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Delicious Library: A database for books that can't find books.
I'm stunned at Delicious Library's failure to find what shelf a book is on. What good is this program for a large library? Why would I spend hours listing all my books if this won't help me find them? Do I just want pretty pictures of the covers? If I create a shelf, then drag a book to the shelf, how come the program doesn't know the book is there? Why do I have to type in a location for the book? Isn't this a computer program? Come on, get with it.
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Raja,
I think what I hear you saying is that you'd like a way to specify a book (or movie or whatever) and have the program tell you what shelve(s) it's on. This is a good idea, I just haven't done it yet.
As others have said, there are a lot of other uses for Delicious Library besides find what shelf a book is on. I designed it around the idea that most people only have, say, one or two different sets of shelves for books, and their books are mostly in some order, so you'd use Delicious Library to help you initially sort your books, but after that you'd know where they were because _you_ set up the system.
Eg, I have a very large sci-fi collection. Delicious Library tells me how to sort the books by my criteria (author then publish date), but if I'm looking for a particular Larry Niven book I just go to my sci-fi shelves and look under "N". I don't boot up Delicious Library for that.
None-the-less, your feature suggestion is a good one. Thank you.
-Wil
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Inappropriate?This does seem pretty obvious... I just don't get what people are scanning their libraries in for if they don't use the information to later find the books. And why should this most crucial bit of information take multiple steps to track, where the rest of the program is so fast and intuitive?
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?To Raja:
Please read my reply to romeodawg here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/deliciousm...
So, why did I spend days listing all my books (and other stuff)?
1) Pretty pictures. Really, that's one of the main things that sets DL2 apart from the others. If you just want lists of data, Bruji's stuff can do that. (Although everything is segregated.)
2) To know what I have so I don't buy anymore duplicate items!
3) To compare the relative "values" of things as determined by random people on Amazon. (It's kind of fun, but I know it's not particularly meaningful.)
Other people also do it so they have a list of stuff for insurance reasons, say if their house is hit by a meteor and they need to say what they've lost.
You say you should be able to drag an item to a Shelf and bang, that's the location. But what if you drag an item to multiple Shelves? Say I have a DL2 Shelf for "Horror" and another for "Books about IRS Agents." If I want to put a book on both DL2 shelves, what should the program do for location?1 Comment Add a comment
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You ask what the program should do if you put the book on two shelves? It should tell you it's listed on two shelves! Simple. How come the program can't do that by itself; it's a computer program, isn't it?
You're using the word "shelf" differently than I'm suggesting using it. I mean an actual physical shelf, e.g. top shelf of living room bookcase, while you mean "category" or "tag", which would be nice also. Delicious Library demonstrates the difference between beautiful eye candy, which it certainly is, and beautifully useful graphical user interface, which the programmers need a little help with. -
Inappropriate?I agree with Raja -- tags and categories are helpful if for example you want to tag all your cookbooks with COOKING so you can see them as a group. And if it looks cool to see them visually on a bookshelf, great. But if you drag an item to multiple shelves, all the shelves should be listed on the item -- it's just another field in the database.
The quickest solution would just be to add a field that shows which shelf or shelves the item belongs to.
I think the best solution is to have 3 options for adding shelves - a virtual shelf, a smart shelf, or a physical shelf. That seems like it would cover all the ways people are using the program.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?3 shelf types would probably be the cleanest solution (although some people still have problems figuring out shelf/playlist/album vs smart shelf/playlist/album), but until that's implemented...the extra five seconds it takes to manually associate the location to the item will have to do.
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Inappropriate?Raja- The books-in-shelves thing works the same exact way iTunes playlists work right now; that is the type of functionality we were going for-- it's not as much for being able to locate books as it is to categorize them.
I'm interested to hear how adding this feature could help people locate books-- if you've already located the book in the library itself, why would you want to locate it in another location as well? I am not trying to argue any point, but am curious to know how it would be useful to people. We are always open to suggestions about how our software could become more useful. It is indeed a "computer program", but these things don't write themselves, you know!
