Trying to add a book

So i keep running into a problem with some of my old, pre ISBN books.

https://www.librarything.com/work/11267479

This is an example... when I click add to my collection, it just takes me to the add books page without adding it.

How do I add these without manual entry?

Well, Librarything is not a source. So searching Librarything will not help you beyond finding out how others entered the book.
I see one person did a manual entry.

One option: Look up the title on Worldcat, find out what libraries have the book, see if they are a source on the add books page, then search that source to add to your library.

Second option: If someone has already found it in a library, searching by title and author through Overcat MAY find it.

Yes, that is what that button does. Why are you so opposed to manual entry?

>1 ruckc:

It appears that other people with the book used the Library of Congress or amazon.com as their sources. Try one of those.

I have found the LOC to be an excellent source for my pre-ISBN books published in the U.S. (and some published elsewhere).

That one is in Overcat.

>3 MarthaJeanne: I have catalogued ~600 books in the past two weeks. I have a huge pile to go. I don't want to hand type every detail. I thought, mistakenly I guess, that if someone else adds a book... I can add a copy of their record to my catalog, instead of duplicating the effort.

>6 ruckc: There is no "duplicating effort" here. We aren't like Goodreads, where all the books exist and you're just marking it as one on your shelf.
Each person has a unique book record, which lump together as a work.

From my own experience, it is faster and easier to enter manually than to enter bad data from Amazon and to have to correct it all. Searching madly for a source can also eat up lots of time and effort.

>8 MarthaJeanne: "Searching madly for a source can also eat up lots of time and effort."

I'm with you on that one. One or two tries (ISBN / Title) on a source before I add manually.

>8 MarthaJeanne: When people comment on not wanting to enter manually, I offer the work around of finding the source. I usually guess that after two or three times doing the work around, they just give up and go manually.

Of course it also makes a difference how accurate you want to be. No matter what source I use, I double check all the information. Even LoC and British Library make mistakes. Not often, but now and again. Or my copy may have a different print year. It doesn't take that long, unless I have succumbed to the temptation to use Amazon marketplace data, in which case, manual entry would have been much faster than correcting everything.

I'm also OCD enough to check the author page for more copies to combine, basic CK... How I wish I had started this earlier. Many of those first books are now accurate - I've fixed them in the process of discarding them.