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Krazykiwi · 03-07-2016, 01:12 PM

Bearing in mind it's not always present and if all the editions of a book are autoimports, it's guaranteed to be wrong, it does have a consistent position on the page.

What exactly do you need to know David?

You can see it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...t_Expectations (expand the "more info" if you don't have it already done, and it's right after the pub date for that specific edition.

Paperback, 505 pages
Published June 25th 1998 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published January 8th 1861)

(re the accuracy: This field is populated in two ways in the GR database - most of the time it's filled in by librarians manually, but it will autogenerate if an edition with an earlier date is combined with editions that already have it. This frequently screws up in the case of PD books that have a million recent new editions but the original book has never been added to the GR database - and it'll say the earliest of the PD republishers dates, which is probably in the 2000's, or whenever it hit Project Gutenberg).

For all these reasons, although I actually go fix the dates on GR, I always check the "get earliest publication date from worldcat" box (don't have Calibre handy right this second, but it's somewhere in the configure metadata download dialogue). Worldcat is a much better, although still not perfect, source of original publication dates, since it comes from library catalogues and the original editions are much more likely to be in the database for semi-obscure titles.

03-07-2016, 01:12 PM	#263
Krazykiwi Zealot Posts: 137 Karma: 2156958 Join Date: Jan 2013 Device: Too many random androids to list	Bearing in mind it's not always present and if all the editions of a book are autoimports, it's guaranteed to be wrong, it does have a consistent position on the page. What exactly do you need to know David? You can see it here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...t_Expectations (expand the "more info" if you don't have it already done, and it's right after the pub date for that specific edition. Paperback, 505 pages Published June 25th 1998 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published January 8th 1861) (re the accuracy: This field is populated in two ways in the GR database - most of the time it's filled in by librarians manually, but it will autogenerate if an edition with an earlier date is combined with editions that already have it. This frequently screws up in the case of PD books that have a million recent new editions but the original book has never been added to the GR database - and it'll say the earliest of the PD republishers dates, which is probably in the 2000's, or whenever it hit Project Gutenberg). For all these reasons, although I actually go fix the dates on GR, I always check the "get earliest publication date from worldcat" box (don't have Calibre handy right this second, but it's somewhere in the configure metadata download dialogue). Worldcat is a much better, although still not perfect, source of original publication dates, since it comes from library catalogues and the original editions are much more likely to be in the database for semi-obscure titles.