Measurements

Can you please, please, pretty please adapt to people not using the "arcane" American measurement system? There is an easy way to recalculate things. This is ridiculous. I pretty much gave up on the feature because of that.

Where does this bite you? (I would like to be able to get kg/cm and not pounds/inches as default for dimensions, but that's the only thing that bugs me. Is that what you are talking about?)

>1 Nicole_VanK: Just so I understand, you're asking for a global toggle to set everything to either metric or American from your profile? To auto convert from a source when you bring it in? And to make everything for your profile show in the desired format?

(Not being mean, trying to make sure I know what I'm adding my approval to. Also, I think this had been requested multiple times before.)

I am not sure if it makes much difference anyway. Many libraries do not record accurate measurements anyway. Most like to round up to the next full inch. I have even seen where a book is exactly 9 inches tall and it is recorded as 10 inches. I suspect some libraries are recording minimum shelf height needed rather than the height of the book. If you measure your own book, you will know it is correctly recorded.

>2 bnielsen: I'm with you. It's annoying to have to go in to each individual record to change to metric. I would like to set metric as my account default so I don't have to make the changes every time.

>3 gilroy: Yeah, I would like a toggle. I can absolutely recalculate, but it's tiresome to have to have to do it for every entry. My preference is metric - make it so, AND remember my preference.

I find that I can make more accurate dimensional measurements in metric units. Figuring the decimal for something like 7-9/16 is a pain, But I can read cm directly from the ruler.

It is particularly a problem for weights. I have a digital scale forth the times I want to be accurate. Entering from g or kg would be much easier.

I shouldn’t have to click the button each time. It is repetitive and unnecessary. For a site which tries to be egalitarian and embracing of all cultures and viewpoints, not supporting the units used by a very large portion of the world seems to go opposite these sentiments.

It makes me wonder if I should try to fix it with TamperMonkey (site-specific Javascript).

James

>7 Keeline: Even though I stated above that I was not sure if it made a difference what scale the measurements were in, I usually record my measurements in CM rather than inches. I just think it is easier and possibly more accurate. When I say I am not sure if it makes a difference, it is because many libraries do not record exact measurements. If you convert inaccurate measurements, they are now in a different scale, but they are still inaccurate. If I have the time I take my own measurements to record. And I always do so on books I consider important (my major collections) if at all possible.

I trained and worked my whole career as a librarian/cataloguer, so I measure the way I did at work - in centimetres and rounded up to the nearest cm. So if a book is 14.2 cm, I record it as 15 cm.

My exception is thickness, which I round up to the nearest .5 cm. We never measured that at work so I didn't feel bound by the old AACR2 rules :)

>9 tardis: It seems that in the United States many libraries round up to the next full inch. Not all, but quite a few do this.

>10 Bernarrd: Not if they're following the official cataloguing rules (AACR2 in my day, RDA now) - they specify metric units.

>11 tardis: I have seen some that use metric units, but others do not. And I have seen some that give actual measurements and do not round up.

>8 Bernarrd: The practices of libraries to round dimensions is less important to me. If I take a measurement and enter it, I want it to be as efficient of a process as possible. I live in the U.S. but studied physics for several years so SI units are familiar to me. I just don't want to haul out a calculator to enter each unit.

James

I use measurements mostly because I put book jackets on my books to protect them from this tropical climate. The book jackets I buy come in height increments of 2mm so metric measurements are more useful to me.

>13 Keeline: While I doubt if most of my measurements will ever matter, I would rather have accurate measurements if I am going to bother with them at all. I may at some point want to compare the size of one volume to another for bibliographic purposes I suppose. But then often older books will have very minor size differences from one copy to another at times.

>15 Bernarrd: We moved to a new larger home in Feb. 2021 and we were planning not only what bookcases would fit but also what could fit in each section. For the key collections that we display, knowing how much would fit on a run of shelves and what hight spacing was required is more helpful if there are good measurements in the database. The measurements supplied can be dramatically wrong, including those 20x20x20 inch books. (A space character in the field becomes 20 hexadecimal for URL encoding purposes and this seems to be the source of this wild error).

Of course when actually shelving, adjustments are needed because the books may be too tight despite any measurements made. Plus, on a growing collection, one wants to leave space for new additions when possible.

The bottom line is that extra steps in data entry are a barrier and a good way to ensure that the data will not be entered consistently during the accessioning process.

Taking a quick look at the source code of the Edit Book page I see:

<td class="subitemtitle" colspan="5">Convert all physical measurements to 
 <a href="#" onclick="convertPhysDescUnits(1);return false;">kg/cm</a> 
 or <a href="#" onclick="convertPhysDescUnits(0);return false;">pounds/inches</a></td>

So, this indicates that a TamperMonkey script would run on the URL pattern of

https://www.librarything.com/work/\d+/edit/\d+

and call the following Javascript function once the page is fully loaded:

convertPhysDescUnits(1);return false;

It should be doable and with a bit of comments then a member that prefers everything converted to English units could have that as well with a variable setting in the UserScript for TamperMonkey (Chrome) or GreaseMonkey (Firefox). I haven't made one of these from scratch but I have looked at a few of them and made small edits. It might work.

The other thing I'd like to do is to disable the "feature" that clears the search box on a list view. I open the page, start to type, and before I can hit return the field is cleared and the cursor is placed there. The page loads slowly even with a fast Internet connection. I don't need this "feature" and would gladly turn it off. That would have to be a separate UserScript so one could be installed without the other.

James

I agree. Either make the default metric, or offer a global permanent change.

Yes, please make it an account option which system we want to use. And it should be consistent. I changed the dimensions on my books to cm and added the values. I didn't add a weight. Now in the list I see the calculated weight in pounds. That's annoying.

I suggest we standardize on cubits and bushels.

Maybe a compromise can be found, like here:

https://xkcd.com/1923/

Is it time for a bump?

bump