Bookpedia dates?

[jefferyn]

Greetings,
I am a little uncertain about how to set up dates in Bookpedia. So I am curious how others handle book dates in Bookpedia.

Bookpedia has a field for dates called “release”. For may cases where the on-line search finds my book, it populates that field apparently with the printing date of the book. For example, my copy of Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett has a “release” of 1972, but the book was originally written in 1930.

When comparing Bookpedia, CDpedia and DVDpedia, I see that the other pedias have multiple fields to handle dates. CDpedia has 2 dates, “original” and “release”. DVDpedia has a “Theatrical” and “Release”. I looked thru the settings fields of Bookpedia but didn’t find anything that looked similar, to handle the fact that books will usually have an original date and the release date of the copy we own.

These dates matter to me because I like to search occasionally for items in my pedias by their original dates. I have set up “smart collections” in CDpedia and DVDpedia by decades. For example, my CDpedia has 1960s, 1970s, 1980s etc for each decade that displays all music of that era. Same for DVDpedia, for movies by era, 1930s movies, 1940s, etc. I even do the same thing with smart playlists in iTunes to be able to listen to music by eras. I’d like to have my Bookpedia data set up similarly, but need to figure out the best approach.

So a couple questions.
1- Have I missed something in Bookpedia? Does it have another date field that I’ve missed for this?
2- If not, how do other’s record the original dates vs the release date? Do you just use release date for the original book date? Or do you use a custom field or something else?

I’d like to make sure I have the best way to do this since my library is large and it will take a long time to do this. I’d hate to do it wrong then have to change it later.

Thanks for any suggestion-
Jeffery

[Conor]

Hi Jeffery,

We have always considered a "copyright" date attribute that would match the original release date field that CDpedia and DVDpedia have (in the form of theatrical release). But Bookpedia relies on several online databases, all of which have different views on dates and the issue became too hard to differentiate between an original release date and the release of that particular copy. Ideally each database would carry both but they rarely do.

I would use one of the custom date fields and name it 'Copyright' to keep track of that information and keep the 'Release' date field for the release date of the actual copy you have. You could use the Terminal app to move the information from the 'Release' field into the custom date field and then adjust the Release field where needed. If that sounds like it would be a time-saver for you, here's what you need to do: first quit Bookpedia and make a backup of your Bookpedia database file found in your Home folder under ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia/Database.bookpd. If you don't see the ~/Library/ folder, use the Finder's 'Go' menu, hold down the option key and the Library folder will appear.

After you've made the backup and with Bookpedia still not running, start up the program 'Terminal' found in Applications/Utilities and copy/paste the following lines into the window that opens, each followed by a return:

Code: Select all

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bookpedia/Database.bookpd
update zEntry set zCustomDate1 = zReleaseDate;
.exit

[Waldbaer]

Well, this is not exactly on topic, but the possibility of access to the database you mentioned in the end sounds quite interesting to me. I suppose there are many more possibilities to batch manipulate the pedia databases this way... do you know any documentation for this? Or is there maybe even a GUI for it? Sometimes I like to change handling of this or any other field and would e.g. like to replace a word or something like that in all fields... so it would be great to know if there is anything like that for the pedias' databases. Thanks for the info in advance!

[Conor]

The database is an open format it's called SQLite. Although an open format that has a lot of power the syntax is terse and can be hard to grasp. However, there is a lot of code here in the forum over the years of doing a lot of integration directly with the database that might cover some of the things you could be interested in. Search for sqlite3 as it's the beginning of the command for the Terminal and hence shows up in every post about direct access.

There are number of GUI tools for the Mac. Base (App Store), SQLiteManager Pro Liya and even an add-on for Firefox. I haven't used any of them extensively so can't really give a recommendation.

[Waldbaer]

Thanks for your answer and the tips, Conor! This post will be a good place to start if I (or anybody else) should need to edit the database in a more complex way than the pedia-internal tools allow to do.

[Alex]

Or is there maybe even a GUI for it?

I've tried a lot of SQLite GUI tools trying to find the right one, something that would be as good as Sequel Pro is for Mysql databases. While I haven't found the right one yet, the closest I've found is Base.

I wrote a short piece comparing SQLite GUI tools a couple of years ago which might be useful to you. Just keep in mind that it's 2 years old and some of the tools might have changed or not even exist anymore, but I still think it might be helpful to get started.

Cheers.

[Waldbaer]

Great, thank you Alex!