Dealing with Unlinked Books

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1

I am a brand new user–please be kind. I have tried searching for answers to my questions and found one about duplicates. However, I am a bit overwhelmed by the number of unlinked books after I moved my Readerware collection of about 8,000+ books over to this system. I used the directions for transferring my Readerware database, but over 1500 books are unlinked, including almost 1,000 that have a low match score. I was also accepting “matches” from high match score items that had incorrect publishers, etc., because I was daunted by the task ahead, and thought perhaps close is better than having to review closely. Is there any way to deal with these 1500-plus entries other than going through them one by one, reviewing them carefully, and making corrections for each record? I did find an answer to my question about duplicates. I noticed that, while accepting high-match items, some books kept coming up over and over.

Thank you so much for your help. I look forward to learning from more experienced members!

2

Hi and welcome!

Did the Readerware database not have ISBNs? Books with ISBNs are way easier to link with the Link screen (found in the menu top left, then click “Import/Export”, then click “Link Books”)

If you just have author/title/year, then yes, indeed you have to go through them one by one - there is no magic way for our database to know what Readerware thought the book was.. you have to check them.

1500 books is a lot, but it should be doable.

I’m sorry I don’t have a better reply for you.

3

Thank you for letting me know. Many of my books predate ISBNs, and I entered them manually into Readerware. I didn’t realize that the ISBN was the only (or primary) linking point.

4

For automatic linking the ISBN is needed, for fast linking, but, when linking based on author/title, then indeed you do have to make the choice if it is correct (and that is a bit of work coming from a different app… but you only have to do this once!)