What Publisher Series Have You Made Today?

Keltainen Kirjasto. Almost 3/4 done.

#2

Shouldn't that have been entered on the Finnish LT?

Yes.

As should have the following gone on .de http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Fischer-B%C3%BCcherei

http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/B%C3%BCcher+des+Wissens

Why should CK data for publisher series be language-specific? If a work has appeared in (for example) the Penguin Classics series, that's the case regardless of whether you speak English or live in an English-speaking country. I'm very happy to see the Finnish series listed on the English LT.

I thought about the language site use. Finally, I went with the least effort. I use the English-language site 97% of the time, and I didn't think the existence of other-language series would be objectionable to the American members.

You can be sure I would not think of putting Finnish-language quotes, or first or last words, onto the English-language site.

#7

I think it is mainly an audience thing. Most anglophones couldn't care less about a Finnish series (publisher or not). I would imagine that Finns would (and that they would be the audience who would maintain it going forwards) and that most of them would use LT in their native localisation.

If the Finnish series CK is only entered on the English language site, won't people using the Finnish site miss it completely?

Still?
When I give you an URL of the form <a href="/publisherseries/Keltainen Kirjasto">, it will go to whatever locale you are logged in to, and list the series for you as well as for me and for someone else. The only place where the language site shows is that when the CK info is entered under a subdomain, you don't see it on the work page on any other subdomain.

I have cursed this many a time when incorrectly entered CK requires me to log onto a completely-foreign-language-subdomain to correct a typo that I see where I am logged in but cannot access except under the specific language it was entered in.

So, since I am a Finn, I should not enter the site where anglophones reside; nothing but good American permitted here after sunset?

11: I'm a US citizen and I'd like to see French publisher series. And French Canadian publisher series. And series from small Native American language publishers (if there are any).

And I expect a lot of Europeans with English as good as ari.joki's (which is a LOT of Europeans) use the English site a majority of their time on LT.

#10
Still?
When I give you an URL of the form a href="/publisherseries/Keltainen Kirjasto", it will go to whatever locale you are logged in to, and list the series for you as well as for me and for someone else. The only place where the language site shows is that when the CK info is entered under a subdomain, you don't see it on the work page on any other subdomain.

When I look at the page for Too late the phalarope on the English language site, http://www.librarything.com/work/94166 , the Finnish publisher series shows up in the CK, as Publisher series Keltainen Kirjasto (1). When I log on to the Finnish site, and look at the equivalent page for Liian myöhään vesipääsky, http://fi.librarything.com/work/94166 , the publisher series line is blank. So certainly, if you personally link to the series page when talking to another Finnish user, they will be able to find it. But a random Finnish user who enters the book in their catalogue won't know that the series is there, which I think is a disadvantage.

#12,
you have something of a point there. However, I did debate that among myself. Given that I know several Finnish LT users who use mostly the English-language www. subdomain like I do, I decided to go the way that is easy for me.

Entering the same publisher series information on different subsites should not cause problems on entering new data. And "Keltainen Kirjasto" is a household word in Finland; I am guessing that it would be among the first publisher series that people would be searching. I think on the CK search all language versions will show up; at least for some data that is true.

a random Finnish user who enters the book in their catalogue won't know that the series is there
Ah, but does a random Finnish user use the Finnish site, or the English site? Our one data point, ari.joki, said he uses the English site 97% of the time.

All this makes me wonder - what percentage of non-English users actually use the non-English verisons of the site? Does the separation of CK entries affect their usage -- do Finnish users prefer the .com site because there's more CK? Would non-English users prefer to use a translated site if there was no separation of CK entries?

Any chance of getting statistics comparing geolocated IP addresses to domain usage?

>1 Collectorator: Your series looks very nice. It could easily look less nice if someone combined Huckleberry Finn with all the other editions unless anything is coming of Tim's hint here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/102076#2296171

I do hope that change is made.

#12
I am guessing that it would be among the first publisher series that people would be searching. I think on the CK search all language versions will show up; at least for some data that is true.

