Norton Critical Edition combined despite Disambiguation Notice

I've just found this in the log...

marina61 combined Persuasion by Emma Austen, Persuasion (Wordsworth Hardback Library) by Jane Austen, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Persuasion by Jane Austen, PERSUASION by Jane Austen, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Persuasion (Vintage Classics) by Jane Austen, Persuasion (Norton Critical Edition) by Jane Austen (see work)

Anyone want to send a polite message?

Why not you?

But are we absolutely sure there was a disambiguation notice on this particular NCE?

Silly me, forgot that those get taken along with combining. Yes, there was one.

On the subject of "Persuasion" - isn't the "Penguin Longman Penguin Readers" edition an educational abridgment / adaptation?

Why not me? I fear my "polite message" might not seem polite to the recipient; coming across with the right tone is not one of my skills. I'd dive into the combine/separate mess but a) it's not a book I'm really personally interested in or have knowledge of (for example, I have not the slightest idea as to the answer to your question in #4), and b) I'm supposed to be at work, and would likely have to leave it half done.

Don't you just hate it when work interferes with your combining.

On the subject of "Persuasion" (msg4) I came across this when I was looking at the Penguin reader adaptation of "My Fair Lady" {BTW Amazon.com accepted the requested change of the 1st author to Derek Strange for that book}

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45881672&referer=brief_results

> 7: Thanks, I will try to weed those out.

Ack, typos...

4> yes. They are even more important to keep separate than the Norton's, because of the reviews they tend to get.

Are LTers obligated to abide by disambiguation notices? The one for Persuasion gives 2 reasons for keeping the Norton Critical Edition separate: (a) it has thorough explanatory annotations, and (b) if it's combined with other editions it can't be linked to the publisher's series. The latter could be said about every publisher's editions, and I'm not convinced of the former: the footnotes look pretty typical of those in other trade editions. Where the Norton Critical Editions do separate themselves is in the number of essays they're bundled with, although even there it seems to be a matter of degree rather than kind. How many bundled essays make a distinct work?

10> No, you aren't obligated to abide by disambiguation notices. However, I think that LT lacks a lot of the technological support for reversals and stuff, and so it's more painful to have a revert war. There is something of a consensus to keep NCEs separate, so I think it much better to discuss first and try and change the consensus.

I don't have any NCEs, but collections of long essays on a particular book get published all the time; if they could really stand alone, that's a decent argument for keeping them separate.

> 10

if it's combined with other editions it can't be linked to the publisher's series.

Based on the definition of "series" given by Tim, that's not a valid reason. "Also avoid publisher series, unless the publisher has a true monopoly over the "works" in question. So, the Dummies guides are a series of works. But the Loeb Classical Library is a series of editions, not of works. " NCE are clearly more akin to the LCL.

And #1 certainly isn't a good reason. I have a couple of editions of classics with "thorough explanatory annotations" and I'd never dream of separating them for other such editions.

I see nothing special about Nortons either.

I don't know the Nortons, but it seems that most of those who own them and participate here would rather be associated with other Norton owners than with those owning other editions. They care enough to keep separating them out.

The notice mentioned above really doesn't give a good reason for not combining. Maybe one of the Norton owners can come up with something better.

Probably this would be a bit too crass:

a) 42.8% of the pages are extra material.
b) You're going to get folks mad and start a combining/separating war if you do this.

No, LTers are not obliged to abide by them. But it would have been nice if (s)he had realized, because there was a notice posted, that this should at least have been a matter for discussion.

I agree it's hard to draw the distinction clearly. I'm not familiar with this particular NCE. But as a rule for those I do know, they do contain substantially more than just the main text (plus a couple of notes).

Anyway, these things often get discussed at length before such separation takes place. This has certainly been the case for the NCE in general. We seem to have reached a sort of consensus that they should be kept apart.

Partly because of the extra contents - they simply contain other things than just the main text, so the part / whole rule applies to some extent. But also, and perhaps more importantly, because they seem to draw another public - more interested in scholarly analysis of these texts than the general reader. Which means that keeping them separated improves the connections for those users involved.

But by all means, if you feel this needs to be revised bring it up in the Combiners Information & Discussion thread : http://www.librarything.com/topic/50653

p.s.: I agree that second reason - about the series - isn't valid.

I'm not sure it qualifies as a reason to keep separate, but I suddenly had my series list saying I have one book in the NCE series, even though my copy of Persuasion is a Bantam, and the book info in my library is correct for that. I was quite confused by this.

Yeah, that's because the CK got combined as well.

Recent NCE's I've read have more pages devoted to critical essays than to the work itself - to my mind, that separates them from a purely annotated edition. If the argument is that critical essays are unimportant as a distinct entity (as opposed to annotations, which are just an addition to the text) for social purposes, why not combine all critical texts with the main entry for any work, why not all literary criticism, why not 'Case Notes' and study guides? Obviously that wouldn't be correct but I would argue that the often 50:50 split between crit and lit in NCE's puts them in a class alone, unless you undervalue the crit side and elevate the text as the primary entity.

Meh! No-one's ever going to agree on Nortons - some people don't value the criticism as a separate entity to the work and see it as an extended annotation. Some people see it as an equally valid portion of these editions. Who's right? Who knows ... maybe it really is just a matter of perspective. I remember Tim himself saying somewhere that these are the archetypal border-line cases (can't find it now ... but to paraphrase). I uncombine the ones I own so my connections are OK but I don't want to get into a separation battle with people whose opinions are probably equally as valid but with whom I personally don't agree. I certainly wouldn't message someone to tell them they shouldn't have done it.

In this particular case, from looking at the CK entries, I suspect this was a case of a naive user who didn't consider the issues, not someone who strongly holds the opposite view.

(And they just ignored the disambiguation notice? But they didn't delete it, either...)

I just discovered on my series page that my Penguin copy of Persuasion is also in the Norton series, but, hilariously, none of the Nortons I actually own are in it. The way I read the instructions for CK Series, Norton Critical Editions is not a legit series any more than Penguin Classics would be, but has it been legitimized on the grounds that they are being kept separate from standard editions of the relevant works? I could not possibly care less about either combining/not combining NCEs or putting them in a series or not - whatever everyone else decides is fine with me - but inaccurate data in my statistics bugs me.

I am trying to decide if I have the energy to separate out Persuasion. It appears very few of the editions on the current work page are NCEs, and it seems like it might be more of a project than I should undertake while I am at work.

I've removed that now faulty CK information - for the duration.

21> Thanks, BarkingMatt. I was afraid to touch anything, especially since I care so little about the underlying issue, which is clearly important to other people.

This is not super important to me by any means, but klarusu is right. All the NCEs that I have are approximately half "the text" and half "the criticism." It seems to me that based on all our other combining principles that should keep them separate. We don't combine "complete works" with "collected works" because there is going to be a bunch of stuff in the first that is missing from the second. The NCEs just plain contain a lot of pages of material that don't exist in other editions--way more than just an introduction and annotations.

That's not even getting into the fact that keeping NCEs separate for social reasons is probably a good idea. I think it is, but I don't even think that argument is necessary. If we're not combining abridgments with full works, we shouldn't really be combining these either.

But that's so arbitrary. Just because these are common and known in the Anglo world, they get separated. Other critical editions, less well known or non-Anglo, don't.

The most futile aspect of this, to me, is the striving to impose categorisation through combining, when all that fine work is so easily undone. (Repeatedly. I'm currently cleaning up Gide's "The counterfeiters" from "The counterfeiters with the Journal of the counterfeiters" for, oh, the third time? Fourth?)

And, FWIW, I have a bunch of Nortons, none of which were bought or kept for the critical apparatus. Considering how common they are, I really don't think I'm in the minority.

jmo

24> We are not separating it because it's a critical edition, which is merely an edition edited by a textual critic to match the originals, usually with a critical apparatus, which is merely the line-by-line comparison of different editions of the text. Those can be and usually are combined in.

What makes the Norton Critical Editions distinctive is the collection of criticism. I've never seen a volume that was half book and half criticism, but I would be happy to see them separated out no matter how well known or in what language they are. Are there really that many editions done this way?

I've got a bunch of NCE's and, personally, I'd rather see them combined than separated. But I seem to care less about it than others, so I've generally been trying to follow the "keep them separate" model.

Another argument for keeping the NCE's separate: they tend to have a lot of content on the historical context of the work that other editions don't have, in addition to criticism.

A lot of my professors at university specifically required the NCE of a work because of the additional material. Those that didn't require the NCE tended to not care if we had a Bantam edition, NCE, or Penguin Classics, or something printed off Google Books.

I think it's similar to the comments I've seen in this thread - people who really care about Norton Critical Editions and feel that they're substantially different from mass-market editions care really strongly and want the separation, but those who don't feel that the differences are all that important don't really care either way.

Personally, I want them to remain separate because of the additional material, but I like to have the Norton Criticals specifically because of that - I've three copies of Frankenstein, but the NCE is my favorite.

>24 Lola, it isn't that we don't care about critical editions from other languages. It is because the main combiners who work on those books don't often have the knowledge to work with other languages. I do a lot of combining foreign language translation (foreign to the English speaker), because I have aptitude for languages. (I just don't usually mess with the big stuff. I find it tedious.) As for the less well known critical editions, well, they are less well known. That means that fewer people in general have knowledge of them, and if a combiner doesn't know how different an edition is, it usually gets combined.

If you come across a situation where a critical edition should be separated out, please post on the "Fix this book!" thread. Someone will get around to fixing it.

Edit: As for the books you keep cleaning up, have you tried adding a disambiguation notice? It usually works out pretty well.

Let's see. The only NCE is really feel strongly about is the "Alice in Wonderland" http://www.librarything.com/work/6765363

The most important reason why it shouldn't be combined with the "ordinary" Alice is that it also contains "Through the Looking Glass" and "The Hunting of the Snark" - so if anything it should only be combined with "The Complete Alice & The Hunting of the Snark" (http://www.librarything.com/work/4681960).

But it does - besides about 230 pages of "work" - contain about 200 pages of essays and such. I would call that substantial.

>27

I wouldn't say that the people who don't see the difference don't "really care either way." I own several NCEs, and if I had my way they would be combined with the main work. I bought Moll Flanders because I wanted to read Moll Flanders, it just happened that the edition I bought had other material. I'd rather connect with everyone who has read the book. And because a lot of combining/separating is done on the basis of ISBN, removing (Norton Critical Edition) from the title won't necessarily bring my work in with the other ones I want to connect with.

I feel this is an appropriate time for me to note how badly we need a "contained in" relationship!

indeed

>27, those who don't feel that the differences are all that important don't really care either way. is a pretty big generalization, and it's absolutely not true. I hate having NCEs separated. In (I think) all cases where I have NCEs, I have or have had in my life several different editions of the work ranging from the cheapest of the cheap to Oxford/Penguin to NCE to more scholarly editions; usually, they're books I've taught, so yes, I am familiar with the difference. And I feel they should be combined -- among other reasons, because singling out just this one series seems contrary to the idea of works and a bit like fetishizing the series. I said so when the question first came up, as have others, but it was clear that the majority opinion was going the other way and I'd rather not have it turn into a back-and-forth edit war like the Absolute Watchmen debate. That doesn't mean that you can assume that people who disagree either don't care or don't know the books.

>31/33 We consider abridgments to be different works on the grounds that another person has selectively removed words. Shouldn't the same apply when someone other than the original author has selectively added words? Since there is another author, the nature of the work changes, as opposed to when the original author changes things (and even then, revised editions and editions with author commentary are usually separated).
However, a contained in relationship would be interesting, and allow us to both separate NCEs, other critical editions, even perhaps abridged versions, while still maintaining the relationship of the work as a whole. It is an interesting concept that I haven't heard of before. Perhaps this should be next on the list, after getting the ability to distinguish between authors with the same name.

Edit: corrected a typo.

Edit: I was wondering about how social data would work for this. Would it be based on the edition you have? This would give readers of a particular language more accurate social data, i.e., they would be connected with speakers/readers of the same language. I am starting to really like this idea!

> 25

The "Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism" series is also half work, half criticism, but my copies of Hamlet and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are still combined in with all the others.

In general, I think NCEs should be combined with the main work, unless there's something specific about the edition that would distinguish it: for example, I did separate out (and disambiguate) the NCE of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde because it also contains Boccaccio's Il Filostrato and Henrysson's The Testament of Cresseid.

#25

It doesn't matter what the Nortons are like. It doesn't matter how much criticism etc. they contain. The question is what's the justification for separating them out when similar cases are not being separated out. And, as I said, the "justification" is utterly arbitrary.

#33

I feel the same.

Can someone make the case, as with the dead language exception (although I wasn't terribly convinced), that Nortons connect a socially different group of people than the mass of non-Norton editions?

>34 yue said "We consider abridgments to be different works on the grounds that another person has selectively removed words. Shouldn't the same apply when someone other than the original author has selectively added words?"

I say "no" because removing portions of a work changes the work - this particular book is no longer the same as what the author created. However, just because the publisher issues The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn with added illustrations, margin notes, footnotes, introduction, preface, appendices, indices, historical background, author bio, and/or critical essays doesn't mean the work is not still The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn. Mark Twain's words (the 'work') remain untouched, and remain the 'heart' of the book.

We enter our books, but we combine them based on works, right? this sentence edited to clarify based on comment 88

Os.

What I don't understand is why those who want NCEs separated keep fighting this battle when they have already begun establishing NCEs as a series, which allows the owner of an NCE to find other owners of that NCE, right? Why not use that rather than separating me from others who own the work, simply because I found an NCE at the used book store, and like having the extra info it provides?

Also, if the NCE of Austen's Persuasion is not the same work as the other editions, then the author should not be Jane Austen, since she never created a work called The Norton Critical Edition of Jane Austen's Persuasion. The primary editor should be the author, and Austen should be listed under 'other authors' along with the authors of the other various materials included in this edition, right?

Os.

And, yes, a contained in feature would make most all of these issues go away. My copy of the 'work' The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which the publisher elected to bind with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer will no longer be separated by other combiners from other copies of the 'work' The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's still the same 'work' (as created by its author, Mark Twain), no matter what else the publisher decides to include between the covers of this particular 'book'.

Again, we enter our books, but we combine them based on works, right? this sentence edited to clarify based on comment 88

Os.

35> The fact is, though, those who combined "Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism" probably weren't familiar with the book. I haven't combined those in, because I wasn't sure if they even had the original text in them.

If you separate out Troilus and Criseyde because it has Boccaccio's Il Filostrato in it, why not because it has Smith's Love and Death in Chaucer (hypothetical name) in it?

36> Put simply, the justification is that Frankenstein combined with a two-hundred page volume entitled Critical Essays on Frankenstein should not be combined with Frankenstein. The extra material could stand alone, and I don't know of any other similar case that people are aware of the issue and aren't separating it out.

38> Because series is a work-level concept; if Frankenstein (Norton Critical Edition) gets combined into Frankenstein, there can't be a NCE series.

"The question is what's the justification for separating them out when similar cases are not being separated out. And, as I said, the "justification" is utterly arbitrary."

That has already been asked and answered - see message 28.

To reiterate; if similar cases are not separated out, it's because we don't know about them, not because we're selectively applying the justification for separating out such works.

>40 "Because series is a work-level concept; if Frankenstein (Norton Critical Edition) gets combined into Frankenstein, there can't be a NCE series."

Ah, of course. Then we really need a 'contained in' feature.

Os.

> 40

I viewed the addition of an additional work of fiction differently than pieces of criticism-- in effect, it's now an anthology that contains those three stories, Troilus and Criseyde and Other Stories, if you would, not just the Troilus and some supplemental works. The Troilus is only half of the fictional content of the book; the other half is the Filostrato. If adding a bonus short story causes us to separate out some works, why wouldn't adding an entire epic poem!?

I don't think just essays is enough of a difference to merit separation. A Norton is only different than a Penguin Classic, for example, in degree, not in kind, and that rightly gets lumped in with the main work, too.

I've noticed this issue before and so I haven't touched the Norton Critical Editions when combining, but I don't see any reason why the Nortons should be separate from books containing the main work. The main work is essentially the same, and my guess is that's what people want to see shared.

If adding a bonus short story causes us to separate out some works, why wouldn't adding an entire epic poem!?

I don't think just essays is enough of a difference to merit separation.

This is what I'm not getting...I don't see how an essay differs from a short story, especially an essay that's not billed as an introduction or afterword. What if the extra material isn't an essay, but an excerpt of another work of fiction, or an excerpt from a journal? These are all typical NCE materials, and when they run to the hundreds of pages I don't see how they differ from any other additional content.

#40: prosfilaes, Thank you for saying it so perfectly.

Put simply, the justification is that Frankenstein combined with a two-hundred page volume entitled Critical Essays on Frankenstein should not be combined with Frankenstein. The extra material could stand alone, and I don't know of any other similar case that people are aware of the issue and aren't separating it out.

NCE's are more than just a "simple" work.. it is the work PLUS the criticism & annotations... bound together to the same spine.

If other works have significant additions, annotations, or criticisms, then they can be separated.

When connections are implemented, then the different editions/variations of a work can be connected. For now, NCE's should be kept separate.

>15
We seem to have reached a sort of consensus that they should be kept apart.

These consensuses don't reach everybody who are combining. Most people look at the instructions on the combination page. There is nothing about the critical editions. So you will be separating Norton editions forever if the system allows them to be combined with the other works.

>39 Os, the book you mention should not be combined with either of the works it contains. It should be listed as an omnibus since it contains more than one work within one spine. Perhaps once we get the "contained in" relationship, we could get an "also contained in" relationship, e.g. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is found in Omnibus X, Anthology Y, etc.

> 47 : Certainly - that's where the disambiguation notices come in. Don't get me wrong. I don't really care that much either way myself. And I'm all for discussing that "consensus" again - like we're doing here now.

But I do see the point, and I do happen to see the NCE's I know as anthologies of literary texts PLUS essays. But I also very much agree with LolaWalser that there is an imbalance. Similar books that are not NCE should be treated the same way - whenever we can identify them. Ideally: either separate them all or combine them all.

And yes, only the much awaited "relations" feature can deal with these problems to satisfaction.

>48
yue, I disagree, in that this is too simplistic. Short answer - Let's talk about my copy of Dracula combined in one volume, at the whim of a publisher, with Frankenstein. Your approach forever separates my copy of Dracula from all of the others on LT. The social connections are work based, and my copy of this work is isolated simply because I got another work with it (and saved a few bucks over individual editions).

Continued as a long answer (with my solution at the end) - And when does the whim of a publisher become the determining factor: the work with an introduction? the work with an introduction and annotations? the work with an introduction, annotations, and a short essay on the social impact of the work? the work with an introduction, annotations, and a 200 page work by another author on the social impact of the work? the work with an introduction, annotations, and a short essay on the social impact of the work, and another work by the same author? the work with an introduction, annotations, a work by another author, and 100 page essays on the social impacts of the works? This is a continium - a matter of degree, and the debate over when a work is no longer the original work, but an omnibus or a 'critical edition' will go on forever. Plus, who is the author in the last three examples? Certainly, not the author of only one or two of the three works included, unless that author is also the editor. So now, my copy of Dracula is also not connected to other copies of Dracula or other works by Stoker because the author of this 'omnibus' is Gary Perwin, the editor and author of the essays on the social impacts of Dracula and Frankenstein.!!

Obviously, a 'contained in feature' is what's needed for most of these examples. But, until then, here is what I do, and it works very well (except for a few annoying combiners who ignore all the evidence I include in the title and separate my Dracula from all the others): I create two (or, possibly three) entries for this 'book', which contains two 'works'. One entry as Frankenstein (from Classics of Horror; bound w/Dracula), by Mary Shelley; one entry as Dracula (from Classics of Horror; bound w/Frankenstein), by Bram Stoker; and, perhaps, one entry as Classics of Horror: Dracula and Frankenstein by the editor or by 'various' (an author name I hate to use), or by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley (which becomes a non-existant author with these names combined), or by Bram Stoker, with Mary Shelly listed as other author.

Yes, I end up with an innacurate 'book' count (so what), and, if I enter the omnibus as well as the two separate works, I end up with an innacurate 'work' count (so what), but my 'works' are now properly associated on LT with others who have the same works, regardless of the nature of the binding and the odds and ends of what's bound with the 'work'. And, due to the info in the parens for each entry, a reasonable combiner will see that Frankenstein (from Classics of Horror; bound w/Dracula), by Mary Shelley, is intended by its owner to remain with other editions of Frankenstein, not separated and then combined with some omnibus by who knows what author. Plus, when I run across the 'work' Frankenstein when clicking around on LT, the work page doesn't lie to me and tell me I don't have this work in my library. And, it accurately reflects what's on my shelves (which is the primary purpose of LT for me) because it's obvious that each of these 'works' refer to the same 'book' on my shelf.

That's my approach until we have 'contained in' features, and it has worked very well for 2-1/2 years.

Os.

PS - when I do put Mary Shelley in the 'other author' field, as an author, that book doesn't show up when I click on 'see yours' on the Mary Shelley page. This seems like a bug that needs attention. Otherwise, the 'other author' feature doesn't serve its purpose very well.

but, Os, if you do a Mary Shelley search on authors in your OWN library, it will show that work.

Not really "good enough" but......

>50
Your fix sounds similar to mine - I enter the Omnibus and combine it with any other similar omnibus's - and put the editor as author (or whatever seems most appropriate)- tagged "omnibus".

Then I enter each work separately and tag it as "inclusion" with the appropriate author (stripping ISBN and publication info to prevent it being combined with the omnibus) - examples on my profile.

The only difference is that I put the "from" information - "Included in Blankety Blank Omnibus" (or double or whatever) in the "comments" field (again to prevent well-intentioned but misguided separation).

Yes, my work count may be a little off but if I really care I can just go to my tag page and see how many omnibus's/inclusions I have and do the math...doesn't bother me a bit. I plan on moving all the inclusions to a "collection" when that becomes available (among other plans for collections.)

I do the same, but I tag them with virtual. I think by putting that information in the title you (Os) are inviting the copies to be separated by someone who doesn't understand what you are doing.

>51
Correct, but as you say, not really 'good enough' but a work-around for now. The main thing is, if I enter a work as I described in comment 50, with only the omnibus entered and the author of the second 'work' entered in the other author field, I can't count on the 'see yours' results as reliable; but if I enter the 'work' separately as well, I can (I believe this is true even if some overzealous combiner separates it from the work and combines it with the omnibus).

Os.

>53
Yes, and it does happen at times, but about 4 times a year, I scan my 'duplicates' list and find these (because this combining results in Dracula and Frankenstein showing up as a duplicate, and it's easy to spot on my duplicates list).

I have thought about cutting the info about the other works out of the title field and putting it elsewhere, perhaps leaving a 'code' word in parens in the title field that tells me it's an omnibus so I can find it on my shelves. My fiction is shelved by author, so I need to know that an author's work may be on the shelf in another location because it's in an omnibus with another author. With about 2,500 books, I can lose a book (or buy a book I already have) if I'm not careful, though it's surprising how well I can remember what's in my library, where it is, and what it looks like, considering the size of my 'wall of books'. Okay, now I've slipped into brag mode - sorry.

Os.

Okay, but we could equally support separating that edition too.

The best solution, imho, would be "relations" - also "promised, but alas not yet realized" - which would allow things like "contained in", "adaptation of", "abridgment of ", and I guess/hope "annotated version of".

I hope that once we have relationships, there will be some wiggle room in it. I imagine a big work pot for the work with no extra information. Then subsets for Norton Critical Edition, Arden edition, various languages, different translators ...and even Longmann's ESL version.

This may not be important for works that only 18 people own, but Hamlet has over 6000 copies on LT, the first Harry Potter nearly 40,000. Breaking some of that down is going to be useful, or at least provide interesting statistics.

It would also be hugely helpful for "Alice in Wonderland", for example. Think of all the abridged Alices that are still based on Lewis Carroll and entered as by him. And then there are all the omnibus volumes also containing "Through the Looking Glass".

They keep ending up being combined in ways that shouldn't happen - and I try to keep separating them. But why should somebody with that Omnibus loose all connections to people who have one that also contains "The Hunting of the Snark"? - and vice versa.

I've been looking forward to part/whole functionality for so long. At first I thought that was what Collections was, and was excited, but then realized they're more like super-functual tags.

56>

I'm not sure it's clear here exactly what's secondary/supportive and what is not. A NCE of See Spot Run wouldn't be itself if it didn't include See Spot Run, but neither would it be itself if the essays were missing--it'd be just See Spot Run.

Personally I'd prefer for them to be combined, but I think the arguments for separation are much stronger. I don'r have strong intuitions about the Arden Shakespeare. Yes the non-Shakespeare material clearly reaches levels allowing for separation if we just look at its sheer magnitude, but there seems to be a consensus that introductions, afterwords, and footnotes don't constitute other works, while essays (and certainly the fiction, poetry, and drama that NCEs commonly include as comparisons) do. But even there the line seems blurry--see the discussion of Watchmen vs. Absolute Watchmen in a different thread (FWIW I think they should be combined)--so maybe the Ardens should be separated. Their annotative material certainly is in a class of its own.

> 62 : The extra stuff added to the NCE is just a marketing tool.

Come on, there is a difference between scholarly annotated and standard editions. The question is just : does this warrant separation or not. Your answer just happens to be a clear "no".

ok, both sides have their very valid points, but for those on the "separate" side, the point is that we feel that the annotations, essays, criticisms, etc. HELP US UNDERSTAND THE WORK!! Having the annotations, etc., makes these "editions" MUCH MORE than the book without it.

I live in the 21st century, not the 19th or earlier, when many of these works were written. The society & culture of the times is EXPLAINED, so that I can connect with the work. I can understand the language of the era & understand the constraints that the characters work under.

I read Gulliver's Travels as a child & a teen. And although as a teen I could see some of the political meaning behind the stories, I didn't understand it. I recently was able to get a copy of the Norton Critical Edition of Gulliver's Travels.... and now I may understand MORE.

When talking with a friend & co-worker about how young people don't understand the civil rights movement and WHY it it happened and WHAT was being done.... the young people just take for granted the freedoms we have today (for the most part)... how can we expect them to understand the culture in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?? or Uncle Tom's Cabin??

There is so much more in these editions. and, yes, there are other publications that have additional materials included (and that discussion can happen later) but there are enough of the NCEs that their contribution cannot be ignored.

I'm sorry if you disagree with me on this issue.... (actually disagreement fosters good discussion) but please see the side of the "separatists" on this issue.

To me the difference between a "plain" edition of a work & a Norton Critical Edition is the difference between two scoops of vanilla ice cream and a 3 scoop 3 topping banana split over a dark chocolate brownie with real whipped cream, nuts & 3 cherries.

56> There are collections of critical material sans main text; does adding the main text as a convenience to the reader really make everything supportive of the text that was added as a convenience to the reader? If you take a three hundred page Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, does it matter that the Gospel itself is included?

