Following on from the discussion in this thread, we can discuss guidelines or a general consensus on what is or isn't a series.

Reposting part of my message (#243):

# Some multi-volume works, fiction and non-fiction, are accepted as series. Can we then broaden the definition of "series" to include all multi-volume works? Should we then include two-volume works among series? If not, what are the exceptions?

# Some publishers' series are acceptable, when the works in question were 1) intended as a series by the publisher, and 2) created/undertaken/commissioned etc. by/on behalf of the publisher, making those works unique (such as the McGraw-Hill "Teach Yourself" series.)

Obviously, most titles in a Penguin/Oxford/Everyman/Norton/Modern Library (etc.) Classics series are not unique to that publisher.

Hence: can we also accept publishers' series which were put together by the publisher, and whose titles are usually "unique" to that publisher, but which may not exist as a series in another language/context? (See the University of Minnesota's Theory and History of Literature series, or Stanford University's Cultural Memory in the Present for examples.)

Message edited by its author, Jan 22, 2008, 3:13pm.

Can we then broaden the definition of "series" to include all multi-volume works?

No. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is not a series, though it is a multi-volume work. Jane Austen's works do not, in my view, constitute a series, despite the fact that some publisher may have issued them in that fashion.

#2: Jane Austen's works do not, in my view, constitute a series, despite the fact that some publisher may have issued them in that fashion.

And yet I would find it tremendously useful to find all the volumes of a standard, critical or at least authoritative edition of a writer's work in a series.

For example, these two series published by Princeton University that I created last night:

Kierkegaard's Writings

Goethe: The Collected Works

It seems to me it would be useful to distinguish between "author-imagined" series and publishers' series (sometimes the two overlap, of course). Formulate and explain each category and then separate them (allowing for cross-linking... )

Otherwise, I see nothing but confusion in communication ahead, as people will likely continue to operate under one OR the other definition in any given case.

It is critically important to note that LT is working on a "list" functionality, which would encompass such things as "all the novels of Jane Austen" or "the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die" without the need to designate such lists as "series".

I'm contemplating deleting the 1001 Books "series" data -- there seems to be a consensus that it isn't what was intended, and I'm already seeing people use it as an example to justify designating other miscellaneous lists as series.

I agree completely with LolaWalser. A series consists of multiple logical "works" (in Tim's sense of works"), envisioned as such by the author. A publisher's "set" or "edition" or whatever it is eventually called consists of multiple physical volumes. Sometimes a series can be in an edition. Sometimes an edition could be a single work. Sometimes each volume of an edition could have multiple works, such as the Harvard Classics. I think we need to keep the logical and the physical separate.

I don't see the harm of having lists like that marked as series now - when the list functionality becomes available, it'll be much easier to change the books over if they're already identified. Just open the series, then open each book in a new tab and add the List and delete the Series.

In defining a series, I would (1) let utility be my guide instead of visceral feelings about what counts as a 'series', and (2) always have my eye on drafting simple, unnuanced guidelines for users.

On utility: librarians record series because authors and publishers publish works under series titles and this data needs to be recorded. Users, in turn, are curious about works that are part of a set they may be unaware of, or own only part of. (I.e., encyclopedic works and fortuitously multi-volume works are self-evidently parts of a series; nothing is gained by recording the fact.)

So my solution is to treat as a 'series' a set of works with a title distinct from the underlying works. Whether the series title is given by the author or the publisher seems not to matter: users are interested in both. I admit that sometimes one must impute a title; see this for example:

http://www.librarything.com/series/Thame...

and for periodical literature one must sometime impute a unique title to a given number (e.g., 'Current Legal Problems 1990'). But in requiring a series title different from the titles of the underlying works, we would be doing just what librarians do, for the very reason librarians do it, and moreover accomplishing what the notion of 'series' is intended to accomplish: the provision of useful information.

I wipe away a tear as I am overcome by what I have written.

#7: But do you see the cleanup happening? I don't ;-).

#4 and #5: Maybe we should write up a definition for each and put it in the LT Wiki, for Tim/Christopher to reference as a Help link.

#3: Existanai, I disagree! My Goethe only has 6 volumes! >:-) I think I should delete it, for the reason lorax gave in #5...

#9,7:
Why would someone be willing to go into what's currently marked as a series to remove the series (as suggested in 5) but not be willing to create the list while they're deleting the series?

Specifically: lorax, if you're willing to go into all the 1001 books and remove the series from them, would you be willing to at the same time add them to a list, if lists were available? If not, why not? If you would be, why not wait and do it when lists are available?

I definitely agree that 1001 Books shouldn't be a series, but just think it would be a waste to throw away the work that's been done.

#10: The reason I'd delete them is to prevent "1001 books" from being used as an example to justify adding other random lists as series.

Given the many, many times that my "hard work" on combining and separating has been undone in a matter of seconds, believe me, I'm aware of how annoying it is, but in this case I think it's the lesser of two evils.

The reason I'd delete them is to prevent "1001 books" from being used as an example to justify adding other random lists as series

Ugh, by all means. The notion of "series" is confusing enough as it is...

#9

My Goethe only has 6 volumes!

This helps me express (imperfectly!) what bothers me about Existanai's examples in #3, the Kierkegaard and the Goethe: it feels wrong to call editions of collected works "a series". In contrast, Existanai's examples in #1 (University of Minnesota's Theory and History of Literature series, or Stanford University's Cultural Memory in the Present) clearly are series.

Can't really say why at this point. Technically, though, at least it's possible to discern one of the distinguishing marks: "collected works" are likely to be present in numerous editions in many languages, while a publisher's series, as such, generally are not.

Would it be possible to make the series template available for people who like it, to use/call as they see fit? A library-specific work CK page? Or is that adding much to a muchness?

I agree with all the objections to my various series, but that is why I am asking so many questions. The abundance of definitions and proposals simply demonstrate how nebulous the current application of this term is, and its vagueness is only compounded by other nebulous guidelines on what we should call a series.

I think I know why Tim and co. preferred to keep it nebulous at first - the less that is defined, the more flexible one is, the less time spent on fretting over trivia (and this is, of course, trivia) and the more people that are satisfied with the feature, if they can tailor it to their own ends.

The problem is that any concept, no matter how nebulous, will encounter obstacles further on, so some clarification in detail is necessary (whoever brings it forward.)

(Not complaining or blaming anyone for anything here - just stating what seems to be our current situation.)

Right now, the term 'series' on LT incorporates several different kinds of things, but mainly: multi-volume works; publishers' series; and authors' series (of individual, successive works.) This causes confusion.

