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Friday, February 12, 2010, by Administrator

900th indexed cookbook

We added our 900th indexed cookbook - Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques which brings the total number of indexed recipes on EYB to almost 215,000. We have a lot of new features we are planning to add to EYB in coming months - one of our priorities is a form to allow members to index their own cookbooks if they wish.

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13 comments for “900th indexed cookbook”

  1. Gravatar of Debbie Piper
    Debbie Piper on 2/12/2010 at 11:12:38 PM

    Congratulations! I've been wanting a master cookbook index for my books for ages and finally just found you. I LOVE this idea. I'd like to be able to print a hard copy of "my library" and to be able to share it online with other members. I'd also like to be able to print a hard copy of my favorite recipe titles. Thanks.

  2. Gravatar of Jane
    Jane on 2/13/2010 at 9:26:20 AM

    A new feature is in the works that will allow you to abbreviate My Bookshelf and search results (book title/author for books and recipe name/book tile for recipes) which you can then print out. It is one of many new features we have planned so it will be a few weeks before it is up. When you say "share it online" do you mean by copying the data or by providing a link to that page?

  3. Gravatar of monica
    monica on 2/14/2010 at 11:04:32 PM

    Congratulations on indexing your 900th cookbook!

    I know a lot of my cookbooks were sold regionally in the United States and will likely never be indexed by your service. I look forward to a form that will allow me to input indexing. Better yet would be if the EYB software read a scanned indexed page and performed the indexing magic. Manually keying recipe titles and ingredients would be a time-consuming task.

  4. Gravatar of Jane
    Jane on 2/14/2010 at 11:30:47 PM

    I think magic would be the right word if we could just scan a page and the recipe details would be entered into the database. The problem is that every cookbook formats recipes in different ways. Some recipes don't list ingredients but incorporate them into the recipe text. The ingredients list has far more information than we need for the database e.g. "1/2 cup of toasted walnuts, finely chopped" requires only one word for the ingredients list, walnuts. Also a scanner can't categorize the recipe in ethnicity, recipe type, meal/course, special diet, occasion. Yes, manually keying the recipe titles, ingredients and categories is very time consuming but we haven't yet found a way to automate it. But if lots of EYB members each do a little bit then we could end up with a great shared resource.

  5. Gravatar of Anne Crain
    Anne Crain on 2/15/2010 at 12:08:30 AM

    I just love reading all you will be doing in the future. Having been a bookseller before this is right up my alley. When I found the web site and understood all it could do for me now I had a big "Well, why didn't I think of that" moment. Great work Ladies.
    I have spent the better part of my day cataloging my cookbooks with EYB. Can't wait to actually use it every day or week.
    Something I would find helpful would be if you could enter more than one book at a time by ISBN. Being able to list mutiple books at one time would save some time.
    Give your self a big pat on the back for me , or should that be a big hug?

  6. Gravatar of Jane
    Jane on 2/15/2010 at 8:21:27 AM

    Thank you Anne - your support is greatly appreciated. Please spread the word to all your friends and family who love to cook! The entire Adding books to your Bookshelf process is being revamped - we'll look into multiple entry of ISBN's. The issue I foresee there is the potential for mis-entering data on the ISBN - it's very easy when entering 10 or 13 digits to make a mistake. So you would probably need to get a confirmation list of the books you have just entered, which may not then save time over individual book entry. We'll give it some thought.

  7. Gravatar of Erica
    Erica on 2/21/2010 at 8:10:39 PM

    I am a first-time EYB user, and I am so excited! It took me most of this weekend to enter all of my cookbooks, but I already used the recipe-search feature tonight for dinner. I simply searched for "fish fillets", and it gave me over 40 different options. I made a really great "fish taco" recipe, and the family raved about it. Just a couple of comments... I LOVE the idea of allowing users to index their other cookbooks, because (just like Monica stated above) I have several local cookbooks (spiral bound, group publications, etc.) that I would love to include in "My Bookshelf" with EYB. I guess my only comment is that out of the 101 cookbooks that EYB recognized of mine, only 30 have been indexed. Do you have employees that index cookbooks all week long? I'm just curious what the turn-around time is for an average-size cookbook to be indexed. How many are typically done per month? I am a teacher, and I can't wait to tell all of my co-workers about your website! I am currently doing the 30-day free trial, but I'm sure I will pay for a lifetime subscription as long as requested cookbooks are indexed frequently. Thanks for thinking of such a brilliant idea, ladies!

  8. Gravatar of Jane
    Jane on 2/21/2010 at 10:05:28 PM

    We are so pleased you are enjoying EYB, Erica. You will discover lots of new recipes you never realized you had. The process of indexing the world's cookbooks will take time but once we open up the inputting to members we should see the number of indexed books increasing rapidly. EYB will of course continue indexing new cookbooks and top requested books. We do have indexers who are completing indexed cookbooks all the time. For example just this evening I have just added Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller ( which I know a lot of members have been waiting for), Heirloom Beans by Steve Sando and a couple of older books, Cold Weather Cooking by Sarah Leah Chase and Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café. So you will see more of your cookbooks being indexed over time. Even with only 30 of your books being indexed so far, this gives you more than 10,000 recipes to search in - imagine having to do that manually!

  9. Gravatar of Andrea
    Andrea on 3/3/2010 at 8:44:07 PM

    I just finished inputting over 500 cookbooks (another 150 or so weren't even in the library because I'm so random) and Jane, this service is a life-changer. I love experimenting with different ingredients, but then always end up with leftovers I don't know what to do with. Now I just type in "white miso" and find 6 recipes to use it up!

    Have you thought about offering a user-indexing program? People could index one book in exchange for say, a month of free service or something. Then we could even get some of those more obscure books put in. Just a thought!

  10. Gravatar of Jane
    Jane on 3/3/2010 at 10:34:48 PM

    We are so pleased that EYB is doing exactly the job it is intended to do - make your life easier!
    We are going to introduce a member indexing feature on EYB. You will then be able to choose to index whichever of your books you want to. We hope this will become a great collaborative effort so everyone should see more and more of their cookbooks being indexed. EYB will still be indexing new cookbooks as they are released and indexing the top index requested books.

  11. Gravatar of Diane
    Diane on 3/6/2010 at 7:18:44 AM

    I love your idea of members indexing books themselves. As a French- and English-speaking Montrealer, many of the cookbooks I own were originally written in French and are not included in your library. I have raved about EYB to everyone, with the only caveat being that books catering to a specific population such as mine would not be found on EYB.
    I have been trying out your website for free, but this latest news has convinced me to join.
    Keep up the good work, ladies!

  12. Gravatar of Erica
    Erica on 4/2/2010 at 10:24:35 PM

    I have a question regarding your newly indexed cookbooks. For some reason, I can't seem to figure out how you add them to your list... Do you type the latest additions at the top or bottom? Sorry, but I can't seem to figure out the method. I'd really like to be able to see them in order of indexing, and if at all possible, dated with the index date.

  13. Gravatar of Jane
    Jane on 4/3/2010 at 1:26:18 PM

    The newly indexed books have the most recently added at the top of the list. So as we do updates, you will always see the new additions first when you open Latest 100 Indexed. We are currently revamping the search process and part of that will be that you can choose just indexed books to review and sort them by Date indexed (or by title or author if you prefer). You will then be able to add books to your Bookshelf directly from the indexed books which is not possible currently. The three lists currently available, which were a rough-and-ready quick fix until the search was revamped, will then no longer be required.

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