I see critical commentary as going beyond the original text. For one thing, critical commentary is usually published sans original text, whereas introductions and footnotes aren't.

64> You draw the line at the supplementary material. There's also

Hamlet: Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces (extensive extra, but merely supplementary, material, according to Harold Bloom)

No, there's no bright line; I'm not sure I understand why that point continues to be frustrating to some people.

>61
I'll be repeating myself, but I don't think this has been discussed beyond my first comment:

If the predominance of essays constitute a different work, then I contend that it also constitutes a different author. If 300 pages are commentary and 200 pages are by Mark Twain, and the 300 pages are deemed substantial enough to warrant a separate work, isn't the author of this new work the contributor primarily responsible for the 300 pages?

Os.

>65

In understand why you reach the conclusion you do, but your argument is that you understand the original work differently because of the commentary. But others who read the same work (without the commentary) with a good knowledge of the background (due to other reading they've done, or education, or their family background, or whatever) achieve the same understanding, but are seperated from connections with both LTers who just happen to have a copy with commentary and LTers who actually use the commentary.

We're peering into a crystal ball and trying to say who should be connected to whom based on the material that is included in their copy (which may have just been what was on the shelf at the used bookstore). And, based on my personal experience, these separations are often made in the face of evidence to the contrary - that is, when I include, in the title field, information that should inform a combiner that I want my book to remain with other 'regular' editions of the work, it gets separated and re-combined anyway with some 'special' edition as if it were a separate work.

At a minimum, if some consensus is reached, I'd hope that it includes paying attention to the hints provided by the book's owner and respecting their wishes.

Os.

Valid point, and I have seen such works attributed to their editor instead of to the author of the basic text. I have always entered them as "other authors".

Anyway, through combination they usually end up on the author page of the person who wrote the basic text.

>65
Early on, it was established that a work with added illustrations is still the same work.

However, consider an edition of the work that contains extensive illustrations which, because the illustrations were created at the time of the original work by an insightful and skilled artist, provide valuable insight into the work's subtext, the times in which the work was written, the political/social background, etc. Using your argument (and noting that a picture is worth a thousand words), this illustrated edition should be a separate work and, arguably, the illustrator should, at a minimum, be listed as a co-author, if not the author.

I offer this up not to suggest such a separation, but simply as another illustration about the arbitrariness of creating such a dividing line, primarily due to the complexities created by the universe of variations surrounding the original work which are offered up by the various publishers over time.

This whole discussion reminds me of an observation about the difference between progressives and conservatives - the progressive is against something if it might inadvertently cut someone off who belongs, while a conservative is against something if it might inadvertently include someone who does not. In this discussion, there are those who are willing to inadvertently cut me off from the vast majority of readers of Huckleberry Finn so as to create a separate NCE work that many want (and want for good reasons), and there are those (and I'm one of them) who are against separations that might cut out a few who just want to interact with others reading Huckleberry Finn. The two views are legitimate, but it's quite difficult to serve both.

Os.

>61
BTW, I'm not arguing that "the predominance of essays constitute a different work" but simply that, if it does, that conclusion almost demands that this different work be credited to a different author.

Os.

>64

I love your scale--it really clarifies things!

For me:

Hamlet: Penguin Popular Classics (no annotation) (original work)
Hamlet: CUP (little annotation) (still original work)
Hamlet: Arden (extensive annotation) (questionable)
Hamlet: NCE (extensive annotation + suppl) (a new work)

>68: "If the predominance of essays constitute a different work, then I contend that it also constitutes a different author. If 300 pages are commentary and 200 pages are by Mark Twain, and the 300 pages are deemed substantial enough to warrant a separate work, isn't the author of this new work the contributor primarily responsible for the 300 pages?"

If all the supplemental work is all by the same person, then yes. But if it's 200 pages by Mark Twain and 300 pages by 50 other people, then no.

But this seems to be beside the point. People, in cataloguing their own library, are free to put the author or illustrator or editor or main contributor or whoever they like as the main author. It's not a combination issue (although getting versions put down as having different authors to show up as the same work is).

>71: "However, consider an edition of the work that contains extensive illustrations which, because the illustrations were created at the time of the original work by an insightful and skilled artist, provide valuable insight into the work's subtext, the times in which the work was written, the political/social background, etc. Using your argument (and noting that a picture is worth a thousand words), this illustrated edition should be a separate work and, arguably, the illustrator should, at a minimum, be listed as a co-author, if not the author."

It's impossible to know in the abstract whether such a separation would be called for. It's not prima facie a reductio ad absurdum.

"In this discussion, there are those who are willing to inadvertently cut me off from the vast majority of readers of Huckleberry Finn so as to create a separate NCE work that many want (and want for good reasons), and there are those (and I'm one of them) who are against separations that might cut out a few who just want to interact with others reading Huckleberry Finn. The two views are legitimate, but it's quite difficult to serve both."

I'd want to have the connections for my NCE of Wide Sargaasso Sea to connect with original edition copies too. But while wanting connections to remain separate is one of the canonical reasons for keeping works separate, I think if two works are different works (by virtue of one containing material the other does not), then they are different works, and issues concerning connections are mainly irrelevant, at least until we get part/whole functionality.

>73
Alixtii,
Generally, I agree with your response to my earlier comment 68 and the first part of my earlier comment 71. I offer up the 'who is the author' question more to get folks to think outside of the particular (NCE) and into the more general cases it implies. If you are thinking your book is a new work, you should think about who is the creator of that new work. If it doesn't make sense to fill the 'author' field with the author of the 300 page commentary, or the editor who has brought together most of the disparate parts to create this new work, then perhaps it's not really a new work after all. The illustrations example (>71) is yet another way to look at the same issue. Can the illustrator or editor, or commentator become the primary author, relegating the original author to secondary author status? If not, then has a new work actually been created?

As for your last response, this touches on the primary and secondary purposes of LT, which may still be fluid, but, again, should be considered in a discussion such as this. In my mind (and I think this is, at least, consistent with what is stated on LT by LT) it looks like this:

Primary - to catalog one's library. This is unaffected by anything combiners do (or argue about doing)
Secondary - make broad social connections. I use the word broad, both because that's my preference, but also because the 'great commission' we combiners have been given is to combine, with 'separate' as a necessary tool in the combining process.
Tertiary - precise identification, definition, combining, and/or separating of variations of a work. This is where most of the debate is generated.

But I also know that others would set these priorities differently. That's why we are having this conversation (a social connection which would not have happened if combining was clear-cut; viva la difference!).

Os.

If all the supplemental work is all by the same person, then yes. But if it's 200 pages by Mark Twain and 300 pages by 50 other people, then no.

Why not? Surely the "author" should be the editor or publisher or something (but not Mark Twain!) in that case?

I recently added an NCE of Little Women to my library. I think it's the only NCE I have (aside from the Troilus, as mentioned above) that's its own work. It bothers me. It's not part of the Little Women series. With only sixtyish people owning it, I don't even get recommendations for it! How does that help me? The fact that it's got a bajillion essays and some dreadful early fiction by Alcott isn't the important thing here; I'll skim those at best.

I agree with the lumpers here, but how will we ever reach a consensus?

>74 Can the illustrator or editor, or commentator become the primary author, relegating the original author to secondary author status? If not, then has a new work actually been created?

It seems silly to ask if it "can" when there are plenty of places on LT where it already has. Amazon complicates this even farther--sometime it has truly strange ideas of who the "author" is!

>75 Why not? Surely the "author" should be the editor or publisher or something (but not Mark Twain!) in that case?

Editor or publisher would be sensible choices, too, but I think putting it under the main contributor (in this case Twain) can make sense too. And, again, it's really up to the person with the book in her library--if she wants to put it under Shakespeare because there's a single sonnet on page 457, that's her prerogative (although some combiner is probably going to snark about it, and that's their prerogative).

>79
The point is not "who is the author", but, if you honestly think this is a new work because of the added content, you must honestly answer the question about authorship with a name other than the author of the original work. Again, I brought up this example to challenge the logic (or at least the consistency of the logic) of those who would make an NCE a separate 'work' rather than just a different edition of the original work, not to convince people to put the editor (or illustrator) in the author field.

The simple question is - can anyone come up with a sound rationale for calling the NCE edition of Little Women a different work from Alcott's Little Women while still claiming that the author of this NCE edition is Alcott (who was dead before this 'new' work was ever even contemplated)?

Os,

A lot of what combiners do is combine works that are really the same but for some reason or other have different authors. I don't think this will fly.

I agree with jjwilson61, ( regarding number 1: ) the name in the LT author field does not always match the name (or the first listed name if more than one name) on the title page of a book.

>80: The simple question is - can anyone come up with a sound rationale for calling the NCE edition of Little Women a different work from Alcott's Little Women while still claiming that the author of this NCE edition is Alcott (who was dead before this 'new' work was ever even contemplated)?

Sure. Insofar as one of the ways of deciding who the author is is by looking for a "main" or "major" contributor, then Alcott'd still be the author of the different work.

But even that rests on a false assumption, because it assumes that LT has a principled method or methods for determining authors and it just doesn't, full stop. And everything you say only makes sense if you assume there's a principled method for determing authorship. But one only has to spend a little time with the catalogue to see that there isn't.

But let's say you're right and LW:NCE being a new work entails that LMA isn't the author. It turns out, I don't know, that George W. Bush is the rightful author of the NCE. Absolutely nothing follows from that, because combiners don't assign authors; individual cataloguers do. You could argue that individual combiners would be obligated to have the primary author listed be the one consistent with their combination philosophy, but that assumes that the person one lists as the main author has to be the person one considers to be the "real" author, which I reject. So I'm not sure what the point is.

>81: Combiners should always follow the basic principle:
Work X by Author A
All books "Work X by Author A" should be combined, but if another name is listed in the author field (Author B) then they should not.

I have to agree with the others: combining work X by A (when A is the "real" author) with work X by B (where B is the illustrator) with work X by C (where C is the editor) with work X by D (where D is the guy who wrote the foreword) is one of the most important things a combiner can do.

76> Of course you get recommendations for it. They may just filter down below the 1000 bar. You may very well get better recommendations for it, as it reflects more closely what you're actually buying. If you want to have part of the book stand out, then feel free to file a virtual copy of Little Women.

Why on Earth are you spending three times as much ($11.95 vs $3.95) and carrying around a book that's twice as heavy (1.1 pounds vs 7.2 ounces) as the Signet Classics if you don't want that stuff? When I put the Alice in Wonderland NCE on my Amazon Wishlist just now, it wasn't because I wanted an oversized edition of Alice; it was for exactly that stuff you're disdaining.

Oh sheesh, reading the debate on this thread is like watching a bunch of Medieval bishops arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. There is NO right answer to the question, "How long is a piece of string?" Or, in the case of what's being so passionately debated here, "How many additional essays and extraneous works bound with the core work they are analyzing make that particular edition different than all the other editions of that core work with no or lesser supplemental material?" In situations concerning questions of degree - such as how much is enough? - there are NO definitive right answers, only many subjective - and consequently, conflicting - opinions.

For many published works, the question of whether to combine or separate is a straightforward issue with a right or wrong answer, but there are far too many editions and versions of books (many, many more than the NCEs that initially triggered this debate) for which the answer is a continuum (or at least a set containing many possible solutions) and not a simple yes-no dichotomy. Trying to handle a question of degree (such as how many additional supplemental essays, prefaces or addenda make a work unique?) in the same manner as a simple dichotomy (such as does this book contain more than one work or not?) is a totally fruitless enterprise.

Hopefully, everyone posting on this thread will agree that an anthology or omnibus edition of multiple stories/novels is NOT the same as an edition of any of the individual stories/novels by themselves. It's simply a question of being able to do integral arithmetic ... five stories in this one, only one story in that one, therefore these are not the same "work" since the "combo work" anthology contains four more stories ("individual works") than the other one. But that is the only situation that yields an objective dichotomous answer that will ever come close to achieving a consensus of agreement here.

Unfortunately, you cannot apply this same straightforward objective approach to almost any of the other issues and examples cited on this thread (and some that haven't even been cited here yet). To try and do so would simply be another manifestation of, "to someone with only a hammer, everything looks like a nail"! That is, to an over-zealous work combiner, every combination issue looks as simple as a "single versus multiple work" combination decision. But most of the time it is NEVER that simple because the answer is not yes-or-no; in most cases mentioned here the problem is one of DEGREE not KIND nor COUNT. In those situations there is no right answer; or if you prefer, almost every answer is correct.

Because in issues of degree (such as aesthetics, ethics, or that legal standard of guilt "reasonable doubt") you can rarely ever get a consensus - just as in our 2-party political system, at best you can only achieve a stalemate; in most cases you will end up with a majority that gets its way and a marginalized minority that is totally miffed. If the split is 95% to 5% you can probably afford to ostracize the minority (that's just democracy at work) but when the split is 51% to 49% (which is probably nearer the case with the NCE issue) you have the makings of LT rebellion and civil strife.

Take for example the issue raised in post #65. The question of editions that have a significantly social difference for the reader has no single correct answer since that criterion IMO is clearly a question of degree NOT kind. Tim's example of The Pop-up Kama Sutra being significantly socially different from a regular bound copy of The Kama Sutra only appears on the surface to be a distinction of kind, but in reality it's not; and it certainly isn't a distinction based on work count. To even think about applying this criterion immediately raises the question: "How much social difference is significantly enough social difference to qualify as a reason not to combine?"

I agree with skittles that all the extra analytical material in an NCE (or, for that matter, any other critical or significantly annotated edition of a work) makes it socially different for the reader than just the work by itself. But does it make it socially different enough to be considered a separate work? Once again, how long is a piece of string? I would say yes it does. Os would say no it doesn't because all that social difference can be gleaned by another person from additional reading material and/or life experience. Now we have other books and other people's life and reading experience coming in as a criterion as to whether to combine or separate, and the slope just gets slipperier and slipperier.

We have also repeatedly seen owner/reader intent implicitly (if not explicitly) being proffered as a combine / separate criterion in this discussion. For instance, in post #76, the owner of that Little Women NCE wants his edition of it combined based on his intended use of it (viz. he bought it for the base work and all the supplemental materials are completely extraneous and unimportant from his perspective). But how can anyone combining works possibly know the owner's intended use of it? As has been repeatedly demonstrated here, for every NCE owner that only bought his copy to get at the base work there is going to be another NCE owner, such as myself, that considers it a significantly socially different reading experience than just the base work.

A threshold of too little additional work (cf. many posts at beginning of the thread) has also been proffered as a combine / separate criterion in this discussion. If a book just contains a preface, a foreword, an afterword, a glossary and an index plus illustrations (none of which were created by the author when s/he penned the original work) then that still doesn't constitute enough to designate it as a separate work from just a base edition. But for many posting here the NCEs contain enough additional analytical material to be considered as having exceeded some unspecified "critical mass" that determines a book edition should now be treated as a separate work from the base work from which it is ultimately derived.

But what is that "critical mass"? Is it the same for every base work or does every original work have a different "critical mass" when it comes to supplemental materials? Is it based on an absolute number of additional pages or on a relative number of additional pages (i.e., % of the whole book) - that is, has an 800+ page edition of War and Peace with 300+ pages of notes and critical essays attached achieved enough "critical mass" (to be considered a separate work from just a base edition) as an 120 page edition of Death in Venice with 300+ pages of notes and critical essays bound with it? Also, who determines this "critical mass" however you decide to quantify it?

Finally, a threshold of too many contributing authors (cf. post #73) has also been proffered as an important combine / separate criterion. In this situation apparently, if only one, or just a few, authors contribute the supplemental essays and notes then that's just fine and dandy, and I suppose we then revert to counting actual pages, or percentage of pages, or absolute number of additional essays in order to determine if this work has achieved our magical "critical mass" yet? However, should the LT Goldilocks determine that TOO MANY additional authors have contributed to this supplemental material, well then things start to get a little bizarre ... the base work now actually morphs from being a work written by the original author (with some supplemental material) to one that has been created by a critical mass of critical MAs and PhDs, which by definition makes this a separate work from the one that was written by the original author all on his/her lonesome! Could someone possibly explain to me how this process is supposed to work in any kind of objective fashion?

Not only are ALL of the foregoing criteria subjective distinctions of DEGREE, but to even choose which criterion applies and when, or to rank all these subjective criteria (and some others I may have overlooked) into some kind of order of precedence is also, in and of itself, a purely subjective process ... because your rating of the subjective criteria wouldn't match my order of those criteria wouldn't match someone else's ranking of them. In truth, we most likely could not even agree on which subjective criteria (= unknown lengths of string) are pertinent, let alone reach the point where we could start ranking all these various pieces of string by their unknown lengths!

To cite a very trivial example, Os in post #74 claims there are (from his perspective) 3 main purposes to LT:

Primary - to catalog one's library.
Secondary - make broad social connections.
Tertiary - precise identification, definition, combining, and/or separating of variations of a work.

I personally disagree with that priority ordering - and there are only three concepts here; imagine if there had been ten?! I do not need to catalogue my library at all, on LT or anywhere else. If I have any need at all, then it is only to catalogue those areas of it that I'm in danger of unnecessarily duplicating when out in bookstores and forget what I already own. I can, and in fact do, do that using nothing more than Excel or Word. Most used book stores near me don't have PCs dotted around their facility for shoppers to log in to and access their LT accounts; but then again, neither do B&N nor Borders.

So having my library catalogued on LT is absolutely no use to me when I could really benefit from its access (i.e., when I'm away from home and cannot quite remember what I own). When I'm actually at home, I only need to look at my bookshelves to resolve those kind of issues, so once again I don't need an LT catalogue. Thus for me, the primary purpose of LT, the only purpose of LT, is Os' secondary reason. I mention this only as an example of how hard it is to get a consensus on the ordering of only three criteria - it only gets more difficult with more criteria to be considered; not easier.

If the NCE of Little Women has 'some dreadful early fiction by Alcott', (76) that would normally keep it separate from editions of just Little Women, even without the critical essays. Whether the person owning it cares about the extra fiction is not really the point.

Or should I combine these two because many people who bought the first one really wanted Nerilka's Story (part of the Pern series), but only found the edition that also included The Coelura (At best a side line to the series)?

http://www.librarything.com/work/1448014
http://www.librarything.com/work/32631

>37 & 39

We enter our books, but we combine works, right?

Actually, no. It's the other way around. We combine specific instances of book "editions" to create the abstract concept of the corresponding "work". The first person that ever entered Robinson Crusoe into his/her catalogue on LT created both the concept of the RC "work" and one specific instance of an "edition" of it (a Penguin PB perhaps). The next person that entered RC into their catalogue created a second specific instance of an "edition" of it (a Franklin Library leatherbound version say) but it should have been automatically combined by the system with the previous RC "work". If it wasn't, then that's where the combiner comes along later to fix things - or possibly sometimes break things! :(

We enter our books and the system is sometimes smart enough to automatically combine them - or, failing that, a combiner later manually combines them - in order to create abstract "works". We don't combine "works" to create "books"! What you are doing, Os, is entering the omnibus "edition" of a book containing 3 "works" and then also entering 3 "virtual books" that correspond to each one of those constituent "works". You then do indeed manually combine each of those 3 "works" with their corresponding extant "works" - but in doing that you are really just combining 3 "virtual books"!

So even you combine books, Os ... it just so happens that in the case of anthologies and omnibus editions you combine "virtual books" rather than the real book "edition" that you own, which the system should automatically combine for you to other similar omnibus and anthology "works".

86>

I doubt any of this is news to anyone on any side of this discussion. But we still need to decide the particular case, and thus, debate.

Ah, maybe I shouldn't exaggerate so much to make my point. :) I got the NCE of LW (which now seems to be the standard example in this thread!) because it was required for a class I am taking... and it was required because we had to read two of the essays in the back. So undoubtedly I've just undermined my own argument!

> 85

I don't want a book in my catalog I don't actually own! And I still don't get recs on the work page.

The cocktail party test, I think everyone is forgetting, is casual. If you can explain casually why a work is different, it's probably different.

To say a NCE edition is the same because within the 300+ additional pages of material is the original work is a bit silly. To me, it's a bit like saying, "oh, I don't need to see the museum's works in the new wing, I saw the original gallery when it opened - it's the exact same museum."

As to why they put the original author's name on the book? Simple, they'd like to sell some of these to non-scholars. It doesn't make the book the "same." It just means they'd like to sell a few of these and point out that they're different - which you can clearly see when they're side by side.

> 76 : And I might think that - say - MacBeth is the only worthwhile part of my Complete Works of William Shakespeare. But that wouldn't make it okay to combine the complete works with MacBeth.

92:
Except for you in message 81 I have never seen anyone say anywhere that the same work shouldn't be combined with other copies of the the same work, regardless of who is listed in the primary author field.

If the contents are 100% the same, the works should be combined.

The only issue here is where to draw the line when the contents aren't 100% the same.

> 77 : I do understand your point.

But in practice that would mean that "Lord Jim: Authorative Text &c" by Moser would get combined with "Lord Jim" by Conrad anyway - because "Lord Jim NCE" by Conrad (with that same ISBN) is already in there.

> 92 : Now you're exaggerating. Combiners do agree on the simple fact in your point 1 - and the agreement is that that's not the way to do it.

You can't honestly mean that "Alice in Wonderland (Norton Critical Editions)" by Lewis Carroll is a different work than "Alice in Wonderland (Norton Critical Editions)" illustrated by Sir John Tenniel, is a different work than "Alice in Wonderland (Norton Critical Editions)" edited by Donald J. Gray.

You might desire to enter all these options separately in your catalogue, which would be your prerogative, but - since LT is based on works - expect to see them listed as duplicate entries.

>88
You correctly point out that I erred by being too brief in my statement. "We enter books, but we combine 'works'..." should have been "We enter books, but we combine them based on 'works'...".

And, yes, a work is 'virtual', and the way I described entering an omnibus is as you say - a real book, plus some number of virtual books, all of which are (usually) combined into virtual 'works'. The term 'virtual' doesn't make it any less real. Mark Twain really did create the work The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's just that, as you indicate, the concept of 'work' in LT is a virtual one, made up of the many paper and print, real books combined to define a work.

I've not gone back to read all of my posts related to this, but I don't believe this clarification changes the straw-men I've posed or my own contention that we should combine more, separate less.

Os.

>98

The fact that #96 specified an NCE seems to step around that objection. We're not talking about combining different editions here, we're talking about combining "versions" of the same physical edition which are physically identical in every way (except for any dog-ears, torn pages, etc. introduced by users, of course).

98: want to connect with other people who have that particular edition
But those "three Alices" are the same edition! The same title, the same contents, the same author, the same illustrator, the same editor -- the only difference is which name the person who entered the book put in the primary author field in their catalog.

There is no disagreement among combiners (other than you) that works should be combined if the contents are 100% the same. Works should be combined even if the contents are different in many circumstances.

From the description on the author combine/separate page:
What to combine?
Editions. The Dover and Signet editions of Alice in Wonderland are the same work. Ditto normal and "deluxe illustrated editions."
Title variants. The British Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the same work as the American Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Foreign editions. The Italian and English-language editions of a book are the same work.

Read more about it here: http://www.librarything.com/concepts.php#works

Whatever is "decided" here, the result will still be that "lumpers" will combine regardless of edition and "splitters" will separate & recombine based upon what they think the works should consist of.

This WILL HAPPEN regardless... because all it takes is one LTer to combine &/or separate a work.

Each of us has an opinion & they are all correct in their own way... based upon our knowledge, experience & point of view... and most people won't change their opinion... they'll just continue to do what they feel is right & proper to make LT look the way they think it should look.

>101

Well, yes. But that doesn't mean we have to be fatalistic about it. Discussion is good for the soul.

A patron goes to a library and says, "I would like a book, please. Furthermore, I need this specific edition of the book because it contains supplementary material I am required to read."

The librarian says "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I can get the book for you, but because we've catalogued all the editions under the same record, I can't guarantee we'll get the specific one you need."

Absurd? No more so than a situation where lumpers are arguing that NCE of books should be combined because the main work is the same and the rest is irrelevant.

That example is absurd because the function of a lending library and of LT are different. No one is going to go to LT to get a physical copy of a book (ok, there are a few small lending libraries that use LT, but they are overwhelmed by the personal libraries). And no one is going to get to a lending library and ask to get recommendations based on all the other books that that person has read, or to find other libraries that are similar to their own.

>103

I realize you're technically agreeing with me, but I think your logic generalizes out to too many cases to be useful; a patron might need an edition in a particular language, but translations canonically and thus (mostly) uncontroversally get combined together. Or a visually-impaired patron might need a copy with large print. And to think of a librarian saying "I can get the book for you, but it might be an audiobook and it might be a physical book, but I can't guarantee which" is equally absurd, and they get combined together.

The argument isn't that a patron might in particular want or need a NCE rather than a bare edition (although that's extremely likely); the argument is that they're different works.

Functionality to distinguish between editions within works is sort of impaired at present, but that's a different kettle of fish.

>86,103 You are exactly right. This is why we need the work relationships. The actual logistics of such relationships will have to hammered out, but if we can separate books into editions, it will (partially) satisfy most people. How social connections would be determined will be . . . interesting to figure out.

Rule42, message #86 was a joy.

In the mean time, however, I would leave NCEs alone. Once we can establish the difference between editions within a work we can deal with NCEs.

EDIT: >105 I would separate translations (within libraries), and most libraries have foreign language sections anyway. Patrons looking for non-English works in a primarily English based library are usually a small group.

>107 HoldenCarver's point was that it would be ridiculous for LT to lump editions when libraries don't.

#103: You CAN go to a library & request a Norton Critical Edition of a work... they ARE cataloged by edition!! and (in my area) if the library doesn't have one, they will interloan it for you from another library.

> 106 : I would separate translations (within libraries), and most libraries have foreign language sections anyway.

This may be normal in countries where multilingual skills are not frequent. But - especially for non-fiction - that would make no sense at all in countries where it is.

>106: I would separate translations (within libraries), and most libraries have foreign language sections anyway. Patrons looking for non-English works in a primarily English based library are usually a small group.

I'm . . . not sure what you're arguing.

>108 The US isn't terribly bilingual, multilingual, whatever, but I wonder what libraries in Florida or Texas do. Miami not only has a large Hispanic population, but a large Haitian population. I wonder if they separate into English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. But then, that isn't what this thread is about.

> 98 : I gave three ways in which the exact same edition could be listed. "Alice" was written by Lewis Carroll, the NCE edition includes the Tenniel illustrations and it was edited by Gray. Maybe I should have given Carroll's real name - he used an alias - as a fourth option.

Anyway : they are the same, up to ISBN and pagination. So how do they become different works, that should not get combined, just by people listing it differently?

> 108: I know, but this isn't a US only thing. The basic choice for LT has been to combine various language editions of the same work - even though many people wouldn't do that in a physical library.

But you're right, that isn't the subject for this thread.

