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I'm a bit confused - i signed up to a membership thinking all of the 'unlimited' books I can have would be just that, complete books with all of the recipes. 75% of my books are not indexed and most are very very popular ones. Can I not search for recipes in them? If not, what purpose do they serve in my list? It's a bit disappointing as if a book is searchable to be added to my list, surely recipes need to be available too?!

By recipes I mean obviously the name and shopping list and not the actual recipe - i know I need to go to the book for that. Am I missing something? Can I do anything with these non-indexed books?

Now you got me confused, about how you counted that. When I look at your bookshelf, I see 54 of 104 books indexed - over half. Of the books with over 100 members (which we can safely assume are the more popular ones) 40 were indexed and 1 was not. I'd think that was a pretty good score.

Now, what to do with non-indexed books? Indexed books are more useful than non-indexed ones, it's true. Of course you can index the ones you really want indexed yourself. The other ones are catalogued - I do like to have a list of my cookbooks, although I do admit sites like LibraryThing are better if catalogueing is what you're after. You can also still make notes even if a book isn't indexed. But mainly, they are on hold. The main point of having unindexed books in your library is that when they become indexed, they are available to you rightaway and you don't have to keep checking if your books are being indexed.

EYB is a work in progress, but I definitely prefer an incomplete database to no database at all.

In addition to Wester’s comments, you can also request that a specific book be indexed. If very few other members own that book it is unlikely that it will ever be indexed by EYB, but you can offer to do the indexing yourself. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I have indexed several books in my collection that I really wanted to be able to search. https://support.eatyourb...st-a-book-to-be-indexed-

Thank you both - i might look into indexing some of my favourites then, I just didn't fully understand how it worked.

You're right, having some indexed is better than none. I actually started my own spreadsheet myself before discovering this site so at least indexing on here will serve more of a purpose! 

There are also many members like me who use the EYB advantage not only to find recipes and shop for ingredients. I have A LOT of cookbooks.  Each book is entered into my personal data base, indexed or not.  Each book is also tagged with a bookmark (or many bookmarks) of identifying features.  I can check on which books contain North African food (my ethnic bookmark), which are written by bloggers (online recipes), a favorite celebrity feature (I like how this person writes), etc.  The most important benefit is that I bookmark which location in my home houses that book...which room, which shelf, alongside whichever similar books (my own personal quasi-Dewey Decimal System).  Use EYB for more than grocery shopping.  Expand your horizons!

I joined EYB a few years ago and very few of mine were indexed so I let my membership go. This year I rejoined, and now have I'd say 65-70% of my books indexed. Some were slightly obscure and I was surprised and thrilled to find them indexed. I also keep a list of my books that don't appear here at all even as not indexed. I forget to look at them otherwise!

Stick with it, EYB is rapidly expanding its content :)

I just recently rejoined and second the explanations and others have posted, especially that if a book gets indexed they will automatically update your shelf.  

I had culled my cookbook collection severely when I moved and now I have 157 books of which 102 were indexed.  I picked one of my short unindexed books to give indexing myself a try.  If it goes well (easily) I will look over my unindexed and prioritize a few of my books which I use frequently.

Since I joined EYB, the ratio of indexed to unindexed books on my bookshelf has been 1:1, and it hasn't budged since. I buy cookbooks less often than I used to - I have enough recipes to last me at least three lifetimes with no repeats - and when I do buy a cookbook I buy it regardless of its index-worthiness. Between the indexed and unindexed books on my bookshelf there is a steep drop. With few exceptions, the indexed books have the number of bookshelves in 3 or 4 figures, and with few exceptions, the unindexed books have bookshelves numbering in 1 or 2 figures. (About three books have only 1 bookshelf - mine.) With all the big, important cookbooks always being published, these cookbooks are unlikely ever to be indexed unless I do it myself, when I get a new full-size computer. In the meantime I sometimes just consult the index of one of my unindexed books, trusting to luck.

EYB will always be a work in progress because new cookbooks are published every day. Our focus is on indexing new cookbooks and magazines since we have indexed most of the popular cookbooks from the last 40 years. Although we will continue to index older cookbooks that are on a lot of Bookshelves, it is unrealistic to expect we can ever index every cookbook that every member owns. There are almost 150,000 unindexed cookbooks in the Library - that's more than 25 million recipes.

Member volunteers continue to index their own cookbooks though for every newly indexed book there are at least 10 new unindexed books added to the Library. We will keep plugging away, increasing the indexed recipe count - now over 1.7 million recipes - but members should be realistic that their indexed books count may not increase as fast as they would like, especially if the books they own are older or not owned by many other members.

That many! You're right, EYB is going to be a work in progress forever and a day!