I have been using "series" tags of various kinds in my catalog for a while. There are five broad categories, as I see it:

1) a publisher's established series, such as Penguin Classics, etc. and that includes the University Press series above.

2) A publishers' sub-series tag for - obviously - series within series, such as limited-edition Penguin Classics series.

3) what I choose to call a "set" - this is applied to multi-volume works or a very closely related series whose volumes, put together, make a single work (such as an encyclopedia) or cohesive body of work (such as a multi-author, multi-volume history or reference book.) Generally speaking, there is only one author, or one body of authors, for such works.

4) a publisher's series of a particular author's works; this is very loose and has as many advantages as disadvantages. This can include the standard editions in English, as above for the Kierkegaard, or it may simply be a large number of titles by one author, published by a single company (such as the numerous Joseph Roth titles published by Overlook.) The disadvantage is that, apart from excluding other editions of the same works and so on, such series are rarely 'complete' or even representative of all major works by the author, and do not serve the intended purpose. They do point to more works by an author, and are consequently helpful, but they are usually not a comprehensive 'list' of works by that author. I keep it because I find it convenient.

5) A series or cycle of works by a particular author. I have not used such a tag yet, preferring to see such works as part of a "set" (a super-set, that is) but I can see the necessity for popular SF/fantasy works. In literature, one would cite the Rougon-Macquart cycle as such a series, I guess.

The major benefit of such divisions is that they encompass both something tangible and intentional (series that actually exist as such) and something conceptual and potentially arbitrary (multi-volume works that are divided by size rather than content.)

Series can be tremendously useful - I love them, and occasionally I will even buy some editions only because they belong to a certain series (don't ask...)

But if the concept of "series" remains this vague on LT, then you might as well include pretty much everything in some kind of "series" - since everything belongs to a set of something - reducing the utility and fascination of series.

Even if I am exaggerating, the fact remains there is tremendous overlap between the current loose definition of series and what LT staff say are "not" series; thus inviting complications, and making it very difficult to decide beforehand.

Here's a library definition, from http://www.maine.gov/infonet/minerva/cat... as used for the MARC 440 and 490 fields:
"A series is a group of separate items each with its own title proper but that share a collective title, one that applies to the group as a whole."

However, a lot of people on LT mostly read fiction, and I think they probably think of series differently, as a set of separate books by the same author that together form a larger story, regardless of whether they have an official series title.

I'm not sure whether this is the same distinction that LolaWalser refers to, but I think it's similar, and that it describes the two main entities that are likely to be accepted as series. It's bound to get fuzzy at the edges, though, regardless of definitions.

I have considered series as

1. the true roman fleuve e.g A dance to the music of time. Series has a title given by the author and each book has its own title.

2. Series such as Aubrey/Maturin or Sharpe which follow the careers of the central characters but with no series title.

3. Books by one author about one character e.g James Bond, Philip Marlowe, Jeeves which individually do not really relate to other books in the series.

4. Part works such as the Oxford History of England published as a series with individual books by various authors. I think the series should have an encompassing title and a common purpose - not simply being similar books bundled together.

Am I doing OK? There are still problems - for example should books about James Bond not written by Ian Fleming be included in the James Bond (007) series?

Just read comment elsewhere - 1. multi-volume works so maybe don't count?

Message edited by its author, Jan 23, 2008, 8:59am.

>15

That's exactly how I've been treating the series.

As to the James Bond question, if the author was not aware of and didn't approve of the subsequent books (e.g., published after Ian Fleming's death), then I haven't been treating them as series. For example, think of all the problems that could arise with Sherlock Holmes series if any continuation counted. Now, the non-Ian Fleming James Bond books I would probably put into another series called "James Bond continuation" or something.

WHat's the issue with having a very broad definition of series?

If someone want to go to the effort of seriesing all 1001 books/any other example does this cause any problems?

OK I've seen someone complain that it makes there green check marks look untidy if they don't own them all - specifically regarding omnibuses.

This to me does not override the usefulness of knowing what titles contain works I already own.

Any other problems?

On James Bond, that's a purist question, but I think it's fair to include the non-Fleming works since it's intended to be a continuation of the series (one could do a sub-seres of 007: Fleming Authored if they really wanted to).

There are similar issues with SF series all the time - the Dunes were continued by Herbert's son, the Rama Universe was started by Clarke & another author joined and subsequently took over; there are those that consider only the Clarke-involved versions to be "true."

I'd vote for sub-series in lieu of starting arguements over "true" Bonds (or Dunes or Ramas or Llamas...) for the "purists" but having a master series that touches everything.

CK is supposed to be a "share what you know" feature and the wikipedia article referenced whenever we put in a series definitely has a more fluid definition. While lists can definitely be deleted (even for 1001 books, it's okay, trust me), I think more people would be discouraged from helping if they were in fear of a purist saying, "that's not Ian Fleming, so keep it off the list!" at every turn...

ETA - As for the green checkmarks and not owning omnibuses...well, as a "completionist," I own a lot of omnibuses and story collections (The Green Mile - I have the original series and the slip-cased omnibus). I don't think less of someone that would own one over the other, though...

I don't think omnibuses should be left out to make people feel better about green checkmarks.

Message edited by its author, Jan 23, 2008, 10:44am.

>15,16

That was more or less how I understood series. A dance to the music of time counts as a series because it's twelve separate novels, even if they are usually encountered in threes nowadays, but "the complete works of Thackeray in 26 volumes" doesn't, nor does Vanity Fair in two volumes.

I think (some of) the Bond sequels were actually commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate to milk the franchise even further, so they have some kind of posthumous authenticity - possibly not a good example.

You could probably find examples of fiction by multiple authors about a single set of characters that should be treated as series - I was thinking of the various Stratemeyer Syndicate creations (Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, etc.), but those did have a single notional "author" name, even though that name was used by lots of different people.

reading_fox > I think the things like '1001' and awards and stuff are considered 'Lists' of books and Tim and Co want to keep them separate and are planning on giving us the ability to do those. I think part of it has to do with how he wants to use them for suggestions and such. Also having them separate he could use the 2 kinds of things for different kinds of recommendations.

#17: What's the issue with having a very broad definition of series?

I don't mind an all-inclusive definition of series, but as mentioned, LT has a certain concept of series in mind that they prefer members adhere to. The issue being that it is a very fuzzy concept and overlaps with the groupings that they don't consider series.

Apparently we can't go ahead and make any publisher series or multi-volume work into a series, and yet the examples cited include multi-volume works, for instance, and certain kinds of publisher series which are similar to series that aren't allowed.

As readafew mentioned, apparently there are features in the works which will take care of these other groupings, but there is no clear indication as to how we differentiate between them.

Message edited by its author, Jan 23, 2008, 2:37pm.