>109 I meant that to find a particular language edition wouldn't be too hard in many libraries because different languages are often (around where I live) separated. If they wanted a particular language, they just look in the section, and if they need help, they ask the librarian for that section. Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear.

>113

Well, yes. But I don't think anyone would have denied it, and I was confused as to what light it shed on the issue. After all, the initial analogy was flawed, which is all my translation example was trying to point out.

In retrospect it looks like it was simply a harmless digression (which I have no problem with); I just didn't realize that at the time.

The NCE page for AiW -- http://www.wwnorton.com/college/titles/english/nce/alice2/ -- clearly shows Carroll as author and Gray as editor. HOWEVER it also shows that this is a 2nd edition which, according to the promo, has substantial changes and additions to the first edition -- newly discovered episode by Carroll, new selections from recent biographies, letters and diaries, 4 more essays and updated bibliography. Does this mean the separatists are in favor of separating the 1st and 2nd editions??

115:
The descriptions of what to combine and what not to combine, on both the author combination page and LibraryThing concepts page (http://www.librarything.com/concepts.php#works) which I quoted in message 100 make no reference to author, and specifically mention that the same content with a different title should be combined.

Quoting from the concepts page: "A work brings together all different copies of a book, regardless of edition, title variation, or language."

Two things, be they books, editions, or works, with the same content should be combined. Period.

Nothing, anywhere, says works should be separated based on who the cataloger happened to list as the primary author.

And, slightly relevant to this thread, again from the concepts page:
What works shouldn't be combined?
...
* Books ABOUT a book. This includes "Cliff's Notes," "Spark Notes," critical interpretations, adaptations, etc.

It's unfortunately not clear on things like NCEs...

> 115 : If you start talking about isbn and pagination, you are thinking in terms of books rather than works.

So are you saying that these are the same book, but not the same work? It simply doesn't make sense to me. You wish to combine books that have close to 50% different contents, but separate books that are 100% the same.

> 116 : I agree it's hard to define just where to draw the line about what amount of reworking / addition justifies separation. (And I forgot about that second edition).

> 117 : Indeed. The NCE's fit nicely into that gray area between "edition of" and "book about".

115> "Copyright prevents authors from putting a different (their) name on a work produced by another author. Therefore, a title must (will) be different, often by adding a subtitle." just isn't so. The US Copyright Office FAQ says "Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases. In some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks." One big example of this is Otto Binder's I Robot, which later had its title stolen by Isaac Asimov's I, Robot.

> 119: Copyright laws are not the same internationally. I guess this might be illegal in some countries. However, most of the basic texts available in NCE - that I'm aware of at least - have been long out of copyright (not including the editing, the essays, and - if applicable - translation).

Anyway, even if you might legally get away with it - you would make yourself slightly ridiculous by claiming authorship of, for example, Don Quixote. ;-)

>119 "just isn't so."

I'm so glad you caught that; saves me having to point that out. However, you contradict yourself. Having correctly pointed out that under US copyright law a book title cannot be protected, you then accuse Asimov of stealing Binder's title. How can that be the case if (now I know I've read this somewhere quite recently!) under US copyright law book titles cannot be protected? *rolls eyes*

It is the body of the work, and in particular the specific phraseology thereof rather than the ideas contained therein, that is protected by copyright - and not just in the US either; I believe this is internationally recognized (at least in the western world). So you or I could both write and publish books entitled I Robot and no one could do anything about it.

However, your Asimov/Binder example is entirely spurious. Because Asimov's book title has a comma in it while Binder's doesn't. And as every LT combiner very well knows, that fact alone makes them completely separate works!

Better examples might have been Greenmantle by both John Buchan and Charles de Lint or The Outsider by no less than Colin Wilson, Albert Camus, Richard A. Wright, Howard Fast, Penelope Williamson, Ann H. Gabhart, Barbara Delinsky ... well there's probably quite a few more, but I think I've made my point! :)

The fact that Asimov was able to steal re-use Binder's title is an illustration of the fact that it is not protected by copyright. If it had been, he wouldn't have been able to use that title.

>120

"... you would make yourself slightly ridiculous by claiming authorship of, for example, Don Quixote. ;-)

However, a book entitled, Don, Quixote would not look anywhere near as ridiculous IMO! :)

> 98 : Well, it is obvious then why Tim is postponing or hesitating to give every Contributor (Author 1, Author 2, Editor 1, Editor 2, Illustrator, Translator, etc) their own author page. Because Combiners like you et al would start throwing everything together.

I've been thinking on this and I really don't think you can *blame* that on us. No we wouldn't "throw everything together". In fact I spend more time separating than combining - admittedly also because that's more labour intensive.

I just don't consider your take on cataloging as logical. You insist on listing the "Communist Manifesto", for example on both Marx and Engels separately. Fine, they did co-author it. And I certainly won't combine Marx and Engels - nobody is advocating that. But it is the same book, and I will combine them. Other people will have chosen only one primary author: either Marx or Engels.

LT uses a fairly primitive, and for my purposes quite inadequate catalogueing system based on *only* one author name.

No it does not. You can use as many listings under any author name as you choose - as your practice shows. But you can also enter co-authors, editors, illustrators, translators, etc. as "other authors". And if you do that you can search them in your library for instance.

Tim's plan to give all contributors their own author pages can in fact only succeed in as far as people start using these "other author" fields. Maybe you should try using the system as it is supposed to work.

120>

Anyway, even if you might legally get away with it - you would make yourself slightly ridiculous by claiming authorship of, for example, Don Quixote. ;-)

That would really be ridiculous. Everyone knows Pierre Menard is the author of Don Quixote.

;)

Re "LT uses a fairly primitive, and for my purposes quite inadequate catalogueing system based on *only* one author name.'

Isn't that because LT uses library cataloging data/principles which have the concept of One Primary author?

edited to add - I'm probably using the wrong words as I'm not a librarian but I remember having it explained to me when I joined WHY the library sources didn't just have multiple authors in the one field.

125>

I thought it was Dale Wasserman.

>86 "But we still need to decide the particular case, and thus, debate."
>102 "But that doesn't mean we have to be fatalistic about it. Discussion is good for the soul."

Discussion with some focus and purpose to it is indeed good for the soul. But futile discussion where people merely try and push their own agendas without even fully understanding the issues is merely jibber-jabber and is IMO good for nothing (except possibly exercising one's typing fingers). Exactly which part of my, "In situations concerning questions of degree ... there are NO definitive right answers," did you not understand?

Nevertheless, in the spirit of attempting "to decide this particular case" by debate, let me try and get the discussion focused back to the issue originally identified in the thread OP. Clearly many of us contributing to this discussion feel that any significantly annotated and supplemented works (not just the NCEs) are NOT the same as the base work. It appears a consensus was already established prior to the initiation of this thread that NCEs are NOT the same as the base work from which they take their title and should always be kept separated from them, and only combined with other NCEs with the same title (NOT with other critical editions of that title from other publishers). The issue that caused the OP to start this thread was their observation that this established consensus had been reneged on despite there being a disambiguation notice in place (although it also transpires that the notice may not have been as clear as it should have been).

Thus the starting point for this discussion is that there are (1) basic editions of a base work (such as, say, a Penguin or Puffin paperback) which should always be combined together; (2) enhanced versions of the base work (that might contain prefaces, forwords, afterwords, indexes, illustrations, appendices, etc.) that are still considered to be the same as those editions in group (1) and should accordingly be combined with them; and (3) super-enhanced versions of the base work (such as the NCEs) where the base work represents such a small portion of these super-enhanced editions that they should be kept separate (viz. NOT combined) with those editions of the base work that fall into groups (1) and (2) (but, of course, that they should be combined with each other).

There is a school of thought that believes everything in groups (1), (2) and (3) should just be combined together - we'll call them the "lumpers" (thank you, skittles).

There is another school of thought that believes the books in group (3) should indeed be kept separate from the other two groups - we'll call them the "status quo" (because that was the situation before this thread was initiated).

I think there is also a third school of thought (in fact, I know there is, because I'm a member of it) that believes that the books in group (2) should also be treated in the same manner as the books in group (3) - we'll call them the "splitters".

I think that even if you are a "lumper" that believes there should be no separate groups, you'll still agree that if there has to be a group (3) then it will not be confined to just the NCEs. That is, there are other critical or super-enhanced editions of titles that have equal merit of claim to be treated in the same manner as the NCEs. Thus group (3) - if it exists at all - contains NCEs plus some other similar editions (yet TBD).

Based on the foregoing, there emerges a sort of "book continuum" - just like a number line - which looks something like the following (and the line is purely topological, NOT to any kind of scale!):

Group (1) ____________ Group (2) ______x______ Group (3)
............................. ^ .......................................... ^ ........................................ ^
........................ splitters .............................. status quo ............................ lumpers

I have marked on the above continuum where each of the three schools of thought think the dividing point at which editions of books containing the same core work should no longer be combined. Thus for "lumpers", who believe that everything should be combined, this point lies beyond the continuum (wherever that ends?!). They believe that should someone publish a copy of, say, John Steinbeck's The Pearl (roughly 50 pages) bound together with 2000 pages of commentary and critical analysis (* Rule42 adopts his best Judy Tenuta voice * it could happen!) it would still be no different than the 50 page Penguin paperback edition and so those two editions of this "single work" should be combined together. Even if that Steinbeck critical edition contained 2 million rather than 2000 pages of "supplementary material" the "lumpers" would still hold the view that it was just another edition of a single work!

I live in the real world so I think that position is simply too ludicrous for words ... talk about the tail wagging the dog! Consequently, I don't think there should be any further energy wasted on this thread discussing this untenable position. Besides, it appears there has already been a consensus established before this thread was even initiated (viz. the "status quo" school of thought) that there does indeed come a point where books - such as the NCEs - fall into group (3) and have to be treated differently. I think all further discussion here should focus on establishing some objective criteria to determine where that point "X" on the above continuum actually lies. Based on my "lengths of pieces of string" argument in post #86 I'm not confident that any kind of consensus will ever be achieved, but I still think that that is where the debate, if there is to be any discussion, should focus.

Finally, I don't feel anybody has yet properly argued the case of the "splitters" on this thread, so since that is the dog I have running in this race - that is, if I have a dog and there is a race (gee, I hope that that is not too many canine metaphors for a single post!) - I will make a separate post (or two :( ) arguing for that position. What I mostly wanted to do here was set up a context for the discussion and re-focus it back on to the main issue for which the "NCE debacle" that originally triggered this thread appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.

129> I'm glad that works for you. Others, for whom the purpose of using LT is to help them keep track of their books, make one library entry for each book that they own. Me, I'm somewhere in the middle.

129>
You are discussing two different cases.

One: the example you use in #129, of a book (1) containing two stories (2 & 3). Nobody would argue that these are the same work, and only an Infernal Idiot would combine them. The book contains roughly twice as much content as the stories, and the stories are completly different to each other. If you wish to catalog these separately, and there is no other way to catalog them at present, that's fine. We are all hoping and waiting for a "contained in" relationship so that you could say that 2 is contained in 1, and 3 is contained in 1.

Two: The example of The communist manifesto, entered in your catalog twice with two different authors. This is unusual, and not using the facility that's built into the system, since that's the purpose of the Other Authors field. But, it is understandable since that system isn't really complete yet. Nobody would argue that you shouldn't do this. However, since these two entries in your catalog are the same work (100% same content, same two authors though you've only listed one in each entry), they should be and will be combined. Not because of the title (which is irrelevant), but because of the content of the work.

The third case, and the original focus of this thread, is where there is a work (Persuasion by Emma Austen) and another book containing that content plus additional content (the Norton Critical Edition of Persuasion) -- should those be combined? This is the grey area that everyone else is debating.

I think your misunderstanding stems from the word work. In LibraryThing, work refers to the thing created, possibly with different contributions from multiple people, but it is the thing itself. If two things are the same, they are the same work. The Communist Manifesto is the Communist Manifesto, and it is a single work. Different people made different contributions to that work, and that is the purpose of the Other Authors fields, to record all the varying contributions to that single work.

Note that, by the LibraryThing definition of work, The Italian is The Italian, whether it is published on its own or contained inside a book with another work as in your example. The two should be combined. Not with the omnibus, not with Northanger Abbey, but The Italian should be combined with The Italian.

The basic problem I see that causes all the issues in this debate is that people appear to believe that critical essays and literary analyses are not works in and of themselves. That's ludicrous! Just because a book's contents list or title page is rightly not considered to be an additional work to the core work that is bound in that book edition, IMO that does NOT mean that the afterword in that book cannot be considered to be an additional work. I would now like to explore this concept from first principles.

The status of such items as contents lists, title pages and prefaces, etc. is IMO what is meant by "extra material not being able to stand alone." You cannot take a contents list out of an edition of Treasure Island and put it in an edition of Kidnapped. You can't even put it into another edition of Treasure Island because the page numbering would be wrong for that other edition. So contents lists "cannot stand alone" from the specific edition for which they were created and are thus considered to be part and parcel of the "packaging" of any given book, just like the boards, FFEP and DJ. Or even all that puff on the back of the DJ or the rear of the PB that is designed solely to convince you to purchase that particular copy of the book.

Similarly, title pages and prefaces usually "cannot stand alone" either. That's because in most cases the preface to the second edition of Wuthering Heights would look rather silly in the first edition of that title, and pretty damn stupid in a copy of Jane Eyre. OTOH, many prefaces to a particular edition of a work penned by its author do get carried over into subsequent editions of that work. But since they were created WRT that work by the author in their own lifetime you should just think of them as now being inherently "part of the work" rather than being part of the "packaging" of a specific edition of the book. Prefaces written by other people also sometimes get carried over to later editions in this manner, and are not so easily dismissed as being inherently "part of the work" since the work's author did not write them. Nevertheless, let's say for the sake of simplicity, that all prefaces are either inherently "part of the work" or "cannot stand alone."

Indexes and notes on the text (corresponding to superscripts throughout the main body of the work) are also both "book edition specific" (since they, by their very nature, include page numbering) and so too "cannot stand alone" from the specific edition for which they were created. However, when it comes to the consideration of bibliographies (of either "sources used" or "for further reading") and glossaries, things start to get a little murkier. If, for example, I write a non-fiction work that is published in hardcover by Viking (and my Viking editors create a useful glossary of, say, technical terms or jargon used and/or a bibliography) then since neither of those items contain page numbering references, that effort will most likely be carried over to the Penguin PB edition that comes out a year later, and then onto any further editions should my book prove popular enough. OTOH, even though I, the author, did not create the glossary or bibliography when I created the work in MS, since they appeared in the first published edition of the work (after my review and with my full approval) they can also be considered to be part and parcel of that work just as if I had created them.

I think everything I've addressed up to this point falls fairly cleanly into one of two categories - inherently "part of the main work" or "cannot stand alone." Now, we come to forewords and afterwords. And I think this is where the big mistake is being made that is causing all the issues here. At first glance forewords and afterwords appear to be merely addenda to the main work that "cannot stand alone" in exactly the same manner that prefaces, notes and indexes are unable to stand alone from it. They are usually written by someone other than the author (and so cannot be considered to be inherently "part of the main work") and they are mostly created only for a specific edition of that work - usually a much later one that is now treating the main work somewhat as a classic. If this was universally true then forewords and afterwords can indeed be dismissed as being essentially nothing more than "packaging" for a specific edition of a book.

But now consider this case. One of my copies of David Copperfield has an afterword written by W. Somerset Maugham. That afterword wasn't written for that edition but is instead an old Maugham essay that was simply appended to the main Dickens work rather than have someone write an afterword specifically for this edition. If you had two different anthology editions of Maugham literary essays and one contained 10 essays and one contained 9 essays, most people posting here would say that those two collections of essays are different works. Yet if that missing tenth essay "work" that makes you want to separate those two anthology editions from each other also happens to be the same essay that is used as the afterword in my copy of the Dickens novel then it's not a "work" in its own right but simply "packaging" like the preface and title page! Consequently, this now results in the paradox that exactly the same essay or criticism can be both a work and not a work!

The more I have thought about this situation the more convinced I have become that afterwords and forewords are NOT quite the same beast as all those other items I addressed above with which they have historically always been lumped together. A twenty page literary criticism or analysis is by no means an insignificant item ... it is every bit as much a literary "work" in its own right as, say, a 20 page Sherlock Holmes short story is, and it's probably a lot more meritorious from a literary perspective than the vast majority of sci-fi and mystery genre short stories of a similar length. Thus for combiners to have caniptions because someone has unwittingly combined an omnibus edition containing twelve short stories with the later omnibus edition containing thirteen of that author's short stories, and yet to waive their hands at an afterword written by, say, Edmund Wilson or I.F. Stone and dismiss it as merely "packaging" is simply illogical hypocrisy.

Just because SOME, or even MANY, forewords and afterwords "cannot stand alone" doesn't mean that ALL forewords and afterwords "cannot stand alone"! Once you adopt a new paradigm where forewords and afterwords can (but don't necessarily have to) be works in their own right - and reject the current paradigm that relegates ALL forewords or afterwords to be merely "packaging" - almost all of your problems begin to disappear. All those NCEs now become anthologies of multiple works (some of them works of fictional literature and some of them works of non-fictional historical analyses and literary criticisms) and THAT, right there, is the reason why they should not be combined with their comparable core works - not because of their significant social difference nor because of the vast quantity of the supplemental material (both of which criteria are far too subjective to ever get a consensus on as I argued in post #86).

Even before allowing for this change in paradigm, most of the NCEs should not have been combined with other editions of their core works simply because they contain other works by the author of that core work, thus making them omnibus editions anyway. The Little Women NCE referenced in post #76 was never a candidate to be combined with other editions of Little Women (as pointed out in post #87) because it also contains a copy of "some dreadful early fiction by Alcott" (the poster never stated which particular work this was). But that only changes the issue from "should the NCEs be combined with other editions of the core works?" to "should the NCEs be combined with other comparable omnibus editions of the same core works?" which doesn't solve anything. Because under the current paradigm the vast portion of the NCEs are still being treated as merely "packaging"!

So IMO an NCE contains the core work of its title, possibly multiple other works by that same author, plus many other "critical analysis" and "historical background" works by numerous other academic authors (some of which may even have their own LT author page). It should not be combined with other editions of that core work, nor with any comparable omnibus editions of that core work, because it also contains all those other additional works. In fact, all those additional works make every NCE unique so they can ONLY be combined with another NCE of the same title. It also should not matter whether they are listed under the name of the author of the core work or under the category "various" (as suggested by Os) with all or some of the other authors, editors and illustrators, etc. accordingly identified for exactly the same reasons that The Communist Manifesto can be attributed only to Marx, only to Engels, or to both of them (as per post #133).

All of the above is, of course, pretty much what people have been doing all along. Hopefully, we now have a justification that everyone can accept for why they have been doing it that way.

Given LTers slightly fanatical catalogging addiction, we expect to see a few copies of the contents of an anthology listed seperately. This is clearly happens.

However if the essays in an NCE have not been listed seperately anywhere by anyone on LT (which as far as I'm aware they haven't), then obviosuly no-one on LT, not even the most fanatical catalogger considers them seperate to the main work. Hence the NCE should be combined with the main works because no-one who owns one considers the other contents sufficiently independant to stand on their own.

> 129 What you see now on the Edit Page (i.e. the option of filling in names of different contributors) is Stage 2. In Stage 1, there was only the author field (an a sort of extra note field lower on the page).

Yes, I remember - main reason why I didn't join at that early stage.

I am filling out all those fields. But I don't want to wait till Tim goes on to Stage 3: that may be either years in the future, or never at all. I have a very large book collection, I need that functionality now.

I fully understand. I have some hope that the new author "splitting" feature is an early announcement of that. It's certainly a necessary step.

Like you I do desire my books to turn up on every applicable author page. I would even go back to my catalogue and start entering all contributing authors to anthologies and such.

But that doesn't mean I agree to your idea about grouping books like this in the mean time. I really really don't. In my view: same content should always be combined - whoever is listed as "primary author" -, while significantly different content should be separated.

Brought to extremes, that would mean we would abandon "works" for "editions" since there are always differences between editions - after all: any translator has a significant role as well. I'm not advocating that. But it means we are forced to discuss the question of just how much difference is significant before we start separating (or "allow" combining). Which brings us back to the topic of this thread.

> 135 : That's a conclusion you can't base on that evidence. Since the NCE itself was separated in the first place, there would have been no strict need to catalogue that separately.

>135

"if the essays in an NCE have not been listed seperately anywhere by anyone on LT (which as far as I'm aware they haven't), then obviosuly no-one on LT, not even the most fanatical catalogger considers them seperate to the main work. Hence the NCE should be combined with the main works because no-one who owns one considers the other contents sufficiently independant to stand on their own."

So if I understand what you are saying correctly, something isn't a work until someone actually catalogues an instance of it on LT. Thus, hypothetically, if no one to date has bothered to catalogue their copy of The Red Badge of Courage then that novel is not really a work - despite the fact that millions of copies of it are in existence, and that thousands of LTers actually own copies of it and have even read it? Since when does a work not exist just because an edition of it hasn't been catalogued on LT yet?

Could you please tell me what it is that you are smoking? ... cuz I would like to get me some of that! :)

Yet even if what you say is true, any NCE owner can quickly resolve that issue merely by making a point of separately cataloguing one or two of the critical essays in each of the NCEs that s/he owns so that for the NCEs we can now also "see a few copies of the contents of an anthology listed seperately (sic)."

"However if the essays in an NCE have not been listed seperately anywhere by anyone on LT (which as far as I'm aware they haven't), then obviosuly no-one on LT, not even the most fanatical catalogger considers them seperate to the main work. Hence the NCE should be combined with the main works because no-one who owns one considers the other contents sufficiently independant to stand on their own."

Sorry reading_fox, don't agree with your logic here. I consider them separate to the main work and as valuable in their own right and as a separate entity. I just don't separate anything as my cataloguing is based on what's contained in a single physical book. How that relates to works is a different matter - hence the fact that I have The Liar and The Hippopotamus as a single entry, as it is a single book - it doesn't mean that I necessarily believe that either The Liar or The Hippopotamus are not sufficiently independent to stand on their own, it just means I physically own them as an omnibus. Whether anyone else on LT agrees or disagrees with that perspective has no bearing. In the same way, I buy NCEs for their critical content specifically but catalogue them under their main title (for example Beowulf (Norton Critical Edition)) because they contain both the source text and the critical essays. It doesn't mean that I devalue the critical aspect, for me that is the main aspect. I, personally, have no interest in being connected with the umpteen users that have a copy of Emma but am interested in the users who specifically have a NCE edition as it demonstrates a different level of interaction with the text.

#138 "Since when does a work not exist just because an edition of it hasn't been catalogued on LT yet?
"

err all the time. Work is strictly an LT concept. If it's not in LT it isn't an LTwork. It may well be a book, or an edition or an essay, but it's not an LTwork. That's the point.

#139 "I just don't separate anything as my cataloguing is based on what's contained in a single physical book"

n=1

just because you don't do it isn't the point. You also don't seperately list short stories. Neither do I. But other LTers do, and yet none of them has seen fit to list the NCE essays as works.

> 141 : Maybe NCE owners suffer less from OCD than average LT users ;-)

> 140 : Basically, out of desperation I start wondering whether we should perhaps simply lump them together.

On that principle, why not combine all of LT into one big happy work? After all, they all have letters and / or illustrations...

Nah. I know it's an uphill struggle and I get frustrated too, but I do feel we're gradually improving the data on LT through our efforts.

140>
I think we're getting close to agreement here! You have said about your copies of the Communist Manifesto that "Combiners have combined them on the same title". I'm saying that it's not because they have the same title, but because they have the same contents. How do we know they have the same contents? Well, in this case because they have the same title, the same cover, the same ISBN, and indeed the only visible difference was that one was cataloged by one of the co-authors, and the other was cataloged by the other. That's an easy judgment call: they should be combined.

Other cases where the title is not relevant are when someone includes a subtitle and someone doesn't, but the ISBNs are the same, or the ISBN of the one without the subtitle is the same as someone else's book which does have the subtitle, or the covers are the same, or the covers are different but both show the subtitle. The titles, as recorded in LibraryThing, are different, but it's easy to determine that they are the same content. Sometimes someone leaves off "The". Sometimes someone includes "Illustrated by George Smith" in the title -- and the LibraryThing concepts page is pretty clear that even a "Deluxe Illustrated Edition" is the same work.

The examples you've given in message 140, where the title clearly indicates that the contents are different ("& Other stories" or "Vol. 1" vs. "Vol. 2") make it easy to see that those works should not be combined. Unfortunately, there are the Infernal Idiots out there who will combine them anyway.

And, of course, as you point out, sometimes the published title is the same but the contents are different, or some users have entered the title wrong, which is what Disambiguation Notices are for -- to indicate that although the works may look like they should be combined, there's a reason why they shouldn't be. (Which links back nicely to the beginning of this thread.)

Obviously, we can't know without looking at it what is really in a book, we can only use our best judgment based on the information given. For your Communist Manifesto, it's clear that you've got two copies of the same book, and they should be combined. For your examples of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, unless there's some other information (and I personally look at ISBN, cover, description, reviews, tags, other editions already combined with, and most importantly Disambiguation Notices) they'll get combined by the title. If that's all there is to go on, then that's all there is. If someone figures out that it's wrong and separates them, they should add a Disambiguation Notice explaining why, and others should respect that.

