Booksense Event entries won't stay Deleted?

How often is the data from Booksense downloaded to LTLocal? On Thursday, I took the time to delete all of the literary "On this day. . ." calendar events that are always created for the Centuries and Sleuths bookstore on the Chicago Local page whenever Booksense data is imported. Those are more like junk or filler clogging up the Chicago Local page and not actual Events to my mind. I noticed today that those non-event "Event' entries are back. I assumed they were just new entries from an overnight upload and started deleting them again but then when I took the time to read some of them more closely I noticed that they were familiar to me as the exact ones I had deleted a few days ago. What gives?

Yeah, the system looks at what's there. If it's there, it doesn't reimport. If it's not, it imports it.

I'll send this to Chris. Maybe he can check the "delete flag."

Yeah, I can look into it. And to answer your first question...we check for booksense indiebound events nightly.

Maybe a better way to do it is for you not to have to delete them in the first place. I'll have to take a look at some of them and try and make a filter to catch them.

BUMPING this topic because it's still an annoying problem IMO. The Chicago Local page always has lots of actual data/activity and I still feel like these unnecessary "On This Day. . ." faux Events from Centuries & Sleuths calendar that indiebound robo-installs are so much detritus cluttering up the local listings.

I completely hate the automatic adding by Booksense of events. Every event sponsored by Seminary Co-op is added as if it were held at Seminary Co-op, and most of them aren't. They're at 57th Street Books, or at the Newberry, or the Harold Washington Library Center, but only a few are actually at Seminary.

> 5

No doubt lilithcat. I remember you bringing that problem up before and yes, it's annoying too as well as being counterproductive to the folks who added the actual entries manually to the correct venues. It may be tedious but there is definitely something to be said for the old human touch no? : )

The humans who have been helping are to be congratulated on their diligence, but they aren't enough. It's crystal clear that we can't get enough events the way we're doing it now; events just isn't working for most people in most places.

We are working on an iPhone app to make it more attractive generally, in the hope that people will help us. But automatic adding from Booksense and elsewhere is, for now, absolutely necessary.

As someone who enters a crapload of events manually, it would be nice if there were a way to upload iCal data, so we can grab events from Barnes and Noble and any other stores that post events in iCal.

> 8

I'd be 100% on board with that idea of yours too for venues like B&N or Borders since they have so many stores and it's so tedious going through each of their calendars. . .BUT ONLY if there was a way to filter the data so that only author events came over! : )

OMG, I can already see myself going cyberifically postal if automatic uploads brought over the musical appearances, children's story times, children's character appearances, game meetings, education discount days, open mics, writing workshop meetings, and sundry different book groups that comprise well over 90% of the actual calendar entries for those chains. Honestly, if I saw all that garbage on the regular overwhelming the Local pages I would probably just throw my arms up in defeat and shove off being a LTL Helper. Any perceived so-called problems I currently have with some junk Indiebound data would be chump-change compared to this scenario.

You consider "children's story times" as garbage events? I'm sure the kids enjoy them, more than they would enjoy an author signing.

Same goes for book groups - I personally might not give a crap about them, but other people might be interested in joining one so they can talk about books with other people in a real-life social setting.

>8 lampbane:

I'll look, but I don't think iCal helps with the central problem—mapping the data to our venues and authors. But I'll check. Basically, we need to do a lot of screen-scraping. It's the opposite of rocket sciene, but it takes time.

>9 bookjones:

I have to agree that your aversions are not everyone's. Perhaps the best solution would be to allow members to hide certain types of events. But it may well not be possible.

When I enter information into LTL it's within a narrow prism of thinking, “What would be most beneficial to LT users when they direct themselves to their Home page, a Local page or an Author page?” not as a regular book lover and reader in my own real life where of course I do not logically believe that any events related to or that promote books and reading aren't a good thing. I don't feel many children use LT let alone LTL, secondly I think it is almost universally accepted that most adults already know that every single bookstore or library---large or small---has weekly story hours for children so I think adding a slew of entries for non-specific or generic story hours would be redundant and not serve much of a purpose on LTL. Lastly, some venues have anywhere from 2 – 4 story hours a week so yeah, I definitely would not want to see all these generic entries cluttering up my Local page. Just my own aesthetic opinion about my own Local page but of course others are free---as they always have been---to add them.

