internetarchive / internetarchive/openlibrary

Misclassification in new books

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#8,789 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Lead: @scottbarnes metadata Needs: Investigation Priority: 3 Theme: Identifiers Type: Bug
Dominant language
Python
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Description

Several times while working on the author [Roderick Hunt](https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL964797A/Roderick_Hunt) I've had to create new books to host editions that were imported in clusters under the wrong title. While creating a book, on occasion it would be automatically made into the edition of an already-existing book that had a similar title. The worst example was when I tried to make "Blaze" and it ended up under "Blazing Burgers". Here is one that happened more recently:

![Screenshot 2024-02-03 10 22 06 AM](https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/assets/102813954/e56a88bd-aad3-40c8-af64-5745e94ceb86)
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL50982425M/Dogs_in_the_Mud

Especially for authors of children's books who write on history, science or geography and may have multiple books with similar titles (ie: [electricity](https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL19896A/Chris_Oxlade?q=electricity)) this could be a major problem.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No source file or test is identified. Start by reproducing the book-creation flow with the linked “Dogs in the Mud” case and inspect where a new book is matched to an existing title; done means similar titles no longer cause the new book to be assigned to the wrong existing book.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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