May I present: The Garden Bookworm

Since we launched Botanary on March 12, 2002, almost 2 years ago, we haven't introduced any new major features to Dave's Garden. We're not lazy, we just haven't really seen a need for any new features during this time.

Throughout 2003, Terry and I discussed at length some of the main areas that were severely lacking in the gardening world. As a result of those discussions, we designed and planned two new major website additions to DG. We have been hard at work for the past 6 weeks on the first of the two brand new features, so large that they deserve their own website all to themselves.

Today it is my pleasure to introduce the first of the two additions: The Garden Bookworm.

It is fashioned after the highly successful Garden Watchdog, and is designed with book-loving gardeners in mind. You can browse for a great new gardening book (for yourself, or another gardener in your life), and write a review of your favorite garden books. Anyone can come and leave comments and ratings on their favorite (and not-so-favorite) books. An additional feature of the site is that each entry includes a direct link where you can purchase the book, should you decide that you need it.

Terry has been working hard to prime the pump with some book entries, and as a result we already are 3/4th of the way to 1,000 books listed!

Fun Fun Fun! Enjoy the Garden Bookworm - our gift to the gardening community.

dave

Oh, that is sooooo cool....Great going guys...another step above and beyond..for sure...thanks...I am sure, we will all find it very very helpful....thanks....

Smiles...

Diana

Hi Terry and Dave -

What a great addition, just superb!

Terry can you check an addition I just made to see how you'd like a situation like this to be handled?
http://gardenbookworm.com/c/739/

This is Vol 1 of 10. Do you want an individual entry made for each volume or is a comment in the ratings section enough to lead people to additional volumes, some of which will come up on the Amazon link (which seemed to appear all by itself!).

Happenstance, if they have each have a unique ISBN they should be added individually; if the ISBN is the same, they can be added as one entry. The Amazon link is pretty cool, huh? (Dave does some nifty things - that touch was one that surprised even me when I started working to populate the bookworm.


To all: feedback is welcome! Is it easy to use? Anything that should be added or changed? And what do y'all think of the name and logo? (I think the logo is cute as a bug, but I might be alone in my opinion, lolol.)

Secret number one.............. :)

Thanks Terry! I was wondering if a new entry could be populated by Amazon? Instead of me digging around for the needed info like month published/publisher/editor/author, could the information be grabbed from Amazon by just adding the title?

If I type in the title and it is available from Amazon, the rest could be populated, I could review to make sure it is the right book and then finalize the entry. (Maybe I'm just lazy?)

Terry & Dave, I love this! I started to add Carrots Love Tomatoes and thought I would check just in case, and voila, there it is. I am going to utilize this site for sure. Thank you, I am so excited. Kathy :)

hehehe, that's a Dave question. I found when I entered the first 730-some entries (by hand, I might add) that Amazon's information is pretty good, but sometimes you have to dig around a bit to find everything (price, paperback version info, etc.)

Soooo....if Dave could automate it, that would be great, but I kinda doubt it, since I'm not sure Amazon has a good handle on how they capture and store this info!

I really doubt that automatic population of those fields is going to be possible, but I will certainly look into it!

Congrats! Great new thing!

Great name and very cute logo!!

I'm glad to see my suggestion way back when has finally come to fruition - thanks Dave and Terry. A couple of suggestions. I think it would be better to wait until you get a sufficient number of comments before you publish the top 20. The first time visitor might wonder from what planet the reviewers are coming from when they see that Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening, Succulents II: The New Illustrated Dictionary, and The Euphorbia Journal Vol 1 are three of the top twenty gardening books listed at the site (not to disparage any of them - I'm sure they are all marvelous books). Otherwise, you might want to change the website's name to Extreme Garden Bookworms.

Also, you might want to check into swapping databases with other gardening book database developers. For example, the following website has over 1450 books in its database already - http://www.genevar.com.au/seedsavers/libcat/ They might be amenable to swapping existing efforts.

This message was edited Feb 9, 2004 3:17 PM

One other suggestion - how about allowing gardening catalogs to be included also? Some of my favorite gardening references are catalogs - ForestFarm, Camelia Forest, Heronswood, and Plant Delights Nurseries immediately spring to mind. Catalogs oftentimes have many more species/cultivars with descriptions than most standard reference books.

What a superb job! Well done - and Thanks!! :)

What a surprise! I'll be sure to check this out.

Ya gotta luv it!

Hehehe...lookin' good!

