Difference between revisions of "Help:Getting Started"

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The easiest way to learn how to work with the {{SITENAME}} is to pick a book from your shelf and enter it into the {{SITENAME}}.  If you'd like to try it, go ahead and pick out an sf book and let's get started.  (You do need to be logged into an {{SITENAME}} user account to enter data, so if you don't have one, go ahead and [[Special:Userlogin|create one]]. One caveat is that your login name should start with an upper case letter. All lower case works fine on the wiki but when you log into the {{SITENAME}} database at [{{SERVER}} {{SERVERNAME}}] it'll only work if the first character is upper case.)
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First, I suggest you pick a novel.  Novels are simpler to enter than collections or anthologies, because they usually only contain the novel, and you don't have to worry about entering each story in the book. I'm going to use George Alec Effinger's ''What Entropy Means to Me'' as my example; you can follow along with whatever book you've picked.
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The first thing to do is bring the {{SITENAME}} website ({{SERVER}}) up in another browser window/tab.  There's a search field on the left: enter part of the book title in that field.  There's a pulldown menu just below the search box; make sure that it says "Fiction Titles", and then click "Go".
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This will display a list of all the titles in the {{SITENAME}} that have that string of letters.  If you can spot your book in that list, go ahead and click on the title (not the name, which would take you to the author page).  You'll see a {{t|867|list of publications for that title}} -- in my case I can see that two editions of ''What Entropy Means to Me'' have been entered: a 1972 Doubleday edition and a 1989 Bart edition.  What I've got is a 1973 Signet edition, so this is a publication the {{SITENAME}} doesn't know about, and I can go ahead and enter it.
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If you don't see the title at all when you do the search, it means that the book is unknown to the {{SITENAME}}, and you can enter it.
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Many times, however, the edition of the book that you have will already exist in the {{SITENAME}}.  In that case you can do something equally useful: you can verify the book.
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For the next steps:
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* if your book is ''not'' already in the {{SITENAME}}; '''and''' the {{SITENAME}} has no other editions of that title, see [[Help:Getting Started:Enter a Novel]].
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* If your book is ''not'' already in the {{SITENAME}}; '''and''' the {{SITENAME}} does have other editions of that title, see [[Help:Getting Started:Add Publication to Title]].
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* If your book is a translation of a book that ''is'' already in the {{SITENAME}}, see [[Help:How to enter translations]]
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* If your book ''is'' already in the {{SITENAME}}, see [[Help:Getting Started:Verify a Novel]].

Revision as of 15:06, 28 June 2019

Help Menu
Getting Started

General Help

Editing ISFDB

Editing the ISFDB Wiki

If none of the pages linked here have the information you need, the best place to ask is at the Help Desk. If you don't get a response there, feel free to post on the Moderator noticeboard.

This page is a help or manual page for the ISFDB database. It describes standards or methods for entering or maintaining data in the ISFDB database, or otherwise working with the database. Other help pages may be found via the category below. To discuss what should go on this page, use the talk page.

If, after exploring the Help system, you still have a question, please visit the Help desk and let us know. We probably know the answer, but we need your help to know what we left out of the help pages.

If you are new to editing the ISFDB, please see Help:Getting Started.

For more on this and other header templates, see Header templates.


The easiest way to learn how to work with the ISFDB is to pick a book from your shelf and enter it into the ISFDB. If you'd like to try it, go ahead and pick out an sf book and let's get started. (You do need to be logged into an ISFDB user account to enter data, so if you don't have one, go ahead and create one. One caveat is that your login name should start with an upper case letter. All lower case works fine on the wiki but when you log into the ISFDB database at isfdb.org it'll only work if the first character is upper case.)

First, I suggest you pick a novel. Novels are simpler to enter than collections or anthologies, because they usually only contain the novel, and you don't have to worry about entering each story in the book. I'm going to use George Alec Effinger's What Entropy Means to Me as my example; you can follow along with whatever book you've picked.

The first thing to do is bring the ISFDB website (https://isfdb.org) up in another browser window/tab. There's a search field on the left: enter part of the book title in that field. There's a pulldown menu just below the search box; make sure that it says "Fiction Titles", and then click "Go".

This will display a list of all the titles in the ISFDB that have that string of letters. If you can spot your book in that list, go ahead and click on the title (not the name, which would take you to the author page). You'll see a list of publications for that title -- in my case I can see that two editions of What Entropy Means to Me have been entered: a 1972 Doubleday edition and a 1989 Bart edition. What I've got is a 1973 Signet edition, so this is a publication the ISFDB doesn't know about, and I can go ahead and enter it.

If you don't see the title at all when you do the search, it means that the book is unknown to the ISFDB, and you can enter it.

Many times, however, the edition of the book that you have will already exist in the ISFDB. In that case you can do something equally useful: you can verify the book.

For the next steps:

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