The New Catalog is Official! (Feature Requests & Bugs)

Comments about LibriVox? Suggestions to improve things? News?
cefn
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Joined: February 9th, 2009, 7:33 pm

Post by cefn »

Those are really detailed requests and I'll see which ones I can deliver with the data I have access to. The information stored at archive.org is a bit sparse.

I've already added the author field to the book title list as you requested, so book title entries now look like...
A Little Princess [Frances Hodgson Burnett]
See http://cefn.com/librivox/book_list.html

I've also managed to fix the silly characters which were showing up. You may need to force refresh (I think that's Shift-F5 on windows/IE) to see the changes if you've already got a cached copy of the old page.

I think it's in principle possible to provide the dynamic filtering view that you mention around authors and titles using client-side javascript, which would suit my approach - to generate static content and publish it, rather than having to manage a server-side database.

There's probably a load of tools to support this which I wouldn't have to write myself, like the stuff provided by Simile at MIT - called exhibit...
http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Exhibit/Examples

All they require is that you format the data in the right way and then the client-side javascript sent with the page does the interactive filtering for you in the browser, rather than you having to set up the webserver to do it. Reformatting the data for this kind of purpose is easy with the tools I have assuming I can get good quality catalog records in XML, but that seems to be a bit pot luck at the moment. I don't think I can get at the quality records being maintained by the librivox project right now.

Some examples of the Exhibit approach are even about books already...
http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~mpawel/resources/time/tern.php

Of course there may be simpler views possible, like sortable tables...
http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/sortabletable/demo.html

I'd see this as a branch of the project I'm doing rather than the main section, since I'd like to keep the main section functional without javascript to suit screenreaders, so this would be an extra view for those who have the benefit of javascript.[/quote]
Illiterati
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Post by Illiterati »

I was toying with ideas mainly, yes, and know you couldn't possibly even do some of those (the author pages etc.)

But ideas are free, as they say. :D

As I replied before in your introduction, I love the ease of use you have with your system. And Simile is exactly what I had in mind - very quick and intuitive restructuring of a mass of information. I would of course love if it was possible to tweak the GUI a bit.... :D

[Edit - and I really see you point about screenreaders.]
[url=http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=314255]Leisure Class[/url] by Thorstein Veblen + [url=http://librivox.org/wiki/moin.cgi/Illiterati01#preview]wiki![/url]
mshiffer
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Post by mshiffer »

First, my apologies if this has been previously requested. I started to read through all the posts and after 2 pages gave up... :oops:

I just had a quick request to make the search results easier to read:

Could the results be displayed with a break between entries, and perhaps the title in bold to further differentiate it from the rest of the text?

Thanks,
Mark

p.s. I'm happy to make the changes to the php myself if you like. :)
Gesine
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Joined: December 13th, 2005, 4:16 am

Post by Gesine »

mshiffer wrote:First, my apologies if this has been previously requested. I started to read through all the posts and after 2 pages gave up... :oops:

I just had a quick request to make the search results easier to read:

Could the results be displayed with a break between entries, and perhaps the title in bold to further differentiate it from the rest of the text?

Thanks,
Mark

p.s. I'm happy to make the changes to the php myself if you like. :)
Thanks for your suggestion, Mark - we'll keep this on file for when we make the next round of changes. :)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world." Albert Einstein
barbara
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Post by barbara »

(answered with further searching)
"No matter where you go, there you are."
Lucy_k_p
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Post by Lucy_k_p »

I just thought the ability to search by translator might be a good idea.

I was searching for Book of A Thousand Nights and A Night. And of course I couldn't remember the exact title (1001 and one thousand were the two obvious terms I tried, but didn't work).

I eventually found it on 'night' and fortunately it was near the top. Author doesn't help either, since it's by Anonymous. Again, it's near the top, but that's more luck than anything.

But I knew the thing was translated by Burton, I just couldn't use that information.

Obviously cases where this will be useful are in a minority, but it's worth thinking about.
So little space, so much to say.
TriciaG
LibriVox Admin Team
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Post by TriciaG »

I don't know if this has been requested already, but I don't see why we couldn't put all of the search options on one search page, instead of having to click on a separate link to get to the advanced options. Maybe separate them a bit with the current, basic search fields on top, a couple carriage returns, and the others below.
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Lucy_k_p
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Post by Lucy_k_p »

I agree with TriciaG's suggestion.

Also, would it be possible to have a 'Return random complete recording' (or even selection of complete recordings) button. (A 'Surprise me' option.) We've got a lot of interesting but obscure stuff and the catalogue is mostly geared towards needing to know what you're looking for in advance.

You can browse the entire catalogue, but works in the middle of it require a lot of clicking to get to (You can get to pages 1 ·2 ·3 ·4 ·...·50 ·51 ·52 ·53 immediately. Getting to page 25 would take a while.) And if you want to browsing by author surname has the same problem - You click on M and get to page 31. The end of the Ms is on page 35, and most people aren't patient enough to scroll through the whole section.

