Implemented August, 2008

The BIR (Books I've Read) List conversion page is a one-time conversion of all the books you have read from "unstarred" to "starred".  This is the easiest way to rate all the books you have read by applying star ratings to them, from 1 star (hated it) to 5 stars (loved it!!).

Why do you have to do this?

• Well, you don't have to, but...you won't be able to see your BIR list until all of the unrated books on the Conversion page have been rated (or marked Not Read, if you never did read them).
• Once you have applied Star Ratings to the books you have read, this will not only help other members to have an at-a-glance notion of whether or not they might like a book, but will also
  • help your Similarity Index (read more about this in Bookshelf Upgrade) and
  • make the Book Browser ability to search for highly-rated books more useful and more accurate!

To use the BIR Conversion page to convert your BIR list to all rated books:

• go to your Books I've Read list, under My Lists in My Account
• The books currently on your BIR list that have not been rated by you will appear on the page.
• Choose the number of stars under each book shown, or click  on the right if you didn't read-- or don't remember how much you liked-- the book. Clicking the NR button will delete the book from your BIR list, and this cannot be undone.
  
  • To choose stars, just drag left to right, or click the rightmost star of your rating.  For example, if a book is 4 stars, click the 4th star from the left, and all of those 4 stars will fill in with gold to show you have rated the book 4 stars.
• Your rating will be shown in gold stars (replacing the blue "club rating" stars).
• To clear your star rating, click to the right of your rating.
• When you have rated the books on the list, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Done.
  • You can of course do this in several 'sessions' if you have a lot of books to rate
  • Remember to scroll down and click Done before leaving the page, to apply the ratings you have set.
• When you have rated or removed all books on your BIR list, from then on you will not see the BIR Conversion page.  Going to the Books I've Read page will show you the list of books you have read.

Note that whenever you have an opportunity to add a book to your BIR list, you will be asked to star-rate it.  In fact, this will be required in order to add a book to your BIR list. 

Star ratings that appear on book listings will also now show how many members contributed to the rating.  This will help browsers know how "solid" a rating is!