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I am new to the site but I was able to import 1691 books which is only a portion of my library. I was not happy to see that only 670 were indexed and 28 were being indexed. That left a majority of 1021 unindexed. Is this normal? Am I expected to index them myself?

[edit #1, a few hours later] I added some from my second spreadsheet and the new totals are

2,939 total

1,207 indexed

1,732 UNindexed (OVER HALF!)

46 being indexed

399 ebooks

I really expected to see a higher percentage of them indexed as the usefulness of the site, to me, is greatly diminished by this.

And....I already have a request to link a library location code to the items on my ' bookshelf'. I have thousands of cookbooks and they are located in different parts of the home. Some of the more often used are near the kitchen but some of the more esoteric might be in a library on another floor of the home. I use readerware and I do have location codes stored in that database. 

And--- I sure would like to import directly from Readerware.

Thanks in advance to all that take the time to read and perhaps shed light on my new experience. So far, I am not that impressed and am regretting the annual membership already. 

Hi gamcgill, I joined EYB exactely 11 years ago when the number of indexed books was way smaller than it is now and Member Indexing did not even exist. And I am not even an English speaking native and my German book collection is mostly unindexed. Still, even 11 years ago EYB greatly changed the way I use my cookbooks on a daily basis. EYB is the one site I almost use everyday be it in search of a recipe for the leftover vegetables lingering in my crisper drawer or just to add new recipes to my many bookmarks, etc. For me this site is one of the most useful ones I have encountered over the past years. And EYB is trying to index those books that are on a lot of bookshelves as well as all the interesting new titles. Maybe you want to give it some time and try all the great features that this site has to offer. 

Hi gamcill,

Welcome to Eat Your Books! You do have an impressive cookbook collection. 

I am sorry you had expected a higher percentage of indexed books. But indexing is time-consuming and expensive, so it's not possible to index all cookbooks. 

About half of the books indexed is pretty normal. It does depend on what books you own, of course. You do seem to own quite a lot of books that are shared by few people on this site. The more popular cookbooks get indexed more often, so that could partly account for the high number of unindexed books on your shelf.

You are not "expected" to index any cookbooks yourself, but it is an excellent way to make sure your favourite books are indexed, and it will give you a better feel of how the site works.

You can add bookmarks for the location of books. I do understand doing that manually is not an attractive prospect. Maybe you could start with your most used location? 

I do hope you will come to appreciate the human effort EYB is. It's not perfect, but they are doing the best they can.

Wow - that's a lot of cookbooks!  Even though less than 50% of your cookbooks have been indexed, EYB can still help you to make better use of the 1,207 books that have been.  

I've been a member for 10 years and EYB has helped me to use my cookbooks more, and more effectively.  I love being able to type in what ingredients I need to use up and see what recipes are suggested - often things I may not have thought of cooking - and I like being able to read the notes that other members have made before I make a recipe for the first time. It's my most useful membership without a doubt.

The number of unindexed books on my bookshelf has reduced steadily over the years thanks to indexing by EYB, by other members and doing some of my favourites myself. 

GAMcgill - think about why you joined EYB back in 2017... what has changed since then? What do you use it for? What were you doing in 2017 that is different 5 years later? If you list your bookshelf by popularity , you basically have to get down to books only owned by less than 150 folks before it falls into category of unindexed.. indexing youself is an option, and is how I took my bookshelf to 80% indexed across the 11 years I've been a member. AS a forum post a few days ago indicated EYB only has a small staff: "small, dedicated staff of cookbook lovers and volunteers, nearly 161,000 volumes". Consider becoming a volunteer, indexing some yourself.. and you may find that you could donate some of those books from your shelf to a local underpriveleged school that runs cooking classes. Good luck ;-)

Hi gamcgill - EYB members have given a good variety of responses to your question. I would add that the way to look at our service is to consider that you have 272,688 recipes in your index of cookbooks and magazines that you can now search through in seconds. Rather than focusing on the recipes that are not yet indexed. Of course you would like more of your books to be indexed but that is true of every member and you all own different books. We have an indexing chart where we are working our way through the most popular books and we index every significant new book that is published. And our wonderful volunteer member indexers are indexing many books in their own collections. So you will see your recipe count increase over time, especially with a collection as large as yours.

I'm in the same situation. I joined EYB some time in the 2010's. I have 377 books on my Bookshelf, as well as other books that aren't on my Bookshelf because they are in storage or have no ISBN or Amazon page. About half of them are indexed, and usually only one is being indexed at any one time.

I consider this a situation to be faced, because, as I found out, the world of cookbooks is VAST, and the priority of EYB indexers is naturally with the popular cookbooks, those on hundreds or thousands of Bookshelves.

Before I joined EYB I saw no particular reason to buy a bestselling cookbook, other than Joy of Cooking - if it looked good I bought it. I bought a lot of remaindered and secondhand cookbooks. The result is that I have a lot of cookbooks that few EYBers have.

Finding recipes offline in sources other than indexed books can be a hassle. I hope that when I get a new laptop I can start indexing some cookbooks, especially during the colder months.

EYB isn't the master index of all my cookbooks, but I'm grateful for what it has.

Drom John here, spouse of Shelmar.

Similar numbers here:

1150 indexed

1478 not indexed

628 not listed on EYB.

But interestingly enough, of the 24 items I've membered indexed (22 books, 2 magazine issues), two of them are gamcgill's and Shelmar's most recently indexed common books. (I indexed none of the other 924 common books.)

Shelmar's glass is 35% full.

And if that glass is Fuller's ESB in Brew Your Own English Ale (which is at the end of my primary indexing queue), then, that's a very good glass.