Yes, it does show up, but at the moment, CK search is not exactly easy to find! Maybe that will change when and if the search page is revamped.

#14
Ah, but does a random Finnish user use the Finnish site, or the English site? Our one data point, ari.joki, said he uses the English site 97% of the time.

But he's not exactly random: anyone who's posting in this group is likely to be a high-intensity user with a large catalogue, who knows their way around the site; there may be large gaps between what works for us and what is intuitively obvious to a more casual user.

Does the separation of CK entries affect their usage -- do Finnish users prefer the .com site because there's more CK?

I think there's a danger of a vicious spiral: the more specifically Finnish-language CK that's entered only on the English-language site, the less useful the Finnish site becomes.

Would non-English users prefer to use a translated site if there was no separation of CK entries?

If the vast bulk of CK is on the English site only, I can certainly see a case for having it show through to all the other sites as well.

If the vast bulk of CK is on the English site only, I can certainly see a case for having it show through to all the other sites as well.

It works in the reverse as well; at times I wonder about some detail of some Finnish author or perhaps a novel, and don't see anything in the CK fields. These days I mostly click on the CK history button; it gives me quicker view than redirecting to the Finnish site.

As Eveleen correctly diagnoses and indicates, I am going through a spree of high-activity use. I haven't really done surveys of more general use pattern among fellow Finns; I am extrapolating from myself.

16> If we can't keep the editions separate, then there's no benefit to even having pub series.

Is the Junior Deluxe Edition of Huckleberry Finn substantially different from a regular Huckleberry Finn? If not then the should be combined. If there is a difference someone should add a disambiguation notice to lessen the chance that someone will combine them.

And there's still a benefit to being able to add the publisher series whether or not all the covers match.

I think the publisher series field should follow the same rules as the series field. If the same series is published using an English name, the English name should be used on the English site. This is to prevent a duplicate series for each language the series was published in from overwhelming the English pages. Otherwise, if there is no English equivalent, then the foreign language name is acceptable.

19> ... there's still a benefit to being able to add the publisher series whether or not all the covers match.

Maybe so, but I'd prefer to have no cover images rather than the wrong ones. The Publisher series is not a list of any old copies of the books it comprises.

21> I already have a similar problem with Series, though. It doesn't show MY book-level cover for a given work in the series, just the work-level one. I understand why it probably does this, but it displeases me.

Why bother to have CK fields language specific if everyone puts other languages in the English slot?

23> I agree. But the other-language site users do have a point about usability. The way it's partitioned now can be a bit of a hassle. I'd love if somehow everything was unified and there was only www.librarything.com, and you could just set your display language. Then when you entered CK data, there was some way for it to tag what language the CK data was being entered in (defaulting to your setting for primary language). Finally, you could set which language CK entries you wanted to see. That way those who want all that data from other languages can have it, but those who don't won't ever be bothered by the clutter.

>22 brightcopy: I share your displeasure about Series covers, but at least a series like, say, the James Bond stories have a gazillion different covers and what they have in common is the hero. Publisher's series are, by definition, particular editions.

25> Agreed. But I think some of the same underpinning logic would probably have to be done to make both of those things work. And yes, there are some other fiddly technical details and differences I'm leaving out (like if you have two books with different covers for the same work, the fact that for a publisher series you might want to set the cover to a specific cover for that series entry which doesn't exist in someone's book catalog, etc.)

23>

I hate the language segregation of the CK fields with the intensity of a dozen damp matches. No matter which sublanguagesite of LT I am logged in to, I can always be sure to not see interesting CK information. CK, as it is currently implemented, is more appropriately called Segregated Knowledge.

Naturally I would be moderately aggravated if I were to see memorable quotes in written in Devangari or Katakana, since I have no understanding of either script. Epigraphs in Romanian or Greek are equally unintelligible for me. I can see some motivation for some segregation, but ... currently, I feel it doesn't quite satisfy the idea of common knowledge.

I don't mind if some non-English series show up, like Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. But in general it probably makes sense for this info to be on the proper site. I guess it depends on how common the books are and how unwieldy the field gets.