A great asset. And I luv at the bottom where it says

"A Daves Garden Production"! Those worlds will be what folks will be looking to see on many quality websites/offerings!

I love the site and added a couple of my books. This is so needed!!!! Great job to all who obviously worked so hard on this!!!!

Hi Terry -

I blame messy mouse work for an error I made in entering the author of http://gardenbookworm.com/c/792/

Gordon Rowley, although an expert in the field, did not become the Editor for volume 2. :-)

And I blame myself for not catching it on the preview page.
Is there an "Edit" button for me? sorry

Hey, that's neat! I'll have to link to it in my blog. I need to redo my templates so I link to all your sites.

Wow! This will be an awesome feature! Love books almost as much as I love gardening ;)

Happenstance, it's fixed now: http://gardenbookworm.com/c/792 :)

Thank you so much for this. I LOVE LOVE LOVE gardening books....You two are AWESOME!

I'm hoping this is for worldwide books since I've just put one in. I did note that there is no RHS A-Z (which is practically the same as the AHS A-Z) and that there are N. American regional catagories *G* For the record, I can't recall a book for specifically gardening in England, perhaps because the author assumes the majority reading the tome will be gardening in England, any chance of putting which country the books originate from?

A question immediately arises for the more popular books. Editions!!! I've just entered the second edition of Prof Richards superb Primula book, it's revised so I'm assuming it would be ok to put in the first edition or any subsequent revised edition with a differing ISBN?





This message was edited Feb 9, 2004 8:23 PM

The features I think users will find really useful are the ability to search by author or publisher's name. We also set up quite a number of specific categories so you can browse for books by a narrow cateogry.

A few pointers if you want to enter a book:

1) No dashes in the ISBN field - just enter the sequence of numbers (and/or letter) with no spaces or dashes in between them.

2) Be sure to spell the author's name(s) and publisher's names correctly so they'll match other similar entries in the database.

If you think you've made an "ooopsie" just drop me a note and I'll take a look and fix it ASAP. (My personal best repair time is just under 10 jiffies ;o)

Enjoy browsing - and let us know if you have any other suggestions or ideas for improving it.

Baa, we must have been posting at the same time :) Here's the RHS A-Z Encyclopedia http://gardenbookworm.com/c/34/

And of course, books from other countries are encouraged! (I just started with what I was most familiar with...)

Foreign-language (meaning other than English) books will need to hold off a bit; if someone is itching to add several, let me know. (Dave and I have already talked about adding some additional fields for language.)

As for editions: If an edition has a unique ISBN (some do; some don't), feel free to add it, and note the edition. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see how that goes - there are some books that certainly warrant having each edition listed separately, but others may not.

Thanks Terry!

Now that RHS looks nothing like mine, for one it has a cover that isn't taped together ;)

Thanks for the "fix" Terry.

A question about titles and alphabetizing with the first word of the title being "The." As in "The Well-Tended Perenial Garden." I searched using "The Well Tended" and "Well Tended", but found no entry. It does come up on the search with the ISBN#. (The hyphen also probably caused problems because I didn't use it.)

Another of her books is listed as "The Well-Designed Mixed Garden: ....." alphabetized with the "T's" while "The Well-Tended Perenial Garden" is alphabetized with the "W's"

Which way would you like us to go, leave out the "The" or use it?

I have some older editions like Baa and am finding that the Amazon link will come up with the same title with the available current edition. Do you want us to use the publishing date for the book in hand or double check for what is currently being offered?

I would say to first search to make sure we don't have a more recent edition already listed; if there is one (per Amazon), it should be added along with the older edition - the reason being that if someone is searching the Bookworm for a book that's currently available, we should give them information on the most recent edition. If there have been no major revisions (merely a republishing) then all we need is the "latest and greatest" listed.

As to the "The's" - if the book's title has a "the", the entry should have a "the". If the title is hypenated, the entry should be hyphenated. (Basically, write it just as the book title is printed.) If you spot any errors or discrepancies in the books already listed, please let me know.

Thanks Terry, check the example above:

(The)Well-Tended Perennial Garden is in the W's

The Well-Deigned Mixed Garden is in the T's

:-)

We have Amazon to blame or thank (take your pick!)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Disabato-Aust%2C%20Tracy/103-6244982-0695014

At any rate, I've changed our entries to reflect the actual book titles, rather than relying on Amazon's editors ;o) Good call!!!