I think trying to keep series clean will be like herding cats. Even if we do come up with a fairly rigorous definition, there will still be people who come along and add something that 'breaks the rules'. Until we see what the series or collections functionality looks like - I can dream, can't I? - we won't be able to assess which group belongs with which functionality.

I've created a series out of a set of yearly annuals (Matt) which I was pretty dubious about, but I think it works. On the other hand, I don't like the 1001 books example. However, I think that if you can't be pretty thick skinned about what happens in LT, you'll be driven to despair: I'd really like that combining and separating were kept to an elite, but that is just never going to happen. Similarly, series is a tool for the masses, and what will be, will be.

#13

At the moment it seems to me there are technical problems (quite apart from series-defining criteria) with displaying everything you enumerate as series, e.g. the Penguin Classics, regarding the cover view and the green check marks. For instance, the Princeton Kierkegaard series checks "Sickness unto death" for me, but I have it in the Penguin edition.

#15

That sounds good, seems to encompass a lot of examples.

Further random gleanings from this thread:

1. Some multi-volume works are series, some are not.

(The "not" would include multi-volume editions of single titles, e.g. "Little Dorrit" in 3 or 5 or 12 volumes.)

2. Any series is a set, not every set is a series.

To me, "series" implies some sort of inherent sequentiality, "set" does not. Of course, a publisher can impose "seriesness" in the absence of an "inherent sequentiality", but in these cases dressel's definition in #14 seems to work well. (Does the set have a special over-arching title, with independently titled elements etc.)

Tolkien's Ring thing and Proust's Search seem like the simplest case: they are both series because they contain a (named) sequence of independent (named) elements. The Alexandria Quartet, while without a story arc across all four novels (they are largely different POV expositions, IIRC), is usually presented in a defined sequence too (Justine first, Mountolive last) and has some other features of series--uber-title, same characters, shared plot...

>15,18: Generally, I agree. I did take the liberty of making an over-arching series for the Dune novels by Frank Herbert and others -- in part because there was a long thread about them in the SF group here, and there was some confusion over how the various books written after Herbert's death fit into the sequence. (The thread is here -- and thanks to kassetra for putting everybody straight.) As there's a simple chronology, and the subsequent authors were writing what they considered to be part of a series, I thought I'd add it. (As a companion to the series of FH's books, not a replacement for it.)

A fairly new user has created a series called Scholastic Book with, so far, one book in it. Since Scholastic is a PUBLISHER and does everything from Harry Potter to ancient history to reprints of other publisher's works I just don't see this as a series. Any reactions from the group?

It's definitely not a series. I'd delete it.

> 26

In that case, would it at least be fine to send that user a kind (private) note targeted at trying to explain why his "series" is/will be gone ? This might prevent him getting quite puzzled--and frustrated.

-----
Dear NewUser:

Welcome at LibraryThing!

It turns out that you have been trying and creating a new series named "Scholastic Book". This quite puzzles me. There seems to be some difference in opinion this matter.

I thought that "Scholastic" rather is a _publisher_, doing quite everything from Harry Potter to ancient history to reprints of other publisher's works. Therefore I don't think that this as a series.

I understand and highly appreciate and applaude your trying to help. Then again, in order to prevent desillusion--as well as getting series turned into a mess--mutual understanding on what is a series and what is not might be quite an advantage.

If you want to discuss this matter, please feel invited to join the special topic LT Group "In All Seriesness".

Happy Thinging !

Sincerely yours,

MyName
-----

Feel invited to battle this down. =)

Sincerely yours,

boekerij.

I believe with only 1 book, they stopped (unless more have cropped up?).

In addition, Tim dropped this note in Combiners!

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.ph...

I don't think a note to the user is a great idea at this point. If the user continues to put the series in after deletion, it might be a good idea to e-mail Tim and ask what to do at this point.

Scholastic is just like the Penguin example offered, so it should be kind of self-explanatory.

tim's note was about catalog/edition specific changes, NOT about shared info such as CK. However when sending notes keep them civil and polite.

If we can't tell anyone about 'how things are' how will they learn?

"Happy Thinging!"

I like that! I'm going to start using it at the appropriate juncture.

I took the series designation off of the book. We'll see what happens...

I'm with > 23. Since I read mostly fiction, the word series always brings to mind fiction series, where all the books take place in the same universe and usually with the same characters, with an "inherent sequentiality", or at least internal chronology.

So, for instance I agree that "Jane Austen's works do not, in my view, constitute a series." They may kind of take place in the same universe, but they do not have common characters and there is no sequentiality. While all of a certain author's books may indeed belong to the same series, they do not do so by the inherent characteristic of being "all the books by a certain author".

I think what we need to think about is the *point* of a series for a reader - for me, reading a book and then seeing it identified as part of a series is a good way of determining other books I would probably want to read, what books it's related to.

That's why some of the publisher "series" mystify me - just because I found Photoshop 7 for Dummies useful, that has absolutely no bearing on whether I will have any interest in Osteoporosis for Dummiesor Trigonometry for Dummies. So where is the value in identifying them as part of the same series?

That why the "all the author's books" series also fails my usefulness check - there is already an easy way to identify those books as being related/of possible interest - they have the same author.

And I would argue that it's *especially* useful to identify a series that has multiple authors, even if the purists disagree - since you cannot simply check the original authors works.

#32

Books in the "Dummies" series (and other similar series) are related to each other by style, reading comprehension level and purpose (giving a low-level, easy-to-assimilate overview of a topic, say). Subject matter or plot (in case of fiction) isn't the only criterion for a series.

>32

Here's where I see the "For Dummies" or "Complete Idiot's Guide" or even DK, Zagat's, Fodor's, Sparks Notes and the like being a "series" vs. Penguin.

The editors of these books clearly set out to make a series of life, art, or travel guides. And while you may have no interest in Trigonometry or Osteoporosis because you liked the Photoshop 7 book for Dummies, the "For Dummies" folks are hoping that the specific layouts, techniques and practices they've put forward in the "For Dummies" guides will make you go, "do they have a Japanese for Dummies guide?" should the need arise because you had a positive experience with "for Dummies."

Penguin, on the other hand, simply would like you to buy classics at reasonable prices. Same thing for Easton Press (well, not the reasonable prices thing so much). While they'll have a similar cover theme or design (leather, yellow boarder), there's nothing between the pages that takes it to the "series" level. No single-paragraph writeups on restaurants, no "quick picks" for limited budgets, no quick-guides, no dummies bubbles, no 101 things...and so on. Just a reprint of the same book you could buy elsewhere at several different price points.