"But other LTers do, and yet none of them has seen fit to list the NCE essays as works"

Whether a LT-er has seen fit to list something as a separate work or not is just not the criterion that should be used to assess whether something actually is a separate work. At no point in the description of a work does it state that to be considered one, something must already have been separately catalogued as a work. What it does say about 'edge cases' (and Tim's already admitted elsewhere that NCEs are exactly that) is "some edition or language differences are so major as to be socially significant" and the argument here is that NCEs are different enough to be so. You may not agree with that distinction but whether someone has been OCD enough to catalogue them separately is not the criterion to apply to assess whether the differences are 'major' enough, that's content. If there is even one LT member that believes that NCEs are different enough to be catalogued as a separate work, then there has to be a place for the consideration that the differences are 'major' enough to be 'socially significant'. It's in no way dependent on whether someone has artificially separated portions of a physical text. If your assessment of the consensus for division is correct, then I should just go and catalogue the separate entities from my NCEs to reflect my value of them - obviously I'm not going to do that just to make a point, but if you use something as arbitrary to make the decision as cataloguing habits then that's the kind of thing it engenders.

from the book description for Darwin (Norton Critical)

http://www.librarything.com/work/3153887

(note the second paragraph description of the Norton Critical Books)

"The best Darwin anthology on the market" (Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard) has just become better, in this newly revised version of the now classic Norton Critical Edition, first published in 1970. The impact of Charles Darwin's work on Western civilization has been broad and deep. As much as anyone in the modern era, he changed human thought, and his influence is still felt in virtually all aspects of our lives. This new edition, larger and more varied than the previous ones, includes more of Darwin's own work and also presents the most recent research and scholarship on all aspects of Darwin's legacy. The biological sciences, as well as social thought, philosophy, ethics, religion, and literature, have all been shaped and reshaped by evolutionary concepts. Excerpts from the most important books and articles of recent years confirm this Darwinian heritage. New work by Richard Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson, Kevin Padian, Eugene C. Scott, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Michael Ruse, Frans de Waal, Noretta Koertge, George C. Williams, George Levine, Stephen Jay Gould, Gillian Beer, Ernst Mayr, and many others illuminates this exciting intellectual history. A wide-ranging new introduction by the editor provides context and coherence to this rich body of engaging material, much of which will be shaping human thought well into the new century. This edition will be useful to scientists and historians alike: "The Norton Darwin explains Darwinian evolution and illustrates the social and intellectual conflicts of the past two centuries better than any other book that I am aware of." (Charles Taylor, Professor of Biology, Ecology, and Evolution, University of California, Los Angeles) And it will be of great value to the humanities and social sciences as well: "The edition provides the sharpest and most exciting access to Darwin we have ever had. It shows all of us interested in the heart of our intellectual heritage how that heritage is sustained, manipulated, and honored." (James R. Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California) A Selected Bibliography and an Index are included.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehenive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

134> You make a convincing case. However, something still nags at me. Eventually, I hope, we will get a contained-in relationship between works where I will finally be able to connect my omnibuses with the works they contain. When that day arrives, do you really consider the various essays etc. of your NCEs to stand alone enough to add them separately to your catalog?

145> Every publisher is going to say that their edition is special. Is marketing hype going to be the criteria for when a work is separated?

#146 whilst drooling over the concept of 'contained in' and taking your point on board, I would say that, in certain cases I would herald a hearty 'Yes'. To give you an example, I would certainly consider Tolkien's very weighty and significant 30-odd page treatment in the Beowulf NCE something that stands alone enough. If we got 'contained in', I would separate it so that it could actually appear under Tolkien as well as Beowulf. I would certainly consider any additional pieces of writing by the author of the main text as significant enough to list separately (for example in, I believe, the Alcott Little Women NCE among others) and I would definitely separate out Daniel Donoghue's essay from Beowulf, which is more about Heaney's work than Beowulf in particular and so stands alone for me as a piece of criticism. Others additional pieces are not as significant, or at least not to me, but having a 'contained in' option would definitely change how I catalogue completely. Until we do though, I think we have to argue with what we have not what might appear later - if we get further functionality, there's time for a throwdown then ;)

> 147 : I agree that part of #145 sounds like a bit of advertising from the publishers. We had, however, already established that these books in fact are substantially different from a "normal" edition. Only question is : are they different enough?

148> Then does it really come down to some NCEs are different enough to be separate works but other NCEs aren't?

> 150 : Could be, hope not...

#150, that's a point I've been considering. I can only speak for the ones I know and those are different enough IMO. It's the reason I wouldn't consider going on a separating blitz per se. It hasn't stopped me separating out the ones I know to be different but as for the others, I'll leave that to the owners. Any with additional writings by the author of the source work should be separate, I think, under the same reasoning that I wouldn't combine Rashomon and other storieswith Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories as the 'other' is different, or Northanger Abbey with Northanger Abbey and Lady Susan. As for the critical essays, I can only speak for what I know. Maybe that's the point. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to apply a rule to NCEs as a whole, but take each work individually.

So : no combining there - simply because of the part / whole rule.

I've just been going through the list of NCEs on the Norton site (http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nce_alphabetical_a-c.htm) and a large number of them would be separated purely based on the part/whole rule or because there is additional material (including extra fictitious writing, journal extracts or collections of letters) from the author of the focus work. Would it be a starting point to argue that any that contain these kinds of distinctions should be separated for that reason alone, without even considering the critical essays and historical contexts?

I would support that.

>141 "Work is strictly an LT concept. If it's not in LT it isn't an LTwork. It may well be a book, or an edition or an essay, but it's not an LTwork."

"Work" is NOT strictly an LT concept. Only an "LTwork" is strictly an LT concept, and even the concept "LTwork" is merely derivative of the general concept of "literary work" that has existed for millennia. I had a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare on my bookshelves 30-odd years before LT even came into existence but I can assure you from my heart that it really did exist 30-odd years ago when I first bought it and started reading it. It didn't just appear on my bookshelves like magic a couple of years ago because the first instance of it had just been catalogued on LT.

Whether a particular edition of a book has been catalogued on LT or not yet is irrelevant to whether that book edition exists or to whether any of the multiple works contained in that book edition exist. Works and books do NOT get created by someone entering them into LT - the work gets created when the author completes the MS, and the book editions containing that particular work get created each time a publishing company prints an edition of a book that includes that work. We only become AWARE of a particular edition of a book the first time it is entered into LT, and we only become AWARE of a particular work the first time a particular book containing it is entered into LT. Both the abstract works and the tangible books containing them exist whether they've been entered into LT or not. If LT ceased to exist tomorrow, all of the created works and the books containing them (whether LT was AWARE of them or not) will still exist in the universe.

>146 "... do you really consider the various essays etc. of your NCEs to stand alone enough to add them separately to your catalog?"

First off, as many others have already stated, whether someone decides to add any or all of the individual works (be they complete novels, short stories or critical essays) contained in an anthology or omnibus edition as "virtual books" (see post #88) in the same manner that Os does (see post #50 plus others) is completely extraneous to this discussion. Trees do indeed make a sound when they fall in the woods whether you are there to witness them or not, and (as just pointed out above) works do indeed exist in the real world whether someone chooses to catalogue them on LT or not.

Secondly, I do not own any NCEs. But, I do own other Group (3) type editions of books which I have specifically avoided cataloguing on LT because, like the NCEs, they will get completely screwed up by the LT "let's lump everything we possibly can together" combiner numbskulls. However, I do appreciate what the NCEs are.

If I have a dog in this race (hmmm, that probably should be "dog in this fight" or "horse in this race"; I may mix my metaphors but at least I don't spell like a fifth grader!) at all it is because I'm on the side of common sense versus lunacy. I do not understand how any intelligent person can say that 300+ pages of a 400+ page book is just "packaging" and keep a straight face - which is, in effect, what the "lumper" school of thought are doing WRT to NCEs. Dismissing a 4-page afterword in a 200+ page book as mere "packaging" is one thing (and I can fully accept and go along with that stance) but if the same analytical process that you apply to come to that conclusion also leads you to dismiss the larger portion of a published book (in some cases more than 300 pages) also as mere packaging, as well as resulting in paradoxical situations as illogical as that Maugham essay (see post #134) both simultaneously being a work and not being a work, then your analytical process is obviously broken.

When a theory fails to explain real world experience it is ALWAYS the theory that is wrong NOT the real world and thus one needs to go back and come up with a better theory that explains all the phenomena that the current theory fails to explain. If an "LT theory of works" leads one to conclude that 50% - 75% of a book is irrelevant (if that were true why would Norton have ever made the decision to publish it?) and that something else is both simultaneously a work and not a work, then we really want to go back and re-examine the basic axioms of that theory and modify any of the ones that are not true. Such as the one that states critical essays are not works. Or the one that states forewords or afterwords are "not able to stand alone" - because in MANY cases they most definitely can!

Seems that many of the comments here are concerned with how to separate and why to separate, rather than what are the consequences if you do or don't separate. I offer these 3 scenarios as a LT user (I have owned and used NCEs) from the list of more than 220 NCEs available:

1. Little Women (because it is used as an example here) -- if I own the NCE and click on the title I get: 64 people who list this; 0 reviews: 0 conversations; a series listing for 'Norton Critical Editions'; A canonical title 'Little Women (Norton Critical Edition)', a 'DO NOT COMBINE WITH MAIN WORK - this is a heavily supplemented critical edition'; a book description from Amazon that was taken directly from the publisher. Accessing the remaining lumped 10,195 copies, I get 123 reviews, 5 descriptions, 314 conversations, and relevant CK info.

2. Crime and Punishment: almost 14,000 copies, with about 600 NCEs , NOT yet separated out. Everyone has access to 116 reviews, 8 descriptions, 231 conversations, and connections to 12 legacy libraries, and CK facts. I skimmed the reviews for mention of specific editions, found only a few mentions of supplementary material (not NCE), but did find lots of pithy discussion of content, context and translation.

3. Inferno ( I currently own two versions and have read several others, but not the NCE). 10 separated copies of NCE ---> same info as LW (see above). Lumped 7370 copies ---> 7 descriptions, 52 reviews, 124 conversations, and 9 legacy library connections, CK. Also, following the Google Books link, you get 2 full texts and many partial texts with lots of background material. If you have the NCE, the Google Book link gets you the book description of that edition. Since there were only 10 NCE copies, I wandered around their libraries -- a mix of post-graduates and undergraduates, and several who owned multiple editions along with many supplementary books on criticism and background.

After this foray, I'm voting with the lumpers (as long as each case is carefully examined for legitimate exceptions such as mentioned in #153). In the end after I've read ANY legit edition of Dante's Inferno -- that's what I've read -- Dante's Inferno. Any extra info absorbed may have enhanced and expanded the reading experience, whether it was from my edition, a comparison of several editions, or (as more likely these days) an internet search.

FYI - I just ordered a used NCE copy of the Inferno based on discussion here. Hopefully this thread will be wrapped up before I receive and wade through it. However, if I am leading you to believe I'm going to read all of that extra stuff, I will be sharing the fate of those other falsifiers in Dante's 8th Circle.

Saying that books should be lumped because the extra material is unimportant is a shitty argument to make. It may be unimportant to you, but it is important to those who want to keep the books separate!

To take the argument to absurd extremes once more: to a Jewish person, the Old Testament is the important book. The bible is just the Old Testament with a bunch of extra, superfluous stuff appended to it. Therefore, the two should be lumped together.

Absurd? Of course it is! And so is arguing for the lumping together of books where many people believe that there are differences and said differences should be respected.

I only skimmed messages after #115 or so--I think I must have explained my POV on some ten previous occasions, so I beg forgiveness for ignoring the rest. This is clearly the same old discussion, and it pivots on, in my view erroneous (given current capabilites of the LT work-combination), emphasis on the uniqueness of editions. LT networks are based on judicious but wide combination of various unique editions, individually collected for any of the myriad reasons, into a "work" which encompasses them all. This variety is precisely the beauty of the system.

I'll remind you again that we combine across languages--and I for one resent the idea that my NCEs would be forced out of multilingual combinations, for example.

HoldenCarver etc. keeps missing my point about the lack of justification for separating Nortons--yes, you are separating Nortons because that's all you know--and that's exactly why they ought not to be separated. There are hundreds (and likely many more) various scholarly imprints on LT now, and no single combiner, or the entire set of combiners in this group, can identify and keep track of them--even if all of them were identifiable to begin with. That being the case, to single any ONE out is silly and superfluous. That, however, is a minor point-- more important is to consider what the separation practically achieves for people holding (or not) these separated editions. I'm asking again if anyone can demonstrate that recommendations for NCEs are different from those for the bulk of editions.

#159

Thanks for the examples.

#160

You ought to think more of the effects of combinations, what LT combinations achieve and so on, and less about "the text". Everyone here can read and tell the difference between an annotated text, text with supplements etc. Not the point.

Looking at review data proves what? On the Zeitgeist page:

Unique works 4,339,326

Works reviewed 274,241

So knowing that any work has a 5% chance of having a review you stand by your theory that NCEs aren't good enough?

By that logic, all 19/20 works on LT without reviews are unimportant and have no right to be on the site and can be combined because some folks seem to feel the need to connect comes only through seeing larger numbers, reviews and recommendations.

You also seem to assume those that own NCEs don't own another non-NCE...

I checked one user on Emma - this is the first user I picked - timepiece:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=timepiece&deepsearch=emma

Do you think they own both Emmas because they think they're identical?

>146 "You make a convincing case. However, something still nags at me."

I had a nagging feeling that NCEs (or any other super-enhanced editions) could never be justified as needing to be kept separate when I first posted on this thread ... because the arguments to justify doing that would all be subjective ones (more socially significant, exceeds "critical mass", etc.) all of which would have to be based on degree and never achieve a consensus. But when I got down to thinking more about the issue in order to construct my own argument for why NCEs should be kept separate, I realized the problem was once again the legacy of thoughtless "lumping" - but this time not of books, but of concepts.

We are now suffering the consequences of others that have preceded us on LT who sloppily (and incorrectly) lumped concepts such as critical essays, afterwords and forewords in with prefaces, indexes and the like. As I tried to show in post #134 the process is one of gradual conceptual creep. The hidden division by zero that ultimately allows you to fallaciously prove that all triangles are isosceles is mistaking the fact that because MOST forewords and afterwords effectively consist of "literary essays" that cannot "stand alone" in their own right, ALL literary and critical essays cannot "stand alone" in their own right and are, ergo, mere "packaging" too.

What makes NCEs "archetypal border-line cases" (see post #18) is not that the NCEs themselves are "edge cases" (see post #144), but that the majority of the items they contain are considered "edge cases"; viz. literary and critical essays. Once you accept these essays for what they really are - i.e., that a short critical literary essay by W. Somerset Maugham or Anthony Burgess is every bit as much a work as a Sherlock Holmes or Father Brown short story and not at all the same as a preface or many forewords - then the NCEs no longer contain large chunks of gray material that nobody can agree upon, but are instead simply large anthologies containing diverse works.

Whether other LTers like these essays is irrelevant. Personally, I don't much like fantasy fiction but I would still never argue that Harry Potter books do not contain works. To take that stance would be to simply have an agenda of pushing my own tastes. Whether you like Dickens or hate Dickens you cannot deny that he created literary works. Why are so many people in denial here that authors of literary criticism also create works?

Whether other LTers (who do like and own these essays) don't behave like "fanatical cataloggers" in other areas of LT and enter all of them independently as works is also irrelevant. As post #142 states, that may just be because "NCE owners suffer less from OCD than average LT users." I own multiple copies of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (none of which are catalogued on LT) but I wouldn't dream of entering all of the short story works contained in it independently of that main title. However, that doesn't mean that I believe that, say, The Adventure of the Speckled Band is not a work in its own right. * rolls eyes *

121> Your claim that I contradict myself is wrong; copyright law has nothing to do with theft. I expected that readers would understand that in common English, "to steal" is not necessarily a word that requires illegality. In any case, both titles are "I, Robot", even if the one person who entered the short story did so without the comma.

161> You tell me there are hundreds more; name them. Seriously, as a person who has a collection of classic literature in various editions, I have never seen a volume like this, where the original text is combined with a significant body of critical text on the text.

164> tl;dr

To pull out one point, critical essays stand alone all the time. "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery" is a book-length critical essay that stands alone. The only reason most critical essays don't stand alone is because they are like short stories; they aren't long enough to publish alone. But they are published in books and journals without the text of the work they are commentating on all the time.

164> I'm afraid that's not a counter argument that carries any weight. If something "nags at you" then I suggest you take her out for a nice slap-up dinner followed by a romantic evening together.

I explained what was nagging me in the next sentence. I'm sorry but I didn't bother your lengthy post after this. I think you need to take a break and calm down because each succeeding post from you is getting more and more abusive.

>159: as long as each case is carefully examined for legitimate exceptions such as mentioned in #153

I think it's a rare NCE whose supplementary material does not include fiction, drama, or poetry alongside the critical material.

>161: various scholarly imprints on LT now, and no single combiner, or the entire set of combiners in this group, can identify and keep track of them--even if all of them were identifiable to begin with.

We're only asking of people what they can give. To say that we shouldn't ask anything at all of them because what they're able to give is isn't a 100% flawless result is just silly. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

social connections: I'm not a good example, but I have 17 books that I tagged Norton. I have 16 NCEs & 1 Norton Annotated (The Norton Annotated Fairy Tales. http://www.librarything.com/work/book/32300100 ). Yes, I personally care that I have an NCE copy rather than a generic edition without notes or commentaries/criticisms.

In "real life" when I discuss a book, I would prefer to discuss the book with someone who has already made some of the same connections that I have with the book. I feel that someone who has read a NCE will already have some of the same "knowledge" about the book that I have.... and we can go from there. I'm not saying that I will only discuss a book when the other person/s have read the same book that I have, but that they are at least at the same level of discussion that I am at. If I want to discuss Dracula, I'm wanting to discuss it with someone who actually reads books at a higher level... not someone whose idea of a fantastic vampire novel is Twilight (sorry, but the hype about the books & movie is making me a little cynical about it)... and I'm not saying that a person without an NCE edition cannot discuss it with me... it is just easier. (but they may also have the generic edition because they don't need the condescending notes & criticisms... they already know more about the work than anything the NCE has to offer!!)

What I'm hoping for is when I can connect with both groups, NCE & non-NCE, but for now, I'd prefer the NCE group.

IMO, if someone has put the Norton Critical in the title, or has the Authorized Texts & Criticisms stuff in the title, then they are going to get the NCE combining, if they leave it out, then they get the generic group.

#169

The irony is that separating Nortons into their own set also separates them from OTHER scholarly editions. Not to mention that you cannot judge the "level" on which someone read or studied a work by the simple fact of their listing this or that edition.

>159

"Seems that many of the comments here are concerned with how to separate and why to separate, rather than what are the consequences if you do or don't separate."

Outside of any of the arguments here WRT the merits of whether NCEs should or should not be combined, I just want to point out that the consequences of "incorrect combining" (of anything, not just NCEs) far outweigh the consequences of "incorrect separating."

Because of the way the LT manual combine/separate functionality works, 200 NCE copies of some title (already grouped together) can be combined with all the other non-NCE copies of that title with only a few mouse clicks. Since they can only be separated individually it might take someone two hours or more work to go restore the status quo if it was subsequently decided that such a combination was not valid.

Turning that around, if those 200 NCEs were already combined with all the others editions, it would still take someone that same two hours "labor of love" to separate them out, despite it being subsequently determined to be a misguided "labor of love." And even if was, their misguided "labor or love" can still be fixed with only a few mouse clicks in order to restore the status quo.

The two situations are just not comparable in scope and consequence. Wrongful separations can be fixed relatively easily (well, at least, as long as the person that uncombined them also grouped all the separated items together). Wrongful combinations require much more dedicated effort to rectify. Which is why I would caution others to err on the side of over-separating for right now no matter what school of thought you belong in on this issue.

This is still a beta site. All of your personal "connection data" does not have to be 100% perfect immediately. This should be a time of experimentation so that you can indeed see the consequences - such as seeing how well you can live with there being two different versions of a classic title (an NCE one and all the others). These are classic titles so the people with non-NCE editions are always going to be connected to thousands of other fellow owners. Some of the people with the NCEs appear to prefer to be separated from the the crowd. That should not bother anyone owning non-NCE editions; it's no different than if the NCE owners had not catalogued their books in the first place.

The only LT members that arrangement hurts are the NCE owners that do want to be lumped in with the crowd (see post #76). If that NCE owner entered his copy of Little Women as a "virtual book" in the same manner that Os does for his LoA titles he would get all the connection data he's looking for. Is this a viable compromise for this issue?

Also, has anyone suggested to Tim that there should be an "undo last combination" feature?

Edited to change "most" to "some" as per comment in posts #182 and #185.

172>

I have plenty of works in my library which I haven't read and/or didn't appreciate, including many books I got for free from various sources. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

172>

I have plenty of works in my library which I haven't read and/or didn't appreciate, including many books I got for free from various sources. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

> 172 : they are the ONLY edition available - I don't want them to be separated from the main work.

What "main work" if the NCE is the only available edition???

172> I don't think it's reasonable to doubt the motivations of other posters for buying NCEs; once you start doubting other posters' good faith on issues like that, the foundation of reasonable communication drops away.

175> What "main work" ...

The work that he wanted to buy, the one with the name on the cover.

>145 "No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehenive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide."

That is an advertisement and should be taken with a grain of salt like other advertisements. Many leading translations are not available in NCEs. NCE annotations appear to be no more thorough than those in typical trade editions. Acid-free paper is widely used in trade editions nowadays.

>149 "I agree that part of #145 sounds like a bit of advertising from the publishers."

It's totally advertising. See: "http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nce_home.htm".

>163 "I checked one user on Emma - this is the first user I picked - timepiece:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?...

Do you think they own both Emmas because they think they're identical?"

For that argument to work, it seems like you'd have to think that the 8 work duplicates timepiece owns ought to be split (because if it's absurd to own identical copies of Emma than it's absurd to own identical copies of All Together Dead.)

>172 The beauty of NCEs must be highly subjective. The main reason I own no NCEs is because of their appearance. (Secondarily, I find most literary criticism not to contribute to my understanding or enjoyment of a work.)

I notice that the CK for the NCE of Pride and Prejudice lists the Last Words as "Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them." What about those thousands upon thousands of words that come later that are essential to the NCE's existence as a separate work?

>181

You're free to change it. (It may trigger an edit war but, then, it might not.)

One if the reasons I rarely fill in last lines in CK is that I can never figure out what the last line is. In a nonfiction work with appendices, is it the last line of the last chapter, or the last line of the last appendix?

(Prefaces trip me up too.)

>171

"Most of the people with the NCEs appear to prefer to be separated from the the crowd. That should not bother anyone owning non-NCE editions; it's no different than if the NCE owners had not catalogued their books in the first place.

The only LT members that arrangement hurts are the NCE owners that do want to be lumped in with the crowd"

For clarification, could you direct me to where you found this information, or how you reached this conclusion?

Can anyone contributing here really justify not answering "YES" to any of the following sequence of questions? ...

(1) Does the LT concept of "work" apply equally to both fiction and non-fiction?

(2) Does it apply to ALL non-fiction (rather than just certain types of non-fiction)?

(3) So works of journalism, historical background, literary criticism, essays, etc. would all be considered "LT works"?

(4) Even if they are published in a bound book with an ISBN (rather than, say, in obscure magazines and journals)?

(5) If I owned a book containing 10 such non-fiction "LT works" bound together would they all still be considered to be "LT works"?

(6) Would it be correct to catalogue my book as an anthology of multiple (=10) "LT works"?

(7) Would it be correct to NOT additionally catalogue each of those internal "LT works" as well if I did not want to?

(8) If my anthology had the same title as another book containing different "LT works" - or just some, or perhaps only one, of the same "LT works", just not all of them - would it be correct to NOT combine my book with that other one?

(9) If I owned another book with exactly the same non-fictional works in it as the first one but with a copy of the fictional work Jane Eyre prepended at the front, would all those non-fictional works in the rear still be considered "LT works"?

(10) Would it be correct to catalogue my book as an anthology of multiple (=11) "LT works"?

(11) Would it be correct to NOT additionally catalogue each of those internal "LT works" as well if I did not want to?

(12) Would it be OK to additionally catalogue just some of those internal "LT works" if I felt like it?

(13) Would it still be correct to NOT combine my anthology with other books with the same title if those other books don't contain exactly the same "LT works" as mine?

(14) Are you really sure?

(15) No seriously, are you quite certain that all the non-fictional "LT works" don't simply disappear when you include them in the same binding as a fictional "LT work"?

(16) Are you absolutely positively sure of that? Because, ya know ....

>183 I just want to point out that one could answer "no" to numbers 8 and 13 if (and only if) it were determined that they were just different editions of the same anthology (in which case, the "are they radically different" rule comes into play).

>182

The first sentence of the quoted comment is a personal observation based on the vociferousness of the NCE owners posting on this thread (and elsewhere). But your query is well noted ... I cannot possibly know that they represent "most of the people with NCEs"! I will change that to "some of ..."

That should not bother anyone owning non-NCE editions; it's no different than if the NCE owners had not catalogued their books in the first place.

That part is pure common sense. If I own an NCE I am under no obligation to catalogue it on LT. If it is an NCE for Robinson Crusoe and you also own a copy of RC and would like to connect to all other LTers that own copies of RC that's all very nice ... I'm still under no obligation to catalogue mine.

If I do choose to catalogue my NCE copy of RC but in such a way that it does not connect with yours that is still my business and none of yours. This is essentially the situation that has spawned this thread. If owners of NCE copies of RC wish that their editions of that book show up only connecting to other similar catalogued NCE copies of RC that is entirely their business and none of the owners of the non-NCE copies of RC. If you don't like that conclusion then just pretend that those NCE owners had never bothered to catalogue their NCE copies of RC in the first place. You would be no better off.

I view other people telling me what and how I catalogue my books on LT as an invasion of my privacy. In effect, they are all being a bunch of busy-bodies. There is nothing that says I have to catalogue books that I actually own on LT - if I so wish, I can enter book titles with the tag line: "need to locate a decent copy of". That "wish list" book is a non-book. It is no different than a "virtual book" as entered by Os or Edwin. If I so desire, my whole LT catalogue could be one big "wish list" ... kind of like those NFL "dream teams" people put together in bars, I could use LT to catalogue my "dream library" - either to see who that connects to, or just because I feel like it and have nothing better to do.

Of course, one option for NCE owners who prefer the social connection with non-NCE editions is for them to remove the ISBN and not mention in their catalog that it's an NCE. It would, by lack of distinguishing features, be combined with the base work and not combined with the NCE.

>186

Yes, exactly ... that's what I meant by this at the end of post #171:

"The only LT members that arrangement hurts are the NCE owners that do want to be lumped in with the crowd (see post #76). If that NCE owner entered his copy of Little Women as a "virtual book" in the same manner that Os does for his LoA titles he would get all the connection data he's looking for. Is this a viable compromise for this issue?"

I have a suggestion, admittedly with little hope that it will be accepted, that I hope those with a personal interest in keeping Nortons separate might consider.

First, the more I think about separating Nortons, the less I like it. This means that the next time I'm faced with combining them (or not) I'll be in a quandary, perhaps risking destroying another combiner's careful work (I do a lot of separation, I know how much more time it takes, and I also know how frustrating it is to have to re-do one's work).

But I see the Norton separation as going against the grain of LT, AND as setting a very bad precedent. I'll remind you that the guideline examples do NOT include anything like the Norton case (no, the "dead language exception" is different, purely a personal choice on the part of Tim Spalding). This is something someone has decided on their own. Please understand that I do not consider this view as wrong in itself. It is simply a point of view--wanting to have editions separate, and giving special weight to connections with exactly the same editions, translations etc.

Again, please don't misrepresent my point by thinking I don't see the differences. Of course I do, and I agree that being able to focus on narrower commonalities would be nice.

However, this simply isn't how LT networks have come to be. They are a result of loose and flexible (but not indiscriminate) combining, and they represent the consensual reading of the guidelines not just by the people who post in this group or thread, but everyone who has ever combined (or separated) a work.

Now, Nortons are fairly common, and unfortunately they tend to be editions of classics--works that are generally present in many editions and many copies. This means that disambiguation notices for Nortons are likely to be seen by great numbers of people. To have a bad precedent is bad enough, to have it loudly "advertised" is worse.

