to "things I should never do".

Thanks for your detailed answer!

I understand all of that, but thought I would be able to do what I am doing by using a organizational account instead of a personal one. Either way I am ceasing all my activities right now. I had no intention in breaking the terms of service.

I'll continue to help the community by the ways you described.

Once again, thank you!

>4 bookfinderapp: https://www.librarything.com/organizations

"Organizational accounts are limited to a total of 20,000 books."

:) So back to "read the rules of service before doing things or you will end up stepping on someone's toes and/or feet".

Send an email to LT so someone can assist you (https://www.librarything.com/contact has all contact details) and they should be able to work with you and get your data straightened out in the way they preferred it done). They do show up in Talk but for things like that, contact them directly.

>4 bookfinderapp: One thing we could certainly use help with is finding working Z39.50 protocol connection details for copy cataloging from Lusophone libraries. For any in the list of existing sources which are broken ((ETA hit the "Show/hide broken sources" toggle in the list that pops up when you click "Add from 4,967 sources" beneath the "Add to your books" field to see the list)), or any others you can think of, it would help if you could contact their technical librarians and inquire whether they can provide working details. For instance, Biblioteca Municipal Camilo Castelo Branco used to use Millennium (which we knew how to connect to) but now uses Gestão Integrada de Bibliotecas. (per https://librarytechnology.org/library/10889). It's not clear (at least to me) whether this type of system supports Z39.50 connections and, if so, what the default connection details might look like (or, indeed, whether this particular library is making use of any support that might exist).

We are hoping to support SRU connections in the future as well, so if a library supports SRU, those connection details may also prove useful.

When people add books by searching quality data sources like libraries, those records are copied into Overcat, which does indeed make adding the same books easier going forward. So helping us address our shortage of Portuguese sources (and then spreading the word about the site so people add their libraries!) is the best way you can help in the way you intended.

>6 davidgn: I'm more than available to help with that. I went to gib (Gestão Integrada de Bibliotecas) and found a list of all the modules they offered. Between them was the phrase "Client and server Z39.50" which I am assuming means it is Z39.50 available. As far as I can tell is the only library in Portugal that uses this system so I don't know if it is good to spend the efforts on it. I saw many using Koha or Koha -- Independent, Horizion, BIBLIObase and ALEPH 500 which can be a better approach.

I don't understand quite fully how the search for z39.50 works but I'm more than available to help with anything, even if it is contacting portuguese libraries like you said.

Once again sorry for my past mistakes and I hope I can bring help to librarythings in the future.

Also, many of these books in Portuguese will belong in works with books in other languages, but the computer can't know that. In order for the books to be properly combined, somebody has to do it manually for each book. Are you planningon being that somebody?

>7 bookfinderapp: Sent you a message. I do appreciate the offer, and I hope staff will take it into account. You've definitely highlighted a genuine issue, and I'm going to try to give some love to the Portuguese sources in coming days and weeks. Any help with that would be welcome.

>7 bookfinderapp: Also, given that you're building up a bibliographic database of your own, depending on the source and quality of the data, if you were willing to set up a Koha or FOLIO server or the like and to serve the records in a standard MARC format, you might be able to stand up an external source that would be searchable via Z39.50 and that we could integrate into Add Books. Again, if the records are quality, that could a helpful way forward.

>8 MarthaJeanne: You speak as though that were a problem. They'll get combined all the faster the more usable we make LT for Portuguese speakers.

>9 davidgn: Ok, i'll look up your message when I get home

>1 bookfinderapp: Hi Pedro,

I emailed you on Monday afternoon (from kristiATlibrarything.com) about your account and with other ways you could help on the site. Please have a look at your Gmail and let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

Best,
Kristi at LT

If you thought new books wouldn't get added if they didn't have any members, how did you think you would be able to add them? Your explanation doesn't hold water.

As you realized you caused a great deal of trouble. Maybe you should have asked first rather than breaking the site and then coming up with this half-baked explanation.

>14 kristilabrie: I sent you a private message. Thank you!

>15 lorax: If that was so direct there wouldn't be a checkbox stating I could import books and not add them to my library. If I disabled it and imported them, without them having me as their only member, would they just go to void?
It was not that simple, so there was a reason for doing it as I was not sure what would happen. Either way sorry if my actions harmed the usage of the website for you in any way.

>17 bookfinderapp: "If that was so direct there wouldn't be a checkbox stating I could import books and not add them to my library."

Where did you see that checkbox? Because either something is written in a weird way or you misread something. You cannot import books which are not added to your library.

Are you by any chance mistaking the collection "Your Library" with your complete library. You can indeed import into any collection inside of your library, they do not need to go into "Your Library" - you can add them to any other out of the box or custom collection.

>17 bookfinderapp: I think that meant LibraryThing's import system had read those records and was storing them. (Temporarily, for the import perhaps?)

>18 AnnieMod: If you try to import something, for example from a website, it appears checkboxes saying "Your collections". If I disable all of them and try to import, supposedly it tries to import anyways.

That's why I was saying that. English is not my native language, so I could be mistaken.

>20 bookfinderapp: The only place that any books can be added to is a user's catalog. There is no where else. If you uncheck all of the collections it will just put them in a "collection" called "no collection".

>21 norabelle414: Oh, ok. That makes sense now. Thank you for the information