The ISFDB

[Brendan Moody]

For about a year and a half now I've been contributing to the ISFDB, which is, to quote the site's front page, "a community effort to catalog works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. It links together various types of bibliographic data: author bibliographies, publication bibliographies, award listings, magazine content listings, anthology and collection content listings, and forthcoming books." It's a bit like a wiki, but with slightly more stringent content-addition rules: you have to be a registered member to submit changes, for instance, and a moderator has to approve your submission to check that it's been done right before it goes live.

Naturally given the size of the endeavor it's a work in progress, and some sections are a lot fuller than others. One thing I've noticed is that small-press horror and supernatural fiction tends to be poorly represented. I've done what I can to correct that, but I don't have that large a library. If there are any other speculative fiction/bibliography lovers out there who aren't already contributors, the ISFDB could really use your expertise. There's a bit of a learning curve involved, since the rules for recording certain pieces of information are exact and a few of the technical processes are complicated, but in my experience the moderators are always willing to explain things in detail.

To use Ligotti as an example of some of the gaps that interested parties could fill: Songs of a Dead Dreamer has five listed editions. Of those, one lacks page numbers, a page count, an ISBN (assuming the book was issued with one-- if not, that needs to be mentioned), and a cover image. Another has everything but a cover image, but could stand to be primary verified, that is, checked by a member who has the physical book, to confirm that whatever source the data came from isn't incorrect. The other three have been primary verified (two by me), but could stand additional verifications to make sure the one doing the verifying didn't make mistakes. If you're the type of person to whom this work sounds enjoyable rather than tedious and pointless, and you have some spare time and at least a couple speculative fiction titles lying around, the ISFDB is right up your alley.

[Michael]

Brendan,
This definitely does not sound like something tedious or pointless; sounds pretty interesting. Is there a certain person we contact at the ISFDB website to become a registered member?
M

[Brendan Moody]

You can sign for an account by clicking here and filling out the form; that'll give you an account both on the ISFDB Wiki (which is where discussion about rules, problems, and work to be done occurs) and on the ISFDB (where you put in the actual bibliographic data). After that, you go to the main page of the ISFDB, look for the log-in link on the left, right below the search engine, and click on it. There's a general introductory page for new users here.