I'd certainly use that sort of feature.
So little space, so much to say.
RuthieG
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Post by RuthieG »

TriciaG wrote:I don't know if this has been requested already, but I don't see why we couldn't put all of the search options on one search page, instead of having to click on a separate link to get to the advanced options. Maybe separate them a bit with the current, basic search fields on top, a couple carriage returns, and the others below.
Hear, hear. I've never seen the point of having two separate pages.

Lucy, an improved search function/catalogue is certainly on the "to do" list, but somehow we never seem to get around to improving the infrastructure. There always seems so much to do just handling the day to day stuff.

Thanks for the kick up the proverbial. We really MUST do something about this.

Ruth
My LV catalogue page | RuthieG's CataBlog of recordings | Tweet: @RuthGolding
Lucy_k_p
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Post by Lucy_k_p »

Thanks for the kick up the proverbial. We really MUST do something about this.
I just wish I was competent enough at coding to be able to help out.
So little space, so much to say.
WYSIWYG
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Post by WYSIWYG »

I'm still new enough here that I didn't realize how new the [insert several hyperbolic adjectives] searchable catalog is. I've been depending it on it since I arrived here, so I just thought it had been like that from the start.

At Mudcat Cafe (www.mudcat.org), when we post a song lyric in a discussion thread that we think may make it into el database muy grande, The Digital Tradition, we add what modern computerese now calls tags (like @spirituals for the songs I usually post). (The DT and Mudcat itself predate all canned database software currently in use since the internet shed spores in its explosion.)

The DT managers decide, if they harvest a song from a thread, what tags to use in the DT. They may add more, change it to another primary tag, or keep the tag the original poster (OP) gave for it.


As I pull books off the Librivox shelf to add them to mine, in folders, I'm organizing my shelf just like you would at home. I may use the genre category in which I found it, for my shelf; or I may change it to one of my own according to how I will use it (pleasure, work, or study, for example). When I get a book here out of the genre search, I know a bit about where to shelve it.

For new material, it would be really helpful if the catalog page for it could include the genre or genres where it's listed in the catalog. Otherwise I don't know where to Save File to until after I have heard the book. It makes it a little harder to know where to put a book I have not yet heard, and thus where to look for shelved books for a particular purpose when that area of study gets "hot."


Librivox is becoming my first library of choice for just about every subject I can think of, and more subjects I NEVER thought of. From here, in a given area of study, I may look for a contemporary book at a commercial audbook site, but more usually I just go from the historical perspective I gain here, merge that with my other knowledge, and work from that. So this is becoming a pretty good curriculum source for lifelong learners, which is what homeschoolers usually turn into. :~) (Also called, in adult ed, self-directed learners or SDLs.) There oughtta be some grant bucks in all that.....

If that suits as a testimonmial, feel free to quote me. :~)

GO TEAM!

~Susan
Vision issues and routine, long travel make audbiobooks a MUST for me-- THANK YOU. Apologies in advance for ypto's in my posts.
Steampunk
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Post by Steampunk »

magpookie1133 wrote:Hello,

I'm soooooo happy I found LibriVox. The audiobooks have transformed my daily two and a half hour commute from tolerable to enjoyable. I even eat lunch in my car so I can listen to another chapter.

I would like to suggest adding chronological lists for series of books. For example, I just started listening to the Scarlet Pimpernel books by Baroness Orczy. I'm new to this series and it would really help me to know in which order the books should be read. It would also help to highlight the missing books in the series so that perhaps someone will take up the book to fill in the gap.

I'm having the same issue with the Anne of Green Gables Series. I've listened to "Anne of Green Gables", "Anne of the Islands", and "Anne's House of Dreams". I started "Rilla of Ingleside" but it was obvious from the first chapter that I've missed some books, but I'm not sure what books.

Would it be possible to add a printable chronological list in the same way as the printable CD booklet?

Thanks for all the great work by everyone.
rwinbladus
Posts: 5
Joined: March 9th, 2008, 9:23 am

Post by rwinbladus »

Any chance of sub-categories? Thanks to volunteers items like histories are huge but it makes searches difficult. Subhistories or a dewey system may aid in searches. Thanks.
Starlite
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Post by Starlite »

I was wondering if it was possible to add more then one genre to the advanced search. I was looking for Children's science. But I can only search for one or the other genre and not both.

Just adding it here as part of the 'wish list'. ;)

Esther :)
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
gypsygirl
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Post by gypsygirl »

Starlite wrote:I was wondering if it was possible to add more then one genre to the advanced search. I was looking for Children's science. But I can only search for one or the other genre and not both.

Just adding it here as part of the 'wish list'. ;)

Esther :)
Or, when they get around to it, it would be nice to be able to search more than one genre at a time, since a project can be marked with more than one.
Karen S.
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