Forum

First - I'm so excited, I had this very idea about 10 years ago and even started building my own database to house all the indexes of all my books - needless to say life got in the way...

I love this!

How about being able to use a scanner from a mobile phone to scan all the ISBN numbers from your books in order to add to your bookshelf

Alternative spelling suggestions - I was searching for lemon bars to no avail and then figured out the one I wanted was called lemon squares. (In AU and NZ they refer to bar cookies as slices).

I know I can use plus and minus to restrict or exclude books for the recipe search - but - a filter option  - filter by source would be nice (listing only those books you have in your shelf). Or, perhaps an optional search box labeled Book or Source with a +/- you select whichever you want and then type in the name.

Welcome jeneaton1 - we are so pleased you found us.  In answer to your questions:

You can scan the books' barcodes into our Import Books feature using a barcode scanner.  This is explained in Help, How to, How do I use a barcode scanner to add Books to my Bookshelf?

Alternative spellings is problematic - the example you give isn't even a spelling variation but an alternative name.  If you aren't sure of the recipe name, a better way to search is to use the Only show filters on the right.  In this case you would select Recipe types; Baking; Brownies, slices & bars and also select lemons from Ingredients; Fruit; Citrus; Lemons.  We do have alternative spellings for ingredients so for example if you enter hummus you will also see every recipe using humus, humous, houmous and homos.

I'm not sure what you mean about specifying sources.  You can already search just the books you have on your Bookshelf by selecting Bookshelf at the top and left of the screen.  You can also add Bookmarks to any of your books or recipes - just click the blue Bookmark button to the right.  You can then set up whatever bookmarks you want - locations, favorites, etc.  If I didn't understand properly what you meant by selecting Book or Source please can you clarify?

Our Help section does have a lot of explanations (with images) of how the various features on the site work.  But if you ever have a question for which you cannot find the answer there, please do post on the Forum or email us at [email protected].

Thank you for your response! I'm going to have to thoroughly mess about with the search and filtering features after I get all my cookbooks on my shelf.

For the specifying source I meant that as you performed your searches you would see all the available books on your shelf that were returned for the search. You could then filter by checking the book you wanted to see results from. (Especially since half the time I cannot remember the exact name of a particular book.)

For example, say I am looking for chocolate chip cookies - I have a lot of books with a relevant recipe - it would be nice if I could then filter by those books on my shelf that had a result returned in the search.

The barcode scanner isntructions - does that work with the scanners on a smart phone?

Also - I wonder if there is a way to include notes about handwritten recipes, family recipe cookbooks (no ISBN), random bits of paper with tasty recipes, etc.

Thanks again!

Jen

Lots of questions, Jen!

Filtering books in results - sorry if I'm being dense (it's late at night here on the east coast) but I don't understand what you are trying to do.  If you get a lot of recipe search results and want to just limit them to one book, then you type the name of the book or author in the search terms box in speech marks e.g. "Barefoot Contessa".

Barcode scanner - ISBN number imports works with any type of scanner though with an iPhone app you would need to list the numbers then email them to yourself, then cut and paste into our Import Books feature.  If someone knows an easier way to do it, please post here.

Personal recipes - as soon as we finish member indexing (any day now) our next project is personal recipes.  You will be able to enter the details of any recipe you own - clippings, family recipes, online recipes - and these will become your personal cookbook.  They will only appear in your searches.

The speech-marks technique works for single books, but I use a different technique when I want to limit a search to a group of specific books ... I have set up a bookmark called "check" and when I want to look in a group of books, I apply that bookmark to those books, the search only books with that bookmark.

Also, with regard to the "lemon squares" vs. "lemon bars" question, you might want to try out limiting your search by recipe types. Using the designation for cookies would bring up both squares and bars, but you wouldn't get all the other recipes on your bookshelf that had lemon in them as well!

Another thing, Jen: when you search for recipes, are you searching in the Library (every indexed book in the EYB database) or in My Bookshelf (only those indexed books that are on your EYB bookshelf)?

That makes a big difference in your search results. For instance, a very basic search on the words 'chocolate chip cookies' (no speech marks, just the words typed in) brings me 73 results when I do it in My Bookshelf and 1422 results when I do it in Library.

Thanks Vanessa and schambers for your advice.  Just one thing Vanessa - if you want to find squares and bars you should search by Brownies, slices and bars under Recipe type; Baking. Lemon squares will appear there rather than as Cookies.

Jane - you are so right! (I confess, I got half-way into the comment and couldn't remember the exact recipe type ... so I tried to be vague.) However, with Jane's correction, it is a better illustration of the level of precision that the Recipe Type selection can offer when searching!

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions!

For the book filter - I have to confess I work at a search engine and tend to think both large scale and how can a wide audience get confused. Sooo- the book filter -- I am only looking at my own bookshelf -but - once I scan all my books in it will be about 1000 books - I confess i cannot  remember the names of them all, so , a handy list of what sources (books) had the recipe I was looking for in it is a nice way to jog my memory. What I mean is as a user I *know* I have a book with a fabulous lemon bar recipe , but, I cannot remember the name of the book - so - if there were a list of my books that were returned when I search on lemon bar (or filter and use lemon as a search term) and I could quickly scan and have my memory jogged and then check a little box by the one I think I meant.

For the lemon bars, lemon squares - I was thinking more of a prompt (for example something on the SRP that says what you all suggested - try filtering by 'bars and slices ' and searching for lemon - err- only a lot less wordy...... That is I was taking the point of view of a novice searcher who does not quite recognize the nuances of the filter interface.

One more question (for now) ;) - can we scan the UPC code from a magazine and have that added to the bookshelf?

Thanks!

Jen

Jen -- I think by "book filter", you are referring to a feature that already exists in EYB but you aren't recognizing it as such:  Once you scan in the ISBN's of all your books or otherwise add your books to your EYB Bookshelf, if you want only to search your own 1000+ books (and not all the 89,000+ books in the EYB Library!), just click on My Bookshelf in the left navigation bar, then enter your search words into the Search box, which defaults to a Recipes search.  Then you'll only be searching for recipes in the books you own, and the search results will display the book and author for each recipe along with the recipe title, ingredients, categories, etc. 

Now if you're like me, whether you can quickly put your hands on a specific book on your shelves is another story...

Deborah