Book discussions/book groups are a whole other issue for me and it's so fortuitous that this very subject came up because I have been thinking lately that I may very well reverse my own policy on not adding them for my municipal library system which would just happen to be Chicago Public Libraries. I have always felt a twinge of regret about forgoing them because after all, public libraries are public sector workings and in theory are there to benefit us all so my first inclination was always that they “should probably” be added. What public libraries do is a good thing but I have been hesitant to add them because of concerns about sheer volume. I think there is no difference between say a group getting together to talk about Garcia Llorca for an hour at the library as there is in a guest lecturer talking about Garcia Llorca for an hour at say the Instituto Cervantes. One is not IMO more “Eventful” or at face value substantively more valid. But I only feel I would be willing to do this for public sector venues and not private sector ones. As such, I have been intermittently scanning the Chicago Pub Library calendars for the different Branch locations for a few months trying to get a sense of how many entries this undertaking might involve and have only recently come to the conclusion that while there are 80 branches, they don't each have an endless litany of book groups/discussion EVERY SINGLE week because of all the other services they offer to the public and allot time for. IMO, they by and large do not have nearly as many discussions scheduled as say an average B&N when I go through the B&N calendars. But yeah, to be honest I would probably consider the endless amounts of B&N book discussion/groups for each store a lot of clutter on the Local page and for me, for private sector Venues, that just isn't as worth the hassle to deal with nor do I want to contribute to what I perceive as clutter.

Children may not be using LT or LTL, but their parents certainly are, and the great thing about LTL is that it can put all the story hours in one place so they can decide "hey, this one is pretty close" or "this one is at a time when I'm free." It's about giving people choices - as well as the fact that a lot of people don't realize that their library might even have such a thing (I certainly never realized how much was going on at my local library branch).

As for book groups, I could see them becoming overwhelming, which is why I tend to pick ones that are definitely open to the public and offer something special. A good example is the Society for Ethical Culture in NYC - they have a lot of book group discussions, and I can certainly imagine someone saying, "Hey, talking about Kafka's The Trial from an Ethical Culture side could be really interesting."

It would be nice to have a way to sort out different types of events, though - there's no way to isolate out things like book release parties or book sales (which I would be interested in) from book groups or poetry readings (which I am SO not interested in).

I'm happy with any real event that's book-related, be it a children's story hour (lampbane's right - kids may not use the site, but parents do), a book club (open to all) or an author reading.

But those damn "On this day" things are annoying, I agree*. And, oy! If all of the CPL events were added automatically, we'd be inundated with kids crafting events and "Create an Email Account" and "Internet Job Search", etc., etc.

At least nobody is entering the "Bean Fridays" at Border's!

*I hope no one actually thinks that Cicero is going to be appearing at Centuries & Sleuths on January 3 to read from his book, "Murder Trials"! I don't think I'm going to edit that one away - it's too amusing.

I think this is simply one of those issues where I see black and others see white because I still don't honestly feel that parents need LTL to inform them that their local bookstores and libraries have story hours week end and week out. Or rather, at least I don't feel they need LTL for that to the extent that it warrants my personally taking the additional free time to add them all. Ultimately as with so many issues related to LTL content, it's just stems from personal opinion.

If we had filtering options I would certainly not care one iota whether story hours were added by anyone---indeed, if people have been adding them I just scrolled by them but there doesn't seem to have been a stampede to get them onto the Chicago local page as I have rarely seen any. All I am saying is that I still wouldn't be the LTer who did them because my own view that they are sufficiently generic enough Events to not warrant taking over my personal Home page or my area's Local page. As it stands, I use LTL through my Home page to get a snapshot of what's going on. I have it set to show me 20 upcoming Local events within a 12 mile radius and if all of a sudden 12-14 of my listed Events were consistently children's story hours because 8-10 B&N and Borders immediately fall within that mile radius then for myself, I would consider that functionality useless and a complete bust. I would feel the same way if I saw them taking over the overall list on my Local page too where my mile radius setting is considerably larger much like I already consider the unnecessary Indiebound entries gunk that I have to scroll though . My thinking has always been that it serves much more purpose to select the Author Events at those large retail chains and have them stand out to users rather than risk having them be buried under a litany of story hour listings and group discussions from those same stores.

Nevertheless, it's true now as it always has been since LTL was introduced that if others want to see them and feel a great urge in letting other members know about them then they are free to add them.

>>14 lilithcat:

At least nobody is entering the "Bean Fridays" at Border's!

Which is why one shouldn't enter events at 3am...

> 15

You know, it might be nice if there were a separate area on a venue page for recurring events. So that at the page for Library X it might say, Storytelling, Saturdays, 1:00, instead of having that pop up every Saturday.

> 17

Now that's an excellent thought! It would be super sweet to have a "Recurring Events" section that parses the information from the more distinct, one-time Events for a Venue. The ability/functionality to set them up as "Recurring" from the get-go would be the icing on the cake.