User:Herzbube

Current status
I am usually "working" for ISFDB in bursts of a few days or weeks, then go MIA for a couple of months or half a year. While I am "on it", there is no fixed day of the week when I will be present.

In urgent cases (rather improbable, I'm just a lowly editor :-) I can be contacted by email (reliable) or instant messaging (unreliable). See below for details.

My interest in ISFDB
Being an avid SF reader, ISFDB of course is on my list of useful Internet resources, alongside other services such as IMDB or Wikipedia. Since I believe in community efforts, I have always felt a diffuse need for contributing something back to those projects that I take advantage of. Unfortunately, most of the time those projects have already passed the stage where I believe my feeble efforts could make any difference. ISFDB on the other hand has opened up for public editing rather recently, so I think that my help could still be of some use.

My interest in SF
I have been reading SF&F, horror and mystery stories since my early teens, but in more recent times SF has become the main focus of my interest. I mostly read for entertainment, currently I prefer older stuff from the 1940-1970ies. I also try to get a vague overview over the history of SF, but I have no real scholarly interest in the field. Although English is not my first language (I am Swiss), I almost exclusively read my books in English - otherwise I would not be here, I guess :-)

Projects / Goals
Enter my not-so-big books collection into the ISFDB.

Cleanup of Tolkien bibliography.

Learn python and study the code that runs ISFDB, together with its DB scheme.

Generate a list of "books that I own", aka shamelessly exploit ISFDB for personal benefit. Maybe I even have to help working on this feature request - mon dieu, quel horreur! :-)

Cleanup of Tolkien bibliography
Things to do:
 * Get bibliographic source (J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography)
 * Review current state and formulate a plan what needs to be done. Notably unclear:
 * How should interior art be recorded? Difficulties are the different maps in LotR, but also the apparently innumerable variations of illustrations in The Hobbit.
 * How to fix collections that consist of other containers (e.g. The Tolkien Reader); possibly change them into omnibuses?
 * Remove Christopher Tolkien as co-author of the "History of Middle Earth" series, as per discussion on Help Desk
 * Also see TODOs on my wiki

Useful (?) links:
 * http://tolkiengateway.net/
 * http://www.tolkienbooks.net/
 * http://www.tolkiensociety.org/
 * http://lotr.wikia.com/
 * http://mysite.verizon.net/wghammond/index.html

Contact
I have a confirmed email address in my Wiki preferences, so you can simply send me an email.

Alternatively, you can try to contact me in real time:
 * Via Skype: My Skype name is "patrick.naef".
 * As an experiment, on IRC: For a trial period I am going to hang out on irc.freenode.net, channel #isfdb, while I actively do some work for ISFDB. If you're curious or just want to say hello :-) you can try http://webchat.freenode.net (enter your nick and channel info "isfdb", then hit connect)

Links
Home:
 * List of verified books
 * Notes about my activities on ISFDB