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I’m a little surprised that those who wouldn’t find partial indexing to be beneficial are so vocal about not wanting it. I’ve tried to make it very clear that ideally this would be filterable so if you don’t like it, you need never see it. Why stop others having something they would find useful just because you don’t want it. I don’t understand that kind of thinking.

On the other hand, for at least some of us, it would seem like this could be very helpful. I have no way of knowing the numbers of how many people would benefit from it but there must be a reasonable amount.

Personal indexing could partially solve this for me but why not share my efforts with others and I in turn, would hopefully benefit from other’s efforts. Rivergait’s ‘analysis’ of my books overlap with others is interesting but if I index the books why not share that with those ‘less than 25’ and ‘less than 10’? That’s what community is about, surely?

I don’t see that it’s relevant that I’ve been a member for only 3 months. I love the service and am happy to go on paying for it. I’m just thinking of ways it could be improved for myself and hopefully others.

Originally Posted by: joesan

if I index the books why not share that with those ‘less than 25’ and ‘less than 10’? That’s what community is about, surely?

Exactly why I started member indexing ..there is perhaps no "other way" that my less popular books especially older ones were going to get done.. many of the books that I have MI had less than 20 shelves when I started back in 2011.. now I see that several of them have many more shelves .. one is sitting at 310 shelves now! Others at over 200 shelves..others still sit at under 5!

From little things big things grow...

Whiling away an hour a day eventually gets the book indexed completely!!

Originally Posted by: Cati

Why not just use the existing facilities, namely Personal Indexing. Saves using Sydney's time having to review work which might only benefit a very small number of members. Jane, perhaps you could make personal indexing quicker for members if you added the ability to "add previous" to the source.

Personal indexing does not allow one to add ingredients which is a significant issue for me. Yes, I know not everyone shares my interest in Sami (Lappish) cooking and international uncommon ingredients.

Originally Posted by: mjes

Personal indexing does not allow one to add ingredients which is a significant issues for me. Yes, I know not everyone shares my interest in Sami (Lappish) cooking and international uncommon ingredients.

Personal indexing certainly allows you to add ingredients, recipe type, ethnicity etc.. You can even add your bookmarks there. If you have unusual ingredients just add them along the recipe title line and they will show up in your search. Its personal! Do your own thing.

Originally Posted by: joesan

I’m a little surprised that those who wouldn’t find partial indexing to be beneficial are so vocal about not wanting it. I’ve tried to make it very clear that ideally this would be filterable so if you don’t like it, you need never see it. Why stop others having something they would find useful just because you don’t want it. I don’t understand that kind of thinking.

No one is saying that the idea is not worth pursuing. But just like the discussion of moving some ingredients from store-shelf to listed elicted strong positions, so your idea elicts strong positions. These range from people who simply don't want to change their habits (I didn't see any in this thread), to people who are concerned that partial indexing might eat into the resources currently working on full indexing, to people who have no objections beyond it is not what they want the very limited IT support working on, to people who are concerned with potentially increasing the overhead management for the company, to people who think it is somewhere between a great and a terrific idea. At least that is what I as an IT retiree would expect to find without looking at specific issues in this specific application.

I hope that helps you understand that the reaction is simply normal - not an evaluation of your specific proposal.

Originally Posted by: Cati

Personal indexing certainly allows you to add ingredients , recipe type, ethnicity etc.. You can even add your bookmarks there.

You misunderstand me. You cannot add new ingredients to the list of available ingredients. One also cannot do so when indexing blogs which is why I am no longer trying to add my favorite global blog 196 Flavors to our online capabilities.

Confused.  Is "personal indexing" the same thing as "member indexing"?  If not, does personal indexing allow me to list recipe names, pages, and book title only? 

Originally Posted by: Rinshin

Confused.  Is "personal indexing" the same thing as "member indexing"?  If not, does personal indexing allow me to list recipe names, pages, and book title only?

Rinshin, personal indexing is different - under "My Bookshelf", the "add personal recipes" link is what is meant by "personal indexing".. I don't *think* that these recipes are checked by EYB, and, as I understand it,  they only appear in your library

>>>>
Do you have stacks of recipe clippings that you've saved from magazines; been given by friends; print outs from the internet; copies from friends' cookbooks? Even with a great filing system, it can be difficult to keep track of your recipes and to remember that they even exist.

