Aggregating locations for Neil Gaiman

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Aggregating locations for Neil Gaiman

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1persky
Oct 23, 2008, 12:27 am

Neil Gaiman recently blogged (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/10/bookselling-is-science-fiction.html):

Which, having typed that to figure out what I think, means it is my opinion that if the people blogging about boycotting Borders put their efforts into promoting the independents and the specialist places that are stocking all the books (or as many as they can) -- perhaps making an overall website to find them, more easily than http://www.indiebound.org/ (a good thing, but not at present much use if you want to know where in the world the SF and Fantasy shops are) more books would get sold and we would have a healthier SF and Fantasy field.

This seems like something that LibraryThing Local ought to be able to do, viz., aggregate types of bookshops (with specialty SF/Fantasy shops being one instance).

Some ideas for how this could be done:
* Add the current description and comment fields to the existing "Find Venues" search box. (minimal change to existing system)

* Add the ability to tag venues (most LibraryThing-ish solution?)

* Add venues to "common knowledge" (e.g., an aggregate of shops could be
treated like a series of books. This feels less flexible than tags.

Thoughts?

2timspalding
Oct 23, 2008, 12:02 pm

We could have checkboxes for specialty stores. I mean, there aren't that many types, are there?

3lilithcat
Oct 23, 2008, 2:12 pm

I mean, there aren't that many types, are there?

1. Sf/Fantasy
2. Religious/spiritual
3. Foreign language
4. Gay/lesbian
5. Children's books
6. Feminist
7. Art
8. Academic
9. Architecture
10. Mystery
11. Music
12. African-American

And that's just off the top of my head.

I like checkboxes rather than tagging. Tagging is individualistic, and for this purpose I think it would be better to have consistency.

(For instance, I could see #4 above being tagged variously "LGBT", "GLBT", "gay", "Gay/lesbian", etc., etc.)

4christiguc
Oct 23, 2008, 2:25 pm

I entered one the other day in Paris that was a culinary bookstore and one in London that was a gamboling bookstore.

Others I've come across--Military, Aviation, Birding, Outdoors (walking maps, nature guides, etc.), Arts and Crafts (or is that what you mean by Art?)

5fyrefly98
Oct 23, 2008, 2:32 pm

How about new/used?

6angelikat
Oct 23, 2008, 2:44 pm

Comic book stores!
*Although my friends and I would rather not go to another comic store besides our local one, it is too much like cheating on your significant other*

7lilithcat
Oct 23, 2008, 2:59 pm

> 4

Arts and Crafts (or is that what you mean by Art?)

No, when I said "art", I was thinking of places like the bookstore at the Art Institute.

one in London that was a gamboling bookstore.

Is that a typo for "gambling"? I must say, though, that I am enjoying the mental image of a happy bookstore, skipping about the town, handing out books!

8christiguc
Oct 23, 2008, 3:01 pm

>7 lilithcat: Yes--that was a typo. :) But my spell check didn't catch it because it must have been busy with the mental image as well.

9persky
Oct 25, 2008, 5:41 pm

Much of the logic for tagging books applies to bookstores as well:

1) Where the useful categories are not immediately obvious, tagging is a useful, bottom up way to discover those categories.

2) Multiple categories may apply, with equal weight, to a given shop (this would be supported by checkboxes as well).

3) Virtually any category of book implies a corresponding specialty store. Virtually any tag that can be applied to a book (with the exception of tags like "in the hall bookshelf") can be applied to a bookshop/location.

Given #3, perhaps the existing tag set (for works) should be made applicable to locations.

Simple implementation:
* Add locations as first class targets of the existing tags. E.g.:
A) Tags would be mapped to locations by a join table of the same structure
as the one currently used to map tags to works.
B) Adding an existing tag to a location would add a row to this table.
C) Adding a new tag to a location would add a row to the tag table and
a row to the tag-to-location join table.

More conservative implementation:
* Let locations use existing tags, but quarantine new tags created for locations.
E.g.:
+ Again, a tag-to-location join table would be used for mapping existing tags.
+ A new locationtag table, with corresponding locationtag-to-location join
table would be created to handle case (C) above.
+ If locationtags turned out not to be divergent from works tags (expected),
this table could be folded back into the works tag table.

A major advantage to hooking into the existing tags is that many of the possible ambiguities mentioned above have been somewhat resolved for this tag set (in that new tags tend to track existing usage, and related tags have been mapped).

10staffordcastle
Modifié : Jan 3, 2009, 8:34 pm

#3

There's a revolutionary bookstore here in Berkeley, CA (of course!)

11lquilter
Modifié : Jan 4, 2009, 2:10 pm

To add to the list:
* travel
* political
* science / technical

Also you should be able to pick more than one specialty -- e.g., "Women and Children First" is gay, women's (feminist), and children's.

12persky
Jan 22, 2009, 3:10 am

>10 staffordcastle:
There's a revolutionary bookstore here in Berkeley, CA (of course!)
The one in under the Durant/Channing parking structure? I have fond memories of that one...

>11 lquilter:
Also you should be able to pick more than one specialty
This would be well supported by tagging.

13staffordcastle
Nov 9, 2009, 1:50 pm

>12 persky:
The one in under the Durant/Channing parking structure? I have fond memories of that one...

Yep, that's it!