27> When you say "pop out the one that's collectible", are you saying you are separating one edition from the rest in the works, simply because they're a different edition?

As I see it -- and I say this as a mostly-monoglot English speaker (I can get by in Spanish, but not read for pleasure), the ideal language situation in CK should be this:

0. If the field is language-independent (gender, author dates, original publication date, etc.) it should appear across all sites without needing to be separately entered.

If the field is language-dependent (series, Canonical Title, first words, etc.):

1. If it is populated in the site the user is logged into, that value and only that value should appear.

2. If it is not populated in the site the user is logged into, and it is populated in one other language, that value should appear. (So for a series of books that have only ever appeared in Finnish, a user logged into .com would see the Finnish CK.)

3. If it is not populated in the site the user is logged into, and it is populated in multiple other languages including English, the English CK should appear (assuming that this is the most likely to be populated and understood, given the user base of LT.)

I don't know what to do in case 4 (not populated in the site the user is logged into or in English.) If you're on .fi, and there's data on .es and .de, what should happen? My gut is to just have nothing show up in these cases, but I'm hoping someone will have a better single-valued solution.

31>

That's abusing the system, though. You can note that, say, Moby Dick has appeared in a gazillion Great Works series without separating out those editions, and you absolutely should not separate out those editions.

So no, you aren't going to get dragged to the stocks for creating your series, but you will for separating out books that shouldn't be separated and creating lots of work for combiners.

ETA: Of course, if the books are abridged or simplified to fit into the series, then those editions should be separated out regardless of the existence of the series. Do you know whether that's the case for your "Junior Deluxe Editions?"

31 > that is not what's it was added for and I will guarantee you will have a combine/separate war on your hands.

Tim mentioned giving us a way to pick which covers belong to the series and I hope he is able to do that relatively soon.

31> Time for Collectorator to get the frying pan

;)

33: if the books are abridged or simplified to fit into the series, then those editions should be separated out regardless of the existence of the series

... with a suitable Disambiguation Notice explaining why they shouldn't be combined back in to the main work

If you're going to separate the editions from a particular publisher out from the rest, then you end up with works that can be listed in the normal series field, no need for Publisher Series.

The purpose of Publisher Series is a place to list series information that doesn't apply to the work as a whole, that's why it's a different field.

Edit to add: The example that Tim gave when he annouced the feature was The Works of Mark Twain, Complete and Unabridged and the series Oxford Mark Twain. He didn't separate out that particular edition first.

37>

You obviously didn't read Tim's post. This is intended to let people list their publisher-specific series without cluttering up the Series field, not to fundamentally break the entire book/work structure of LT.

You're ignoring my questions about abridgement. I'm going to assume these are complete and unabridged editions and recombine -- the onus is on you to demonstrate cause for separation, and "but these have such pretty covers" is not adequate.

Are they abridged editions? If so, they should be kept separate -- let us know! If not, well -- come back to the series when Tim gets it set up to let you choose the cover.

41>

Good luck getting an answer. I asked twice point-blank and got none. I'm working on recombining until I hear otherwise (there's nothing online I could find about the content of these editions, just the illustrations). This is a slow process, though; I started with Alice in Wonderland which needs lots of other work.

>32 lorax:
Largely seconded, but dates are not language independent. And I'm not referring to bizarre American standards, but rather the unfortunate mess that was created when parts of Europe refused to use the suspect catholic calendar, and the fact that non-christians might want to use totally different systems.

43>

You seem to be making a rather large assumption about my religion there.

However, I'm not sure whether calendrical ambiguity about something published when part of Europe was on the Gregorian calendar and part on the Julian calendar is language-dependent. I don't think it is.

43> Dates are language independent when represented in numerical fashion (which is how they should be in the database). They are, however, calendar dependent. And the display of dates as well as the non-numerical entry dates is language dependent. However, just because I speak language X doesn't mean I use the same calendar system as the people who are from country Y where lots of people speak language X.

I don't have a problem with foreign publisher series being entered on the .com site. I have a problem with non-English series *names* being entered there.

