Export library from one account to import into another account
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1CurrColl
Is it possible to export your entire library (ideally with all collections and tags) from one LibraryThing account into another LibraryThing account? If so, any advice on the best way to do this? Thanks!
2lorannen
>1 CurrColl: The short answer is "no, not exactly." Your best option is the Universal Import. You can capture all your data in an export, but our Universal Import system will only be able to bring in some of that data, I'm afraid—Tags are importable there, but Collections are not.
What you'll want to do is export your library as an Excel file, then edit that file to match the column headers exactly with the LibraryThing Sample file found on the Universal Import page (very bottom of the green box on the right). This import is designed to be as fast and simple as possible, so if you leave your ISBNs in that column, rather than import your specific data from the other columns, you'll get copy-cataloged records from one of our data sources instead.
To capture your Tags, once you've formatted your spreadsheet to match the Sample file, delete all the ISBNs in that column. Leave the column in place, but leave it blank. This will capture all the rest of your data (Tags, Reviews, etc.). Once your books are imported, you can use Power Edit (click the yellow lightning bolt in the menu bar on Your Books) to move them into your Collections en masse.
What you'll want to do is export your library as an Excel file, then edit that file to match the column headers exactly with the LibraryThing Sample file found on the Universal Import page (very bottom of the green box on the right). This import is designed to be as fast and simple as possible, so if you leave your ISBNs in that column, rather than import your specific data from the other columns, you'll get copy-cataloged records from one of our data sources instead.
To capture your Tags, once you've formatted your spreadsheet to match the Sample file, delete all the ISBNs in that column. Leave the column in place, but leave it blank. This will capture all the rest of your data (Tags, Reviews, etc.). Once your books are imported, you can use Power Edit (click the yellow lightning bolt in the menu bar on Your Books) to move them into your Collections en masse.
3divinenanny
>1 CurrColl:
A better question is, what are you trying to do? Because there might be another, less destructive way to go about it...
A better question is, what are you trying to do? Because there might be another, less destructive way to go about it...
4CurrColl
>2 lorannen: I'm a little confused. So I export to an Excel file and edit it to match the column headings in the LibraryThing Sample file - then import that? I don't understand the part about capturing the Tags and deleting the ISBNs. The sample file shows a 'TAGS' column, and I thought you need the ISBNs for an import??
5CurrColl
>3 divinenanny: I created a rather large collection at work and want a copy of it for myself.
6lorax
No, it's not. Nor can you export your entire library, or a subset of it, and re-import it into the same library. I've been beating this drum for years and all I got was a condescending comment from Tim that LT isn't a spreadsheet.
The closest you can get is to export your library in TSV format. Save a copy, and make a new copy. Open the new copy, and strip it down to the few columns that are permitted in import (which are specified in the laughably misnamed "Universal Import"), remove the ISBN numbers, keeping an empty and correctly named column in place which will prevent LT from overwriting any edits you have made to title, author, and publication, and use the import functionality to upload that basic skeleton. You can then use the full copy of your export to edit all the records to put back the rest of the columns that LT wouldn't upload, as well as the ISBN.
(If you leave the ISBN in, LT will look up the book in a source, and use that source's title, author, and publication, rather than that from your input file.)
Good luck, and I'm sorry the news isn't better. Come add your voice here if you think this basic functionality should exist.
The closest you can get is to export your library in TSV format. Save a copy, and make a new copy. Open the new copy, and strip it down to the few columns that are permitted in import (which are specified in the laughably misnamed "Universal Import"), remove the ISBN numbers, keeping an empty and correctly named column in place which will prevent LT from overwriting any edits you have made to title, author, and publication, and use the import functionality to upload that basic skeleton. You can then use the full copy of your export to edit all the records to put back the rest of the columns that LT wouldn't upload, as well as the ISBN.
(If you leave the ISBN in, LT will look up the book in a source, and use that source's title, author, and publication, rather than that from your input file.)
Good luck, and I'm sorry the news isn't better. Come add your voice here if you think this basic functionality should exist.
7CurrColl
>6 lorax: oh man, I have over 8000 books in this library. :( I'd exported in TSV first, and it looks like jibberish in Notepad and Wordpad.
8davidgn
>7 CurrColl: That's because TSV is meant to be opened in a spreadsheet, but is spreadsheet format-agnostic (i.e. meant to be opened in ANY spreadsheet software).
9CurrColl
>8 davidgn: Thank you for that tip!
10lquilter
I really would like to do this too -- I have posted a "recommended feature" here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/314495
11AdocentynLibrary
>4 CurrColl: My use case is pretty straightforward. I want to merge one library with about 800 books (and plenty of editing of tags, collections, and other data I'd like to preserve) into my existing library. When I used LibraryThing to export the data, it never occurred to me that LibraryThing wouldn't be able to import that same file.
12CurrerBell
>11 AdocentynLibrary: According to >2 lorannen: tags are importable but collections are not. Here's one suggestion for a work-around to capture collections. At least as to getting your Collections data into your new LT account, you'll accomplish your purpose without putting Tim's programmers to work on something that will take their limited time from other projects.
