Scanning & Importing State of the Art

[rickl]

Over the last couple of years, I've missed most of the developments in Bookpedia and Delicious Library through general busy-ness, and my library is wildly out of date. I soon found that there isn't really anything to report in Delicious Library, but Bookpedia is another matter.

My old workflow was to scan things into Delicious Library, because the scanning feature was at the time so much better than that of Bookpedia, then use DL's export feature and Bookpedia's import feature to get everything into Bookpedia. This time, though, I decided to try Bookpedia's scanning again, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is now even faster than DL's! That's great, but unfortunately none of my books came into Bookpedia with covers attached, while the same books all came with covers when scanning into Delicious Library.

So I decided to try my old workflow again, but I had a number of problems/questions:
1. The Bookpedia help mentions direct import of a Delicious Library library. So I copied my Delicious Library Items.deliciousLibrary2 file over to the computer on which I use Bookpedia and tried importing it. Bookpedia allowed me to select the file and click the Open button, but then nothing happened… nothing imported, no error message. Is this a common problem, or did I just do it wrong?
2. When I exported my DL library as a csv file, import into Bookpedia went OK, but a lot of the fields weren't filled in and no covers went along. What fields is it recommended to export/import?

I'm wondering what the current recommended practices are for getting books into Bookpedia? Are my experiences consistent with those of other users?

Thanks for any help.

Rick

[Nora]

Hi Rick,

For the cover images that were missing during your searches - what site were you using? Some sites, such as AbeBooks, have good info but are a bit weak on the cover images. In that case you can either do an advanced search using the little gear button using another site or ctrl-click (right-click) inside the cover image well at the bottom of the main window and choose 'Open Google Images' to get the cover image via a Google search or the 'Download from' command.

For the automatic import - make sure you bring over Delicious Library 2 (the application) as well as the whole Delicious Library 2 data folder over to your computer before doing the import. Bookpedia needs the application as well as the data file for the import to work.

The automatic import is a lot better than the CSV option since it will include all fields and the cover images but if you prefer doing the CSV option, make sure you select all fields to export in DL 2 and then map them correctly in Bookpedia during the import. There is a way to get the cover images to come along with the rest of the info but it depends on whether DL 2 lets you export the image path for your entries. If that's the case then you can add this to your exported file "/Users/[you]/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library 2/Covers/5.jpg", and then map that column to the Image URL field in the import feature for Bookpedia.

Alternatively, import the data and then use the 'Download from' or 'Open Google Images' commands from the cover image well to re-download the cover images from the site of your choice. (You can do this in a batch by selecting all entries first or do it one by one, depending on what you prefer.)

[rickl]

For the automatic import - make sure you bring over Delicious Library 2 (the application) as well as the whole Delicious Library 2 data folder over to your computer before doing the import. Bookpedia needs the application as well as the data file for the import to work.

Thanks, Nora, that was the missing piece!

On the search, I've found so far that AbeBooks and Abbeys seem to have good info for most of my books, but, as you say, they seem to be a bit weak on cover images, and, although the built-in Google Books search works well, it can be a bit time-consuming with lots of different books. I have a feeling search would go better if I could get my Amazon Associates set-up working, but I can't find any reference to access keys and secret keys in my correspondence from Amazon.

Anyway, based on the small-scale tests I've done, it looks like the two-stage process of scanning to DL and then importing the library is going to work well. Thanks for the help.

Rick

[Nora]

I have a feeling search would go better if I could get my Amazon Associates set-up working, but I can't find any reference to access keys and secret keys in my correspondence from Amazon.

You have to sign up for two different accounts for the Amazon search: AWS (which gives you the access and secret key) and the associate program (which gives you the associate ID). You can find links to both in the Bookpedia Help and also more information on our blog here and here.

[rickl]

Thanks for the links, Nora. The explanations were all pretty clear, except for this:

Unless you are a registered on Amazon

Things seemed to go OK, but after entering all 3 bits of info I got the message:

Your AccessKey Id is not registered for Product Advertising API…

Your pages make it clear that we should go to Amazon if we have any problems so I'm not expecting you to troubleshoot this for me. Just thought I should mention the problem in case other people have the same problem.

In any case, since the import from Delicious Library works so well, I think I will stick for now with the workflow I know, i.e. scan into DL en masse then import into Bookpedia. Thanks for all the help.

Rick

[Nora]

Try going to the Amazon associate site (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp ... gn-in.html) and sign in with your new username and password. Then go back to the Amazon settings in Bookpedia and try it once more.
For newly registered users of the Associate program this usually does the trick; it seems like there might be an issue with the registration not fulfilling itself automatically and thus you have to log in once to make it 'stick'. Please let me know if that doesn't fix the issue for you.