For instance, Google Translate tells me that Keltainen Kirjasto is "Yellow Library." Now, GT doesn't always have great translations, but it sure seems like there's a valid translation of Keltainen Kirjasto that could be put in the English language version of the publisher series field.

46> I don't know, not sure I really agree on that. That's like translating a title for a book that wasn't published outside of its original language. Or like translating an author's name (Leonardo da Vinci -> Leonardo of Vinci).

46>

I'd rather have it stay in the original. There is no English-language "Yellow Library" series; the series is from a Finnish publisher, of Finnish editions, and I actually know more from seeing a meaningless-to-me Finnish name for it than I would from a literal translation into English when that English translation is never actually used.

46/47/48> It reminds me of an astronomy app I used for the iPad where by default they had translated all the constellation names. So it had "Little Bear", "Big Bear", "The Twins" instead of "Ursa Minor", "Ursa Major" and "Gemini". It was just confusing, even if it was technically my native language.

I entered two last night, both of potential interest to those who enjoy "reading globally": Writers from the Other Europe and African Writers Series.

48>
And for a name like "Golden Books" vs "Kultaiset Kirjat", I am not at all certain that the contents would be the same across the oceans. That would be folding two unrelated pub.ser. into a shapeless lump, just because having foreign-language names is Not Good.

>44 lorax:

My apologies. I was trying to say something about the strange fear of anything that bore the mark of Catholicism, not something about Catholicism or other religions per se.

>45 brightcopy:
Calendar and language often overlap, though. The difference between a convention that is used in Sweden and one that is used in Swedish is negligible here (Finland switched at the same time, as it was part of Sweden then). Either way, the fact that some languages are associated with several calendars does nothing to counter the argument that you cannot assume that a date that is used in language would be appropriate to use in all others.

52>

Thanks, I suppose, although that wasn't the misconception I was talking about. You seemed to for some strange reason be assuming that I was Christian.

>53 lorax:
If that's the case, I've been misunderstood. Since most of those who might want to use calendars other than the Gregorian aren't Christians, I used that instead of some longer, more exact expression. That this could be read as if I was saying that all those who do use the Gregorian calendar are Christians never struck me. Apologies, again.

To return to the original topic, I moved a series over from a standard series page to a publisher series page:
http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Fontana+-+Blackwell+History+of+Europ...

When I originally entered it, I thought it was a proper series, written specifically for Fontana in the UK and Blackwell in the US, but I discovered later that a couple of the works had also been published elsewhere. I'd been intending to remove it, so the announcement of the new publisher series page was a pleasant surprise.

I intend to have a go later at the Penguin 60s series, http://www.librarything.com/series/Penguin+60s , where I remember leaving a note that some works were excluded because they weren't unique to the series; it looks like an ideal candidate to move over.

I moved "The complete works Winston Churchill" as it was to a publishers series. There are some volumes missing from the series, in particular some volumes of the second world war, which get removed by someone who thought their editions were not part of the larger series - it might have been me!

>55 EveleenM:
I discovered later that a couple of the works had also been published elsewhere

Where they published prior to inclusion in the series? Or where they republished later?

I don't know if this has ever been clearly discussed, but I think it matters. My opinion has been, "once a series - always a series." If a set of books is commissioned and published under common editorship and and/or a common format with a common series name, it's an LT series. If one of those volumes is later republished elsewhere, it shouldn't break the series. It's only the reverse that's a problem, when a publisher assembles a series out of previously published works.

#57
I can't remember at this point, I'm afraid. Anyway, I think that the publishers series slot is a better fit, so I'm happy to leave it as it is.

57> Sorry, I don't agree with that. I do remember it coming up recently and my (foggy) memory says it was about books that were created for some kind of contest or through some kind of program. But then later some had been republished outside of that series. Both this example and yours seems a prime candidate for Publisher Series. Regular Series are, by definition, things that apply to ALL editions of works, right?

