Work-to-work Relationships Reboot Thread

Continuing the discussion of work-to-work relationships, with updated lists, &c.

Original Thread.

HelpThing page.

General Principles

1. Create no new works. Do not create new works in order to make work-to-work relationships. If a work contains something, but there is no work for it, leave it off—or add a note to the "Disambiguation notice" for future inclusion.

2. Link whole work to whole work. This isn't an all-purpose table-of-contents feature, but a way to show relationships that apply universally across all editions of a work.

3. This doesn't change any rules about what's a work. If it was a work before this feature, it's still a work. If it wasn't before, it's still not. Don't split or combine works for the purpose of creating relationships.

4. This isn't for series. We have a series feature! We can, however, finally link the various non-canonical "sequels" to Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre etc.

5. Make the closer link. If you link the Fellowship of the Rings directly to the Tolkien omnibus, you won't be able to also link it to the Lord of the Rings.

6. Relationships are reciprocal. If you say Ulysses was inspired by The Odyssey, the relationship will display on The Odyssey page as "Inspired Ulysses", and on the Ulysses page as "Was inspired by The Odyssey."

And finally:

7. When in doubt, leave it out—and talk about it with others.

Current Relationships

Contains

Is a retelling of
Is a (non-series) sequel to
Is a (non-series) prequel to
Is an adaptation of
Is an abridged version of
Is an expanded version of

Is a parody of
Is a reply to
Was inspired by

Is a study of
Is a reference guide/companion to
Is a supplement to
Is a commentary on the text of
Is a concordance to

Is a student's study guide to
Is a teacher's guide to

Examples and preliminary definitions of these are on the HelpThing page.

Please feel free to add additional examples on the HelpThing page. If you don't think the definitions as set out there work, propose an alternative here and we'll discuss.

If you think there's a relationship that's not covered by any of the current relationships, post in this thread with an example and we'll discuss.

Was study of previously combined with guide to? If we marked something as a study/guide, what is it now? Can we see a list of all the relationships we've marked, to check that they still make sense as the names change?

When a novel, say, is published in multiple volumes (each existing as a separate work in LT), we still relate them using "contains", right?

I ask this as a clarification of principle 2 -- linking "whole work" to "whole work." It must be understood that volume I of Les Miserables constitutes a "whole work" in LT-speak.

Or should we have a special relationship for volumized texts...

ETA: I hope you say no to this

>2 _Zoe_: It was - we rolled them into guides, but will make sure any studies now being called guides are switched back, by some method or another :-)

"Study or guide" is not now "reference guide/companion to."

I need to make a page listing all instances of these relationships, by relationship. It's on the way.

Tim, you mean "now", right, not "not"? :-)

Or should we have a special relationship for volumized texts...

No. But my bet is that, as we go forward and add a true "expressions" layer, we'll put single volumes into the work as a separate expression. But we're a month or two from that.

6> Dare I say - search function?

So, for now at least, should we defer from creating relationships between multiple-volume editions and single-volume editions of the same text?

8> One thing that came up on the other thread as it was near the end is The Hobbit: A Graphic Novel, which has been published as a single volume or split into three.

http://www.librarything.com/work/7552508
http://www.librarything.com/work/3206367
http://www.librarything.com/work/7840629
(not even going to ATTEMPT to get touchstones to work on those, since it has a hard enough time with just the plain graphic novel)

So all of these things are an adaptation of The Hobbit. So I'm wondering if it could make sense to say the individual parts are contained in the single volume one, and say IT is an adaptation of The Hobbit, and then have the individual volumes get an "Is adaptation of" relationship via "indirect" linking like the Contained in/by already does.

Reposting:

But if we split them out, it should be into two groups--relationships that are about contains/contained, and the rest.

Yeah, this is basically what I mean.

Different works
(non-series) sequel to
(non-series) prequel to
retelling of
inspired by
parody of
reply to

Is a study of
Is a reference guide/companion to
Is a supplement to
Is a commentary on the text of
Is a concordance to

Is a student's study guide to
Is a teacher's guide to

Various forms of the same work
Contains/Contained in
Abridgement
Expansion
Adaptation of

I'm not quite sure reference guide/companion has the same sense as "study" when it comes to scholarly works, but maybe I've just been using the terms too loosely. How is The Evolution of the Euclidean Elements related to Euclid's Elements? It explains the historical developments in Greek mathematics that are behind the Elements, and it seems too weak just to call it a "companion".

I forgot to say, I'm looking forward to the page listing all instances of these relationships. (And it will be even better if it has multiple sort/filter options.)