That's a good way to put it - my EYB glass is half full.

Hi Gamcgill,

I feel your pain.  I have a huge  number of cookbooks, both digital and all over the house  and EYB has actually been a bit of an enabler as I now have the excuse that I will pay attention to them.

When I first joined, many of my books weren't indexed, but I quickly found that EYB really upped my use of the books that were indexed.  And actually got a few more into the act, since they might be shelved nearby or come up on a search. I have books spanning back over 40 years, and am always pleasantly surprised when older volumes are indexed.  I love used books stores, but what is not in print is not likely to get a greater number of users.

When I don't have the recipe I want in one of my indexed books, and can look over the unindexed titles and think about whether one of them might have the recipe I need.  So even unindexed, EYB keeps my books in front of me. 

Over the years, the balance has gone to more than half indexed.  I think a bit harder about buying a book that isn't indexed,  and I don't often buy unintentional duplicates anymore

Anyway, I hope you don't give up on EYB.  I am not an indexer, so I cherish those members that are.  In fact, there is a thread on underated cookbooks and one indexer was so enamored of one of my suggestions that she indexed it (thanks Vanessa).  So if you have a couple of great ones that you think are underated, please post to that thread and let the rest of us in on the secret

Zephy

My collection is half French half English and a lot of French books aren't translated, so only way for me around this is indexing! Getting out of a burnout at work at the moment so not going very fast (the book is tedious to index as well), but all in all better than nothing.

I have significantly fewer cookbooks than you guys, really, and a percentage of 50% indexed including a few by myself but even like that I find EYB is a tremendous help, and I would definitely hate to go back to the miserable world of before EYB.

It's a small company and they have done and improved the indexing over time, and if we all chip in indexing-wise, it will be even better.

And indeed, as mentioned by other people, you can use bookmark like "kitchen" "garage" "bedroom 1" to attach the location to a particular book

I have recently joined as well and like you I was surprised to see how many of my books were not indexed. I possibly did not understand how this all worked before joining. Like you, I have thousands of cookbooks and I do appreciate that some of the more obscure ones wouldn't be indexed. I have however used the recipe search and found that it really does work, and I really am using my cookbooks more efficiently. However, it will just be the indexed ones that get used more. Watch this space, as they say!  :-) 

Hi boncie - I'm delighted to hear you are getting more use out of your cookbooks. Because EYB has indexed the most popular books first, the "long tail" effect applies where there are a lot of unindexed books all owned by different members. Between EYB professional indexers and member volunteers we are chipping away at those but of course thousands of new cookbooks get published every year as well. It will be a never ending project!

Like others, I have many unindexed cookbooks and ones that don't appear in the library at all. As I am vegetarian, not all recipes in all of these cookbooks are of interest to me. So rather than formally index the whole book, I have added the vegetarian recipes using Add Personal Recipe, with a tag that is the name of the book. eg BOOK Nourish, Holly Davis 291. The number is my code for finding the book. So I can find all recipes from this book by selecting the tag, and the recipes are now searchable. There are some drawbacks, and it was a big project to do this, but it works well for me.

I am a long time member and have had the same experience as many others: over time, more and more of my books have been indexed, and I have begun member indexing.

I think I would be faster, and more willing to volunteer in the future, if the process for listing (or not listing) "store cupboard ingredients" were simplified.

Perhaps a thread could be started among member indexers to come up with ways to streamline the indexing process.

Eat Your Books would be even more valuable for me if more of my unindexed but beloved books were indexed, especially if I could easily index them myself. 

I would love recipe titles only listed as a start for those unindexed books.  I don't use ingredient search function much.  I normally search with titles.  

I disagree. Ingredient lists don't tell the whole story, but they are very important in weeding out unlikely recipes.

If anything, I would like to see them go further (what if something you don't want or can't have is considered a store-cupboard ingredient?).

I can see your point, Bittrette, and think it would be easier to list all the ingredients in a recipe rather than determine which ones should be omitted. 

May I ask how "significant" is defined? I am sometimes surprised by what is and is not indexed quickly after release. Note I am very pleased with the rate at which my books are becoming indexed and the mix of what is indexed.

So many books .. so many unindexed books.. what is "significant"..? That's a loaded question , and its a big ask to index every book in EYB's database.. even if it is just "recipe titles".  EYB doesn't even contain ALL the available cookbooks.. Done any importing book titles and come up with "not in EYB library" response....Gourmand International estimates there were around 100,000 books/documents on food & drink published in 2021 alone.. when they started doing their award program in 1995  that estimate was 25,000.. it's a burgeoning industry worth a motza (in 2011 it was a $4 billion dollar industry, I don't have current stats). In their  awards for 2021 (entries closed in November 2021) there were 1558 selections from 227 countries and regions.. how do you identify "significant" in that.. is it sales volume ?.. That data is pretty much unobtainable. Is it topic interest? Baking sales went up during the pandemic... Will it be reducing living costs? Sustainable/ethical eating? How do you choose? Literary awards do not always equate to a universally acknowledged "good" book.. we all have different interests, different tastes, different budgets, different product markets.... is there a middle ground? EYB is a wonderful resource, it's paid indexers and its volunteer indexers are doing a great job. Even for recipe titles, someone has to sit down and manually KEY in that data.. I am thankful for what EYB has given me, I was inspired to join way back in 2011, and I continue to use it, almost every single day. OK so you may not agree with the store cupboard list  - it depends on where you're located in the world as to whether your store cupboard might agree with it .. but hey guys, can we also acknowledge that it is a great resource.