57> That's a nice opinion in theory, but this isn't about theory, it's about what LT can and can't do. The whole reason for a distinction between Series and Publisher Series is that LT only knows about Works (and Books) but not Editions, so a Series has to apply to all editions of a work or none. That has nothing to do with when an edition is published by someone else.

>59 brightcopy:,60

But my point is that the content of the work was determined by the conditions of original publication. That content will not change under republication. It may not be listed on the cover, you will be reading a book from the series. This is a clear distinction from a reprint series where the content, except perhaps the introduction, was created without any knowledge of the series.

This is the longer post I was writing before the last few came in.

>58 EveleenM:
I think that the publishers series slot is a better fit

What's your basis for this? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I think if we don't have a good definition of the difference between a series and a publishers' series we'll end up with rather random assignments to one or the other. I'm particularly worried about this for nonfiction.

At an extreme end we could say that only a multi-volume, single author work can be a nonfiction series (e.g. Robert Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson. My view is at the other end. If it was published as a series and did not, at publication, include reprints of other works then it's a regular series not a publishers' series (e.g. Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America). In the middle one could use criteria such as later republication or common subject matter or common format. I don't know what's best, but I'm reluctant to move edge cases before some discussion.

This is actually why I started this thread. Unfortunately it got only one response.

62> I think the guideline in the wiki is pretty good:
Never create publisher series, unless the publisher has a true monopoly over the "works" in question.

Of course, this was written before the new CK field, so you can create them now, just as Publisher Series.

I think it's a great guideline. I don't think it has value to put things in a Series just because of its publisher history. Just doesn't make sense to me. I'd say we should stick to the pre-existing guideline.

(me) #58
I think that the publishers series slot is a better fit

#62
What's your basis for this? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I think if we don't have a good definition of the difference between a series and a publishers' series we'll end up with rather random assignments to one or the other. I'm particularly worried about this for nonfiction.

My criterion is simple: if even a single member's edition is labelled as part of a series to which it does not belong, then that series should be in the publishers series slot rather than the general series slot. The series label right under the author's name on the work page is very striking, and it certainly puts my teeth on edge if it's not a correct series for the edition I own. I assume that at least some other members feel likewise.

By that criterion, the fact that something originated as an exclusive series is irrelevant, if there are now editions which are not part of the series.

>63 brightcopy:,64
First, let's be clear that this creates the situation that it may be perfectly fine to enter a series in the regular series CK one day, and the next day it has to be moved to publishers' because once volume was reprinted. I think that's strange.

Second, this seriously conflicts with my use of series, and especially with the use of the series column in the catalog and the series statistics page.

If a book was originally published in The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science back in the early 20th century I want to know that. It doesn't matter if I can only find an Arno reprint edition. The setting of it's publication is far more significant to me.

What about republication in other languages. It is fairly common for the only most successful books in academic series to get translated and the translations are put out by different publishers. Does translation break series?

I am more interested in academic nonfiction series than any other type. I have put in hours and hours entering these series. I have been very careful to leave out previously published works. I do on occasion use the series column in the catalog and more often I use the series statistics page. Even if we eventually get those features for publishers' series they will be far less useful for my purposes because there will be overloaded with reprint series data.

I find this very sad.

65>

If a book was originally published in The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science back in the early 20th century I want to know that. It doesn't matter if I can only find an Arno reprint edition. The setting of it's publication is far more significant to me.

This is precisely the sort of situation for which Publishers' Series was created for.

>67 eromsted:

To me publishers' series is for my Everyman's Library Edition of The Divine Comedy and my Harvard Classics edition of the Same book. Dante had never heard of either of these series. The content of those books has nothing to do with the series (even the translations predated the series). Only the form is series dependent. The authors of the books published under the Johns Hopkins series were working under a particular editorial guidance. The content, and even the fact that books on such topics were published at all was impacted by the series.

I'm with eromsted. The series description does after all also say that "A good rule of thumb is that series have a conventional name and are intentional creations, on the part of the author or publisher."

And such series does actually already exist, for example Waverly Novels or Les voyages extraordinaires. There are also other books were you can't determine from the cover that they are really part of a "series", but have to do so from internal characteristics (e.g. detective novels featuring the same sleuth).