Your Bookshelf can now include an index of your own personal recipes. So next time you're searching for a chocolate cake recipe, that one a friend gave you will come up in your search results.

If you want your own indexed recipes to be consistent with EYB indexed recipes follow these guidelines for you.

For an explanation of each field and how to complete it, just click on the ? next to the field name.

Originally Posted by: Rinshin

Confused. Is "personal indexing" the same thing as "member indexing"?  If not, does personal indexing allow me to list recipe names, pages, and book title only?

Rinshin. The beauty of personal indexing is that you can add as little as you like to be able to search for your recipes. Sydney will not be checking up on you.

Oh, I get it now. Thank you Debkellie and Cati.  I've used both the member indexing as well as adding personal recipes.  I need to investigate the adding personal recipes more to see how those come up in searches.  I have lots of books that will never be indexed and I can certainly add some of them to my personal stuff. 

Originally Posted by: Rinshin

I have lots of books that will never be indexed ...

I initially heard about the site from an old online article that had mentioned the low-cost lifetime membership. That's really what drew me to the site. When I saw that was no longer available, I had to really think about it because $30 a year is a lot of money for me and hard to justify spending. If member indexing wasn't available I NEVER would have joined. But so long as it was, this was my idea ...

Catalog my book collection to see how many have already been indexed and then work on indexing ALL of the rest! I mean I had notions that that could possibly be accomplished within a year for my small book collection. Is that an unreasonable assumption? And then my hope was that in the distant future EYB might even be able to accommodate the pre-ISBN books in my collection.

I'm actually surprised to learn that EYB has the resources to pay professional indexers. I obviously don't know the background behind all of that. I would have thought a site like this would be much more focused on member contributions. I really had no intention when I signed up of sitting around and waiting for my books to be indexed by someone else.

Originally Posted by: whitewoods

If member indexing wasn't available I NEVER would have joined. But so long as it was, this was my idea ...

Catalog my book collection to see how many have already been indexed and then work on indexing ALL of the rest! I mean I had notions that that could possibly be accomplished within a year for my small book collection. Is that an unreasonable assumption? And then my hope was that in the distant future EYB might even be able to accommodate the pre-ISBN books in my collection.

I'm actually surprised to learn that EYB has the resources to pay professional indexers. I obviously don't know the background behind all of that. I would have thought a site like this would be much more focused on member contributions. I really had no intention when I signed up of sitting around and waiting for my books to be indexed by someone else.

Hello and welcome to EYB.  I think the idea of indexing all of your unindexed books within a year might be a bit ambitious, although your enthusiasm is great!  Member indexing takes a while to get used to and your indexing will be sense-checked by someone at EYB before each index is published on EYB to make sure everyone is working to the same standard.  At the moment it feels like it's taking about 4 weeks from when I submit a book to when the index is published on EYB and, while you can work on indexing another book in the interim, it would make sense at the start to wait for any feedback on how you've done it so that you can apply any learnings to the next one.  I am still learning after doing 10 or more books!

EYB has some quite detailed guidelines on how to index books which you can read here:  https://support.eatyourb...-Indexing-your-own-books and if you want to try your hand at indexing without committing to a whole book you can try adding some personal recipes instead - details here: https://support.eatyourb...ecipes-to-your-Bookshelf

There are many, many books that EYB will never pay to have indexed because so few members own them, so it's great that you want to join in!

whitewoods - welcome to EYB and I am delighted to hear that you plan to index your cookbooks. We love that members help us get more books indexed, especially those that we are unlikely to ever get to. About 30% of the books are indexed by members. Our professional paid indexers are mainly indexing new titles though we do try to chip away at older books that are on many Bookshelves. We have one HUGE classic book (more than 2,700 recipes) that will be going live in the next week or so.

It's The Escoffier Cookbook. It's taking a while to review and approve the index -- not only are there almost 3,000 recipes (with French recipe titles to proofread), but there are nearly 100 requested new ingredients! We hope to have the index live this week.