That's where the nonfiction vs. fiction divide lies - at least in my head and by Tim & Co's definition who clearly calls out Penguin vs. For Dummies.

I'm not going to argue the Dummies as series - that question has obviously been answered, by Tim as well as others. It's just my personal fiction bias that doesn't get most non-fiction series. They seem to be easily identifiable by title and therefore not need a series page to identify them as being related.

I actually did create one non-fiction series page, for the English Men of Letters (biographies of British Writers). I did think that was a good example of a non-fiction series, since there was no good way to know the books were connected without seeing the common editor, or the few works where "English Men of Letters" appears as part of the title. Most had different Authors, and usually the title was simply the surname of the subject. "Inherent sequentiality" was definitely lacking there.

I'm happy no one's arguing my other points though.

What a people's current feelings on a single novel that was originally published as multiple volumes? Personally, I would not consider these series. But now we have our new series stats on the profile, I noticed that someone had created series for several Haruki Murakami novels that were originally published in Japan as two or three volumes (but were only ever published in the west as a single volume). For example, my Kafka on the Shore is listed as an omnibus, third in the series, where the first two parts are Japanese vols 1 and 2.

Like I said, I don't think this is the most appropriate use of the series field. If we wanted to do this, we should have series for like, almost every long European novel published in the 19th century. We don't. I believe we need to handle this somehow, because we should be able to make part/whole relationships, but series don't actually do that anyway.

#36> Until we have another capability to record an "edition," the "series" will continue to be abused for this purpose. The series ought to be based on the author's intent in writing separate books that are linked in his or her intent; an edition is the decision of a publisher.

#36 - until you can convince everyone on site that "The Lord of the Rings" is not a series, I think you're kind of stuck with this.

Certainly many manga series are concieved as one graphic novel in multiple volumes, at the same time that they're universally considered series.

My only issue there would be the perpetual issue of whether it's frequently subdivided into *different* sets of volumes, and that goes back to the same troubles we've had with part/whole ever since combining rolled out.

#37> I agree, using the series to denote different edition collections is an issue due to there not being another defined choice that seems to fit.

For example, I own 3 editions of the Elfquest graphic novels. The original Donner publications (1-4), the "Reader's collection" (1-17), of which 1-4 were reprints of the original Donner, and the new DC published Elfquest Archives (1-4 reprinted again, but with differences not only in coloration but re-touching of the art/text by the original artist/author). And I'm not even including the original WaRP graphics 1-20 black-and-whites (same content as the original Donner pubs) or the Marvel reprints (again same content but bad comic coloration version) or the new Manga editions (resized and I believe split into more volumes than the original graphic novels). The whole thing is such a mess. I've considered doing each edition as a separate series just because they each contain different content, but I'm just not sure.

ETA: Sorry, double post!

Message edited by its author, Mar 26, 2008, 2:31pm.

#36 - until you can convince everyone on site that "The Lord of the Rings" is not a series, I think you're kind of stuck with this.

But the Lord of the Rings is frequently published, in all languages, as three volumes. Each volume has a different name, even. I am talking about books that are a single novel, with a single name, published as one volume in all circumstances except in Japan where publishing in multiple small volumes is still a convention. It is more akin to whether Les Miserables should be a series, consisting of tomes 1-3, where the full novel is considered an omnibus. I have a feeling if, as I said, every nineteenth century European novel was showing up on people's profile stats as part of a series, they would be pretty irritated.

#41 just because it's published that way doesn't mean anything. We've already agreed that publishers aren't arbitors of a series.

One can buy LoTR as a single work.
Or as a 6 volumes which was how JRRT originally wrote it.
And then there's the Hobbit.

Personally I'd have no problems with series field being used to identify all of these differences.

I will always consider Lord of the Rings to be a series- I was sent the 'Hobbit' and 'Fellowship' as a Christmas present when we lived in India, and it was well over a year before I could get my hands on '2 Towers' and 'Return'. Talk about torture. But I had read what I had several times by then.

#42 - no, JRRT originally wrote it as one work, his publisher split it up into several volumes for publishing purposes. You'll still run into people who insist that LOTR is one book, and therefore omnibus editions aren't actually omnibuses, just complete novels, which is why it's a pretty close parallel to nperrin's situation.

I would be okay with massive nineteenth century serial novels that were originally published as several volumes over a period of time to be entered as series. Many of them operated in pretty much the same way that novel series do today. I don't think a lot of them are entered in LT as individual volumes (I haven't run into anyone here who collects them in original editions yet, but I'd bet there's somebody) but I don't know *why* they shouldn't be able to use the series function just because their series came out before the modern definition of a fiction series was common.

On the 19th century example, how many people really do own all 20 original 32-page volumes? Honestly, if someone does own all of the original monthly installments of David Copperfield, I'd actually love to know. I'm sure some manuscript libraries may have them, but with the last one published in 1850...I doubt that there are any private holders left (if they do exist and are somehow in even "fair" condition, I'm shocked they haven't been sold).

I don't think anyone really has them - at which point, if you're just entering the "Omnibus" edition, you'll need to explain that it was originally published in 20 volumes. With no one on LT even owning the originals, it's really fallen into the relm of trivia.

In the end, this is the old "there's something worse that could happen!" argument. If something worse happens, it will be addressed. We can what-if anything to death (if we allow people to plant poppies, they will make heroin!).

> 45

Well, they're not the original monthly installments, but I do own Great Expectations in facsimile installments issued by Stanford University.

They have done this with other works as well: http://dickens.stanford.edu/index.html

>46 I wasn't aware anyone was reprinting them - frankly, the original author intended the novels to be serials, and that would make a legit series.

I notice you don't have them listed separately (I'm guessing that's the binding project?) and I've done a search for the Stanford University versions, even going through the orphaned Great Expectations.

It appears no one owns the set and is cataloging it as such.

Is a shame, really.

I stand by my comments in 45. If someone starts cataloging the Stanford installments, they have every right to call it a series. That's exactly what it was when it was published. As I understand it, many authors resisted the idea of publishing their books as one volume (it's been 20 years since my 19th century lit classes).

There's an awful lot of fretting about what people personally feel is or isn't a series. I know there's a side that would like this to be the strictest definition possible - there's also a side that wants to be able to know when books are deliberately connected. My copy of It shows up as a series because they published it in France originally as two volumes. From their perspective, it was a series - Ca Tomb 1 & 2 (I think). From my perspective, it was one book (of course, I also own a copy of the serialized French).

I've lived and nothing horrible happened, I promise.

As Victorian triple-decker novels were usually published with the titles "Volume 1" "Volume 2" "Volume 3", they cannot be considered a series, because if I told you out of the blue (i.e. starting a conversation) I read "Volume 1", you would not reply "Ah, Volume 1, I've read that", but "Volume 1 of what?" .

