ISO

i got a new library program to go with my new computer. it's fairly nice, only available on apple computers. if i had an iSight camera, i could even scan my books in instead of entering them by hand. all very cool.

the way it works is this: you enter information (like the title, author, or ISBN) from the book, CD, DVD or game, and the program fetches the rest of the information for that item from amazon.com's database. very cool.

the kicker is that amazon.com does not have any amount of standardization. for instance, i catalogued my copy of the chronicles of narnia today, which is in seven volumes. six volumes were identified by amazon as belonging to the genre 'chronicles of narnia.' leaving aside whether or not that is really a genre, if 6 novels in a series of 7 are going to be in one genre, then the 7th damn well oughtta be in the same genre.

but no. not at amazon.

don't get me wrong. i love amazon. but could we try for a little uniformity? maybe next year we can make complaints about what 'genre' means.