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Jessie,
Your comparison to iTunes is just what I wanted to hear. Why? Because there are some very important differences that you are completely ignoring. I don't want to "categorize" my iTunes songs. I want to listen to them. iTunes lets me "find" them, all kinds of ways, and then, most important, it lets me play them. You ask the perfect question: "if you've already located the book in the library itself, why would you want to locate it in another location as well?" The answer should be obvious to anyone who actually has a library: after "locating" the virtual book in Delicious Library, I want to "read" the actual book! To do that I have to "locate it in another location". That location is called the "real world". What good is it to me if I can locate the virtual book, but can't find the real book? Your note reveals the deep problem with Delicious Library. iTunes is concerned with functionality, Delicious Library is concerned with pretty pictures. iTunes is concerned with real music and real satisfaction. Delicious Library is concerned with a virtual world of books with covers, but not with any words inside. Do you get it? Those of us who actually have a lot of books were very happy when Delicious Library came out. Finally, we'd be able to keep track of our very large, dust-covered, chaotic collections of actual books. We could remember what actual shelf they were on so we could take them down and read them. Alas, this wasn't what you guys had in mind. -
It's interesting to hear Jessie say that DL is more for categorizing books than locating them. I honestly cannot figure out who these people are that want their book collections categorized virtually... I just don't see the point. Have you done surveys and actually found that this is what users want? It's baffling to me. Physically locating the books seems to be such an obvious need. And again, the location field is there, albeit pretty hidden. It's good to know that I can select multiple items and assign a location in one step. DEFINITELY NOT IDEAL, but do-able. But DL is so intuitive and cool when it comes to getting the books into the program and sorting them, it's just frustrating that this most basic location issue isn't more elegantly incorporated. I do appreciate that you're taking the time to discuss the issue here - these comments ARE being read and I hope the next update will reflect feedback from active users. I'd also like to know what percentage of users actually use the lending feature - that seems to get so much screen real estate but it's nothing I'd ever use.
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Inappropriate?Raja- There is a "location" category in the details for each item; isn't this what you're talking about?
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Inappropriate?Jessie, yes there is a "location" field, but you have to enter it by hand. If I have 50 books on the top shelf of my downstairs office bookcase, I have to type that in for each book, instead of dragging them to a "shelf" called "top shelf, etc." so the location is entered automatically. Here's the thing. You are making an analogy between iTunes playlists and Delicious shelves. The problem is that if you know the name of a song in iTunes you can find the song and play it. If you know that it's in a playlist, you can't find which playlist it's in, but who cares--you can still play it. With a physical book, it's different. You really need to know which shelf it's on in order to read it. It makes no sense that you can drag all the books to a shelf, but then you can't find which shelf you dragged them to. The only alternative is to type in the location field for each book. That is a very inelegant, very uncomputer-like method. But that's what you get from following the iTunes metaphor. The thing is that in iTunes, if you get info for a song, you can see where the actual file is in your hard disk and you didn't have to enter the information. Are you getting this?
I’m still frustrated
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Inappropriate?"If I have 50 books on the top shelf of my downstairs office bookcase, I have to type that in for each book..."
"The only alternative is to type in the location field for each book."
No.
As I said...
http://getsatisfaction.com/deliciousm...
To get the workflow you want, this is what you can do:
1 Make a Shelf
2 Scan set of items (they will add themselves to that Shelf)
3 Select all items on Shelf and fill in the location field
That'll only add about...say, 5 seconds tops per [Shelf].
While yes, it would be nice to have a way to associate DL2 Shelf with the location field automatically, as it stands, it's not as time-consuming as you make it out to be.
Jessie: what they're asking for is the ability to make a DL2 Shelf and have that Shelf tied to the Location field. Probably the clearest way to implement that in-programme is to create a third Shelf type, say "Physical Shelf" or something like that.
Right now, DL2 is modeled on iTunes/iPhoto with its Shelf/Smart Shelf dichotomy. However, while iTunes and iPhoto catalogue AND point to files on the computer, DL2 catalogues physical items. If this hypothetical third shelf type (or something) were created, then DL2 could also "point to" the items automatically. -
Inappropriate?Raja,
I think what I hear you saying is that you'd like a way to specify a book (or movie or whatever) and have the program tell you what shelve(s) it's on. This is a good idea, I just haven't done it yet.
As others have said, there are a lot of other uses for Delicious Library besides find what shelf a book is on. I designed it around the idea that most people only have, say, one or two different sets of shelves for books, and their books are mostly in some order, so you'd use Delicious Library to help you initially sort your books, but after that you'd know where they were because _you_ set up the system.
Eg, I have a very large sci-fi collection. Delicious Library tells me how to sort the books by my criteria (author then publish date), but if I'm looking for a particular Larry Niven book I just go to my sci-fi shelves and look under "N". I don't boot up Delicious Library for that.
None-the-less, your feature suggestion is a good one. Thank you.
-Wil
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