So would you say that the Buffy scriptbooks don't qualify as a series?

>49 I have no idea why they wouldn't be a series...

I don't either, but by shmjay's rule, they wouldn't be.

> 48

I notice you don't have them listed separately (I'm guessing that's the binding project?)

Yes. Once I get that done, it will be one volume. And, of course, when I catalogued it, we didn't have series here!

>52 Now I'm officially intrigued.

What are you going to bind it in? And have you been doing book-binding for a while? Are you going for a period-look?

If this group comes to an agreement about what is a series and what is not, how are you going to get others to follow the rules? I doubt that everybody reads this group. If people have other ideas about series and do what they like, are you really going to delete their series? It sounds drastic to me.

No, looking at them, as a whole, I agree the Buffy scriptbooks are a series. Maybe people know now how many seasons the program has, but at the start of Season 1, no one could possibly have known whether it would end with Season 1 due to unpopularity or go on to Season 7.

But, for example, as it stands The Buffy Scriptbooks Season 2 is not a series all by itself. Like a Victorian triple-decker novel, it had a known beginning and a known ending.

These things are on a continuum, and I can tell you that publishers don't think of the convenience of the cataloguer when they issue these things. And then it gets worse when you have to consider whether or not it is a serial. So as a cataloguer, when I look at a group of books and catalogue them, there are a group of characteristics I use to consider whether they are a series or not. The more characteristics it passes, the more likely it is to be a series.

0. Consider the situation of the books from when the first edition of the first volume of the set was published. (This is an instruction, not a characteristic; hence I made it point 0.)
1. The books were not published simultaneously.
2. When book 1 was published, it was not known how many further books there would be. (Known is not the same thing as planned.)
3. The volumes have distinctive titles that can stand on their own; the titles are sufficiently unique that you do not have to know the title of the whole set to order a replacement copy of a missing volume.
4. Full understanding of what is going on in a certain volume depends on having read all the volumes. (This criterion applies mostly to fiction.)

Often the only way to learn what is a series and what isn't is by seeing a lot of examples.

I'll work through all the above examples in this thread some other time.

>54 is right.

>54,55 You have to be careful about absolutes - There's a reason the Series page points to the Wiki definition and clearly states that there's a certain fluidity that needs to be present in defining a series (exact quote from page - Like many concepts in the book world, "series" is a somewhat fluid and contested notion. ):

1. The books were not published simultaneously.
So all omnibuses are out? My "complete Chronicles of Narnia" boxed set cannot be considered now? Publishers re-issuing Master & Commander are right out? Publisher series where several volumes that come out in batches - even though a monopoly on the works exists - are out? What if someone doesn't know the exact publication dates? What if someone gets through a contractual dispute and is able to publish several volumes at once? What if the author wrote it as one work and it just got split up - Lord of the Rings, be gone!

2. When book 1 was published, it was not known how many further books there would be. (Known is not the same thing as planned.)
All Absolute editions are right out now. Actually, graphic novels in general are out - those are usually contracted (and far different from singles). Anything where a the first book starts out "part 1 in a trilogy" that remains a trilogy is right out until one gets to the fourth book (hey, Doug Adams makes it!).

3. The volumes have distinctive titles that can stand on their own; the titles are sufficiently unique that you do not have to know the title of the whole set to order a replacement copy of a missing volume.
Ouch. So many series out, it's not even funny. Many are subtitled, but many are not. How dare the person include a short story in Everything's Eventual in the Dark Tower series? I know it was a prequel and it explains a lot about the goings-on in the series - but it's out!, right out! Doesn't fit the distinctive titles rule! As I think of it, Doug Adams is now officially out, as the Hitchhiker books didn't always reference the other Hitchhiker books. Oh, and that inclusion of "The Sentinel" is also out for Arthur C. Clarke, even though it was the original story - can't clutter the tightly done definition.

4. Full understanding of what is going on in a certain volume depends on having read all the volumes. (This criterion applies mostly to fiction.)
There go all the detective series. After all, they pretty much spend the first chapter giving you what you need to know about the prior character development in a few pages. Actually, any series involving crimes and the said solving of such crimes, is out - I don't want to deny the 87th Precinct non-series status just because it wasn't the same detectives. Publisher series are right out as well - even though this "mostly applies to fiction." The volumes of the collected stories of Philip K. Dick are totally out, despite being published as a series. Cartoon collections are largely out - goodbye Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert, the Far Side and Foxtrot! Frankly, I never really needed the other Jack Ryans to understand what he was up, so those are right out as well. Frankly, if there's a movie out there, who needs the series listed? We can sort it out! I can assure you from what little I've read, there's no need to have read the others to understand the Rogue Warrior series - they're all pretty much the same book. Manga Shakespeare, while an updated and intriguing series is also out of the picture. Tales of the City - OMG - what was Armistad Maupin thinking when he began to abandon most of the characters from the first books later in the series? Oh god - tv crossover book series. Even worse! Oh, all those TV Sci-Fi book tie-ins. Let's face it, you don't have to read all 285 volumes of Star Trek to get a full understanding (they just hope you think it). Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys are most definitely out.

See what happens when you start putting in rules beyond what's already listed in the rules? I can obliterate nearly every series out their with one of these proposed rules.

I cannot stress this enough - the rules are actually already there - they're designed for the "fluid and contested notion" of series. They're already published on all of the series pages.

If there's an actual question on an existing series, or if a series you're about to enter brings pause, bring it to the group. Trying to tightly define the rules can basically destroy the concept - the more rules, the more confusing, the less likely folks are to enter series (unless this is the ultimate goal - the few deciding for the many?).

Rather than obliterate half the series in existence with stricter rules because "something worse might happen," wait until the "something worse" happens. Something worse can be dealt with - trying to prevent something worse only damages the work already done.

Um, he didn't say they were rules, he called them characteristics, the more a group of books have the more likely it is to be a series.

The rules I've been using to determine what is a series are a lot simpler:

1. Does that series have a conventional name, and is it an intentional creation, on the part of the authors or publisher?

2. Are books in the series distinct enough from other books to be consistently separate on the "works" level?

3. Is there no better site-wide way to group the works using LT's current system?

4. If it doesn't fit one of those qualifications, but it's still consistently referred to as a distinct, non-edition-based series by all booksellers and publishers and critics, list it anyway.

(1) is the basic guideline we get from on high, and gives us our initial set of "things that may be series", though it also includes some that don't work with LT's current infrastructure.

