Forum

Firstly let me say how much I enjoy EYB,  I joined about 6 months ago and probably search for recipes at least 5 times a week.  It's really made a big difference in deciding what to cook every day.

However, of the 135 books on my shelf, only 70 (just over 50%) are indexed and I'm wondering is this about average or do most people have a higher ratio of indexed books?

Today I looked through my unindexed books and realised that I haven't used many of them in the last 6 months, other than to find a recipe I already know and want to cook again.

I do know that I can request an index and also that I could as a member start to index some of my own books.  I thought I'd start by indexing a small book and it would be a good way to pass the long winter evenings.  Hopefully I'll soon become proficient.

I'd be interested to know how other members deal with unindexed books?

One third of my cookbooks are indexed. It has remained quite constant since I joined. And because I am in my seventies, only about a third of my cookbooks are catalogued in EYB - the rest do not have ISBN's or are Finnish publications not carried by Amazon. I keep hoping for a Library of Congress card number interface to allow another chunk to be catalogued.

83% of my books are indexed.  The percentage used to be a lot lower, but I indexed the ones I was really bothered about and then the books I've bought more recently have all been indexed.  

I can't quite bring myself to get rid of the unindexed books because I might want something in one of them one day ... but I definitely use them much less than the indexed ones.

Hi Pamsy - I'm so pleased to hear you are finding EYB useful. The average for EYB members is that 65% of cookbooks on their Bookshelf are indexed. Because we have indexed all the very popular books we now focus on new books and only index older books if they are on a large number of Bookshelves and we can get hold of them - often an issue for books more than 20 years old. Members are indexing a lot of the older books that they own - 35% of the books indexed are now done by members.

We do understand that every member would like more of their cookbooks indexed but you all own different books! It's the "long tail" effect - the further away we get from the bestsellers, the more books there are, owned by fewer members. There are thousands of new cookbooks published every year and we index around 1,000 a year so the number of unindexed books is growing rather than reducing.

I have some suggestions on how to cope with unindexed books (hopefully other members will also chime in):

• Obviously the best way is to member index your unindexed books - I'm glad to hear you have started this. The more you do, the faster and easier it gets. We have member indexers who have indexed more than 100 of their books, and several member indexers now work for us as professional indexers.


• Put a colored sticker on the spine of every indexed book. Then when you don't find a recipe that works for you in your EYB index, you know at a glance which books you might want to look in the old-fashioned way.


• For books that you don't want to do complete indexes for (yet), go through them and add the recipes you know you may be interested in for the future as Personal Recipes. This is explained in Help. Because only you will see those recipes you can add as much or as little information as you want - you do not have to follow the EYB indexing rules.

When I started with EYB in 2011 most of my library of 267 included titles was unindexed.. so 6 years later (and also as a member indexer) that's gone down significantly .. now around 95% are indexed ;-) - thanks to other member indexers as well, of course! - .  My cookbook collecting started in the mid-1960s so a lot of my books have yet to be added as I offer to member index them, but I'm slowly getting through those ...

Member indexing does while away winter evenings quite nicely!! Beats the dreadful idiot box and opens your eyes to what's on your shelves!!

Mine are low too at about 54% not counting my Japanese books.  But, I've been collecting books since my teen years so it's to be expected.  I like to still buy unusual cookbooks that most people normally don't buy here. 

81% of my cookbooks are indexed, or 116 out of 143. However, I only have a handful of cookbooks from 1990-1996; everything else is 1997-present. I have indexed 10 of my cookbooks. Indexing helps me get acquainted with the book, and I get a terrific sense of accomplishment for my work. (It is easy to measure an evening's progress.)

I put orange dots on the spine of my unindexed books. It is joyous when EYB sends me an email that a book is indexed, and I can remove the dot! Whenever I buy a new cookbook, I read it cover-to-cover before putting it on the bookshelf. So I have an idea of what each book contains, and which books I need to examine apart from EYB. Whenever I make a recipe, I add the "I've cooked this" bookmark in EYB (with notes if I've made changes, etc.) if it is indexed, and I write the date in pencil in the cookbook. This helps me find and remember specific recipes.

Around 95% of my English-language cookbooks are indexed, because over the past years I member-indexed more than 125 books myself. I recently started to add my German-language books as well and am slowly working on indexing those also. I realized that I had been neglecting them because I was too lazy to physically search for recipes in these books when it was just so easy to do an EYB search online for whatever ingredient I had at hand. So hopefully in a few years from now my collection will be fully indexed.

Astrid - I am curious about your German books when you import.  I am able to import some of my Japanese ones but not all (all have ISBN) and what I found is that if there are no English titles associated with them, they won't import.  Is that what you see  as well? 

Books that do not have ISBN numbers or are not listed on Amazon have to be added manually which is time consuming so can only be done for books that members want to index.

These have ISBN and are listed in Amazon but if no English translation are shown,  they won't import.  The ones with both ISBN and English translation however silly they sound, do import ok.

Originally Posted by: Rinshin

These have ISBN and are listed in Amazon but if no English translation are shown,  they won't import.  The ones with both ISBN and English translation however silly they sound, do import ok.

For ISBN books there is also screening to make sure they are "cookbooks" ... perhaps the Japanese listing lacks the right keywords as the Japanese title is likely not recognized.

About half are indexed...mostly titles from the last decade or so.

Many of my older or obscure books such as the early Pillsbury Bake Off booklets, I've just been indexing them as I have time under personal recipes and tagging the recipes with a bookmark of the book name so I know either what book the recipes is in or what recipes are in said book.

Thanks for all your replies.  I've definitely learned a lot from this thread.  Jane, your response was particularly thought provoking and useful.

On checking, I found 28% of my books were published in the 80's and 90's so that explains why none of my Good Housekeeping books (7) are indexed - something that had puzzled me.  Also, 16% are owned by 10 or less members, I do tend to pick up the odd book in various places, not neccesarily bookshops, perhaps cookshops that have more of a niche market or TKM*** (hope I'm allowed to put that, I'm not advertising).

I shall now start to put unindexed favourites into my Personal Recipes as has been suggested.  I think as well as that I'm going to set myself a minimum target number of recipes to index each day.  Maybe 5 to start with and see how that works out.  I'll certainly have a busy winter!