So, here's my suggestion: instead of taking on ourselves individually the responsibility for separating hundreds of copies whose owners' opinions on the matter we cannot collect, I suggest that those with a personal interest label their Norton titles in such a way as to distinguish them from the rest, and combine only with such entries. They would attain the homogeneity of edition, AND know that they share the connection with people who regard the matter in the same way (not something we can generally say for any combined work).

of course, we here are a tiny minority not only of LT members, but also of the combiners--meaning that I expect such self-selected sets would be small, at least in the beginning. But that's how it is.

Finally, going back to my quandary, I hope I won't feel forced to ruin another's work--the very thought is highly distressing. But, of course, it's not just me. Combining is open to all, flexible, transient, correctable, changeable, which is, I believe, the best of sytems, but this also means a lot of our effort is repeatedly erased. I repeat that I understand and sympathise with the desire to access data about identical connections--and I hope some day soon LT will come up with a system that will enable those, without destroying the wider nets.

But I cannot agree to help keep works separate where I see more damage than profit in separation.

#188: LolaWalser, my NCEs are "titled" in such a way as to identify them specifically as NCE's. Gulliver's Travels (Norton Critical).

I will admit to being tempted to add a generic edition of each of my NCE editions.... if I used the connections. I don't. But I'm going to keep that idea in the back of my head for future possibilities.

#186

That's the obverse of my suggestion, and clearly arises from that one; however... I'm not comfortable being forced to decide for hundreds of people, which is what happens if you decide to take your and everybody else's Nortons out. Better, in my opinion, that those who wish to be separate include only those who actually and expressly wish so. As I said, we're here minorities within minorities, meaning the cases on either side (people labelling to separate, people labelling to combine) would likely be few.

Again--the guidelines suggest combining across editions and translations, meaning that the baseline for editions containing the main work is combination, not separation.

>184

Actually, I think that's a non-problem WRT NCEs, yue. However, let's think this issue through to its logical conclusion using my hypothetical NCE copy of RC again. For there to exist another anthology edition containing exactly the same works which is not Norton (say by Putnam) I think copyright infringement comes into play. If the NCEs had all been produced, say, at the beginning of the 20th century and were now all long out of print (and all copyrights of the internal non-ficional works expired) then some editor at Putnam could say, "You know, that old NCE series was a real doozie, we should seriously think about reissuing some of those titles again because I sense lots of pent up academic demand for those babies." Then we would have the situation where an older LTer might catalogue the 1909 NCE of RC and a younger LTer might catalogue the newly published 2009 Putnam edition of RC.

OK, two points. First, if the Putnam reissues contained exactly the same works as the original NCEs then they are the same anthology work as the NCE and should be combined with it (but I don't see anyone complaining about that because they both have nearly identical social significance ... or thickness of pages if that's your criterion!). However, if the new Putnam edition dropped just one of the essays (possibly because it was crap, or is now considered a little racist, or because the author's estate has somehow managed to extend the copyright and it is still in effect, whatever) then the Putnam is now a separate anthology work (because it contains "N-1" internal works while the original NCE contained "N" internal works) and it should be handled accordingly.

Do we or don't we combine anthologies with N and (N-1) works? Note that if you ignore counting integral works (as you are meant to do in these "do we combine or do we not?" situations) and try and handle the decision of whether the N-work NCE is as socially significant as the (N-1)-work Putnam as some of the jibber-jabbers would have you do, then you'll still be discussing this issue on an LT thread in 3009 when some editor at Viking says, "You know, those old NCE and Putnams were real corkers, we should ..."

Second, in actuality, of course, the NCEs are recent/current editions, so I don't think another publisher such as Putnam could, or would even want to, produce another "critical edition" of RC that contained exactly the same essays and criticisms, even if all those non-fiction works in the NCE are out of copyright. If it was not a copyright issue preventing Putnam it would still be as silly as an author titling his new work of fiction Don Quixote (as per post #120). If Putnam wanted to get into the "critical edition of classics" market (if it isn't already, I have no idea if it is) it would surely compile a different batch of essays and criticisms. In which case the PCEs will be different anthology works from the NCEs and should not be combined ... even if they do have a friggin' similar social significance or are equally as thick!

190:
So, if you want your work to be kept separate, perhaps make sure the title includes something like (Norton Critical Edition) and have a disambiguation notice saying not to combine with the main work?

That's exactly the way things used to be, and this thread began when someone combined a clearly marked NCE with a disambiguation notice into the base work.

>193 ROTFLMAO

> 192 We were talking about a fiction work combined with a set of non-fiction works. I didn't realize you meant their publishers were different.
Consider this purely hypothetical example: I have two different editions of say, some sort of anthology like "Treasured Horse Stories" which included non-fiction writing on, oh, the Developmental Impacts of Something-Or-Other on Children, and different editions used a different (more up-to-date?) fiction work as an example, they would probably get combined.
(This example is totally hypothetical and does not/will not exist.)
(OK, I do have an anthology called Treasured Horse Stories (For Girls?) - haven't looked at it in at least eight years or so, and it's in a box in the attic)
The point of this example is an extremely low (but greater than 0) chance that someone could answer "no" to 8 and/or 13 of message 183. However, this isn't quite that important.

>193 Sigh.

We can't possibly know what any given member wants to do regarding their NCE. At this time, I still go with separation. Those who want to be connected with the main work shouldn't list their copy as an NCE. If we get the distinction between editions, I would still say that NCEs and other critical editions should be separate because they include new information.

Also, that advertising spiel from before? Well, technically, calling a book which clearly includes more than one work (i.e., essays, other works by the author, etc.) and calling an "edition" of "Work X" is advertising as well. If I want to buy Alice in Wonderland, I am not going to look for a book called, say, "Off With Her Head! and other essays on Lewis Carroll's . . . . (more stuff) . . . Also includes the text of Alice in Wonderland with original illustrations!".

Edited for clarity.

>188: I suggest that those with a personal interest label their Norton titles in such a way as to distinguish them from the rest,

That's what the ISBN is there for.

>192

Elegantly explained.

> 186

I'm slowly being swayed by the notion that NCEs should count as separate works for LT purposes... but I'm offended by the notion that I ought to be required to enter less-than-accurate data into my catalog.

>197
Some 'splitters' have essentially concluded that, if I don't want my NCE to be separated from the main work, then I should remove any reference to NCE from the title field AND remove the ISBN from the ISBN field.

Perhaps I should propose that NCE owners who want theirs kept separate from the main work should remove any reference to the main work from the title field in their catalog AND remove the ISBN from the ISBN field.

Come on, folks. My catalog should not have to be intentionally lacking in perhaps the most important data for which it was built (titles/authors/ISBNs) so splitters can have what they want.

Here is an example of how I would typically enter the title of an NCE in my catalog if I didn't want it separated from the main work:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (in the Norton Critical Edition; bound w/Austen and Her Times; Scott, Austen, and Zombies - a Psychological Analysis)

If I wanted it separated from the main work as an NCE the title field might look like this:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Norton Critical Edition (incl. Austen and Her Times; Scott, Austen, and Zombies - a Psychological Analysis)

or, perhaps like this:

Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (incl. Austen and Her Times; Scott, Austen, and Zombies - a Psychological Analysis)

If a combiner were aware and concerned about the differences between lumpers and splitters, I would expect them to be considerate of how they treat my entry based on the title field. That's what I do - if the title field appears to indicate that the owner considers her edition as special, I'm not likely to combine it unless there has been clear guidance to do so. If the title field appears to indicate that the owner sees hers as another edition of the main work, I'm likely to combine it unless there has been clear guidance that I shouldn't. I'm sure I mess up sometimes, either by not understanding the owner's intent or by not taking time to look at the entries closely, but that's what I try to do.

Unfortunately, many combiners either won't be aware of discussions like this one, or will be aware but will be convinced that their way is the right way. For whatever reason, I often have to go back and separete and re-combine editions in my catalog because my intentions were either not understood or respected.

However, an approach such as mine (clarifying intent in the title field) is, given the limited tools currently available on LT, probably the only way it's going to work - attention to the information entered by the owner, and respect for the owners wishes when they can be discerned. But don't ask me to corrupt my data so you can have your NCE 'properly' combined!

Os.

PS - and, yes, there is a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!. I don't think it's out in an NCE edition, however.

If you think amazon.com data is sloppy, you should see the data from their German and French sites! It's faster to enter a work manually than to use them and then correct it. (and that's for the better entries.)

And people who do enter their data manually, or edit the imported data, have many idiosyncrasies. For example : some people enter cover titles where others use title pages. We can not be expected to understand all of them as referring to specific wishes about combining - many probably aren't.

Also I agree we shouldn't expect anybody to enter inaccurate or incomplete data just because of these problems.

I think, to be honest, that the vast majority of people that just enter books from Amazon and don't edit their data either way don't care if the Norton Critical Editions are combined or split. The people who care will be careful that what they enter will reflect what they want.

How about something like this for the Disambiguation Notice on the separated NCE works:

This work is the Norton Critical Edition of (whatever). It contains a significant amount of analysis and commentary that it not found in (whatever), and should not be combined with (whatever). If you would prefer that your book be combined with (whatever) instead of this Norton Critical Edition, please edit your copy of the book so that the title does not contain "Norton Critical Edition", then separate it from the other Norton Critical Editions on the Editions page.

Edited to add: I really think we need to find a way to allow people who have NCEs to decide whether they want to be split or lumped, and the only way to do that is for them to indicate in their data somehow which they want. Otherwise, one group will be dictating to the other.

Edited again to add: I am assuming that most NCE owning lumpers own their NCE by chance not by choice, and should not object too much to editing the title to reflect what they consider to be the most important aspect of the book. (I'm probably wrong.)

>198

Hmmm, I must have completely missed the Zombie theme running through P&P the couple of times that I've read it! :(

Your, and the previous poster's, point WRT people having to essentially corrupt their primary data in order to enable the manual combinations to even stand a chance of working are well taken. However, some compromises will have to be made somewhere if any kind of solution is to be found for all this mess we're discussing - that's what consensus means!

I personally have no problem at all with following the guidance of your carefully worded titles. I have entered many of my own books manually just so that I can avoid all the awful typos and bogus or erroneous data (that gets sucked in via the LT feeds from Amazon) already in place for the existing instances on LT of the book I wish to catalogue. That way, I get to record the title of the book exactly the way I want to see it and NOT the way some illiterati at amazon.com (or even the Library of Congress *SIGHS*) would force me to have it. If it was just you or I, or even just all the folk posting on this thread, that had to arrive at a "correct way of doing things" I'm sure we could hash out and arrive at an unanimous consensual solution.

However, this thread was started as a result of a prior consensus re the handling of NCEs being reneged on, most likely quite unintentionally. Since "everyone on LT is a librarian" *rolls eyes* any agreement reached by 20 odd posters here amounts to what exactly? ... we're all just spit in the wind in the grand scheme of LT combining! :( As you yourself say, "Unfortunately, many combiners either won't be aware of discussions like this one, or will be aware but will be convinced that their way is the right way." Plus as you yourself admit, you've probably screwed up too WRT honoring the intent of the original book cataloguer.

I have also found myself spending hours separating out something that I'd combined before I knew what I was doing. I felt duty-bound to "fix my own mess" yet I still resented spending the time it cost me. I would most certainly have been darned angry if I'd sacrificed a weekend of my time voluntarily cleaning up other people's mess only to see everything combined back again by the end of the week. If you and I, with our patience and high standards, are going to screw up combinations, there is no way you can expect others to get it right anywhere near as often. I think the guiding principle for combination should be KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid! As much as I agree with your suggested solution I think it violates the KISS principle.

However, you do raise one point as some kind of an accepted "combination ethic", though, which I very much want to question. Where on LT does it say that an "LT librarian" (a.k.a. any total ninny who discovers the LT combination page by accident!) has to honor the cataloguer's intent? This is something that has been stated a number of times in this thread but I don't see that as being a requirement for combination at all.

IMO, counting individual works is the only method that meets the KISS principle. One has to assume that even the newest combiner is minimally numerate and can count. If you tell him/her (via a disambiguation notice) that this book grouping contains "N works" and get Tim to post more clearly on the combination pages that works with different work counts must not be combined, I think we have a chance of achieving a viable solution. Asking a newbie combiner to determine the social significance of two entries on the combination page (where each entry contains only a title plus possibly an ISBN) is a recipe for disaster. When you are on the combination page there is absolutely no way of determining the social significance of two similar-looking book titles as represented by their individual line entries!

Which is why we are here discussing this ... cuz THAT DON'T WORK.

I really, really wish that Tim had never opened up this can of worms with his stupid Karma Sutra and classic Greek examples. Because they are both examples of DEGREE not KIND.

NCEs are different from other editions with similar titles because they have a different work count. It's that SIMPLE!

>204

"It was not put up to distinguish between editions of works."

SIGHS

But NCEs are NOT different editions of anything ... they are anthology collections with DIFFERENT WORK COUNTS. We all agree that the titles are more marketing than anything else. Even publishers that want to sell books understand the KISS principle!

> 204: There are separate possibilities for author disambiguation and work disambiguation notices. The latter are intended to distinguish between works - not editions, I grant you.

>202 rorrison
You posted "How about something like this for the Disambiguation Notice on the separated NCE works:

"...If you would prefer that your book be combined with (whatever) instead of this Norton Critical Edition, please edit your copy of the book so that the title does not contain "Norton Critical Edition"..."

This is exactly what I was pointing out as unacceptable in my post 198. I should not have to remove any reference to NCEs in my title field, since that's how I know what's in my catalog. I am, however, as I stated, perfectly willing for that reference to be in parens if I don't want it used as a basis for combing.

No, I will not remove references to NCEs from my title fields just so splitters don't have edit their title fields to indicate that they DO want theirs separated.

Os.

>198 Rule 42

You say "Where on LT does it say that an "LT librarian" (a.k.a. any total ninny who discovers the LT combination page by accident!) has to honor the cataloguer's intent?" It doesn't - that's a proposed way for combiners to behave.

However, after rejecting my approach for this reason (and, rightly, because less knowledgable combiners will not adhere to this anyway), you propose a combination 'ethic' based on the number of works contained within an edition. That an LT librarian should honor this this isn't stated anywhere on LT either. If we're going to ask Tim to include instructions, why not include instructions that a combiner consider the information provided in the title field and be considerate of that information when combining. That is as likely to work as asking them to consider how many works are contained in an edition. In fact, your proposal doesn't seem to workable to me because the number of works contained in an edition us rarely known by anyone unless they can pull the book off their shelf to count them. Not to mention the next interminable debate regarding what constitutes a 'work' contained within an edition.

I'm not trying to be obstructionist. I think we all by now should recognize that we are a very small portion of the combiners on LT, and even if we agree on an approach, it will require repeated separating and combining to maintain it because newbies and others will be unaware or simply ignore whatever we think is best.

Os.

>202 & 208

How about something like this as a work (i.e., book common knowledge) disambiguation notice:

This Norton Critical Edition is a "combination work" anthology that contains N separate works in addition to the one(s) in the main title, so please DO NOT combine it with any other common editions of the main title work(s) because these contain less than N works.

That solves the main problem for people with Group (3) type books (note: instead of just NCE other super-enhanced editions can also be treated the same way) that want them kept separated from the crowd.

Those owning Group (3) type books that want them combined with the crowd are a minority in a minority and yes something extra has to be done here such as removing the ISBN from their main book entry OR creating a "virtual book". I'll address that issue in a separate post.

>209

"... you propose a combination 'ethic' based on the number or works contained within an edition. That an LT librarian should honor this this isn't stated anywhere on LT either."

You are quite correct, Os, I cannot find text on or linked to the combination screen stating that we must keep omnibus and anthology editions containing separate works separate from their constituent works. Yet I'm sure I've read it at some point on LT, and everyone here would appear to agree to the point of consensus that you do that. Did such text used to be there and has it been removed in subsequent releases? How do I know how to handle omnibus / anthology editions? Is it just from reading posts in this group forum?

I don't think we disagree over how we handle omnibus / anthology editions ... there just isn't text stating it. Is there one of those questions in my post #183 to which you would answer "NO", Os?

"If we're going to ask Tim to include instructions, why not include instructions that a combiner consider the information provided in the title field and be considerate of that information when combining."

Well, my suggestion was to make the text that was there clearer and not to add any new concepts (because that would be anti-KISS). But since there is NO text there anyway, you are right, telling people that omnibus / anthologies are not the same as individual works would also be adding a new concept! :(

How is it that we all know how to handle multiple works when it is not even defined on the LT "Combine" information pages? Maybe that's part of the problem here?

>209

"In fact, your proposal doesn't seem to workable to me because the number of works contained in an edition us rarely known by anyone unless they can pull the book off their shelf to count them."

In fact, many combiners combine editions of books that they don't even own, so they couldn't pull the books in question off of their shelves to count the works even if they were inclined to! I don't disagree.

But you are confusing two levels of agreement here. I maintain posters on this thread will never reach consensus over some book editions being socially more significant than others or having more "critical mass" than others. If we cannot agree on differences of DEGREE then we will never be able to proceed to the next step of putting the right kind of process in place to make things better / clearer - which unfortunately is pretty much limited to disambiguation notices anyway! :(

I believe we can get a consensus on the way books containing multiple works are handled ... because there appears to be no dispute here *crosses fingers* how to handle omnibus / anthology editions. So once we have a consensus that NCEs are the same kettle of cod that we know how to handle, rather than something entirely different than anything we've seen before, we can then proceed to the next step of what to do about them. And maybe that is the stage we are at now in discussing the accuracy of those 3 fields (as per your post #198). I too had written a response to the issue raised in post #197 last night but the site went down for maintenance before I could post it, plus I felt it violated the KISS principle so I was hesitant to post it anyway. When I saw tonight that you had posted something similar to what I was going to say anyway that left only the KISS issue to address ... plus Edwin is saying the same thing.

What has emerged here is that there are 3 types of book owner:

(A) The person that catalogues his/her book (most likely by using the default Amazon data) and doesn't care much about what it combines with. Or if they do care a lot, nevertheless the system automation is still working OK from their perspective.

(B) The person that has something "different" (be it an NCE or something else) that wants it separated from the crowd (and you, Edwin and I have all jumped through hoops in the past to handle something we considered "different" by creating "virtual books").

(C) The person that has something "different" which, nevertheless, they still want combined with the crowd (such as stevil2001).

In essence, the type (A) owner defines the crowd. In order to handle the type (B) owner and keep them separate by whatever means we can (and I think we can do it) that same process will also separate the type (C) owner from the crowd against his/her wishes. There is no straightforward solution here. In order to be able to add type (C) owners back in with the crowd you have to be able to divine a type (C) versus type (B) owner's intent. It appears the only way to do that is to define rules for how the affected owners fill in fields such as the Title, Author or ISBN fields Os identified in post #198. Or is it? Perhaps there is another way?

If we have reached the point where we no longer need to have further "lumper" versus "splitter" wars over why Group (3) type books should EVER be separated, and have indeed now reached a point where the "status quo" has been restored and it is agreed that it is entirely reasonable for some Group (3) type book owners to be granted exclusion from the crowd, then all that remains is to find a KISS solution to handle that! :)

If the "Title/Author/ISBN" fields are indeed the only tool in our tool chest for divining owner intent but no one is willing to compromise on the use of those fields there can, ergo, be no solution to this problem. The ideal solution would require only the people who care enough - viz. the type (B) owners - to make all the compromises necessary (as per post #198 and post #202). However, I have a sneaky suspicion it might only be achievable if the type (C) owners make the compromises, or possibly it would require the type (C) owners as well as the type (B) owners to make some compromises (since these are the two groups for which owner intent has to be divined).

If we can come up with a solution that confines all data entry compromises to just type (B) users is that a fair solution and will that still fly? If not, it is a waste of time to even bother trying to think of a solution.

> 205

" . . . any total ninny who discovers the LT combination page by accident!" " . . .even the dumbest combiner is minimally numerate and can count to, say, 20." ". . .our newbie numbskull combiner . . ." These judgements are unwarranted and condescending.

Click Help/Facts and look under Your Books to see what is recommended to new members. It appears to me that people are encouraged to enter into this type of LT activity. And they should be. How else are you going to increase the pool of combiners?

Everyone is a newbie at some point. I am certainly the newest in this thread. I make (and am still making) many mistakes. I try to correct them as best I can. I read the guidelines, the wikis, the threads -- much of the advice does not make sense until I've attempted a new procedure. Often I am directed to a thread for advice. I find what I think is the accepted solution, I apply it -- then I discover a new thread negating every thing I just did -- then I correct it. . . (I salute those of you who have done this thousands of times!)

That anyone can edit this material gives great power and great responsibility to those who have volunteered their time and energies to keep LT a site that can grow and thrive. Combines and separations are going to happen. If you make too many of these rules, regulations, guidelines, warnings, disambiguations -- whatever you call them -- they are only going to happen more.

Scenerio: I follow the basic instructions given in the initial tour. I enter my universal title - Alice in Wonderland, and get this:

Disambiguation Notice
Please do not combine "Alicia in Terra Mirabili" and "Aliciae Per Speculum Transitus" with the modern-language versions of these books. They fall under the dead language exception to the usual combining of different translations. Thanks! 
Please exercise extreme caution in merging pop-up books with the main work: in most cases, they should not be combined.
Please do not combine The Annotated Alice with any of the "normal" Alice editions, nor the Annotated Snark with the Hunting of the Snark.
Please also do not combine with The Annotated Alice with The Annotated Alice : The Definitive Edition as the latter contains both The Annotated Alice, More Annotated Alice, and additional material. Thanks! 
However, many of us are just fine with combining the annotated versions with the regular versions, as annotations do not change the work itself, any more than an extensive introduction, preface, illustrations, or other material. And we want our copies to show up with other editions, even if they do contain annotations. So, combine away. Thanks!

There MUST be a better solution!

>213 Haha! Your fake disambiguation notice is hysterical and totally sums up the competing view points.

. . . at least, I hope it's a fake disambiguation notice (cringes at the thought it could be a real one) . . .

>214

It's real

>215

I am speechless. I am now going to go cry myself to sleep.

213> I've fixed at least part of the disambiguation notice for Alice in Wonderland; socially speaking, a children's book isn't the same after you've added twice the text in annotations.

>217
You realize, of course, that someone not privy to this thread will run across a disambiguation notice for the NCE of Pride and Prejudice instructing the combiner NOT to combine these with 'normal' editions and will then do exactly what you did for Alice - they will 'fix' the disambiguation notice because they assume that an edition with critical essays is the same as an annotated edition which is the same as a 'normal' edition. The person who wrote that admittedly over-the-top notice obviously sees annotated edtions the same way many on this thread see NCEs - containing enough additional information to make them a 'work' in their own right. Or, perhaps, they just don't like having their annotated edition combined with 'normal' editions.

Os.

>213

I entirely agree with what you say, Joonie, but those comments were not aimed at anyone in particular. However, since you have identified yourself with the generic newbie and taken offence I'm only too happy to go back and change them. WRT the comment of only being able to count up to 20 I actually threw that in to emphasis the point about any solution having to be KISS (which, based on the rest of your post, makes us 120% in agreement). But I agree that 3 such references in the same paragraph is probably a case of my gilding the lily. Also, before you do, please don't get on my case about the last "S" in the acronym KISS ... honestly, I really wasn't part of the acronym committee that came up with that one! It pre-dates me by many years. So I'm afraid you'll just to live with that one or take on Merriam-Webster. :(

FYI, that particular post (at least the end of it) was written very quickly earlier this evening in a midst of a bout of relatively frenzied posting and counter-posting (if you look the posts are only 3 and 4 minutes apart). Just be grateful it's grammatically correct and has no spelling errors like so many posts contain. When people are posting that quickly they don't have the leisure to keep scanning and editing their posts over and over again to get the tone exactly correct. Many feel that also justifies horrendous typos too. I personally don't, because those can be relatively easily fixed by someone that cares. Please bear that in mind when being judgmental of others (because, in effect, that is what you are accusing me of being). I'm not trying to be defensive here ... just explaining how shit happens. There's always another side to every story; not everyone is evil. And you can't keep everyone happy all the time; for instance, someone is bound to take offence to my use of the 'S' word there (but I put it there deliberately so that I could make this point).

"There MUST be a better solution!"

I couldn't agree more. There has to be more tools in the combiners armory than just disambiguation notices, and I believe they were only added relatively recently ... there were no tools prior to those. BTW, I am not a power combiner either. I too am a relative newbie at it which is how I found this thread (while looking for some answers). I think I earned my silver thingymajig mostly by undoing my own combination mess. IMO there badly needs to be an "undo last combine" function that a combiner can use in those "Oh shit, I really shouldn't have done that" moments! It would have saved me half a day or more's work.

Personally, I would rather have seen Tim put his development resources into providing that kind of capability rather than helper badges which are just distractions and icing on a somewhat flawed cake. Any kind of improvement on the current combine/separate functionality by Tim to make it more user friendly and foolproof than it currently is would be a nice gesture by Tim to show that he appreciates all the gratis time and effort that the core combiners (but especially the core separators) put into making his site data better. For instance, adding an "I want my copy separated from the crowd" field to book data would help us out big time right now! The implementation of helper badges were, in effect, his way of doing that too (and they rewarded a lot more areas of member effort than just combining) ... but to be quite honest, I would rather have my six hours of "separation time" back rather than a little silver thingymajig on my profile!

WRT to your quoted "Disambiguation Notice" (DN) for the Alice editions, yes it indeed does appear to be long and wordy but every point it makes IS valid. It would have been much easier for the reader to follow if you could put bullets into the notices, but you can't. That's also a relatively trivial feature that Tim could add to make the thankless combination / separation task a little easier (and its results more productively successful). By that I mean, the result of reading that DN is probably to immediately freeze, and then after your brain stops hurting, to shrug your shoulders and say "sod it" and combine and hope for the best anyway. Or to back off and cancel what you were trying to do and leave it to someone else to sort out! Either way the DN has failed ... it's meant to help you make the right combination decision NOT take pot luck or give up the ghost. The person reading that DN got to that point of almost combining for a reason ... and now they fall at the last hurdle. Also, after that experience, they will probably never try and combine anything else ever again. That's not the desired outcome.

>211 Rule42

I don't think we disagree over how we handle omnibus / anthology editions ... there just isn't text stating it. Is there one of those questions in my post #183 to which you would answer "NO", Os?