(2) excludes publisher sets based entirely on a particular edition of a work that would be completely unrelated to the series when it's published in other editions. This excludes things like "modern library" or "magicquest YA" that we've been calling "publisher series". It also excludes some works that are frequently broken into multi-volume sets with no standard way of dividing them, since the different volume (2)s can't be kept distinct on the work level. It allows publisher editions that are distinct enough from all other editions that LT lists them as separate works, though, and works like "Lord of the Rings" and "Bone" that have a standard way of being separated into volumes.

(3) excludes things like "books about Salisbury, MD" and "the complete works of Mark Twain", which even if they can be twisted to fit #1, are better listed elsewhere in CK or through the author listings.

(4) allows you to bring in obvious exceptions like Nancy Drew that can't be kept separated but ought to be listed, or Stephen Jay Gould's "Nature" essays that weren't explicitly concieved as a series but have always functioned like one, or series like "Lord Peter Wimsey" that you *could* do through the "characters" CK field, but are clearly series.

Obviously we're all going to have slightly different sets of rules based on what our definition of series is and what's in our libraries. But I think we need to be realistic about how the function is useful as opposed to some platonic ideal of "series", and since this is a collaborative effort, we need to be as broad as possible - within the limits of what LT can accurately do.

Message edited by its author, Mar 29, 2008, 12:43pm.

56: Rather than obliterate half the series in existence with stricter rules because "something worse might happen," wait until the "something worse" happens. Something worse can be dealt with - trying to prevent something worse only damages the work already done.

I restarted this discussion not by saying "something worse might happen," but by saying that something wrong had already happened. People are listing what can only be called novels as series. If other people don't think this is wrong, then we should reach some kind of consensus because there are an awful lot of three-volume novels to start adding series for if that's what we're going to do.

How about: If they look neat together on my bookshelf.

#56 seems to be saying that the more you try to define something, the less definition it has. Not to get too philosophical here, but that sounds like a squirrelly bit of nonsense. Either there are coherent rules to follow or there are not. If LT wants people to use their own judgment, then it should say "Use your own judgment."

Gene Wolfe's Latro series is an interesting example. Usually, Wolfe knows ahead of time how about many books he will write in his various series. But in the Latro books there was quite a number of years between books 1&2 and book 3, which continued the main character from the first two books but little else. These books are a series almost by accident or by second thought. I don't mind that they are together. But they are not a series in the same sense as Lord of the Rings, which is a continuing story which requires the reader to read all three books (and perhaps The Hobbit).

It's fine with me. I'm just pointing out the discrepancies which will lead people simply to use their own judgment.

And I think nonfiction series are even harder to judge. It's natural for people to think of Library of America as a series. They probably have them tagged that way already.

>56

First, I need to point out that I am a librarian and do this sort of thing, i.e. cataloguing, for a living and I create records which could very well be used by the Library of Congress or other libraries or LibraryThing, so I have to consider all these things in the course of my job.

You have completely ignored point 0, which I even said was an instruction that I had to follow while considering the other points. Perhaps this was because its intention was not clear, so I will restate it:

0. Consider the situation of the books from when the first edition of the first volume of the set, or the first edition of the first work contained within the set, was published.

1. An omnibus is a collection of all or some of the books in the series. It is not really part of the series, but it has a very close relation to it; it can stand in for part of the series, and even all of it, for in some cases the omnibus has all the books in the series so it is identical to the series.

As for your points here, I again refer you to point 0. For example, the Complete Chronicles of Narnia contains seven works, the first of which published was The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. The other six works of Narnia were not published simultaneously in 1950. Therefore Narnia and all your other examples here have the characteristics of a series.

As for The fellowship of the ring, the other two parts of The Lord of the rings did not come out in 1954 with the first part, so here The Lord of the rings has the characteristics of a series.

"What if someone doesn't know the exact publication dates?"

The corollary to point 0 is that if you don't know when the first edition of the first volume / work was published, you have to find out before you can even decide whether this is a series or not. In other words, if you don't know the year of publication, you don't have sufficient data to decide.

2. As I said in this point, "Known is not the same thing as planned". Now Tolkien had already written the entire Lord of the rings when Fellowship came out, so here it was known there were to be three books. If Tolkien had died right after the publication of The two towers, this would not have prevented the publication of The return of the king.

I'm not sure about Narnia, but I don't think Lewis had written all the books in advance, even if maybe he had planned seven. If he had died after the publication of The voyage of the Dawn Treader, would we be able to tell whether he intended the Narnia to consist of 6, 8, 9 or 12 books? So here LotR doesn't have the characteristic of a series, but Narnia does.

I have no idea what an Absolute book is, so I can't comment on that.

3. You have completely misunderstood this point. The viewpoint here is: if you wanted to order the volume from a library or a bookstore, and you just gave the librarian the title of the work or the volume, would the librarian or bookstore employee have to know the title of the larger work just to be able to find what you were asking for?

If you asked for The restaurant at the end of the universe, if I had never heard of "The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy", I would still be able to get that book for you. But if you ask for "Volume 2", I can't know what to get for you unless you tell me the name of the larger work. So "Hitchhiker" has the characteristic of a series here, where the example of Great expectations published in many parts doesn't.

As for 4, your point is correct, and I can only plead it was early in the morning when I posted it and I went back to bed soon after. So change it to:

4. Full understanding of what is going on in a certain volume does not depend on having read all the volumes. (This criterion applies mostly to fiction.)

By "full understanding" I mean "you understand what the author is taking for granted here, i.e. who these characters are and why they are doing such things". I invite others to improve on the point to make it more clear.

Again, if you had one of the monthly parts of Great expectations, say Part 8, you would not be able to pick up what was going on just from reading part 8 itself. You would have to go all the way back to part 1. Therefore Great expectations does not have the characteristics of a series.

But if you read The horse and his boy, you could enjoy it all on its own without having read any other Narnia books.

I am going to add a new point:

5. Posterity continues to publish, as a matter of course/routine the parts as parts, and not exclusively as a whole. (If the work is still coming out, then the answer will automatically be yes.)

Although Great expectations came out in monthly parts when it was first published, no one publishes it that way now. It is only published as one big book. Therefore it does not have the characteristics of a series. But you can buy a separate edition of The two towers standing on its own.

So, putting all these together, answering 1-5:

Narnia: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Series.
LoTR: yes, no, yes, no, yes. Series.
Hitchhiker: yes, yes, yes, ?, yes. Series.
Wheel of time: yes, yes, yes, no, yes. Series.
Great expectations: yes, no?, no, no, no. Not series.
The last chronicle of Barset (originally issued in monthly parts in a magazine): yes, no, no, no, no. Not series.
Star trek: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Series.
Inspector Banks (by Peter Robinson): yes, yes, yes, no, yes. Series.