ETA: Of course, this method will only work for a standardized item like Collections. If there's other data that you need but that doesn't import (for example, do reviews import? do you need them?), that's a horse of a different color. Personally, I currently have 442 reviews (some better than others), and I'd hate to lose them if I were trying to do an export-import like you want to do.
- In the Your books page, select a Collection, for example, "Wishlist." That will give you all the books in your "Wishlist" collection and absolutely no others.
- Using power edit, tag all of these books with some unique tag that will identify that tag as a Collection, for example, c_Wishlist.
- Repeat this procedure for each and every one of your Collections.
- Do an export, and then import into your new LT account.
- In the Your books page of your new LT account, for each special "collections tag," access all books with that tag, use power edit to assign each book to the appropriate Collection, and then delete the special "collections tag."
ETA: Of course, this method will only work for a standardized item like Collections. If there's other data that you need but that doesn't import (for example, do reviews import? do you need them?), that's a horse of a different color. Personally, I currently have 442 reviews (some better than others), and I'd hate to lose them if I were trying to do an export-import like you want to do.
13AdocentynLibrary
Your method allows for manually preserving the collection field by creating a tag out of it and then using that tag to reassign the collection. But that doesn't address what I need to do.
A LibraryThing member has a library on LibraryThing with extensive edits over years of cataloguing. He died. He donated his books -- about 850 -- to the Adocentyn Library. We exported his library from his LibraryThing account, made corrections to the data to fit our house style, and seek to merge it with our existing library.
A LibraryThing member has a library on LibraryThing with extensive edits over years of cataloguing. He died. He donated his books -- about 850 -- to the Adocentyn Library. We exported his library from his LibraryThing account, made corrections to the data to fit our house style, and seek to merge it with our existing library.
14gilroy
>13 AdocentynLibrary: Can't be done at present time.
15lorax
AdocentynLibrary (#13):
A LibraryThing member has a library on LibraryThing with extensive edits over years of cataloguing. He died. He donated his books -- about 850 -- to the Adocentyn Library. We exported his library from his LibraryThing account, made corrections to the data to fit our house style, and seek to merge it with our existing library.
Please read what I wrote above in #6. This is not possible, and complaining to members won't get you anywhere. Nor will complaining to staff, as I've been doing that since 2016 and all I have to show for it is being treated like an idiot by Tim.
A LibraryThing member has a library on LibraryThing with extensive edits over years of cataloguing. He died. He donated his books -- about 850 -- to the Adocentyn Library. We exported his library from his LibraryThing account, made corrections to the data to fit our house style, and seek to merge it with our existing library.
Please read what I wrote above in #6. This is not possible, and complaining to members won't get you anywhere. Nor will complaining to staff, as I've been doing that since 2016 and all I have to show for it is being treated like an idiot by Tim.
16jjwilson61
If you could somehow wrangle the data into MARC format I think you could import that.
17AdocentynLibrary
Offer for LibraryThing Admin
You've convinced me that what we need to do isn't possible using the public-facing import tools. But an admin on the backend with access to the database would probably be able to do this. (On the DBs that I administer, I use a tool called *Navicat* that would allow me to do this import.)
I hope it's not inappropriate to make this offer, but we'll pay $300 to a LibraryThing admin to merge an xls, csv, or tsv file into our LibraryThing account database. The xls file, containing 851 records, was exported from an existing LibraryThing account. The structure of the db — column headers, their names and locations — is untouched. Some of the data has been altered — titles, tags, and so forth. Some of the data contains unicode characters that need to be preserved and displayed properly after the merge. We'd like the merge not to do a new ISBN lookup; rather it should use the data in the xls file.
Is there an admin willing to undertake this task? If so, please contact me at admin@adocentynlibrary.org. If not, we'll try the MARC import and then go one at a time and manually correct the books.
You've convinced me that what we need to do isn't possible using the public-facing import tools. But an admin on the backend with access to the database would probably be able to do this. (On the DBs that I administer, I use a tool called *Navicat* that would allow me to do this import.)
I hope it's not inappropriate to make this offer, but we'll pay $300 to a LibraryThing admin to merge an xls, csv, or tsv file into our LibraryThing account database. The xls file, containing 851 records, was exported from an existing LibraryThing account. The structure of the db — column headers, their names and locations — is untouched. Some of the data has been altered — titles, tags, and so forth. Some of the data contains unicode characters that need to be preserved and displayed properly after the merge. We'd like the merge not to do a new ISBN lookup; rather it should use the data in the xls file.
Is there an admin willing to undertake this task? If so, please contact me at admin@adocentynlibrary.org. If not, we'll try the MARC import and then go one at a time and manually correct the books.
18krazy4katz
>17 AdocentynLibrary: If you look at the bottom of your screen, you will see "contact". Click that and send a message to one of the staff (maybe email Tim and Chris H?). They might not see your post in this discussion. Good luck.
k4k
k4k
