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#1 Posted : Wednesday, July 21, 2010 5:43:06 AM(UTC)

I have a copy of M.F. K. Fisher's With Bold Knife and Fork that doesn't have an ISBN. When I search by title in the EYB Library, it returns 6 versions, two showing different photos of the jacket or cover (neither of them mine) and four with no art work. Two of the listings show that that particular edition of the book is on 3 members' bookshelves; four of the listings show the book as being on one bookshelf. I'm guessing that means that 10 people have the book. How do I decide which of the six editions to choose? And if I choose an edition that says only one person has it, does that mean I won't be able to see the other 9 who also have it?


I know this will come up more and more as I start listing some of my older books. I'd love to hear how other people have dealt with this.

#2 Posted : Wednesday, July 21, 2010 8:58:29 AM(UTC)

The whole issue of linked books is one we are planning to tackle when we have the mammoth task of our new search out the way (mid-August, hopefully).  We took the view that a lot of members would want to have the edition they own on their bookshelf, with their own cover displaying.  So that meant we had to list every edition separately.  However, once we index the book we need to link it so the recipes appear for every edition.  Once a book is linked it doesn't appear as a separate listing though can be accessed by clicking more detail for the indexed master, which displays all linked ISBNs.  With the new search the linked books will display by ISBN, format, country and date of publication which should be enough to identify the edition you own.


Part of that review is sorting out how all comments, ratings and Bookshelves can be amalgamated for all editions of a book.


There is also the issue of books with no ISBN number that we will also be tackling as we know a lot of members have older books they would love to add to their Bookshelf.  In the meantime, for your MFK Fisher book I would look at all the EYB book details pages for the books which will list format, publisher, country and date of publication and see if you can match your edition.  Amazon and abe books may also list more editions with covers so you may be able to do a match that way.  Sorry this is rather laborious but without an ISBN it is much harder to identify editions.

#3 Posted : Wednesday, July 21, 2010 12:15:10 PM(UTC)

Thanks, Jane. I have had some success finding ISBNs for newer editions of old classics on Amazon and just used those to input my non-ISBN titles. To tell the truth, though, I'm now at the point where nearly all of the books I've yet to input are pre-ISBN. They're probably never going to be indexed anyway, and even if they were I'd cook from them rarely. If I need information from those titles--usually more for research than meal preparation--I know how to find it.

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