First, your last question. I didn't respond to your 183 originally, because I figured it would only muddy things if I did. The truth is, I can say 'YES" to your point (8) and (13), but I can also say 'NO' (that it would also be okay to combine them, if you wanted to). That's why I keep referring back to owner's intent as well as it can be read in the title field. It's not really consensus on whether this anthology should be combined or not, it's on whether or not owner's preferences should (and can) be considered. My answer to your (8) and (13) is due to the fact that I don't handle anthologies the way you state is a consensus on anthologys/omnibuses. I enter the anthology/omnibus this way only becauase it seems to satisfy the splitter who otherwise wouldn't let me put my copy of Huclkeberry Finn with everyone else's copy simply because a publisher decided to bind it with a copy of Tom Sawyer. If I enter the omnibus, then when I enter each work as a 'virtual' book, they are more likely to be left combined with the individual works (as long as I put the info in parens in the title field as I've championed in my earlier posts).

Os.

PS - in the 18th and most of the 19th century, a customer would buy a work or works from the publisher via a bookseller, and then arrange for the binding. The owner had the option of binding each work as a 2 or 3 volume work as originally published, combining the volumes of a work into one book, or combining two or more works into one book. But that did not change what the works were that he bought. The work precedes the book, so I resent to some extent the term 'virtual' for my copy of Huckleberry Finn. I know what you mean by the term; I just think it's not as accurately descriptive as I'd like. It's an 'author-based' work rather than a 'book-based' work.

Many older books in my collection examples of the 17th/18th century books I described, and it really makes no sense to treat the book as if it were an omnibus work (only) simply because the original buyer wanted to save a little on binding by putting several of the shorter works between the same covers. I suspect this is the motivation for many modern publishers as well.

>212 Rule42

The ideal solution would require only the people who care enough - viz. the type (B) owners - to make all the compromises necessary (as per post #198 and post #202). However, I have a sneaky suspicion it might only be achievable if the type (C) owners make the compromises, or possibly it would require the type (C) owners as well as the type (B) owners to make some compromises (since these are the two groups for which owner intent has to be divined).

I just don't see the compromise your talking about. If the (B) and (C) owners simply indicate how they see their copy of the NCE of Pride and Prejudice in the title field (I provide examples in my #198), then the NCE owners who only want to make social connections with other NCE owners will get what they want while the NCE owners who want connections with folks who read Austen's book, regardless of the critical material they may or may not have read, get what they want. It's not an all or nothing proposition, except for the fact that some combiners will be unaware of any agreement to follow the owner's wishes (I'm being charitable - some will intentionally ignore them) and combine/separate as they think best, or they combine all common ISBNs regardless of other information at hand, and we'll all be fixing such entries from now one. But that's true if even we all agree on universally combining NCEs or separating NCEs because we are a very small minority in a world of combiners out there roaming the 'stacks'.

I'm okay with the splitter position. I tend towards the lumpers position. But I don't see that it's been established that it's one or the other. If we simply express our preferences in the title field, and then pay attention to what is expressed there, splitters will get the connections they want (most of the time) while lumpers will get the connections they want (most of the time). Or am I missing some fine point?

Os.

>218

"... they will 'fix' the disambiguation notice because they assume that an edition with critical essays is the same as an annotated edition which is the same as a 'normal' edition."

LMAO. Quite so, Os. Even the one tool we have in our tool chest isn't really much of a tool is it?

BTW, I believe you are wrong about that DN author's take on "annotated editions"! The "Annotated Alice" he refers to are works that should be attributed to Martin Gardner NOT Lewis Carroll. There are 3 editions of just the Alice books. I have the first and third. Those happen to be two of a number of other books I had in mind as being additional Group (2)(3) books that should NOT be combined - IMO that DN is correct. I will explain why in a separate post if you wish me to; it will be grist for the mill of this thread's topic anyway. What I wanted to say here is that the problem with combination is that even people that are extremely knowledgeable and well read in some areas of literature can be quite ignorant in others. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. For instance, the comment "a children's book isn't the same after you've added twice the text in annotations" in post #217 isn't exactly correct either.

Amongst other things, the Alice books are actually satires of the state of mathematical logic at the end of the nineteenth century. Just as Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" is as much an outcry against social injustice as about a trip down the Mississippi. The beauty of all three works is that they can also be read as children's stories and by children. Great literature will always appeal on many levels. The annotations by Martin Gardner mostly address the first level of readership as well as explaining the true meaning of some of Carroll's nineteenth century British language which has lost it's meaning during the twentieth century (and was probably never even appreciated by Americans that bought the book at that time). The rule in combining should always be, "if you don't know what the issue is, or aren't even quite sure, don't do it." Most of the invalid combinations are probably cases of very passionate and knowledgeable people (in other areas) combining stuff they think they understand but don't really. Life is very gray and richly complex but unfortunately many see it as B&W.

221> It seems to me that the lumpers want their copies to be combined with all other copies of the same work, NCE or otherwise and regardless of the owners intent. So I don't think there is a way to satisfy everyone, or even most, people.

221> and if B type owners add (NCE work) at the end of their titles?

That work could then get a disambiguation notice like: The NCE has a large proportion of extra material, and the people who have (NCE Work) at the end of their title prefer to keep this edition separate. Please do not combine with other editions.

As far as I can see, intent shouldn't matter. If I want my copy of Jurassic Park to be combined with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, any combiner would be insane to give into my whim.

Cataloguers catalogue their books in the way that is most accurate and useful for their purposes. Sometimes this means putting the editor or ilustrator as the main author; sometimes not. Sometimes this means putting the full title; sometimes this means putting an abbreviated title; sometimes this means the title plus extra information. This is the starting place; the trick is figuring out which of those entries actually refer to the same work, not trying to divine the cataloguer's psychology.

> 225 : the trick is figuring out which of those entries actually refer to the same work, not trying to divine the cataloguer's psychology.

Amen to that! Fresh out of crystal balls here...

218> For one, arguments don't belong in disambiguation notices. Works can either be combined or not combined, and disagreements need to be brought here.

For another, you reversed the change I made. There's no social connection between people who own a copy of Alice and people who own a huge annotated version and somehow have failed to pick up the original.

> 227: There are - or rather should be - many types of interesting social connections in "Alice". I would, for example, love to be able to connect to people who, like me, have several different editions - indicating a serious interest instead of a desire to read it to the kids.

But I agree, if "relations" came about I wouldn't hesitate to somehow link the Annotated Alice's - but also the adaptations and abridgments - to the "normal" editions. But as it is, I think it's better to keep them separated.

question regarding regular editions, abridgments, & annotated/NCE editions...

if abridgments & adaptations are supposed to be kept separate from full length editions because they have material removed or adapted & changed...

why wouldn't annotations & NCE-type editions also be kept separate from full length editions since they have material added &/or explained?

the social reasons for keeping abridgments & adaptations separate seem to be the same reasons for keeping annotated & NCE-type editions separate?

>229
I'll give this a shot:

Abridgements and adaptations remove some of the author's original material from the main work. Editions with prefaces, critical essays etc. do not. I actually would be okay with distinguishing between "lightly abridged" editions (leaving them with the original work) and "heavily abridged" editions (my daughter's Alice board book probably doesn't need to make social connections with owners of the original work), but that's almost impossible (unless the owner includes such information in the title field for combiners to consider).

For an NCE owner who sees them as a new work from the original/main work, there is no difference. Combining the NCE with the bare mane work is as if material was removed from their work to create the main work. But for NCE owners who don't see them as a new work, but simple an extreme example of publishers extra material, the reasons for separating abridgements and not NCEs is apparent.

Os.

>225
Alixtii: As far as I can see, intent shouldn't matter. If I want my copy of Jurassic Park to be combined with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, any combiner would be insane to give into my whim.
Cataloguers catalogue their books in the way that is most accurate and useful for their purposes. Sometimes this means putting the editor or ilustrator as the main author; sometimes not. Sometimes this means putting the full title; sometimes this means putting an abbreviated title; sometimes this means the title plus extra information. This is the starting place; the trick is figuring out which of those entries actually refer to the same work, not trying to divine the cataloguer's psychology.

You talk about what cataloguers do as if that's the rule for combiners - facts not in evidence. Only I catalog my books. We are talking about combining and separating groups of books that have been catalogued. Combining's primary purpose is social connections (at least for many of us), and intent does matter - Many NCE owners want social connections with only other NCE owners because (at least partly) of their intent in buying/reading the book in the first place. Others want social connections with owners of the main work because (at least partly) of their intent in buying/reading the book in the first place. If no intent is apparent, the combiner is off the hook. But if intent is expressed, why shouldn't it be observed (for that owner of that book). If it's not, they'll just separate and recombine after you're done anyway because they are trying to get some kind of social connection out of LT that means something to them.

Os.

>227
prosfilaes: For another, you reversed the change I made. There's no social connection between people who own a copy of Alice and people who own a huge annotated version and somehow have failed to pick up the original.

Sorry, but I often buy annotated versions only, since they contain the entire original work (no, I did not "fail to pick up the original") and want to be connected with folks who have the original work, just as I do. If they happen to have annotations, fine, but why should I lose connections with the world of Alice on LT because someone thinks annotations make it a new 'work'?

Again, I lean towards broader connections and less towards separating into small specialty groups. Now that's just me, but posting a disambiguation notice that codifies one view is off-base. That's why I simplified the disambiguation statement so it noted that Alice in Wonderland is a separate work from Alice Through the Looking Glass and they are both different from abridged or adapted works, but without the sweeping statement that annotated editions are separate from all others.

Os.

>228
BarkingMatt: But I agree, if "relations" came about I wouldn't hesitate to somehow link the Annotated Alice's - but also the adaptations and abridgments - to the "normal" editions. But as it is, I think it's better to keep them separated.

I'm not sure what you mean by "If relations came about". I've had many exchanges with LTers who have the standard work for which I have the annotated work, or a different translation, or different illustrations, and some of these exchanges are driven by interest in these differences between editions of the same work. If you're suggesting that relations/connections/conversations don't come about when annotated editions are in the mix with standard editions, I have to strongly disagree. They probably also come about with abridged editions in the mix, but, having no strong opinion one way or the other for 'lightly abridged' works; I've simply observed that the abridgement separation practice was well established before I ever started combining, so I've gone with the flow.

Os.

230> A lot of times, we can tell; a lot of the editions of Don Quixote that were separated out recently were still massive editions of 400 or 500 pages.

It's certainly a rule I don't worry about the fine details much. For most of Jules Verne's works, we could remove a bunch of mildly abridged works pretty easily; just separate out all the books in English. (I don't know about modern scholarly translations, but the bibliography I read in the 1970s had no complete translations for most of his works ... and many of the copies being sold today are lousy ancient public domain translations.)

233>
You have connections with the world of Alice, just not the book; but socially, people who only buy annotated editions are not part of the main social group of a short book of whimsy targeted at children. Your desire to attack this book from a scholarly perspective is a huge social difference.

And frankly, I get tired of this need to join in massive works. There is little to no social connectivity based on a book with 5000 owners. Combining is wrong by LT rules; the recommendations, for one, are stunningly different for The Annotated Alice, and being part of that group connects you much more strongly to people who read like you.

236> I think we should combine "Death in Venice and other stories" with Kafka's "Collected Stories", since that will connect to so many more people!

> 234 : "Relations" is a feature that was promised but hasn't materialized yet. It's supposed to become a way through which we could make (and clarify) relations between works on LT - for example, allowing us to mark The Return of the King as "contained in" The Lord of the Rings.

I think this feature might solve many of the problems we are facing here.

>218 Rule42

I believe you are wrong about that DN author's take on "annotated editions"! The "Annotated Alice" he refers to are works that should be attributed to Martin Gardner NOT Lewis Carroll.

I have the following, rendered exactly as it appears on the title page (and pretty muich as it appears on the spine): "The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll; Illustrated by John Tenniel; With an Introduction and Notes by Martin Gardner". I don't see where your statement comes from that the "Annotated Alice" refers to works that should be attributed to Martin Gardner, when Gardner himself attributed them to Lewis Carroll. I know he was being humble when he referred to his extensive annotations as "Notes", but this is Carroll's works with an introduction and margin notes by Gardner, confirmed by Gardner's own 'by-line'. I bought mine because I wanted to be able to enjoy reading the Alice books (by Carroll) and figured having Gardner's notes would contribute to that enjoyment. But it's still Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Yes, I know about much of the sub-text of Carroll's works, so this annotated edition of Carroll's works may be much richer than most annotated editions of other works, but, as a general rule, I don't see that annotations make it a new work. Perhaps I could be persuaded in this one instance, but that would create an exception that would be hard to limit to this case.

Yes, I know some owners of the "Annotated Alice" want it to be separated so they only connect with owners of the Annotated version, but this raises exactly the issues that the NCEs raise, and we've not reached a concensus on that either. Perhaps if someone enters their annotated edition with Gardner as the author, we should assume they wish to be combined with folks who see the book the way you do, and if they enter it with Carroll as the author, they should be combined with folks who see the book as I do. That's what I've been preaching regarding 'owner's intent.'

Sorry if this post sounds a little strident, but I'm starting to repeat myself AND I'm late to work, so I'm writing fast a furious (not meaning to be furious at all).

Os.

> 241: "whatshisname" of course ;-)

233>
...but socially, people who only buy annotated editions are not part of the main social group of a short book of whimsy targeted at children. Your desire to attack this book from a scholarly perspective is a huge social difference.

You seem to have ignored what I wrote and simply provided an opinion about 'a short book of whimsy targeted at children'. As I said, if I pick up an annotated edition, fine, but "attacking a book from a scholarly persepective" was not even hinted at in my post.

Combining is wrong by LT rules; the recommendations, for one, are stunningly different for The Annotated Alice, and being part of that group connects you much more strongly to people who read like you.

Sorry, but I missed those rules. Can you point me to them? You must not be talking about the rules that say "Edition or language differences with a significant social difference. This concept is up for debate, but I have two examples:", since the concept is up for debate, and the two examples have no relationship with annotated editions.

Os.

243> So you buy an annotated edition so you can enjoy a pleasant read of a book with your children? Why?

Why wouldn't I be talking about "Edition or language differences with a significant social difference"? That is, after all, the rule that Tim Spalding goes back to time and time again, and the one most strongly implicated by this situation.

I don't get it; there's a lot I can talk about with someone who owns GURPS Camelot, which I don't own, far more than most people who also own Alice in Wonderland. Why is it so critical that we add to these huge multi-collections without discrimination?

I haven't gotten into this thread much, because I have no opinion about the NCEs: I never have and probably never will buy one. However, now that you've brought up the Annotated Alice -- that's a book that I have borrowed from a friend in the past, and hugely enjoyed. If I ever bought my own copy it would be for the annotations, and I would strongly prefer that it be combined only with other copies of the Annotated Alice. The reason for the existence of that book is the annotations, otherwise it would just be another edition of Alice.

There's one other "annotated" book that I care about: the Special Edition of A Fire Upon the Deep. And once again, the reason for the existence of that edition is the annotations -- without them it would be just another edition of A Fire Upon the Deep. Some may get the book and just enjoy the story, and that's fine, but it's a significantly distinct subset that would want the annotated version.

My personal opinion is that if in your mind your NCE or annotated book is essentially the same as the base work, and you want it to be treated like, and to make social connections with, the base work, then you should just catalog it as the base work. Perhaps put in a tag or private comment that it's annotated or whatever, but if you want the rest of the LibraryThing site and users to act is if it's the base work, then you should make the concession to catalog it that way.

And a small reply to an old message, #211: You are quite correct, Os, I cannot find text on or linked to the combination screen stating that we must keep omnibus and anthology editions containing separate works separate from their constituent works.
The "part/whole" rule on the concepts page clearly (to me, at least) applies to the consituent works of omnibus editions and anthologies.

>232: Combining's primary purpose is social connections (at least for many of us), and intent does matter - Many NCE owners want social connections with only other NCE owners because (at least partly) of their intent in buying/reading the book in the first place.

I, as a NCE owner, "want social connections with owners of the main work because (at least partly) of their intent in buying/reading the book in the first place." I'm already on record saying that. For that matter, I'd like connections with owners of The Two Towers since I own Lord of the Rings. But in both cases, they're separate works, and it'd be insane to combine them just because I or other users "want" something.

We have an obligation to reflect reality here, not just make random users happy. Because while it might please those specific users, degrading the quality of data overall hurts everybody.

Until part/whole functionality comes out, I'm willing to take one for the team and give up those extra connections.

#246: please do not take offense, but you commented: "...degrading the quality of data overall hurts everybody."

I'm sorry, but I just do not understand that comment & it has been said by others, too... and I don't see it or understand how data is degraded by separating out NCEs or other books with greater or lesser data than the main work.

Which data? The main work, or the annotated & commented work? (not just NCEs) or the data of the abridged & adapted work?

Do you mean the social data or the work data?

(keeping my question short since I am tired of all of the overly long posts)

>247: and I don't see it or understand how data is degraded by separating out NCEs or other books with greater or lesser data than the main work.

It doesn't. (How's that for a simple answer?)

But combining them does. If two works are different works, then combining them for the sake of connections is deliberately putting bad (in the sense of "false") data into the database. NCE-LW isn't Little Women, just as LotR isn't RotK.

Yes, we have to take into account social connections somewhat in our account of what a "work" is. But if our definition of "work" completely ignores the contents (some 300+ pages!) of a book in favor of "social connections" and guesses, even informed guesses, about cataloguers' psychology, then that's just not, ahem, workable.

>244 prosfilaes: So you buy an annotated edition so you can enjoy a pleasant read of a book with your children? Why?

Yes. Because they enjoy hearing what some of the funny words in Jabberwocky mean. Because I can answer some of their questions (there are always questions) if I'm a little more familiar with the work than they are. Oh, and I read it for myself as well.

Why wouldn't I be talking about "Edition or language differences with a significant social difference"? That is, after all, the rule that Tim Spalding goes back to time and time again, and the one most strongly implicated by this situation.

I think we are. My take on the first half of this thread was that about half the posts felt that NCEs did not meet the test and about half did. That's why I have been pressing for a solution that can achieve both as far a social connections are concerned. If an NCE (with stand-alone, distinct works of significant size relative to the original/main work) is debatable, why is an edition with a 'normal' length introduction and annotations which could never stand alone be so clearly a separate work and I'm apparently nuts for suggesting otherwise? I'm open to the concept of it as separate; I'm just surprised that being open to the concept of it as not separate is seen as simply nuts.

I don't get it; there's a lot I can talk about with someone who owns GURPS Camelot, which I don't own, far more than most people who also own Alice in Wonderland. Why is it so critical that we add to these huge multi-collections without discrimination?

I don't even get the connection in your first sentence, so I'll only respond to the second. I couldn't care less about huge or small, just connections with people who own the same 'works' that I own, not just the same editions. And the Annotated Alice contains nothing that I can identify that can stand alone that isn't contained in most editions of Alice.

Os.

edited for clarity (and to avoid embarassing typos)

> 245 rorrison: My personal opinion is that if in your mind your NCE or annotated book is essentially the same as the base work, and you want it to be treated like, and to make social connections with, the base work, then you should just catalog it as the base work.

Exactly what I've been proposing all along - I put in parens in the title field clear evidence as to how I'd like it treated. Cannery Row (bound w/Sweet Thursday) by John Steinbeck AND Sweet Thursday (bound w/Cannery Row) by John Steinbeck -rather than- Two Steinbeck Novels: Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck.

And a small reply to an old message, #211: You are quite correct, Os, I cannot find text on or linked to the combination screen stating that we must keep omnibus and anthology editions containing separate works separate from their constituent works.
The "part/whole" rule on the concepts page clearly (to me, at least) applies to the consituent works of omnibus editions and anthologies

I find the LotR example pretty clear. The Fellowship of the Ring stands alone nicely, but also can be considered (and is often bound as) part of LotR. Plus, JRRT wrote them that way. Martin Gardner's annotations cannot stand alone and, in fact, are pointless except as notes to the Alice books. That's why I don't see this as a "part/whole" issue at all. You're right - it is just another edition of the Alice books. I agree that this edition exists because of the annotations. My edition of The Wind in the Willows exists because of the newly commissioned illustrations. Otherwise, it would be just another edition of TWITW and, by your argument, should be considered a separate work? But we don't do that just because someone came up with some new material to justify a new edition. We combine editions even when they do not share the same illustrations, introductions, footnotes, prefaces, etc.

Os.

248> Alixtii
But combining them does. If two works are different works, then combining them for the sake of connections is deliberately putting bad (in the sense of "false") data into the database. NCE-LW isn't Little Women, just as LotR isn't RotK.

No one is proposing combining two works. They are simply at odds about where the line is between a new/different edition and a new/different work. But I think everyone has suggested at some point in this thread that we "combine for the sake of connections", since it's for connections that combining was created in the first place.
And certainly no one is suggesting that we deliberately put bad (false) data into the database for the sake of connections (though it has been suggested that lumpers leave out the ISBN and the NCE indication). I think folks are simply suggesting that we catalog with good data and then there are two valid ways (both connection related) for combining based on that data.

Whichever way, the data remains the same - it's the connections that are enhanced/degraded depending on your point of view of the combining that was done.

Os.

I don't have much more to say here. Though in many guises, we've been debating where along a continuum a 'new' work appears, and we all have different comfort levels. I've expressed it about as many ways as I can; I can see both points of view regarding the NCEs, and can agree with both (I have a lot more trouble with annotated editions, though). I've proposed an approach to data entry that preserves the integrity of the individual's catalog while providing some guidance to the combiner. I've suggested that the connections with other Cannery Row owners isn't much use if you're primarily interested in owners of an NCE edition and its special contents, while connections with only NCE owners is limiting if you're primarily interested in folks who have read (or are going to read) the novel itself.

Then, somehow, the annotated editions got into the mix. Clearly, they do not meet the criteria spelled out so carefully by Rule42 in #183 for identifying a new work (which I indicated earlier I can agree with but just as easily disagree with, again, depending on the definition of a new work). But, the annotated edition comments brought back the question, never really answered, of where on the continuum is the line between the original work and a new work?

So, I'll leave this discussion (and decision?) to others by asking you to consider where the line belongs in the hypothetical (and anal retentive) collection of Alice books that are in my library (keep in mind that the title of all of these books starts with "The Alice Books by Lewis Carroll..."):

1. Alice by Lewis Carroll

2. Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel

3. Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner

4. Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner, footnotes

5. Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner, footnotes, and margin notes by Martin Gardner

6. Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner, footnotes, a brief biography of Lewis Carroll

7. Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner, footnotes, a brief biography of Lewis Carroll, and "The chess game Explained".

8. Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner, footnotes, a brief biography of Lewis Carroll, "The chess game Explained", and an essay (over 100pp) on the impact of Alice on economic theory

9. The NCE Edition of Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner, footnotes, a brief biography of Lewis Carroll, the chess game explained, and critical essays (over 150pages), including "On the impact of Alice on economic theory".

Where is the line?

Os.
(my children need me and I have to start earning a living again)

252> Note that in real life, the book annotated by Martin Gardner is the Annotated Alice, which is clearly different.

Furthermore, any such "where is the line" is pointless; there is not, and cannot be, a bright line separation here.

249> I think what you're missing is that someone with an NCE may not want a connection to my non-NCE edition, but I may want a connection to them. At it's most fundamental, work combination is not about the connections that an individual wants; they are a social construct that transcends the individual.

>253
I think the point in 252 was that, once "Alice" becomes "The Annotated Alice" (Os's example 5), it's still "Alice by Lewis Carroll, w/illus by Tenniel, intro by Martin Gardner, footnotes, and margin notes by Martin Gardner". A different title doesn't make the content 'special' (I think I saw that discussed in an earlier post).

255> What was said was "keep in mind that the title of all of these books starts with "The Alice Books by Lewis Carroll..."

I don't believe that a different title doesn't matter. Titles shape how we view things; if these NCEs didn't call themselves by the name of the major included text, we probably wouldn't be having this argument. A work labeled Alice in Wonderland is more likely to be bought and thought of as a copy of Alice in Wonderland then a work labeled The Annotated Alice.

>225

"As far as I can see, intent shouldn't matter. If I want my copy of Jurassic Park to be combined with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, any combiner would be insane to give into my whim."

LMAO here ... I would love to see the disambiguation notice for that one! :)

Actually, your suggestion, if slightly modified, is nowhere near so ridiculous. If instead of that Sherlock Holmes tome you had chosen ACD's The Lost World instead, then if I put my "lumper" hat on there are very good arguments for combining that title with the Michael Crichton updated version of that novel. Just as there are very good arguments for combining the theatrical work West Side Story with the earlier Romeo and Juliet. In both cases they are the same story, just enhanced / modernized a little. Also, IMO Jurassic Park and The Lost World have almost identical social significance! Isn't that the criterion people keep arguing to use for combination? Or, at least, the inverse of it? - viz. works that are NOT socially significantly different enough should NOT be separated.

Thus if I owned and catalogued both The Lost World and Jurassic Park in my LT library and then made a point of combining them and adding a DN requesting that they not be separated because the latter was just a modern updated edition of the former, but both had essentially the same storyline - and I did this because I wanted to connect to other LTers that liked stories about prehistoric dinosaurs discovered trapped on South American plateaus in modern times - I don't think you could argue that they be separated back out based on social significance. Because they contain almost identical social significance.

Of course, "lumpers" like Os will argue that they should be separated, not because they are significantly socially different, but because they each contain different words. But then so do the NCEs and the core works they are critical editions of ... about 300 pages or more of very different words. So too, do the first and second editions of the "Annotated Alice" books (see my later post for further discussion of this topic there). Ah, but in the case of my two combined books, Os would argue, they are written by completely different authors. Well duh, so are the NCEs ... the authors contributing all those different words in critical essays attached to the Robinson Crusoe NCE are very different people from Daniel Defoe. In the case of the first and second editions of the "Annotated Alice" books that argument carries more weight (both are by Martin Gardner), but it doesn't WRT the Gardner annotated editions themselves versus vanilla editions of the core Alice works.

>232

"If it's not, they'll just separate and recombine after you're done anyway because they are trying to get some kind of social connection out of LT that means something to them."

They may go through the process of separation and recombination once or twice, but after that they will probably just abandon the site. I know I would. Life is too short to keep on fixing the social connections of my books; I'd rather be reading them. Once everyone else has abandoned this site who are the "lumpers" then going to establish their social connections with? I predict that if the "lumpers" get their way and LT is still around in 3 or 4 years from now the only members left on it will all be "lumpers" happily connected to one humungus book.

Both Os and I most definitely agree that combiners should not dictate to how or what we individually catalogue on this site. But Os would solve that issue by having combiners divine intent. Unfortunately, my local Staples is right out of crystal balls, critical mass scales, and social significance tape measures because there has been a big run on them lately.

Personally, I would like to see some clear objective definitions in place (on a wiki page blog or some other kind of combiner page help screen) for what a "work" actually is and how it should be handled; what an "edition" actually is and how different types of editions should be handled, what a "multiple work" actually is and how anthologies, omnibuses, critical editions and heavily annotated works should be handled, and so on. Although all these basic concepts (which are critical to this discussion) appear on the surface to be fairly clear, in reality when you start applying them, they all disappear into a cloud of subjective murkiness too. Even the term "material not being able to stand alone" is now unclear to me (see post #134), although I thought it was intuitively clear when I first read it on the combiner wiki page.

