sort by 'last modified' date?
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1maspotts
I'd like to be able to sort by some sort of 'last modified' date. The
exact use case is to be able to distinguish the 60 or so books I moved
into a particular collection today from the books that were already in
that collection; if the act of moving each book modified some timestamp
then I could sort by that timestamp and know that the books I want
are in the top 60. Make sense? Is this already possible by chance?
Thanks!
Mike
exact use case is to be able to distinguish the 60 or so books I moved
into a particular collection today from the books that were already in
that collection; if the act of moving each book modified some timestamp
then I could sort by that timestamp and know that the books I want
are in the top 60. Make sense? Is this already possible by chance?
Thanks!
Mike
2dchaikin
I can see other uses for this too. Sometimes it would just be nice to see the five books I'm currently editing listed together and on the top of the list.
3jjmcgaffey
No, not possible as far as I know, though it would come in handy now and then.
One thing you could do is apply a tag (@currently editing or !moved or something) to the books you're working on, then remove it when you're done with them. I've got a collection called Working On - it currently contains all my books that have Amazon covers or no covers, and about a third of them have tags saying what I need to do with them - _scan cover (I have the book, I just need to scan the cover), _check cover (there's lots of member-uploaded covers, I can't remember which one I have (if any)), or _need cover (this was a borrowed book or I already discarded it, I need to find a cover for it somewhere). So I do the reverse - look in my Working On collection for all books that don't have a _* cover tag (tag:-"_* cover"), so I can check the ones I haven't yet checked. Or I choose the _scan cover tag and find some of the books and scan them, etc. And when a book has the proper cover at good quality, I delete the tag and remove it from Working On - done with that one!
The advantage of this type of workaround is that you can tag, say, a half-dozen books, whether or not you've done anything to them yet, and go back and select them together at any time. The timestamp thing would require you to work on only one group at a time, and finish with them before you did anything to another group.
BTW, the reason I put symbols on the front of my suggested tags is that then they sort together at the front of the list on the Tags page (if you're sorting alphabetical). The only three symbols I've found to be safe are @, _, and ! - most of the other (easy) symbols have HTML or URL or search meanings and mess stuff up when you search for or click on them. (slashes are a pain for URLs, * will mess up any search that uses wildcards...)
One thing you could do is apply a tag (@currently editing or !moved or something) to the books you're working on, then remove it when you're done with them. I've got a collection called Working On - it currently contains all my books that have Amazon covers or no covers, and about a third of them have tags saying what I need to do with them - _scan cover (I have the book, I just need to scan the cover), _check cover (there's lots of member-uploaded covers, I can't remember which one I have (if any)), or _need cover (this was a borrowed book or I already discarded it, I need to find a cover for it somewhere). So I do the reverse - look in my Working On collection for all books that don't have a _* cover tag (tag:-"_* cover"), so I can check the ones I haven't yet checked. Or I choose the _scan cover tag and find some of the books and scan them, etc. And when a book has the proper cover at good quality, I delete the tag and remove it from Working On - done with that one!
The advantage of this type of workaround is that you can tag, say, a half-dozen books, whether or not you've done anything to them yet, and go back and select them together at any time. The timestamp thing would require you to work on only one group at a time, and finish with them before you did anything to another group.
BTW, the reason I put symbols on the front of my suggested tags is that then they sort together at the front of the list on the Tags page (if you're sorting alphabetical). The only three symbols I've found to be safe are @, _, and ! - most of the other (easy) symbols have HTML or URL or search meanings and mess stuff up when you search for or click on them. (slashes are a pain for URLs, * will mess up any search that uses wildcards...)
4maspotts
I agree re. the tags; unfortunately I didn't think to do that in this case, and now have no obvious way to identify the 60 or so books I moved. A 'last modified' date (sortable) would be a very nice general solution to this sort of scenario. Any chance the devs could add one (or even just expose an existing book-level timestamp)?
5jjmcgaffey
There's a timestamp, but it's only for when the book was entered, not for when it was last fiddled with (date entered in fact records down to the second, though only the day shows). At least, that's the only one _we_ can see - I think the programmers can see more, since Tim and cD have at various times identified books that have recently been worked on. So maybe.
Can you remember any of the books? Was there any common denominator (author, title, date entered, ?) for them or subgroups of them? Even if the PTB decide to make or display a timestamp, it probably won't be quickly, so your sixty books are still going to have to be sorted out individually.
