Some major work habits of mine are not so simple and streamlined as I thought.
Finally tried the Goodreads metadata download plugin today now that I've added about 200 books from Baen and Amazon and have enough books to test results on. I generally like the Goodreads metadata and the simple, consistent way they do genre tags. And I realized my workflow sequence and methods for entering metadata as described in any KISS versions to date aren't very KISS after all. And same for my use of abbreviations and avoiding downloaded tags.
So now I'm considering a major revision of how I work that includes:
- Additional custom columns for metadata items that Goodreads doesn't cover, such as Format Quality, Award, and BookType (they do Anthologies but not Collections or Omnibuses per the genre list). This will allow moving columns around to better accomodate actual workflow sequences, as well as making searches easier and more precise.
- Not cram so much metadata into one narrow tags column, and expand abbreviations to be more human readable. Yes, I know that I can map some of their metadata to my abbreviations if I want to, but I'm not sure I want to anymore.
- Possibly even use Goodreads' Title to overwrite my entered Title if they're consistent about the way they append metadata such as Omnibus and Volume info to the title, and maybe they also append other types of metadata too? (Haven't tested that enough yet.)
- Use their ratings in addition to my own.
- Only use Amazon in a second Metadata Download pass focused on those selected books that Goodreads didn't have.
- Possibly use Goodreads Sync plugin after I learn more about the Goodreads site.
- Use View Manager plugin to manage different views of columns for different needs, such as metadata entry for newly added books vs browsing my library for something to read.
- And so on (there's more)….
I'd overcomplicated stuff (again) and deluded myself it was for KISS reasons. Hope I didn't lead anyone astray.
-unbo