RSSTo Do: Books
The books are a featured part of the web site.
Some general points:
- I've assembled some on-line links to book reviews.
One thing that would be nice would be an index to the CG reviews left out of each of the CG books. This is one case that could use a database table for album id lists. For example:
| Table: alist | |
|---|---|
| Field | Type/Comment |
| list | char(4) not null: A short private identifier for list. This lets multiple lists share the same table. |
| album_id | int unsigned not null: An album identifer, used to join to the album table. |
Example identifiers:
- m90: 1990s albums missing from CG '90s book.
Book Catalog Page
The intent here is to provide a small amount of introductory text for each book. Publication details are probably not necessary here.
Some introductory text would be nice, although for now the page is probably adequately self-explanatory.
Should we have back cover scans of some/all books? I doubt that small back cover scans would be useful, but large ones (linked from same places as large front cover scans) might be useful.
Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s
All text is provided except for the "A Lists".
Compilations: We could add links for all listed albums.
Grown Up All Wrong
Review and possibly rewrite introductory text.
Big issue here is lack of permission to reprint essays from this book. This should at least be explained. I do have such links as exist to HUP's web site.
We could prepare stub pages for the chapters here. This would allow cross-references to book chapters, maybe even some search hits. It would not be satisfying like finding the actual article, but it at least notes that there is something on the subject. We could type up the index and vector it into the chapter stubs. We could see how much "fair use" we can get away with.
Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s
Need info on reprint. Cover scan is of reprint; should we also have cover scan of original edition?
Most of the Introduction and most of the Appendices are missing.
Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s
Need info on reprint. Cover scan is of original edition (a rather dirty copy); should we also have cover scan of reprint?
Any Old Way You Choose It
Cover scan is of reprint; should we also have cover scan of original edition?
Bookstores
The Amazon.Com links are not reliable. They worked at the time they were created (at least for me). Amazon.Com has a program for web sites that vector potential customers to Amazon.Com. This program pays a royalty for each tracked customer purchase, and provides some software (which presumably is reliable) for generating the appropriate links. Other on-line bookstores may provide similar programs. We need to research options here.
One idea would be to have a select list that allows the user to choose between several on-line bookstores. This could even be cookied for a default choice.
Another would be to provide a directory of local bookstores. We would list all local bookstores that promised to keep in stock all in-print titles. (I doubt that we would really enforce this, but repeated complaint might spur some action.) Initially this list would be short enough that it should fit onto one page. Later on it could be subdivided by region and picked using a map.