I have two books which are separate and have distinct ISBNs. The title is the same excepting "part 1" and "part 2". Someone else appears to have entered them as though they were a single volume under the first ISBN. I want to avoid having these two combined. Is there any way I can leave a note that Part 2 is a distinct work, with its own ISBN to prevent it being erroneously combined by someone in the future.

Copies and editions of this title
Lock Picking (Part One) / David De-Val (ISBN 1871067006) (1 copy separate)
Lock Picking (Part 1 and 2) / David De-Val (ISBN 1871067006) (1 copy separate)
Potential work combinations

(combine/separate potentials)
Lock Picking (Part Two) by David De-Val (1 copies)

Under the disambiguation notice you can put in a note that says, "Be careful when combining Lock Picking editions - Do not combine omnibus editions with editions marked Part 1 or Part 2 as they are different." or something similar.

When someone attempts to combine them, they'll see the notice. It won't out and out prevent it, but they'll be aware.

Take note too that the algorithm that automatically combines titles that are the same in some cases ignores part of the title. I don't remember all of what is ignored but it may be that text in parenthesis is ignored, in which case your two titles above look the same to the system.

So, you might try renaming them to something like Lockpicking, Part 1, and see if that fixes it.

Message edited by its author, Oct 25, 2009, 3:55pm.

Is that true even if they have different isbns?

How does LT know if two books with different ISBNs are two different editions of the same work or two different works? The way it tells is if the title and author are the same (with some variations in sameness taken into account).

If parentheticals indeed don't count, I think the reason is so that you can add something like (audio) or (paperback) after the title and still be accepted as the same work.

One other possibility has to do with library sources: often, in library catalogs, all volumes of a book are cataloged together. When you search for an ISBN for, say, the second volume, it pulls up the whole multi-volume book and imports that. Sometimes too, the data grab will also grab a different ISBN than the one you used to search, because it just takes the one the library source gives it, which might be the one for the first volume, or one for an omnibus.

I don't know if this was an issue in this particular case, but it's happened to me a few times (both the pulling up the generic work and the grabbing a different ISBN), and I've had to go in and edit it. Often bookstore sources distinguish editions when library sources don't (otherwise I find library sources far superior).

Thanks for the explanations. I just had the same issue with a translated version of one of Dean Koontz's books. I think part of it was that I searched for the first ISBN number in our national library, found it and added it. Alas the ISBN number wasn't transferred to the LT record, so I should have entered it myself.
I didn't so when I entered the second volume the same way it was combined with the first one.
I've sorted out the mess.

As far as I know the LT way of cataloging things like this will have
"Strangers" and "Fremmede, part 1" and "Fremmede, part 2" as three seperate records, since there is no way of expressing that the two Danish titles are both a part of the English one. Is that correct?

>7. ...there is no way of expressing that the two Danish titles are both a part of the English one. Is that correct?

Correct, there is currently no way to "link" or show a relationship between whole works and parts of works. However, you can, and I would encourage you to, add that information to the disambiguation notices.

i.e. "The English work Strangerswas published in Danish in two parts - this is Part 1."

Message edited by its author, Oct 31, 2009, 5:17pm.

#8: Thanks!