>254

"I think what you're missing is that someone with an NCE may not want a connection to my non-NCE edition, but I may want a connection to them. At it's most fundamental, work combination is not about the connections that an individual wants; they are a social construct that transcends the individual."

Who are you channeling tonight, jj ... Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels?

>234

"I've simply observed that the abridgement separation practice was well established before I ever started combining, so I've gone with the flow."

Yet you appear pretty damn determined to ensure that an "enhanced work" practice (as quite rationally justified in post #229) doesn't get off the ground. That's quite a double standard. If you can go with the flow on abridgements, why not allow yourself to go with the flow on "enhanced works"?

>230

"I actually would be okay with distinguishing between "lightly abridged" editions (snip) and "heavily abridged" editions"

Oh wow, thanks for putting that new piece of string on the table, Os! Let's see now ... Rule42 gathers up all the loose threads of this discussion and examines them ... Hmmm, so far we have:

- more social significance versus less social significance
- cataloguer actual intent versus cataloguer divined intent
- lightly abridged versus heavily abridged
- less pages (or essays) versus more pages (or essays) versus just the right number of pages (or essays)

>256

"Alice lumped with children's books will generate recommendations for other children's books. Alice separated out as a scholarly edition will generate recommendations to secondary literature and other rare editions of works by Carroll.

I go for the latter."

And isn't that what the "splitters" have been arguing all along on this thread, Edwin? That we want our connections to be meaningful NOT just large? For me, the only meaningful LT connection is a relatively eclectic connection. I don't need to catalogue 5000 books on LT to learn that Alice in Wonderland is a very popular book. I knew that before I ever bought my first copy. Learning that 6584 other LTers own it in some form or another tells me what exactly? What am I going to do with that useless statistic (which, since it is highly probable that many Alice books have been over or under-combined isn't even an accurate number anyway)? Send out a mass mailing email to all the owners? (BTW, can you use LT to send spam?).

What I would find a useful connection is finding out that compared to the 6584 LTers that owned other editions of Alice, only 4 other LTers (you, Os, BarkingMatt and prosfilaes) owned editions of the "Annotated Alice" and were likely to have a similar deeper understanding and love of the work as myself. Now that's a useful connection IMO.

OK, Edwin, your cover is now blown. Please take off your "lumper" disguise and come on over and stand on the other side of the debating table with us "splitters"! :)

259> If you'd rather be reading them, why are you arguing here? There's no need to fix the social connections of your books; LibraryThing works quite well as a simple cataloging tool, and most books just don't have the edition complexity for this to be relevant. Most people can avoid stressing out over the fine details of that last few percent.

#253 "any such "where is the line" is pointless; there is not, and cannot be, a bright line separation here.
"

I rather think you are missing the point, of some 250 messages. Each of which is debating where that line should be drawn.

To hold that all 9 division in #252 should be seperate is wrong - the greenside bar clearly indicates that illustrated versions do belong together with un-illustrated versions.

The question then becomes how many of the others should be join it?

I think only combiners who have access to all 9 can make a clear decision as to which should be seperate LTworks. However when there are more than 1 combiners in such a position, then there is still room for debate.

#196

>188: I suggest that those with a personal interest label their Norton titles in such a way as to distinguish them from the rest,

That's what the ISBN is there for.

No. You misunderstood me (especially if you didn't read past the comma). My suggestion to the Norton-owners who wish to be separate was to enter a personal distinguishing mark in the title so that they can separate out their copies from the rest. If you take a look at an editions listing, you'll see what I mean--titles that are distinctive appear on the list. I am NOT proposing any change to the description and cataloguing information of the book, such as the ISBN or LC number or what have you.

This means that the separated editions would still come up as suggestions for combinations, but that is true in any case.

>262 Rule42

...we want our connections to be meaningful NOT just large? For me, the only meaningful LT connection is a relatively eclectic connection.

So why insist that ALL NCE owners be lumped together, including those that have indicated in their catalog entry that they consider their book to be just the main work with some extra introductore/explanatory material stuck in? Wouldn't your more desirable, eclectic connection be one without those who set their sites lower?

OK, Rule42, your cover is now blown. Please take off your "splitter" disguise and come on over and stand on the other side of the debating table with the "lumpers"! :)

(edited to close the italics)

closing the italics.

>235

"A lot of times, we can tell; a lot of the editions of Don Quixote that were separated out recently were still massive editions of 400 or 500 pages."

Ah, that's probably because what we all call the novel Don Quixote today (and what you probably read in high school) is really only DQ Part 1 (first published 1605 and probably about 500+ pages in length in most standard size books). DQ Part 2 (which I believe is of a comparable length) first appeared about ten years later and, I had always believed, is usually considered to be of inferior quality. Which is why over the years DQP1 has become separated from DQP2 and is still popular today, while DQP2 has been relegated to the ranks of academic obscurity. Many works produced in two parts years apart like that, once published bound together (which happened shortly after 1615, I believe), would forever stay together. But in the case of DQ this hasn't happened. And this is another example that might be grist for the mill of this discussion. Is DQ a single work or an anthology of two separate works (DQP1 and DQP2)?

Having just finished reading the wikipedia page for DQ, I now learn that DQP2 has now "come to be regarded by most literary critics as being far superior to the first, because of its greater depth of characterization, its discussions, mostly between Quixote and Sancho, on random subjects, and its philosophical insights." Well, well, well, that's news to me, I guess I now need to go and reacquaint myself with DQP1 and track down a copy of DQP2 to compare the experience! Sheesh, more stuff I have to read! :(

"(I don't know about modern scholarly translations, but the bibliography I read in the 1970s had no complete translations for most of his works ... and many of the copies being sold today are lousy ancient public domain translations.)"

That sounds a little scary to me. You really should not be combining/separating based on your understanding of 40 year old information. That sounds to me like a possible example of "very passionate and knowledgeable people (in other areas) combining stuff they think they understand but don't really." (cf. post #222) I'm not on your case here, I'm just commenting solely on the words in your post (which is all I have to go on) and using the example I see there to emphasize the reality of my own point earlier. Also, in this case, you are separating NOT combining, and as I stated (in post #171) this can be relatively easily fixed even if it was later determined that it was the wrong thing to have done.

People keep mentioning on this thread possible new LT features such as "contained in" (e.g., post #31) and "relations" (e.g., post #228). If my understanding is correct (based on post #239), that former feature is just one example of the latter feature. What I want to know is, where are all these possible features promised in writing on this site? The only reference to such a feature I can find (thanks to post #245) that has been promised by Tim is: "This part/whole relationship will be handled by a future improvement." Are all the speculations about those new features posted here extrapolated from just that one simple statement?

If "part/whole" functionality is coming down the pike relatively soon then any contentious issue (such as the NCEs or "Annotated Alice" books) that even looks like this functionality will solve it should be kept separate until that feature is rolled out and stable. Even if a consensus was to be obtained here now that the right way to handle NCEs was in fact to combine them, to rush straight off and do that would be premature until you understand exactly what "part/whole" functionality can really provide. Right now, everyone is just speculating. If "part/whole" functionality provides nothing in the way of relief to this issue (i.e., if folk still don't accept that NCEs are just variants of anthologies) and no other new feature is promised that might still resolve the issue, only then should they be combined.

Remember: combination is a breeze, but separation is a royal pain in the proverbials

The "relations" feature was described by Tim a long time ago. I admit I was quoting - or rather paraphrasing - from memory. If I have some time on my hands I will try to find those old posts, but it will be something of an archaeologic expedition into LT.

Anyway, we have no idea when it will come about. "Collections" has been "coming soon" for a long, long time... And I can't remember any "coming soon" for "relations". However, I think we're impressing the urgency of having this and we can live in hope.

In the mean time, part/whole is not just an upcoming functionality - it is also one of the basic principles of all combining / separating. Thou shalt not combine part with whole!

A couple of test cases for the splitters:

NCE of War and Peace: 1073 pages of text followed by 110 pages of commentary.
Modern Library edition of Les Miserables: 1194 pages of text followed by 136 pages of endnotes.

Split both? Just the first?

>240 & 252

OK, I apologize for the length of this post in advance, but if we are going to discuss the Martin Gardner "Annotated Alice" books let's at least discuss the many pertinent issues that are raised by the real books and not get distracted by the hypothetical ones listed by Os in post #252.

The Annotated Alice provides an excellent example of seven issues that keep being discussed here - (1) multiple authors; (2) multiple works; (3) highly annotated works; (4) different editions of works; (5) titles versus contents; (6) critical essays; and (7) new material.

(A) The Annotated Alice (1st. ed., 1960) contains "Wonderland" and "Looking Glass" highly annotated by MG plus an introduction by MG. The illustrations are by John Tenniel.

(B) More Annotated Alice (2nd. ed., 1990) contains "Wonderland" and "Looking Glass" highly annotated by MG (but they are completely different notes) plus an introduction by MG. The illustrations this time are by Peter Newell. It contains an essay on Newell by Michael Patrick Hearn who subsequently authored The Annotated Wizard of Oz (or should that be, merely annotated?) and many of the other titles in the Norton annotated classics series. It also contains the first ever publication of the long lost "Wasp in a Wig" episode that was suppressed from the original publication of "Through the Looking Glass" at the suggestion of John Tenniel who had no interest in illustrating it.

(C) The Annotated Alice : The Definitive Edition (3rd. ed., 1998) contains "Wonderland" and "Looking Glass" highly annotated by MG (the notes of the two previous editions now combined and further updated) plus a preface (to definitive ed.) and the 2 introductions to (A) and (B) by MG. The illustrations are by John Tenniel, but of a much better quality than in (A). It also contains the suppressed "Wasp in a Wig" episode and never-before published preliminary pencil sketches by Tenniel. There are also other addenda (such as a list of Lewis Carroll societies) and Select Bibliography not in previous editions.

Now consider these discussion points ...

(1) Multiple authors - Who wrote these books, MG or LC? If you think of these books as a work by MG about LC (as I do since I own other copies of the basic Alice works, while I shelve these books with my other MG books) then MG wrote them. He's the person who received the royalty checks every time one was sold. It is no different than if he wrote a book entitled, An Analysis of the Undead, Zombies and other Gothic Horror Themes in the Works of Jane Austen. One would not credit that work to Jane Austen. Just because MG chose a split-page format to display his literary analysis side by side with the text he was analyzing does not make the work any different from a regular serial textual analysis with lots of quoted text and illustrations inserted inline. Different textual formats are not a criterion in determining if two works are similar or different. It can be argued that his literary analysis is called "annotation" mostly because of the format that was chosen for displaying it.

(2) Multiple works - How many works are in each edition? If you view LC as the author, then each edition can well be viewed as containing just the 2 basic Alice works with increasing levels of annotation, illustrations and addenda as you progress from the first to the third edition (as Os argues in post #252). However, if you view these books as being written by MG, then (C) is an anthology of (A) and (B). It doesn't contain the Newell illustrations but most would claim that illustrations don't count so that doesn't matter. The Tenniel illustrations in (C) are vastly improved in quality over the same illustrations in (A), but quality of anything has never been put forward as a work discriminating criteria. The essay on Newell is also dropped for (C), while new addenda are added, but I would agree that these might all be "packaging" - because other than the essay (see (6) below) they probably could not stand alone anyway. (B) and (C) also contain new material (works?) - see (7) below.

(3) Highly annotated works - How much annotation can a core work take until the annotation is now the main purpose of the book and the core work is just supplemental material? This is really the main issue behind (1) too. I view these books in the same manner as a SparkNotes study guide with a copy of the work being studied thrown in for convenience. In fact, it is clearly stated in the Introduction to (C) that one of the justifications for its release was because the purchasers of (A) and (B) had complained that the only way to read them was to have two books open in front of you simultaneously!

(4) Different editions of works - Although I refer to these books as 1st., 2nd. and 3rd. editions they are actually sold as three separate works with three separate titles and published by three separate publishers - Clarkson Potter (1960), Random House (1990) and W.W. Norton (1999). There are editions and editions! Some new editions amount to little more than a later printing of an earlier edition. That is, you might be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a second printing of the first edition and the third printing of the second edition 20 years later. Are these books different editions of the same work or are they just three very similar works? My copy of (A) is not a 1960 edition; it is a subsequent edition (the term later printing is inappropriate here) of (A) published in 1978(?) by Bramhall House, which was an imprint of Crown Publishing which had swallowed up Clarkson Potter. It is this edition (or other re-releases around this time) that really established the "annotated work" in terms of copies sold. This re-release was most likely made in response to the great interest drummed up by the first publication of the long lost "Wasp in a Wig" episode (see (7) below) in 1977.

(5) Titles versus contents - Another issue that keeps popping up on this thread is do we combine books based on work title or work content. I would side with the content side of the house. However, note that in the case of these three works their content is quite different in each case and they each have a different title. (A) predates ISBNs although my much later 1978 edition of (A) has one, but it is different from the ISBNs of both (B) and (C).

(6) Critical essays - (B) contains a critical essay by MPH that is not in (A) or (C). I still maintain critical essays are works so that adds to the work count of (B) versus (A) and (C). I might be willing to accept a definition of a critical or literary essay being a work if and only if it is also published and bound in other books, while if it only appears in the book in question then it's packaging (on the basis it cannot stand alone) but that gets you into very deep water and I really don't think we should go there.

(7) New material - (B) and (C) contain newly published material in the LC and Tenniel canons; (B) and (C) both contain the "Wasp in a Wig" episode that was suppressed from the original edition of "Through the Looking Glass" and which only surfaced in 1974 to be first published all by itself in 1977 (thus it constitutes a work) after being legally verified that it was not bogus. (C) contains never-before published preliminary pencil sketches by Tenniel from a private LC collection. Even if one insists that these three books are all the same core work by LC then you also have to grant that (B) and (C) are different than (A) - the "Wasp in a Wig" episode is now accepted by many as being part of the core work (it wasn't expurgated for inferior quality reasons but because Tenniel, who was a bit of a prima donna, refused to illustrate it). If you accept that they are works by MG then (B) and (C) each contain one more work than (A). If you don't dismiss the rare Tenniel pencil sketches as being packaging because they are merely illustrations then that is another unique work that (C) contains.

Now finally consider this ... Illustrations are continually being dismissed as not being sufficient criteria to discriminate between different works. Yet when it comes to the two Alice works they have almost NEVER been published without accompanying illustrations. They are probably THE two, if not just two of the, most frequently illustrated works in western publishing. The list of top notch book illustrators that have illustrated the Alice works is second to none - the original Tenniel illustrations are the ones most popularly used; Arthur Rackam has illustrated "Wonderland" (but not "Through the Looking Glass"); and the Peter Newell illustrations (who also illustrated Mark Twain works) are also very popular in the USA. To say that illustrations are unimportant or even not socially significant when it comes to the two Alice works is ridiculous. The illustrations are inextricably linked to the text and vice versa, particularly the Tenniel ones since he worked very closely with LC in producing them and had sufficient influence to be able to suppress the "Wasp in a Wig" episode.

I'm not stating what the right answers are here because I'm not sure I know myself. I just feel these three editions make an excellent foil for all the issues that keep surfacing and re-surfacing in this debate. IMO they would make a superb example for Tim to use on the combiner wiki page to help properly define all the concepts I listed as needing definition in post #259. If you can consistently resolve all of the above concepts for these three titles then you have probably resolved all the combiner/splitter issues period.

Edited to replace "iff" by "if and only if".

NCEs (my opinions only):

When the text of the main work is in English, the distinguishing feature is the quality/quantily of the extras, as the main work should be identical across editions. Given enough "extras", a specific edition becomes distinct (gray, but arguably distinct). When an NCE is a translation, the nuances of the translation become additional distinguishing features. This gives two work subdivisions > 1. English, 2. Translations. Within the 2nd subdivision there is a continuum from text to prose to poetry (or whatever). The farther you go, the more important these translation variations become.

My only point here is that I hope that decisions on each NCE will be based on more than its inclusion/exclusion only because it is an NCE. PLEASE do not take this to mean that I think translations should be separated. I definitely do not, but that's another topic.

>265: "No. You misunderstood me (especially if you didn't read past the comma)."

No, I didn't. I merely think the ISBN should be sufficient. If I have the same ISBN as all the other NCEs, then I have an NCE, and since NCE is a separate work, it shouldn't be combined. End of story.

>266: "So why insist that ALL NCE owners be lumped together, including those that have indicated in their catalog entry that they consider their book to be just the main work with some extra introductore/explanatory material stuck in?"

If two books have the EXACT same contents (as two same-edition NCE's would), they're the same work. To abandon that principle would be to so embrace relativism to the point of silliness. What would there be left to trust in?

> 273

and since NCE is a separate work, it shouldn't be combined. End of story.

End of story? Then why are there 273 posts (now, with mine, 274) in this thread?

I'm more of a splitter than lumper, but that is beside the point I want to raise. That is the ISBN issue, as in: "If I have the same ISBN as all the other NCEs, then I have an NCE, and since NCE is a separate work, it shouldn't be combined. End of story".

Now maybe NCE never had this particular issue/problem, but ISBN's have, in fact, been reused, odd I know, but they have. Mostly by small presses. I have some vague recollection that Barnes & Noble sometimes reuses(d) ISBN's in the past. I could be mistaken about B&N.

Just a small point. Can't always blindly go by ISBN. Sometimes used for completely different works.

(issue comes up on LT, I think, more in faulty data, but there are reuses of ISBN's out there in the publishing world)

>274: "End of story? Then why are there 273 posts (now, with mine, 274) in this thread?"

Well, clearly there are people who disagree with me. I don't begrudge them that, and I believe in the value of discussion. But that doesn't make my position any less simple.

>271: "Yet when it comes to the two Alice works they have almost NEVER been published without accompanying illustrations."

My copy of Alice in French doesn't have illustrations, FWIW. (Not counting the photograph of A. Liddell on the front cover.)

>270

"NCE of War and Peace: 1073 pages of text followed by 110 pages of commentary.
Modern Library edition of Les Miserables: 1194 pages of text followed by 136 pages of endnotes.

Split both? Just the first?"

If either the endnotes or additional commentary are provided without any accreditation then they should not be split. How are you going to set them up as a separate work in LT without an author to whom to attribute them?

If the respective title pages of those two hypothetical books say something like, "War and Peace" with commentary by the author's great grandson Vladimir Tolstoy or "Les Miserables" with analytical endnotes by Victoria Hugo then you might be able to justify separating them out as separate works. However, can either of those items meet the "stand alone" test? If you just pulled the pages containing the endnotes out as is, put a title page on them and then rebound the result as a separate book, could you even give that book away? If not, then it fails the "stand alone" test (if my understanding of that concept is correct). Compare that with this situation: could you even give a copy of a telephone directory (which are items that come for free anyway) to someone that doesn't have a telephone?

In the case of the "Annotated Alice" I would have bought Martin Gardner's analysis even if it had been published separately but with these caveats: it was properly formated as a serial work, brought to my attention by the same level of marketing as the combo editions got, and was reasonably priced. Let me further explain those three concepts.

The first concept is really handled in discussion point (1) in my post #271. If you just erased all of the LC "Alice" text and Tenniel illustrations from the pages of the current format "Annotated Alice" and bound what was left as a book, no I wouldn't, because it would be ugly and too bulky for its content. But if you reformatted the remaining text and allowed MG to gloss it a little so that it read serially as a normal work of criticism, yes I would, but only if the following two concepts were also true ...

I would also have to discover this book on regular bookstore shelves. If you want, rather than MG's annotations being considered to be merely additions to the core text, you could just as easily say that the public domain LC text and Tenniel illustrations were included as packaging in order to make MG's work more appealing to mainstream book buyers and thereby sell it. Doing that allowed those editions of "Annotated Alice" to be sold in Waldenbooks and Daltons, etc. If it had only be produced as a specialist tome for those doing PhD study on Lewis Carroll then I, and many others, would not have come across it and, since I don't normally go looking for those kinds of work, I would probably never have discovered it.

Finally, if I had discovered MG's analysis in a bookstore and it was priced at, say, $120 (which would not be outrageous for an eclectic book with a small print run designed only for a specialized academic niche market) then, as much as I enjoy MG's insights WRT LC, I would still have probably passed it over. A book has to give me a good price to content ratio. If it was reasonably priced for such a work, I would probably then have bought it. The vast majority of LTers owning LC works did not run out and buy the "Wasp in the Wig" episode either because at something like 20 bound pages it also did not provide them an appealing price to content ratio. Most of us have our eyes set on acquiring lots of books that we don't already own, so we like to make our book purchasing dollars stretch as far as possible.

A good criterion to use in deciding if something can stand alone as a separate work is could you even give it away for free. If you couldn't give your commentary or endnotes away for free no matter how you reformat them and present them they probably fail the "stand alone" test. Since I would have been willing to buy the MG analysis with a reasonable pricing it passes that test IMO. Packaging the analysis with the LC text and Tenniel illustrations simply made the purchase of the "Annotated Alice" books a no-brainer for me.

Furthermore, I had been purchasing MG's books since the sixties. I most definitely bought my copies because I consider MG the author and creator of a new work that I desired to own and read. And now that I do own these copies I would rather that they connect to other LT owners of these particular works than to Os' young daughter's highly condensed and derivative board copy of the underlying LC works.

Finally, I'm fully aware that adding the concept of LC and Tenniel being used as packaging for MG rather than the other way around has just added the old saw "is the glass half full or half empty?" to my previous Zen koan "how long is a piece of string?" so please save yourself the trouble of pointing that out to me. I knew I should have quit this thread after my first post here. :(

BTW, has anyone reading this thread realized where the real problem lies yet?

BTW, has anyone reading this thread realized where the real problem lies yet?

The real problem?
a.) We're all stubborn and set on our own ideas about what is or isn't correct.
b.) We don't have "relations", so we can't indicate that works have much in common but significant differences as well.

But pray enlighten us oh mighty one.

>276

"My copy of Alice in French doesn't have illustrations, FWIW."

Et tu brute. :( Please go stand over there in the corner with the "lumpers"!

Errrrrrmm ... French editions don't count! Yeah, that's the ticket. :)

>278

Those sum it up fairly well, I think.

#278:

Agreed... except I'm not stubborn... no, not at all!!

It is just that my opinion is my opinion... and that's that!!

Now for the REAL reason this thread is still going & going & going & going & going & going.... nowhere.

>271 Rule42

I do appreciate the time and care in putting this together. And I agree that these Annotated Alice books make a good test case for many combiner issues.

I'm unconvinced of the merits of your discussion point 1 (Multiple authors), however:

Who wrote these books, MG or LC? ...MG wrote them. He's the person who received the royalty checks every time one was sold.
Royalties don't seem like a suitable clue to primary authorship.
LC (or his estate) would be receiving royalty checks also if his copyright hadn't run out. In fact, if edition (A) had come in 1960 out under today's copyright laws, LC's estate would have recieved royalties.

...Just because MG chose a split-page format to display his literary analysis side by side with the text he was analyzing does not make the work any different from a regular serial textual analysis with lots of quoted text and illustrations inserted inline. Different textual formats are not a criterion in determining if two works are similar or different. It can be argued that his literary analysis is called "annotation" mostly because of the format that was chosen for displaying it.

This looks like a red herring - I doubt that anyone on this thread would agree to text format as a criterion. However, as for MG's text standing alone: I just turned to page 259 of my copy of the (A) text, and here's MG's text (shortened only for brevity, not to remove text that would effect the argument):

"Undergraduates insisted that if you ordered one egg for breakfast, you usually received two, one good and one bad"
-and-
"The Sheep's movement is indicated by a move of the White Queen to KB8"
-and-
"The dots show that Alice has crossed the brook...{goes on to describe the chess move}...although she does not meet him until after the Humpty Dumpty episode in the next chapter."

So, I turned back a page and found:
"It is possible that Carroll thought of these dream-rushes as symbols of...distant, just out of reach, quickly fade and lose their scent..."

And the page before that:
"In his prefatory poem...Carroll describes the Liddell girls as rowing with little skill. Perhaps...as mystified as Alice here by the rowing term 'feather'."
-and-
"Catching a crab is rowing slang...This actually happens to Alice later on."

All interesting tid-bits, but I contend that MG would have to create a new work to make these (along with at least half of the other annotations) useable as review material in a stand-alone form. Yes, many other 'annotations' are really one paragraph essays on a topic relevant to LC's story, so perhaps here again is another matter of degree. But, your suggestion that MG would only have to do a little editing (my words, not yours) and include a few quotes from LC (again, my words) is a bit of a stretch.

On top of it all, the cover page on my copy says "by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel, with an introduction and notes by Martin Gardner" (I think someone pointed that out earlier in the thread). It appears that not even Gardner thought of himself as the author of this work.

I don't offer this to suggest that your overall argument doesn't bear consideration. But, I do suggest that the basis for discussion point 1 is not as strong as you make it sound.

>278

"The real problem?
a.) We're all stubborn and set on our own ideas about what is or isn't correct.
b.) We don't have "relations", so we can't indicate that works have much in common but significant differences as well."

Both of those reasons may indeed be part of the fuel driving the intense debate but you have still missed out the main one glaring you in the face.

Reason (a) is just a manifestation of the fact that all humans are quite different and diverse and that we humans have a tendency to look after our own interests. You'll never eradicate or solve (a). I'm not so sure that I would want to anyway. Just celebrate the fact that "lumpers" have not resorted to accosting "splitters" in the street and mugging them, and that "splitters" are not blowing up the homes of "lumpers"! At least not yet. Even when the REAL problems are solved LTers will still have a tendency to separate out into "lumper" and "splitter" camps. Reason (a) will still be around on LT long after the combine/separate issues have mostly been resolved. Although "religion" has taken up a large portion of the controversy and discussion on this thread it is still not the root cause of the problems being discussed.

Imagine, if you would, that the divide of viewpoints on this thread was a Roman Catholic versus Protestant one. No amount of RCs reminding Protestants that their faiths are different is likely to convert a Protestant over to Catholicism and vice versa. Similarly, no amount of "lumpers" reminding "splitters" that their goals and approaches are different is likely to convert a "splitter" over to "lumper" and vice versa. However, understanding the specific issues that drives each group's "faith" is most certainly useful, as is identifying your "belief" with your opinions so others will know what bias to assign to it. Most of the issues that need resolving here transcend each group's core religious beliefs. If you strip away the "lumper" and "splitter" labels from, say, Edwin, Os and I you will see that we are frequently concerned about exactly the same issues, or are recommending similar solutions (e.g., what I call "virtual books" - please don't go there Os!).