Can you remember any of the books? Was there any common denominator (author, title, date entered, ?) for them or subgroups of them? Even if the PTB decide to make or display a timestamp, it probably won't be quickly, so your sixty books are still going to have to be sorted out individually.
6maspotts
Yup, got no recourse in this case but to identify them manually, but I hope that
a last modified date could be created/exposed for future use: it would be a
really useful feature (imagine how horrible an OS would be if it didn't allow you
to list files in order of last modification time!).
a last modified date could be created/exposed for future use: it would be a
really useful feature (imagine how horrible an OS would be if it didn't allow you
to list files in order of last modification time!).
7maspotts
Are any librarything devs reading this? Is a last-modified date likely to be implemented? And if so, might the timeframe be weeks, months, years?
Thanks!
Mike
Thanks!
Mike
8lquilter
I'd really like a last-modified-date. Even better, a modification history! wiki-style/revertable.
(galloping quickly away on the pony)
(galloping quickly away on the pony)
9maspotts
bumping to top again... tim/conceptdawg; any chance of a comment on the feasibility of a last-modified date? :)
13dhm
Yes, for me this is a top wish: please expose the modification date for us to sort by! I use this a lot in all other databases! Thanks!
14AndreasJ
>13 dhm:
To some extent you can do this by looking at your News Feed (click "Share" towards the right end of the header). No help if the changes you did not register there, but if they're of types that do then it's a workaround.
To some extent you can do this by looking at your News Feed (click "Share" towards the right end of the header). No help if the changes you did not register there, but if they're of types that do then it's a workaround.
16melannen
If you use inventory mode, it defaults to a sort by "date inventoried." Unfortunately it's not, afaik, the last modification of any kind, just the last time the inventory status was changed, but if you're moving a lot of books around it can be helpful.
17bnielsen
Of course you could also go for the geek solution and download the TSV export file once a day (or more often if you like) and save it in a version management system of your own choice.
Mostly meant as a joke as it would be massive overkill, but not completely crazy since LT allows you to search for fairly long strings of BOOKID1 OR BOOKID2 OR BOOKID3 ... so you can use some external tool to find an interesting subset of books and then go back in LT and find it.
I.e. I have a script that tells me the newest 10 books in my library that lack some information about pages and/or dimensions.
When I have a spare 10 minutes I can copy/paste the 131930670 OR 132239433 OR ... string into the search box and go look for the books on my shelves.
Mostly meant as a joke as it would be massive overkill, but not completely crazy since LT allows you to search for fairly long strings of BOOKID1 OR BOOKID2 OR BOOKID3 ... so you can use some external tool to find an interesting subset of books and then go back in LT and find it.
I.e. I have a script that tells me the newest 10 books in my library that lack some information about pages and/or dimensions.
When I have a spare 10 minutes I can copy/paste the 131930670 OR 132239433 OR ... string into the search box and go look for the books on my shelves.
19ianreads
Bumping.
My use case for exposing "Last Modified" to Display Styles is the following. All databases/collections get stale after a while. Maybe your standards have changed, maybe some changes were not recorded, maybe books have plain disappeared, etc. A technique I'm using to great success in these cases is called "freshening". It's going through a list of items, database entries, etc. in a certain order (of which last modified is a prime candidate) and improving each entry. Improve it just a little bit (fix capitalization, set sort order, ...) or overhaul it completely, or focus on a specific aspect (covers, physical description, ...). Do a couple each day and, hey presto, a couple of weeks/months/years later you've "refreshed" your entire catalogue.
This procedure can also be followed by shelf order (i.e. just taking a couple of books from the shelf every day), but that misses books that have disappeared, are in storage, etc. Of course there's many ways to skin a cat, but this is (one of) my reason(s) for also wanting a Last Modified field.
My use case for exposing "Last Modified" to Display Styles is the following. All databases/collections get stale after a while. Maybe your standards have changed, maybe some changes were not recorded, maybe books have plain disappeared, etc. A technique I'm using to great success in these cases is called "freshening". It's going through a list of items, database entries, etc. in a certain order (of which last modified is a prime candidate) and improving each entry. Improve it just a little bit (fix capitalization, set sort order, ...) or overhaul it completely, or focus on a specific aspect (covers, physical description, ...). Do a couple each day and, hey presto, a couple of weeks/months/years later you've "refreshed" your entire catalogue.
This procedure can also be followed by shelf order (i.e. just taking a couple of books from the shelf every day), but that misses books that have disappeared, are in storage, etc. Of course there's many ways to skin a cat, but this is (one of) my reason(s) for also wanting a Last Modified field.