Message edited by its author, Mar 29, 2008, 2:38pm.

>61

Latro, according to my criteria: Yes, yes, yes, no?, yes? Can you still buy a copy of Soldier of the mist as a regular thing?

As for "The Library of America", yes, it is a series according to libraries and my criteria, but not according to LibraryThing's.

>59 & Beyond...

Here's exactly what I'm saying:

The rules ARE defined. They're meant to be vague because series is not a tightly defined thing. Before folks continue to reply, I would appreciate if everyone would re-read the rules and the Wiki article cited. I believe everything is covered between the paragraphs, the examples and the wiki article.

For us to make up lengthy discourses is really just a passive-aggressive way in everyone's mind to stop a handful of things from happening - instead of just addressing them in an upfront manner. Tim has made it abundantly clear that we can delete items in CK that we know are wrong. Maybe I'm the only one here that's actually done it.

As to the "really bad things," outside of the single Scholastic Book mentioned way at the beginning, what other examples are we dealing with?

shmjay - I'm still not convinced of your point 3. Would you class the Foxfire books as a series, for example? How about The Batman Chronicles? To me, it's pretty obvious that both of those are series for all intents and purposes, but each volume just gets a number. I could probably come up with several more along those lines.

Your modified point 4 confuses me; it seems to say the opposite of what it should. Did you put an extra negation in there? Or something? It seems like as you have it there, it is completely meaningless (except as another way to exclude "Great Expectations".)

Your point 5 is fine if we *have* a posterity, but what about something like "Bone"? It's a fairly new (but finished) series that originally came out in magazine-serials, then was collected in a set of book volumes which were published for a few years. Then the split volumes stopped being printed altogether and all editions since then have had the whole work in one volume, with a promise that it would never be published in any other way again. Of course, since it's still under copyright, there haven't been a whole lot of editions to judge by.

I think a lot of what's going on here is that you're trying to make a clear distintion between "series" and "serial", but the problem is that there are a lot of books that still get published as serials. Not so many prose novels, but plenty of nonfiction and many, many, graphic novels (which is also what "Absolute" editions are, by the way,) and they're universally treated as series by everyone involved, and usually even *called* that. So it's going to take a lot of work to convince us that they need to be filtered out.

(And if you try to claim graphic novels don't count, I hereby revoke your "cool librarian" card. :P)

I'm not really sure what you're trying to do with your conditions 1 and 2. When books are split into several volumes, there's often at least a slight delay between part 1 and part 2 being printed (especially if the split edition comes out before the work is ever printed in full); whereas with children's series and nonfiction, it's not unknown for several books to come out simultaneously; and I really don't know how the simultaneity is relevant here.

As for 2 - In the real world, plans as to how many books there will be "gang aft agley". What about the author who had completed three volumes before publication, and then wrote another, unexpectedly, ten years later? Or who completed three volumes and then only saw two get published? Again, this is a very fuzzy criterion and I don't really see how it *helps* any, leaving aside the fact that you need to be able to read an author's/publisher's mind in order to apply it (not to mention the fact that the author and publisher often disagree on this question.) In cases where it's clear, it probably is also clear whether something's a series; in cases where it's fuzzy, this criterion often is too.

You shouldn't need a degree in library science and decades of studying publishers and literary history in order to be able to tell, is kind of what I'm getting at. (Also, no offense, but part of the reason LT's doing it this way is that no library *had* a series function that worked as well.)

***

And, honestly, if it's just the "omnibus" term that's bothering people, go in to CK and change it to "Complete work", which is what I use anyway! "Omnibus" isn't standardized or anything.

Oooh, just for fun, I'ma do a case study of a case that's been borderline - The Once and Future King

By LT's collective wisdom, it's a series - it was entered shortly after the function was developed and hasn't been objected to since.

By my standard guidelines - 1. it was conceived of as a series and has a name; 2. it's not going to combined with anything else; 3. there is no better way to group the works at the moment. So it wins despite being shaky on 4, and I was the one who entered it actually.

By shmjay's guidelines: 0: I'm not actually sure and google's not helping, but I think volumes 1-4 were all bought together. Anyway it advertised to be a tetralogy and The Sword in the Stone was published, although later versions altered it substantially and I'm not even sure (short of holding a copy in my hand) how exactly the original version compares: I'd probably need to visit a specialty library to get a grip on 0.
1. Yes, it was not published simultaneously.
2. I believe that at the time there were 4 books written and planned to be published, but WWII got in the way and IV was never actually published separately, and not at all for almost 20 years, at which point it was part of an omnibus edition, but then book V was written, although it didn't get published for yet another twenty years. So I guess this one's yes, then no, then yes, then no.
3. Mostly yes, although part 2 when published separately was very different and had a different title than the part 2 in the complete edition, so anyone asking for a copy of The Queen of Air and Darkness would be out of luck rather, and of course part 4 was never published separately.
4. This is always going to depend more on how clue-ful the reader is than on how many clues are in the book, but while the first three books stand alond okay, it's pretty well acknowledged that the last two don't, especially the very last. Although that one's sometimes considered not really part of the series anyway.
5. They were originally published separately, though part 4 never was, and for fifty years you've only been able to get parts 2-4 in a collected edition, though they eventually came out with a standalone of 1 it was a movie tie-in edition and very different from the one in the collected edition. A fifth book was published after twenty years of the book only being available in one version, which is sometimes considered not really part of the series and has never been collected. So - yes, no, yes?

So that's, what - yes, maybe, mostly yes, maybe, maybe, and I need a research trip to the library?

I think we do need (at least as individual workers) guidelines beyond what's on the series page, because there are lots of fuzzy cases (like, for example, Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Bones :D ) , but they need to be guidelines that actually *help* with the fuzzy cases...

#64: And, honestly, if it's just the "omnibus" term that's bothering people, go in to CK and change it to "Complete work", which is what I use anyway! "Omnibus" isn't standardized or anything.

That works when it truly is the complete series, but what about when an omnibus only covers half a series? ;)

Well, then it is an omnibus! *g* I meant cases where it's debatable whether you have one work divided into volumes, or a series with an omnibus edition.

Even then you can just say "Vols. 1-3" instead of labelling it.

>64

The problem is that series merge into serials. If you've seen the CONSER serial cataloguing guidelines, they go into great detail too with lots of examples, because I suppose the problem is even worse. I'm not a serials cataloguer.

I restated 4.