Perhaps we should make it a rule that every post on this thread from now on should start off like those introductions they have at AA meetings ... Hi, my name is Rule42 and I'm a "splitter"! * hangs head in shame and waits for encouragement applause to die down. * OK, just kidding! :)

Reason (b) has been around from Day 1 of LT and yet it has not stopped this group of "lumpers" and "splitters" working together to achieve things in order to bring more order to the chaotic combination / separation process - such as, for instance, Disambiguation Notices. So you also cannot blame reason (b) on the inability to reach any kind of closure (a.k.a. consensus) on this thread. Although future LT functionality has frequently been mentioned in the discussion on this thread it is still not the root cause of the problems being discussed.

I'm a splitter & a lumper... yes, both, but for different reasons for differing works.

Just because I keep NCEs separated does not make me a splitter or a lumper... it is the way I see it.

While I can see the reasons on the other side, I would rather spend my time combining & separating than trying to convince anyone to change.

Eventually someone gets tired...

Good Night & Pleasant Dreams.

>271 Rule42

I touched on your discussion point 1 in #282. Now on to your discussion point 2 (Multiple works):
...If you view LC as the author, then each edition can well be viewed as containing just the 2 basic Alice works with increasing levels of annotation, illustrations and addenda as you progress from the first to the third edition (as Os argues in post #252).

I couldn't find any argument either way in post 252 - just a list of 'books' on the continuum for folks to consider. Perhaps you entered the wrong post number? Anyway, I do think of LC as the author, I shelve it that way, and the title says LC is the author. So, yes, it's two works bound together with increasing levels of annotations and notes. Not because I'm a lumper, but because I view these books in the same manner as any unabridged, two Alice's in one cover books, but with annotations and an essay or two thrown in for convenience.

However, if you view these books as being written by MG, then (C) is an anthology of (A) and (B). It doesn't contain the Newell illustrations but most would claim that illustrations don't count so that doesn't matter. The Tenniel illustrations in (C) are vastly improved in quality over the same illustrations in (A), but quality of anything has never been put forward as a work discriminating criteria. The essay on Newell is also dropped for (C), while new addenda are added, but I would agree that these might all be "packaging" - because other than the essay (see (6) below) they probably could not stand alone anyway. (B) and (C) also contain new material (works?) - see (7) below.

Gotta agree with this logic, if MG is the author. I like the stand-alone criterion, BTW, as one hurdle to jump for an edition to become a new work. I know we disagree on just how 'stand-alone' material must be as printed, but it's a good criterion to keep.

>271 Rule42
And next, your discussion point 3 (Highly annotated works):
How much annotation can a core work take until the annotation is now the main purpose of the book and the core work is just supplemental material? This is really the main issue behind (1) too. I view these books in the same manner as a SparkNotes study guide with a copy of the work being studied thrown in for convenience. In fact, it is clearly stated in the Introduction to (C) that one of the justifications for its release was because the purchasers of (A) and (B) had complained that the only way to read them was to have two books open in front of you simultaneously!

MGs annotations are about the finest and most complete of anything in my library, with the possible exception of Walter James Miller's annotated works of Jules Verne. As I stated in my earlier post, I consider the annotations as extra info for the reader, but LC is still the author of the work. I have a couple of editions of "The Wind in the Willows" with wonderful illustrations, each by a different artist. I have to read the book with both editions open to fully benefit from the insights the illustrations provide, but I don't consider these books as SparkNotes study guides with a copy of the work thrown in for convenience. I just know I like to have more quality illustrations for a work like this (as I do with Alice, for that matter). I've even considered slicing the spines off and collating the two works into one for this purpose, but such brutality gives me the shakes.

BTW (tangent - Miller's work on Verne has retrieved these works from the world of pre-pubescent boys for the adult world where they have always lived in the original French for over 100 years. Highly recommend anyone revisit Verne if it's with a Miller translation edition).

>271 Rule42
why stop now - on to your discussion point 4 (Different editions of works):
Although I refer to these books as 1st., 2nd. and 3rd. editions they are actually sold as three separate works with three separate titles and published by three separate publishers - Clarkson Potter (1960), Random House (1990) and W.W. Norton (1999)...

As I'm sure you know, publishers buying the rights and publishing the next edition is very common, so this seems not to be a useful criterion for working through to a solution. And, yes, later printing is often a more accurate term than later edition, though publishers are maddeningly vague about these distinctions sometimes.

>271 Rule42
now to discussion point 5 (Title versus contents)

I agree that title is a poor criterion (though sometimes it's all combiners have to go on other than author). They are often entered wrong (title from the spine, from the half-title page, from memory, from Amazon). I'd drop this as a criterion, but leave it as a cautionary tale for combiners. I would, however, put a lot of stock in an ISBN AND title match.

>271 Rule42
Discussion points 6 and 7 (critical essays; New material):
(B) contains a critical essay by MPH that is not in (A) or (C). I still maintain critical essays are works so that adds to the work count of (B) versus (A) and (C). I might be willing to accept a definition of a critical or literary essay being a work if and only if it is also published and bound in other books, while if it only appears in the book in question then it's packaging (on the basis it cannot stand alone) but that gets you into very deep water and I really don't think we should go there.

Agree. This one's messy, as you point out. MG's critical essay in "Alice" is really only virtual as written, in that you envision it being extracted, text added to tie it together and fill in the gaps, and liberal quotes/illustrations taken from LC's work before it's ready to 'stand alone'.

New material - Actually, I'm on board with B and C being different from A due to the 'completion' of the work by including "The Wasp and the Wig". Or, perhaps A is an abridgement of B and C because it's left out? Aarrgh!!.

>271 Rule42
Regarding you comments on illustrations (and the short shrift they get in these discussions)

I totally agree that some works are 'made' by the quality illustrations that have come to be know with the original written work. However, the status quo and the lack of LT tools to help move from the status quo make me loath to consider tilting at this windmill anytime soon. This seems like something to save for 'relations' and 'contained in' features, which I'll incorporate into my catalog when my grandchildren-to-be are old enough to make a virtual visit to the nursing pod and transmit my rantings into a data stream to upload to the LT organic servers. %^)

done

BTW - I'm a splitter and a lumper. I generally agree with NCEs being split, but I do think many of the reasons given are pretty weak and open the door for many other "less worthy" splits to be made. Someone pointed out that leaving these kinds of issues in the 'split' mode until 'contained in' and 'relations' features come along will make it easier to update when the time comes, and I'm inclined to agree with that. But I don't know how long that'll be, and the combining will continue while we wait.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with the annotated editions being split. This excercise (from Rule42's #271) helped me to pinpoint why, I think - annotations (even most of those by MG) hang on the original works original text, and don't stand well on their own.

In the various discussions that have cropped up on the Combiners group, I think I spot a tendency to see one's own copy of a work (with those special annotations or extra back materials or specially commissioned illustrations in that limited edition copy) to be deserving special handling compared to the 'masses' who would read any old edition. I think we all need to be on the alert for this, in our own cataloging/combining/separating and also in what others press for in these discussions.

TTFN

> 268 : For Don Quixote : see http://www.librarything.com/topic/55739

There are other ways of tracing the contents of a book than just by what is entered here in LT title fields.

Slowly sorting out the "Part 1 & 2", vs. "Part 1", vs. "Part 2", vs. "abridged"... But for some we will never know, that's life...

> 281 : Ah, no, not you skittles obviously...

Frankly, what this debate achieves is that I care less and less about the NCE's either way. Still willing to help out, when called upon, but I'll probably mostly just leave them alone from now on.

293 Agree totally.

#293/4 - Yep, I'm done. I've come to the conclusion there's no right answer and opinions are too polarised to ever find a consensus. I'll keep mine separate, but as for the debate, I'm out.

>282

"Royalties don't seem like a suitable clue to primary authorship."

OMG, I was never claiming they were. In most cases the financial arrangements behind how and what an author is paid for a work are completely private (as they should be) so recourse to royalty recipient could never be used to determine true authorship in probably 95% of cases; and almost certainly in 100% of the cases where the author is still living. Please, I was NOT recommending that be a criterion for authorship determination; I just threw that point in while passing. I have no way of knowing whether Martin Gardner received royalties for any or all of those books; I just assumed he did. So please remove that new unknown length of string from the debating table right now; because we have enough pieces of string on there to contend with already. :(

Also, since my post was a response to post #240 where Os had already strongly argued for these works not being by MG but only by Lewis Carroll, the whole "spin" of the text throughout my post #271 response was to counter what Os had said for the sake of contrast and balance. I did end my post up saying, "I'm not stating what the right answers are here because I'm not sure I know myself." I just didn't want Os' view that LC is clearly the author of these works to be the final word. It's nowhere close to being that B&W. Intuitively, I want to say MG is the author of these works rather than LC. So why is that? After all, I own other "vanilla" editions of the "Alice" works for which I have no problem assigning 100% of the authorship to LC.

>282

"This looks like a red herring - I doubt that anyone on this thread would agree to text format as a criterion."

And that was all I was affirming there too. I wasn't countering someone's claim that it was a criterion. Like you, I was stating my certainty in the belief that surely no one would claim text format as a criterion. Yet it is the very format of the presented annotations that convinces people such as Os that the MG annotations are merely no different than footnotes or endnotes to the text. Because the MG text is presented side by side with the LC text in split page fashion (let's call them sidenotes) rather than at the bottom of the page (as footnotes) or at the back of the book (as endnotes) they are simply dismissed as being "of the same ilk." But here's why I do not think they are the same ...

As I stated in post #277, I happened to buy my first copy of the "Annotated Alice" because I already owned (and had read, plus had enjoyed - that always helps!) other books on mathematical logic by MG. There were probably also vanilla copies of the "Alice" works shelved in the bookstore next to the MG annotated one I bought yet, significantly, I didn't select one of those copies of "Alice" instead (because I already owned at least one, if not multiple, vanilla copies of the "Alice" works). So clearly, if I didn't buy my first edition of the "Annotated Alice" because I needed a copy of the LC text, nor a copy of the Tenniel illustrations, the only rational reason I could have bought the book was to get at the MG created text. (An irrational reason might have been to get at its contents list or index!) Nevertheless, apparently I was only buying a bunch of generic sidenotes - or even worse, merely packaging! :(

Furthermore, things get curiouser and curiouser, because I am quite sure that some of those vanilla editions of "Alice" on the shelf next to the copy of the "Annotated Alice" that I ultimately selected to purchase also contained footnotes and endnotes annotating those particular texts (but to a much lesser extent). Yet I did not feel equally inclined to duplicate my "Alice" work ownership count by buying any of those editions simply to get at their annotating notes. Ergo, there must be something inherently different about the MG sidenotes versus endnotes and footnotes in other "Alice" works that gives them a distinction. Is it their quality? Perhaps it's their quantity? Yet both of those criteria would only be a distinction of DEGREE. If it's not the quantity and/or quality of the MG notes that gave them such a distinction that it caused me to purchase, then what else might it be?

If Michael Patrick Hearn (who I would not have known from a hole in the wall circa 1980 when I saw that first edition on the bookstore shelf) had done the annotations then I very much doubt that I would have bought it. So one might claim that it was the cachet of the author and the prior respect I had for his writing on subjects to do with logic that prompted me to purchase mere packaging. If so, this now raises the question, can mere footnotes, endnotes or sidenotes morph into a new work if their author has a suitable amount of cachet in the eyes of the reader / book purchaser? Or if there are just more of those notes than you'll normally find in a book? Or if those notes are just better quality and more interesting than average?

* Rule42 leans forward holding another piece of string of unknown length labeled "author cachet". He places it on the debating table next to the two pieces of string already there that are labeled "quantity of supplemental material" and "quality of supplemental material". *

286> "MGs annotations are about the finest and most complete of anything in my library"

Complete? Yes. Fine? I don't think so: "Owning a ferret in New York City, which is said to have ten thousand ferrets, is a health code violation. An Associated Press story (September 18, 1983) reported the formation of the New York City Friends of the Ferret, a group seeking to lift the city's injunction. Spokesmen for the group contended that ferrets 'give you love and affection . . . know their names and can do tricks.' During the previous summer the group held a 'ferret festival' in Central Park. It was attended by two hundred people who brought along about seventy-five ferrets." (The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, p. 38) Stop him before he annotates again!

>282

"On top of it all, the cover page on my copy says "by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel, with an introduction and notes by Martin Gardner" (snip) It appears that not even Gardner thought of himself as the author of this work."

If the contribution to this particular work was universally considered to be primarily LC's and not MG's, please tell me why there is a photograph of MG standing in front of the statue of Alice in Central Park on the rear DJ cover with a short bio of him below that, yet no picture nor bio of LC anywhere on the DJ? Clearly, someone else besides just me thinks he is the author of this book even if he did modestly allow the main credit to go to LC in the title of the book on the front cover and title page. Additionally, why did those other editions of the "Alice" works sitting on the bookstore shelf beside the one I purchased not have photos and bios on their DJs of the person that wrote the few footnotes or endnotes in those books? Maybe this has all got something to do with the fact that MG's analysis was presented in the format of sidenotes rather than in the format of footnotes or endnotes used for the core work annotation in those other vanilla "Alice" copies? * Rule42 leans forward and puts another piece of string labeled "form versus substance" on the debating table, sits back in his chair and folds his arms. *

>298

Thank you for posting that. I really appreciate all the research you did to ferret that little tid-bit out! :)

>282

"All interesting tid-bits, but I contend that MG would have to create a new work to make these (along with at least half of the other annotations) useable as review material in a stand-alone form."

If I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that MG's sidenotes cannot be considered a separate work in their own right because they fail to pass the "stand alone" test if they were to be removed from the "Annotated Alice" book. You argue that in order for his sidenotes to pass muster and be "useable as review material in a stand-alone form" MG would have to add a considerable amount of new text to them. But if MG did that, you contend that he would essentially be creating a new work.

Essentially, your viewpoint is that if MG adds about 25% more text to the two core "Alice" works in the form of sidenotes they do not change the fundamental nature of the underlying core work. They are still the same two core "Alice" works contained in other published works of LC. But if MG adds, say, 15% more new text to his sidenotes so that they can be independently published as a separate work in their own right (and thereby pass the "stand alone" test) that would be self-defeating as that new text would create a new work from those sidenotes which would be fundamentally different from the sidenotes that reside in the "Annotated Alice".

Thus adding 25% more text to LC's core work does NOT create a new work, yet adding 15% more text to his own creative output would indeed create a new work.

One of the reasons I like reading the "Alice" works is because of the illogic, nonsense and whimsy they contain. But from now on I think I'll just read your LTMB posts ... because you are so much better at it than Lewis Carroll :)

Here's what I got out of this discussion, though in reality this isn't a significant change to how I worked before.

These are the rules I will follow when combining and separating:

1) I will always respect the work done by others, especially Disambiguation Notices.

2) When combining, I will check the Title, ISBN, and Author, and combine if there's a clear three-way match -- unless there's a Disambiguation Notice. If there's any doubt in my mind, I will check all the other fields on the work pages: cover, description, tags, CK. If there's still any doubt, I won't combine them. I won't combine different editions (either publisher or version) unless they're already combined, or I have a personal interest in the books, but in any case I will respect Disambiguation Notices.

3) When separating, I will check the Editions page for Titles, Authors, and ISBNs, and if there's any doubt after separating them I will look at the separated works to see if there is a reason why they would have been combined. I will not separate editions unless I have personal knowledge and interest in the work. In any case I will respect Disambiguation Notices.

4) If I disagree with a Disambiguation Notice I will bring it here (Combiners group) for discussion.

#302

are you going to change your way of comining on this issue

For Nortons, I'm not going to recombine my separate ones but I'm just going to avoid combining on them on future. I don't think the people who want them lumped are correct at all but I'd rather put my energies into combining/separating on things that aren't likely to revert back when someone else with a contrary opinion works on them. I genuinely don't think there's a right answer here. It depends on where an arbitrary point is put on a continuous spectrum of difference, and that is strongly dependent on your own perspective on the importance of a lot of factors. I don't go to war with combining.

Or the issue of "Story X & Other Stories"?

That's a different issue. I guess you know I'm a raging separatist when the contents differ ;)

So the outcome of the discussion is negative, etc. etc. etc.

That is exactly how I feel about it.

I think it would be helpful for owners of NCEs to list extra significant works in the book in the disambiguation notice, as unlike NCEs as a whole, edition like Troilus and Criseyde (NCE) that also have large works like the Il Filostrato alongside the titled work do have consensus that they shouldn't be combined with other books of that name.

>305

*nods* That's a very good suggestion.

This is the contents of the NCE of Gulliver's Travels (text from WorldCat.org)

ext of Gulliver's travels: Travels: Voyage to Lilliput -- Voyage to Brobdingnag -- Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnag and Japan -- Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms -- Contexts: Advertisement -- Letter from Captain Gulliver, to his Cousin Sympson (A paragraph on Queen Anne)(The Lindalinian Rebellion) -- From Swift's correspondence -- Alexander Pope's poems on Gulliver's Travels -- Lilliputian ode on the engine with which Captain Gulliver extinguished the Flames of the Royal Palace -- Edmund Curll -- From observations, &c. Upon the travels of Lemuel Gulliver -- (The travels of Martinus Scriblerus) -- William Dampier -- From a new voyage round the world -- Samuel Sturmy -- From the Mariner's Magazine -- Francois Rabelais -- From Gargantua and Pantagruel, book 5, chapter 22 -- Robert Hooke -- Account of a dog dissected -- Criticism: Earl of Orrery -- (some remarks on Gulliver's Voyage to the Houyhnhnms) -- Sir Walter Scott -- (on Gulliver's Travels) -- Pat Rogers -- Gulliver's glasses -- Michael McKeon -- (Virtue and truth in Gulliver's Travels) -- J.A. Downie -- Political significance of Gulliver's Travels -- J. Paul Hunter -- Gulliver's Travels and the novel -- Laura Brown -- (reading race and gender in Gulliver's Travels) -- Douglas Lane Patey -- Swift's satire on "Science" and the sctructure of Gulliver's Travels -- Dennis Todd -- Hairy maid at the Harpsichord: Some speculations on the meaning of Gulliver's Travels -- Richard H. Rodino -- "Splendide Mendax": Authors, characters, and readers in Gulliver's Travels -- Irvin Ehrenpreis -- Show and tell in Gulliver's Travels -- Janine Barchas (Paratext of the Travels: Gulliver's many faces) -- Claude Rawson -- Gulliver and others: Reflections on Swift's "I" narrators -- Howard D. Weinbrot -- Swift, Horace and Virgil: Brave lies, dangerous horses, and truth -- Jonathan Swift: Chronology -- Selected bibliography.

I think that is a little too much data for a disambiguation notice... and I chose this one at random (although I do own an NCE edition)

>307

Glancing through there, I don't see anything in particular which would be "less controversial" than the typical NCE (everything seems to be nonfiction), so there wouldn't be anything to note. I don't that the fact that the non-Gulliver material is nonfiction should be enough to exempt it from requiring separation, but I think the main thrust of >305's suggestion was that we should make notes for the benefits of those, so that we don't waste time arguing the easier cases like T&C when we could be arguing over your NCE of Gulliver.

Then put it in... I'm fine with that... just a lot of detail to put in...

Sense & Sensibility:

From theory of moral sentiments (1759) / Adam Smith -- Rambler No. 32 (1750) / Samuel Johnson -- Idler No. 72 (1759) -- From Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) -- Edmund Burke -- From Rights of Man (1791) / Thomas Paine -- From a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) / Mary Wollstonecraft -- From Sensibility: An Epistle to the Honorable Mrs. Boscawen (1782) / Hannah More -- From Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (1799) -- Enthusiasm of sentiment; Fragment (1798) -- From Mademoiselle Panache (1796) / Maria Edgeworth -- From Belinda (1801) -- Criticism: Early views -- From Unsigned Review (February 1812) -- Unsigned Review (May 1812) -- From British Novelists (1860) / W.F. Pollock -- From Miss Austen (1866) -- From the Classic Novelist (1894) / Alice Meynell -- From Jane Austen (1917) / Reginald Farrer -- Modern Views: First publication: Thomas Egerton, sense and sensibility, and pride and prejudice / Jan Fergus -- Sensibility / Raymond Williams -- Sensibility and the worship of self / Marilyn Butler -- Ideological contradictions and the consolations of form: Sense and sensibility / Mary Poovey 338 Sense and sensibility: Opinions too common and too dangerous / Claudia L. Johnson -- Wills / Gene Ruoff -- Novel's wisdom: Sense and sensibility / Patricia Meyer Spacks -- Taste: Gourmets and ascetics / Isobel Armstrong -- Sense and sensibility: Letter, post factum / Mary Favret -- Personal and the pro forma / Deidre Shauna Lynch -- Jane Austen and the masturbating girl / Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick -- Mass marketing Jane Austen: Men, women, and courtship in two film adaptations / Deborah Kaplan -- Jane Austen: Chronology.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

Preface to the third edition -- Note on the text and illustrations -- The text of adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Contexts and sources -- Mark twain -- Letters about Huckleberry Finn -- From the autobiography -- The "poet lariat," the "Sweet Singer of Michigan," and young Sam Clemens / Bloodgood H. Cutter -- On the death of his beloved wife / Julia A. Moore -- Little Andrew / Sam Clemens --To Jennie and to Mollie -- Publishing circular confidential terms to agents -- Banned book: One hundred years of "trouble" for Huck's book -- Boston transcript, March 1885 -- Springfield Republican, March 1885 -- Mark Twain -- Replies to the newspapers / John H. Wallace -- Case against Huck Finn / Earl F. Briden -- Kemble's "specialty" and the pictorial countertext of Huckleberry Finn / David Carkeet -- Dialects in Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain -- True story, repeated word for word as I heard it / Sociable Jimmy -- Criticism -- Early responses -- William Ernest Henley -- Review: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Brander Matthews -- Review: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Robert Bridges -- Mark Twain's blood-curdling humor / Thomas Sergeant Perry -- First major American review -- Modern views / Victor A. Doyno -- From writing Huck Finn: Mark Twain's creative process / T.S. Eliot -- Introduction to adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Jane Smiley -- Say it ain't so, Huck: Second thoughts on Mark Twain's "masterpiece" / David L. Smith -- Huck, Jim, and American racial discourse / Shelley Fisher Fishkin -- Jimmy from was Huck black? / James R. Kincaid -- Voices on the Mississippi review of was Huck black? / Toni Morrison -- This amazing, troubling book -- Mark Twain: Chronology -- Selected bibliography.

Pride & Prejudice:

Technique and moral effect in Jane Austen's fiction / Richard Whately -- Miss Austen / Margaret Oliphant -- The critical faculty of Jane Austen / Richard Simpson -- "Regulated hatred" : an aspect in the work of Jane Austen / D.W. Harding -- On Pride and prejudice / Dorothy Van Ghent -- Pride and prejudice : the reconstitution of society / Alistair Duckworth -- Limitations and definitions / Stuart Tave -- Jane Austen and the war of ideas : Pride and prejudice / Marilyn Butler -- Waiting together : Pride and prejudice / Nina Auerbach -- Perception and Pride and prejudice / Susan Morgan -- Pride and prejudice and the pursuit of happiness / Claudia L. Johnson -- The humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet / Susan Fraiman -- Circles of support / Deborah Kaplan -- Getting the whole truth in Pride and prejudice / Tara Ghoshal Wallace -- A conversation with Colin Firth / Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin -- Darcy in action / Cheryl L. Nixon -- Interpreters of Jane Austen's social world : literary critics and historians / David Spring -- Radical Jane / Edward Ahearn -- A note on money / Donald Gray.

>305 & 306

Why do you need to make it even that complicated? Because all the various NCEs can be separated from their respective crowds based on their unique ISBNs. Surely all the DN has to say is that the NCE with that ISBN should not be combined with other books with the same or similar titles because it contains more than just the core work. That "generic approach" applies to every NCE doesn't it? Remember ... KISS, KISS, KISS!

the detail gives the Disambiguation Notice some "teeth"...

> 307, 310-312 I think you're overdoing it; my request was for major works that consensus would accept as separators. Again, the example was that 100 pages in Troilus and Criseyde (NCE) were devoted to Il Filostrato, and few would argue that a book with T&C and IF should be combined with a book that just has T&C.

> 313 We just had this argument. We came out without any consensus on the issue.

> 314 The detail makes it hard to tell what's what. Pointing out large, significant pieces, if there are any, makes it easy to judge.

>314

"the detail gives the Disambiguation Notice some 'teeth'..."

The DN quoted in post #213 had plenty of teeth (plus it was also correct IMO) and yet you saw what that poster's reaction was to it. In fact, as far as I can determine, that DN had so many teeth that it caused at least two posters on this thread to turn dentist!

Remember that a great many of the people doing combining are not members of the "Combiners" group and even fewer of them are privy to this (or similar) discussion threads, so they don't appreciate the nuances that caused that DN to be added in the first place.

If you make the DNs more complicated than they need be, here are the negative outcomes that might well result:

(1) A neophyte combiner will go ahead anyway with the combination without any regard - or maybe with just partial regard (to the bits they understood) - to what the DN was telling them they should NOT combine.

(2) A neophyte combiner will say "sod it!" and abandon the issue of the orphans they were this close to correctly fixing, leaving them for someone else to fix. Quite possibly, that person will also be deterred from ever bothering to try combining something again.

(3) A more experienced combiner might read the DN carefully (exactly as you desire) but then latch on to the unnecessary justification detail and takes issue with some or all of it. If the would-be combiner disagrees with some portion of the unnecessary detail in your DN for why the book(s) should not be combined they might then either:

(3a) Ignore the DN and combine the titles anyway (contrary to the directions of the DN).

(3b) Perform "dental surgery" on the DN in order to modify it to what they think it should be, then combine the titles anyway (in agreement with their own new DN).

Outcome (1) turns the combination process into a crap shoot; (2) causes combiners to give up the ghost; (3) causes combiner / separation wars between the most informed combiners. None of these are desired outcomes of the DN process.

There is nothing you can do if someone still CHOOSES to ignore a DN they FULLY COMPREHEND. But crafting the DN in a manner that makes it less likely that someone will fully understand it, or more likely that they will choose to ignore it, should be avoided at all cost.

The intent of a DN for an NCE is NOT to re-justify why an NCE should not be combined. Such polemics and justifications belong only in this forum. The focus of a DN should simply be to inform the potential combiner (in the clearest terms possible) exactly what should not be combined with the group of books in question. Remember that 99% of the time the potential combiner will not be an LTer privy to any prior discussions on this board.

The most effective approach to achieving that goal is to keep the DN as simple as possible.

KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS, KISS

Since this thread has clearly demonstrated that there are no definitive right answers to most of the issues broached here I personally would recommend avoiding adding any reason at all other than something along the lines of "it has been consensually agreed that this book"... "contains a different work count" or "is considered to be significantly socially different" possibly followed by an invitation to the potential combiner to come to this forum should they have a problem with that viewpoint.

IMO anything more than that is just opening up a huge Pandora's Box and begging for your DN to not be honored by the potential combiner.

>315: I think you're overdoing it; my request was for major works that consensus would accept as separators.

I thought you and I both made that fairly explicit. I really don't know how we could have been any clearer.