68> "A good rule of thumb" isn't supposed to be all-inclusive. In fact, it often implies that there's going to be exceptions. And that's the case with Series. I'd posit that the vast majority of Series DO fit that rule of thumb. It's like taking "a good rule of thumb is that all mammals have breasts and bear live young" and claiming that this means monotremes aren't mammals.

On the other hand "Never create publisher series, unless the publisher has a true monopoly over the "works" in question." is pretty darn specific.

65> First, let's be clear that this creates the situation that it may be perfectly fine to enter a series in the regular series CK one day, and the next day it has to be moved to publishers' because once volume was reprinted. I think that's strange.

I agree that's strange. If it were up to me all series created by publishers would go into the publisher series field regardless of whether the publisher has exclusive rights to the work or not. And so the series field would only be for those series set in a common world or involving a common character (I wish we could come up with a name for that, like environmental series).

But Tim has said that the new field is only for those rejects that didn't fit in the old Series field. Maybe if enough of us disagreed we could change his mind. I'd start a poll, but I'm not sure this group or this thread would be the best place for it.

>69 brightcopy:
Specific isn't necessarily good. To me what makes a regular series is content. What makes a publisher's series is form. To say that a set of books that were a series on content grounds can no longer be a series because someone took one of them and altered the form makes no sense to me.

71> Well, I think you've hit upon the crux of jjwilson61's post, and I agree with him. In my opinion, those books should never be put in Series at all, now that we have Publisher Series. All those dummies books should now be migrated over to Publisher Series, IMO.

As you said, what makes a regular series is content. The fact that it was originally published by Publisher X has nothing to do with the content. And that's exactly the point of view I and many other posters are arguing from. It doesn't make sense to us to have a regular Series that is only indicative of the publisher. Unfortunately, we haven't convinced Tim yet.

ETA: I should also note that I'd qualify you statement:
What makes a regular series is content and applicability to all editions in a work.

That, to me, is the real crucial test. That's why Tim is still on the side of the Dummies books being a regular Series. There is applicability to all editions in a work. Also, it's arguably true that the content is directly a result of it being a Dummies book.

IMHO what makes it a series is whether it was intentionally created as part of a series on first publication. That can include *some* but not all publisher's series. When that does apply to a publisher's series, it can stay in series. That applies for the Dummies series. When it doesn't apply, i.e. when the publisher's series was created not for the original instance of publication, then it should go in the publisher's series; so, Oxford World Classics, for instance.

But books that were originally intentionally published as part of a series, and later published outside of that, should not have their original series status revoked. If one of the Dummies books gets repackaged under another name, it is no less a work that was, originally, intentionally created as part of a series.

By the way, the edge cases that I'm not sure about are some deliberately created publisher's series, but where the series seems an after thought, just a publisher's convention. E.g.
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_listsearch.taf?series=Cornell%20Studies%...

I'd probably put that in publisher's series rather than series, even if the books only exist as part of that series.

After reading all the posts, and thinking about the two options, I'm coming to the conclusion that if the author thought the books were a series, they go in Series, but if the publisher issued the books as a series, then they should go in Publisher's Series. As simple as that. A regular Series should only have one author, or in cases like the Oz books or the Peter Wimsey mysteries written by what's-her-name after Dorothy L. Sayers' death, secondary authors. Other edge cases would be things like the Hardy Boys, etc., which continue the same characters or environment, but are not all written by the same person.

I know this does not cover Dummies, but I think they belong in Publisher's Series. When Tim first created Series, the option of Publisher's Series was not even a gleam in his eye, so what he said then may no longer be true; the LT world has changed.
:-)

Getting back to what PS I have created today, they are Longman Companions to History and Oxford Reader's Companions. The Longman series already has a regular series, which I have not removed, since I don't know whether there are any books which have escaped from the fold. The Oxford series did not previously have a series entry.

#75: I don't see why it doesn't cover Dummies; every single book in the series was written as part of the series, as far as I know. The author was commissioned to write the book. This is true for a lot of the series where "a book has escaped from the fold"; every book in the Ballantine Best of Series was compiled for the series by the editors.