1. The books were not published simultaneously.
2. When book 1 was published, it was not known how many further books there would be. (Known is not the same thing as planned.)
3. The volumes have distinctive titles that can stand on their own; the titles are sufficiently unique that you do not have to know the title of the whole set to order a replacement copy of a missing volume.
4. Even if you haven't read all the previous volumes of the set, you can still understand what is going on / you can enjoy the book without being puzzled or feel you have been dumped in the middle of things.
5. Posterity continues to publish, as a matter of course/routine the parts as parts, and not exclusively as a whole. (If the work is still coming out, then the answer will automatically be yes.)

Let's see:

Foxfire
1. 1st book published in 1972. 2nd book published in 1973. Yes.
2. Since they go up to at least Foxfire 12 now, I am recently confident that the answer is Yes. I doubt they were originally planned as 12 volumes.
3. The title of the whole set is "Foxfire". The distinctive part of the title is 2, 3, etc. If you came to the desk and asked for 2, I would not understand you wanted Foxfire 2. You would have to also give me the title of the whole set to get the right book. No.
4. I bet the ordinary person could enjoy Foxfire 8 without having read Foxfires 1-7, so the answer is Yes.
5. It's still being published, so the answer is Yes.

For graphic novels, let's take two that I have read:

Scott Pilgrim
1. Yes
2. Yes... at least Scott O'Malley didn't say in book 1 how many books there were to be.
3. Yes, each volume has a unique title.
4. No
5. Yes

Fruits basket (I've only read volume 1 so far.
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No
4. No
5. Yes

However, because the posterity question is iffy, I would not think of this as a series. Instead I think of this as a multi-volume novel, much to my annoyance, because I can't count it as 18 books for my "read" list, but only 1. If only they had titles! I even asked some people who were familiar with manga and Japanese if the volumes had individual titles in Japanese, and alas, the answer was no.

Yet if someone called it a series, I would not quibble, first because the individual volumes are quite substantial in size the size of a regular book, not a comic book; and second, because I can't see that publishers would cease to issue the individual volumes as separate entities even after the thing is complete.

Something like The tontine, however, would be not a series.

As for point 5, if we have no posterity yet, it's automatically yes. This is to weed out all those Victorian novels that were published as three and sometimes four volumes as it was the fashion to do back then. Example: Orley Farm. No one would publish it now as three parts unless they were trying to make a facsimile edition of the original, and then the point of the thing would not be to read it, but to examine it for scholarly reasons. Condition 1 tries to do the same thing.

Unfortunately the whole thing is rather fuzzy, which is why I have tried to think of criteria that you consider together rather than have something that automatically means it's not a series.

As for The sword in the stone, from what I read in Wikipedia, posterity seems to have decided #5 as No, because you can't get the original parts as stand-alone things any more. You couldn't ever get #4 as a stand-alone part; it was just a bunch of new chapters tacked on to the already-existing work. So I would say, no, it is not a series. Besides, how many people have individual copies of #2 and #3 here? However, if someone did have such a thing, and catalogued it, then they could make a series page for it, but they ought to then put a big note on the page to explain that the whole book is published now as one thing and it is not possible to get #4 and #5 as individual volumes so interested people don't start looking for them and asking librarians and bookstores for things that do not exist.

Message edited by its author, Mar 29, 2008, 9:35pm.

I have a question about a book with the series information now deleted. 84, Charing Cross Road was originally "book 1," brought together in a series along with the related memoirs Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and Q's Legacy. But now the series information has been deleted from book 1, leaving the series intact with Books 2 and 3 only (and an omnibus): http://www.librarything.com/series/84%2C...

Should this be a series, or are they standalone memoirs?

I would consider those a series; without 84, Charing Cross Road the others make rather less sense, especially Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. If any one of them were to be left out, I would think it was Q's Legacy.

That makes sense. I've gone ahead and added the series information back in for 84, Charing Cross Road.

I have a couple of questions about new "series" that are showing up in my books.

The first one: http://www.librarything.com/series/Great...

This appears to be a published set of volumes that includes some individual books in addition to the volume info. Should I go ahead and delete Gulliver's Travels from it?

Also, a couple more that I question not as a series, but whether the CK information should be changed for the English language site:
http://www.librarything.com/series/Die+Z...
http://www.librarything.com/series/Avent... and
http://www.librarything.com/series/Verde...

Any feedback before I go and make changes? I don't want to start a deletion/addition war if people feel strongly about these.

>75

Yes, if the books listed on the "Great Books of the Western World" are available from other publishers, then they should be removed from that series. Books like Troilus and Cressida and Plato Complete Works, for example. However, it looks like some of the books were specifically created for the series, so they can remain, such as Great Books of the Western World 55. Note that the series description points out that it is not a valid publisher's series and shouldn't be there. I would include a link to a full list of the books used in the series in the description as well, to make up for the lack of common books in the list.

As for the other series, it looks like someone was on the wrong language site for LT when adding it in? At least, this seems to be the case for the first book in the Zion Covenant series. I'd change it to an English series name where it isn't in English (or remove it if it's a duplicate, like with Vienna Prelude), and see about putting the info in on the correct language site. It looks like German for the first and Spanish for the second - and is that third one even a series at all? There's only the one book listed, and it isn't part of any other series to check.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of the series description for "Great Books," especially since some of the books did seem to be created specifically for it. I did add a little more info per your suggestion.

The third one, I'm really not sure about. It's the only book that I can find on here or by doing a general search on the web.

GBWW is a mess similar to Harvard Classics or Library of America. They are all reprints but for many of the volumes the selection of works bound together is unique to that series. However, they also contain volumes that are reprints of a single work and therefor not unique to the series. GBWW and Harvard classics also have perennial combining problems.

I took out the series data for the obvious non-unique volumes of GBWW.

However, there are still some that should perhaps be combined and then have their series data removed and there are other unique GBWW volumes that also need combining. GBWW has the added problem that it has been published in two editions, with different selections and rearrangement of some volumes for the second edition.

It's a project if anyone wants it.

They are all reprints but for many of the volumes the selection of works bound together is unique to that series

Is there anything added, like with the Norton's, to make the book unique or is it just a compilation of works. If the latter then someone else could come along and put the same works into the same book in which case the work isn't so unique and shouldn't be in the series anymore. In that situation I'd argue that it shouldn't have been made an LT series in the first place.

If the latter then someone else could come along and put the same works into the same book in which case the work isn't so unique and shouldn't be in the series anymore.

I say lets cross that bridge when we come to it. My understanding is that publishers series rule is not one of principle, but of practicality. Because series data can be displayed in individual catalogs, the series CK should not contain any data that won't apply to everyone that owns the work. (e.g. "My copy of Anna Karenina isn't a Modern Library Classic!").

The fact that there are no editions of a work outside of a series now strikes me as more important than a hypothetical possibility that there could be such editions at some point in the future.