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Even the big boys (and girls) make mistakes

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Mills

One would think that a big sophisticated international company like Amazon.com would have a database management system to envy. Alas, even cutting edge industry leaders have their flaws. How do I know this to be true? Consider this particular example:

This week a new book appeared in the various Amazon.whatever listings around the world: Without Remorse: Czech National Socialism in Late Habsburg Austria. Go to Amazon.ca or Amazon.de and you’ll learn that I’m the author of this forthcoming book. But go to the mother ship, Amazon.com and you’ll see that, perhaps, I’m not the author of my book after all. Instead, William J. Galush seems to be the author of my book. Hmmm. Perhaps I should meet this guy.

The question for me is how Amazon could make such a mistake, not because it peeves me that I’m apparently not the author of my book (although it does), but because one would think that Amazon had a centralized database with certain common fields, say ISBN, author’s name, title, that the various other country Amazons feed off of for their pricing and other information. Apparently one would be wrong in thinking this. It’s less interesting to me whether the error originates at Amazon or with my publisher. What’s more interesting is the cross-national data error and the questions it raises about other errors that Amazon may be allowing to float around in their database.

2 thoughts on “Even the big boys (and girls) make mistakes”

  1. Michelle Carr says:
    July 19, 2006 at 1:55 pm

    Dr. Kelly,
    I have had similar problems with Amazon when relying on ISBN numbers alone. For instance, the AHA Guide to Teaching and Learning with New Media by John McClymer assigned for your fall graduate class was not listed by ISBN on Amazon. I found it by doing some internet research and finding a way to print it directly from the AHA site. So – even though the Bookstore listed the Guide with its ISBN, you couldn’t get it through Amazon; which is my usual alternate source if the Bookstore doesn’t have course materials in stock yet.

    Looking forward to your class this fall,
    Michelle Carr

  2. Mills says:
    July 20, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    Hi Michelle:

    Yes, it can be frustrating. What amazes me is that they don’t have a better centralized database for the key elements in the entries.

    Mills

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