In any case, I think saying that a regular series should only have one author is ignoring the variety of series out there. The Thieves' World books are clearly a series without one main author, and many roleplaying books and roleplaying fiction are clearly part of series without one main author.

But the Thieves' World books are all about one world. They have far more connection with each other than any publisher series will ever have.

To refine the test in #75, I would say that if the book was written as part of the series, it is a "series". It need not have one author -- shared world is a perfect example. And it explains why unauthorized sequels and fanfic are not exactly part of the same series -- the original author had no authorial intent to be in the series.

Publisher proprietary series, frankly, I would move to publisher series. Titles can "escape" over time, and we shouldn't have to orphan individual escapee titles, or change a whole series, just because a title is ultimately re-published by some other publisher.

75> If several books are set in the same universe even though the main characters differ from book to book (thinking mainly scifi, but applies to other genres) but are never labeled a "series" by the author, does that fall under your logic?

>79 brightcopy:
It might; if they are all by the same author, quite possible. No examples springing to mind, but I know the kind of thing you're thinking of.

80> A couple of examples I can think of:

The Discworld novels have several Series that subdivide them. Discworld: City Watch is just the stories that center on the City Watch characters. Discworld: Rincewind are the books that have Rincewind as the main character. It can get a bit silly because of the number of them, but it's an example.

Larry Niven's Known Space is another one, though eventually it started being labeled as such on the books. But up until some point, it wasn't really talked about as a series, just a bunch of books that happened to be set in the same universe.

Often, when browsing through my Series list I'll find books that I didn't even know were related because someone created a Series for it. Like just now, I was looking for examples for you and discovered that the Niven book A World Out of Time was actually set in the same universe as The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring. Interesting!

I think Tamora Pierce (sorry, touchstone doesn't seem to be loading) also has a number of books that fall into this category.

Edited to correct spelling, but it didn't help the touchstone >:-(

tamora pierce

Back to publishers series made today-

American Labor from Arno Press (1969-1971)
Reprints of classic books on the US Labor Movement from the 19th century through the first half of the 20th century. 100 volumes in total, only 60 are in LT at present. The series was reviewed by David Montgomery in an article titled "The Conventional Wisdom," Labor History 13:1 (Winter, 1972).
Most of these books were long out of print by the 1960s making this series an excellent resource. However, I believe Arno Press is now defunct so most of them are out of print again.

Because this series was mentioned here: The Publisher's series "Keltainen kirjasto" has been entered in two different forms: Keltainen kirjasto and Keltainen Kirjasto. So there are two pages for this one series. I guess someone might want to fix this.

http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Keltainen+Kirjasto
http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Keltainen+kirjasto

I've been working on the French SF collection http://www.librarything.fr/publisherseries/Pr%C3%A9sence%20du%20futur. I've moved or added some stuff in other major pocket format collections (Livre de poche, J'ai Lu, Folio, Pocket...), but SF collections are my priority right now.

Hi circeus -- I've been doing SF series, among others; do you have lists online for any of the French SF series? I looked for one for Folio SF but couldn't find it -- so I've been moving them there but for the most part they're unnumbered as of yet.

If folks are looking for series to move to publisher series, I've listed many, many of them on the LT wiki at "Publisher Series - Series description". If you finish one off, edit the page and put in <strike> at the beginning and </strike> at the end of the series name.

I've been using the list at Noosfere for Présence. Here's the one for Folio SF: http://www.noosfere.com/icarus/livres/collection.asp?numcollection=-10246496&amp...

In the past, I've also used Bibliopoche.com.

"Because this series was mentioned here: The Publisher's series "Keltainen kirjasto" has been entered in two different forms: Keltainen kirjasto and Keltainen Kirjasto. So there are two pages for this one series. I guess someone might want to fix this."

Keltainen kirjasto is the spelling that the publisher uses nowadays.
http://www.tammi.fi/sivut/32

I have been intermittently adding books to the series and correcting the name of the series.