Question involving metadata and library searching and ebooks
October 11, 2022 6:57 AM Subscribe
Ok. I work in a library, and we have an interesting patron request involving ebooks and all the countries of the world!
This gentleman had set himself a personal project of reading an ebook authored by or set in each state. (The ebook part is non-negotiable, he absolutely needs to have the books in digital format.)
Our patron completed reading 50 ebooks, one for each state, in good time. He decided to expand his goal to read a book for every country of the world. His criteria is that the author is a native of said country, or the setting of the book is specific to the country. He leans toward nonfiction narratives but fiction will work. His problem is searching for ebooks . He's not been able to filter his searches in any usable way. A coworker is working on some advanced searches for him using specific metadata fields but depending on when the data was entered this is a hit or miss method. I've been looking online, thinking that someone somewhere has put together a list of authors/countries that we could base his searches on. I have a feeling that this will probably be a two part process, get the list of items that fit the author/location requirement and then search for the digital format?
Anyway, am tossing this out for anyone who might be able to point us toward useful results!
I should mention that there is no timeframe here, he just wants to keep his project going.
This gentleman had set himself a personal project of reading an ebook authored by or set in each state. (The ebook part is non-negotiable, he absolutely needs to have the books in digital format.)
Our patron completed reading 50 ebooks, one for each state, in good time. He decided to expand his goal to read a book for every country of the world. His criteria is that the author is a native of said country, or the setting of the book is specific to the country. He leans toward nonfiction narratives but fiction will work. His problem is searching for ebooks . He's not been able to filter his searches in any usable way. A coworker is working on some advanced searches for him using specific metadata fields but depending on when the data was entered this is a hit or miss method. I've been looking online, thinking that someone somewhere has put together a list of authors/countries that we could base his searches on. I have a feeling that this will probably be a two part process, get the list of items that fit the author/location requirement and then search for the digital format?
Anyway, am tossing this out for anyone who might be able to point us toward useful results!
I should mention that there is no timeframe here, he just wants to keep his project going.
Best answer: Wikipedia has "List of {nationality} writers" for most countries.
posted by bowbeacon at 8:02 AM on October 11, 2022
posted by bowbeacon at 8:02 AM on October 11, 2022
Best answer: Goodreads has a ton of user-generated thematic lists. For example, here is one with 214 books called Afghanistan in Literature.
posted by dusty potato at 9:01 AM on October 11, 2022
posted by dusty potato at 9:01 AM on October 11, 2022
Best answer: Nancy Pearl's Book Lust To Go might help?
posted by tipsyBumblebee at 12:36 PM on October 11, 2022
posted by tipsyBumblebee at 12:36 PM on October 11, 2022
Best answer: Akashic Press does the international noir series- I do see many as ebooks.
Soho Press has an international crime series- I just can’t see how much is in ebook format.
The lack of metadata for ebooks is quite annoying.
posted by calgirl at 4:56 PM on October 11, 2022
Soho Press has an international crime series- I just can’t see how much is in ebook format.
The lack of metadata for ebooks is quite annoying.
posted by calgirl at 4:56 PM on October 11, 2022
Best answer: I agree about the two part strategy. One idea for the first part is to use nation or region based literary awards as a source of lists. Wikipedia, as expected, has a lot of them here.
posted by alb at 5:20 PM on October 11, 2022
posted by alb at 5:20 PM on October 11, 2022
Best answer: anyone who might be able to point us toward useful results.
India is easy, Belize [with a population = Cleveland OH] not so much? I did a nerdnik analysis of minority language winners of the Jnanpith Award, India's Premier literary prize.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:42 AM on October 12, 2022
India is easy, Belize [with a population = Cleveland OH] not so much? I did a nerdnik analysis of minority language winners of the Jnanpith Award, India's Premier literary prize.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:42 AM on October 12, 2022
Response by poster: You all ROCK! He's thrilled with these responses.
posted by LaBellaStella at 10:39 AM on October 12, 2022
posted by LaBellaStella at 10:39 AM on October 12, 2022
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posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:08 AM on October 11, 2022 [5 favorites]