Suggestions for keeping a guidebook current?
March 16, 2009 3:35 PM Subscribe
Suggestions for keeping a guidebook current?
A friend of mine is authoring a book (publisher already arranged) about museums, concert halls, theater venues, etc. Once the book is out, he'll want to know what information has changed (hours, admission price, phone number, etc.), primarily for a web page that book owners can check for updates (yes, an errata page), and for (hopefully) subsequent printings of the book.
So - first question: has anyone ever described (article, blog, podcast, whatever) their systematic process for keeping a book (preferably a guidebook) current? Second question: suppose you were responsible for finding out what information had changed, and getting that posted to an online errata page - how might you do that?
A friend of mine is authoring a book (publisher already arranged) about museums, concert halls, theater venues, etc. Once the book is out, he'll want to know what information has changed (hours, admission price, phone number, etc.), primarily for a web page that book owners can check for updates (yes, an errata page), and for (hopefully) subsequent printings of the book.
So - first question: has anyone ever described (article, blog, podcast, whatever) their systematic process for keeping a book (preferably a guidebook) current? Second question: suppose you were responsible for finding out what information had changed, and getting that posted to an online errata page - how might you do that?
I can't really endorse the domain forwarding idea--if your domain ever goes down, then all the URLs in the book are worthless, and it's harder to remember a made-up database style link than something like www.nameofbusiness.com.
If all you need to keep current is the basic info like hours and prices, you can just do a phone check every so often--call the business and ask and verify it against the web site as well, if the business has one. You'd want to do this for every business in the book at least once a year.
posted by phoenixy at 3:55 PM on March 16, 2009
If all you need to keep current is the basic info like hours and prices, you can just do a phone check every so often--call the business and ask and verify it against the web site as well, if the business has one. You'd want to do this for every business in the book at least once a year.
posted by phoenixy at 3:55 PM on March 16, 2009
Best answer: One of the best things you can do to keep the information in your database up to date is offer businesses the chance to do it themselves.
We get tons of business owners who manage their own listings in our restaurant directory, because they don't want bad information out there. So, rather than publishing the information only when you find out that it's wrong, publish it all, and the places will (not always, but often) notice when it's wrong and ask you to update it.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:44 PM on March 16, 2009
We get tons of business owners who manage their own listings in our restaurant directory, because they don't want bad information out there. So, rather than publishing the information only when you find out that it's wrong, publish it all, and the places will (not always, but often) notice when it's wrong and ask you to update it.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:44 PM on March 16, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
E.g. In the book, instead of including a direct link to http://wikitravel.org/en/Dublin, make the link www.yourbook.com/link/18 (or whatever). That way if the destination link (in this case, Wiki Travel Dublin) changes, your book is not wrong and out-of-date. You can change where /link/18 forwards to if the destination URL ever changes.
posted by nitsuj at 3:38 PM on March 16, 2009