Tuesday Thingers

[julesjones]

Missed Tuesday Thingers last week, but am back this week. This week's Tuesday Thingers prompt:

Last week I asked what was the most popular book in your library- this week I'm going to ask about the most unpopular books you own. Do you have any unique books in your library- books only you have on LT? How many? Did you find cataloging information on your unique books, or did you hand-enter them? Do they fall into a particular category or categories, or are they a mix of different things? Have you ever looked at the "You and none other" feature on your statistics page, which shows books owned by only you and one other user? Ever made an LT friend by seeing what you share with only one other user?

I've got 27 titles shared with only one other user -- and oddly, it's the same user in the case of "Star Cops: Little Green Men" and "Rome Insight Travel Map"

For the ones where it's just me, it's quite a mix, covering a wide range of categories:

Folio society editions of
Shakespeare's sonnets
Norse Myths
Morte d'Artur
The Pre-Raphaelites and their world
Sakuntala
-- I suspect these are mostly combining failures and I'm not the sole owner on LT

Classic malts of Scotland http://www.librarything.com/work/3663735/book/19642620

Erotic Drawings by Jean Cocteau
http://www.librarything.com/work/1800272/book/19606126

Practical Needlework
http://www.librarything.com/work/3426449/book/17996504

500 Tips and techniques: sewing secrets
http://www.librarything.com/work/4249212/book/17996432

and at this point I'm getting a bit too tired to focus, so I'll skim...

15 sheet music books

3 gardening books

a DIY book

Appletree yearbook 1996

2 books on writing resumes

14 cookbooks -- some of which are obscure, but others surprise me

Manara Tarot -- yes, it's a tarot deck, but it's got an ISBN, so it's in the catalogue.

2000 Writer's Market -- that surprises me

The Language of Science -- but that doesn't

Fare Play by Barbara Paul -- odd, this, as the other books in the series have several copies

A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul

An Excercise for Madmen by Barbara Paul

Ellery Queen's Christmas Hamper -- hmm, would have thoguht there'd be a few of that one

The Harlot of Jericho by Mike Molloy

all five volumes of DHZ: Rock-forming minerals (and no, they are not for sale)

59th edition of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics

Comments

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

I suspect these are mostly combining failures and I'm not the sole owner on LT

Well, I know for sure that you're not with the Pre-Raphaelites one, because I put my own copy on there on Sunday. I was only bemoaning to someone that day how awkward it could be, adding Folio Society editions. I've only got a few of mine on there so far.

[julesjones]

I was pretty sure that one couldn't be the only copy, because it was one of the giveaways one year, so most of the FS folk would have it.

It used to be fairly easy because you just found another Folio Society fan and used their entries. But Tim took away the option to copy an entry from someone else's catalogue, because it was spreading bad data through the database, and now you have to do the full thing by hand. I suppose one way would be to have two browser windows open and copy and paste from someone else's copy.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Tim took away the option to copy an entry from someone else's catalogue, because...

Oh, thank you for that history! That was precisely what I was bemoaning. You'd have hoped that people would be able to spot a duff catalogue record when they saw one.

[julesjones]

What people were doing was looking for something with the same title, copying it, and then changing one or two details, but leaving the rest as they were, even if they were completely wrong for that edition. You'd get an entry with the ISBN of one edition but the publication details of a completely different edition. So it was badly corrupting the pooled data, especially after a couple of iterations of this.

Of course, a lot of people with relatively obscure books that aren't on Amazon but are relatively common with the sort of people who use LibraryThing, such as Folio Society books, would really like the facility brought back. But they're outnumbered by the people who misuse the facility, so Tim won't do it.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, I suppose. Not knowing the history, I was rather bewildered, and thought at first that I was just being stupid in missing something.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

I have the weird situation where most of the only-one-other-user books I have are the person I bought them off! (This also means that the person with the highest match to me is someone I've met, which seems odd)

[julesjones]

You're probably not the only one in that situation, by the very nature of who's likely to be using LibraryThing. Book geeks often have obscure books. :-)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I apparently have 52 that are only shared by one person... and 157 that no one else has. And I still have at least 30-odd of the utterly obscure, very shabby, quite dreadful early 19th century children's-or-school stories to put up :)

I say apparently because I am damned sure i'm not the only one with a copy of Rogets Thesaurus or the Oxford Australian Dictionary (my editions, OTOH, are fairly old)

[julesjones]

A couple of my solitary titles are the same -- I'm damned sure I'm not the only one with the handbook of Physics and Chemistry, but it may be a relatively obscure edition that hasn't been combined.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I don't have my entire library in yet, but I already have two books that are unique. A living from bees by Frank Chapman Pellett and a 1856 Swedish printing of the bible. I should get busy and add the next hundred sometime this summer.

[julesjones]

I rather expected that a lot of my friends would have some unique books. :-)

[literaryfeline.livejournal.com]

I discovered a mistake in the entry of one of my books when I was trying to figure out which books I owned all by my lonesome. I knew I couldn't be the only one who owned the book as it was one written by Ken Follett. He's a pretty well known author, after all. Sure enough, his last name was spelled wrong.

[julesjones]

I've picked up a couple of bad entries that way myself. At some point I need to go through and check some of my solitary books -- I just don't seem to get around to it.