This is fabulous!! Great idea and a wonderful addition. What a great way to get ideas and recommendations on gardening books! I love it...THANK YOU!!!

Terry -

You must be booked out by now.....:-)

Another question. I've just entered Garden Style by Penelope Hobhouse. The Amazon link shows it as out of print with used/new copies available from independent sellers starting at $14.95. I don't have personal experience with this other source, although I have purchased from one of the sellers listed.

http://www.allbookstores.com/book/compare/0316367508

Does Garden Bookworm have an affiliate program going with Amazon, that would exclude listing alternate sources for this book or others that may fall into the same "out of print" situation?

As long as I'm asking more questions....I just entered one of my favorites from last year, Alan Titchmarsh's "Trowel and Error." Found it hard to pick a category, so I picked THREE. It really is autobiographical = history, about landscaping = his adventures/jobs/trials and errors, literature = he is a poet and a quoter of fine literature and sprinkles it throughout his works, both gardening and otherwise.

And Re: The Euphorbia Journal Vol 6
Amazon lists it as "The Euphorbia Journal/Book and Index" and my entry was changed to read that way.

It really is just Vol 6. They put together a paper insert index to index the first 6 volumes because we were all dog earing our copies trying to remember what was where. Perhaps in later printings that index was included in the bound volume? Vol 10 includes a full Cumulative Index for the entire 10 volumes.

This message was edited Feb 9, 2004 8:14 PM

Booked out? Ummm, why yes - I do believe I'm getting there, lolol! And I need to re-focus my efforts on the PDB for at least a few minutes yet this evening to get some things "tidied up" before the nightly processing begins (under an hour from now.)

At this point we have an affiliate relationship with only Amazon.com (US); when Dave and I began working on the Bookworm we tabled the discussion about entering into an affiliate agreement with one or more out-of-print/rare book sellers as well (it just wasn't somethign we were/are ready to do "out of the shoot"); I'm not sure which one or at what point we should revisit the question.

Given Baa's questions, I'm also wondering whether we should consider Amazon.uk and/or Amazon.ca affiliations. (That's definitely a question for Dave, due to the technical considerations as well as the potential recordkeeping to keep up with multiple affiliations.)

I think this is a tremendous reference! I added three different comments so feel I have done my duty. What a great idea!

LimeyLisa Kay

you never cease to amaze me

Happenstance, I'll email you about the Euphorbia Journal entries; I have a couple questions that I'm pretty sure you can sort out for me.)

As to categories: less is more. Most general books cover a wide range of topics, but they should probably be listed as "Encyclopedia/General Reference" or "Techniques", so the ultra-specific categories will have books that deal strictly with a particular type of plant, region, etc. (Keep in mind if someone were looking for an indepth book on lawn care - for example - they wouldn't want to wade through twenty general reference books that devoted a few pages to the subject.)

I hope everyone enjoys browsing around the Garden Bookworm - once you get your bearings, please comment on your favorite book(s) so other readers can learn from your experience.

(Same holds true for those "dud" purchases we've all experienced from time to time - if the book was a disappointment, that's good information to pass along, too!)

Wow. I'm so impressed and I just LOVE getting the new additions in the newsletter. Reading about gardening is almost as fun as doing it. :) Another passion of mine. Bravo, kudos and THANK YOU! I hope I can make some good contributions in the future to the Garden Bookworm.

Sue, I'm sure you will.

Hey, Copperbaron - just for you: http://gardenbookworm.com/advanced.php?search_text=crockett&submit=Search&go=%BB
(I have some more of his books to add, but I thought you might enjoy these, since it seems I recall reading a post where you mentioned they were among your favorites...?) As to catalogs - hmmmm. I'm reluctant to add them because people might get confused on whether they're rating the company or its catalog. Let me give it some more thought ;o)

GOOD JOB.
Thanks Terry and Dave.

Another way I can spend more money on more books.
Don't forget to check out half.com for excellent book prices, I find them to be cheaper than Amazon most of the time.

Paul

I would really love to see the catalogs on here, but I think a disclaimer should be associated with them as in this in no way constitutes approval or disapproval by DG. And then comments could be posted as is for the books.

Edited to say, that the one drawback to catalogs is that someone is going to have to change them every year and that could turn into an awful lot of work.

We appreciate all the hard work Dave and Terry do now and I wouldn't want to inundate them with many more hours. :) Kathy

This message was edited Feb 10, 2004 3:34 PM