Data Submission Guidelines

About the Collectorz.com online book database

Please note that submitting your books is only available in the Windows version of Book Collector.

The Add Books Automatically screen in Book Collector uses our own Collectorz.com online book database for book information, edition details and cover images. This online database is automaticaly "fed" from the various national libraries from all over the world, including the Library of Congress.

But still, the main source for new book entries, barcodes and cover images is Book Collector users like you.

So if you come across a book that is not in our database, you can help your fellow Book Collectors, by adding that book manually and then submitting it for inclusion in the central online database, preferably including full details and a "home-scanned" cover image.

The same holds for entries that are missing a cover image or have incomplete data (e.g. no edition or author/translator). Just (and only) complete and/or correct the entry you downloaded, then submit it back to us.

All submitted data is processed semi-automatically by our content managers. Your submitted entries will be live in the central database within a few days, ready to be enjoyed by other Book Collector users.

How to submit your data

Submitting to the online database is quite easy and can be done right from your Book Collector program.

• Just select one ore more items in the Book Collectormain screen.

  Tip: you can submit multiple books in one go by selecting multiple books in the list panel on the right of the main screen. Use the standard method of Ctrl-clicking or Shift-clicking to select multiple items.

• Now, choose Edit / Submit to Collectorz.com Book Database.

• Finally, in the screen that opens, click the Submit button.

What kind of submissions are we looking for?

Basically, this can be summarized simply as:

• Books that are not in our database yet. Preferably with full details (edition, format, pages, etc.) and a cover image.
• Additional data to complete book and edition entries we already have.
• Barcodes that are not recognized by our database yet.

When not to submit your data

This may sound strange, but there are situations where we'd rather not receive your data, because it would endanger the quality of our database.

So please do not submit your entries, when one or more of the following applies to your usage of Book Collector:

• You are not using the main Book Collector fields the way they were meant to be used.

  This especially applies to the main identifying fields Title and Barcode. In other words, please only submit if you used the Title for the Book Title (and the Book Title only) and the barcode field for the barcode listed on the outside, or inside, cover (ISBN)|.

• You have your own non-standard conventions for field values.
  You may have entered all values in ALL CAPS, or maybe you enclosed all your Title Fields in double quotes because that makes them show up in a nicer way, or maybe you included your own numbering system in the titles. You are free to do so, but please do not submit your data.

Please note that you are of course welcome to use Book Collector any way you like. But if you use it in a non-standard way, then please help us maintain our standards by not submitting your data.

Copyrighted Material

Collectorz.com is committed to protecting the copyrights of itself and all third parties. If you own the copyright for content present in the Collectorz.com database and wish to have it removed, please contact us and we will do so immediately.

Please help us prevent copyrighted material from being included in the database by not submitting any material that may be copyrighted by 3rd parties. This mainly applies to cover images:

Cover images

Copyright issues on images are quite complicated, as there are two kinds of copyrights involved here:

• The copyright on the original image: This copyright is either owned by the Publisher, the Distributor or the cover artist. The "fair use" policy says that copyrighted cover images can be used as long as they are used for illustrational purpose only. General consensus is that low-resolution images can be regarded as just illustrational.

  That is why the Collectorz.com Book Database only delivers cover images with a maximum height of 600 pixels. When larger, submitted cover images be automatically scaled down to 600 pixels in height.

• The copyright on the image file: Another thing to consider when using images on the internet is the ownership of the digitized image file. Other sites have invested time and money in digitizing (scanning) the cover images and creating good looking digital image files. Without permission from those sites we cannot just use their image files in our database, we would be stealing their work.

  So please do not submit any cover images that have been downloaded from other sites (often recognizable by a watermark in the image). If we have any reason to suspect that the images have not been "home-scanned", we will reject the submitted images. If you did not scan your own images, please save yourself and us some time and uncheck the "Submit Cover Images" checkbox in the Submit screen. Thanks!

More legal Mumbo Jumbo

By submitting book data to the Collectorz.com Book Database, you grant Collectorz.com a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute and display any data you submit throughout the world in any media.

You represent and warrant that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this site's policies and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify Collectorz.com for all claims resulting from content you supply.

Collectorz.com has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any content.

Collectorz.com takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content submitted by you or any third party.