I created two relationships and works with 0 users are showed
see
http://www.librarything.it/work/6303635

http://www.librarything.it/work/6855580 (0 users)
http://www.librarything.it/work/6855588 (1 user)

and

http://www.librarything.it/work/6855588

http://www.librarything.it/work/10404709 (0 users)
http://www.librarything.it/work/6303635 (3 users)

Various forms of the same work

No. They're not. An omnibus does not contain "forms of the same work." It contains different works. Abridgment, expansion and adaptation were all chosen as terms about the existence of different works. The only thing that may end up subsumed into works is when contains/contained deals with v. 1, v. 2 stuff.

So, for now at least, should we defer from creating relationships between multiple-volume editions and single-volume editions of the same text?

No, I think it's fine. I think it's going to be a useful guide to what needs to be combined, for starters. And I'm thinking that, when we combine them, we can choose to sink the relationships "down"--from work-to-work to an attribute attached to the expression. Man, this gets brain-wrinkling fast.

>13 _Zoe_: - I'd call that a study.
>14 _Zoe_: - me too - I still need to find a couple examples for the HelpThing page!
>16 timspalding: re: brain-wrinkling - you have that right! :-)

>16 timspalding: You're missing my point, or are just more concerned about the terminology than the idea. If I've read and enjoyed a book, I might immediately seek out other works that were inspired by it, respond to it, etc. I will not immediately seek out an abridgment of it, or an omnibus that combines it with other works.

OK, since we're not going to get separate threads, my thoughts on the whole thing is that there are too many relationships. If you have to go to a wiki page to tell the difference between the different relationships then it's too confusing. I see a few types got consolidated above but I think my point still stands. For example is it really worth making a difference between retelling of and inspired by? And the whole study of/reference guide/concordance blob can be consolidated to "is a reference work about".

There were some other things but I'll probably have to read through the whole thread again to remember what they are.

Oh, I'd like to have a discussion of inspired by since in a sense everything a writer writes was inspired by everything he read up to that point. How do we tell what inspired what? Is there some level of proof needed such as an article where an author stated what he was inspired by? Or if some literary critic says it is that good enough?

I'd call that a study.

But anything that I had previously marked as a study (when it was study/guide) has now been transformed into guide/companion, right? Which is why I'd like a list of all the relationships I've created, so that I can change them as necessary. Though I'll probably wait a while for things to settle down before doing that anyway.

>19 jjwilson61: I agree that something like "is a reference work concerning" would be better than the current abundance of terms. I'm not quite convinced about losing the distinction between retelling and "inspired by", though.

19: I agree that we're getting too many relationship types.

16 You're missing my point, or are just more concerned about the terminology than the idea. If I've read and enjoyed a book, I might immediately seek out other works that were inspired by it, respond to it, etc. I will not immediately seek out an abridgment of it, or an omnibus that combines it with other works.

Okay, that makes sense. I don't think, however, that contains/container relationships are as uninteresting as you think. It depends, I suppose, on whether you are looking at your own book or finding new ones.

I agree that something like "is a reference work concerning" would be better than the current abundance of terms.

In all such discussions we must choose between lumping and splitting. I favor richer data. Indeed, I think that, once we've got a set, we should add "Other..." so people can do that. I don't see any objections, really, so long as we can prevent misuse of it, like people using it as a way to represent edition-level information or series.

I don't see a possibility to say that a work contains excerpts of other works.

I have a slim volume, Herman Melville: Voyages, which contains excerpts from Typee and Moby Dick, in addition to some poems and correspondence. But there seems to be no way to enter these relationships.

228-230 of the old thread> I have no idea of whether this has been further discussed but I need to write down my thoughts before I continue reading the thread.

I completely disagree. I think the solution in this case is to realize that this is only for work-to-work relationships and your trying to shoehorn in work-to-series relationships. We should just give up as it isn't going to work well and wait for Tim to figure out a solution (I suggested an eventual series-level layer and Tim responded but I can't remember at the moment what he said).

>23 timspalding: I definitely think contains/container relationships have value, but it's a different kind of thing. That's why I'd like to see the section split, or at the very least organized so that the two types of relationships are grouped together.

As for richer data, it's only richer insofar as the distinctions are meaningful. I'm not convinced that that's the case here.

> 19

For example is it really worth making a difference between retelling of and inspired by?

Absolutely. While it's true that one work may be both a retelling of another and inspired by that other, that is often very much not the case. For instance, March, by Geraldine Brooks, while inspired by Little Women, is definitely not a retelling of that story.

23> In all such discussions we must choose between lumping and splitting. I favor richer data. Indeed, I think that, once we've got a set, we should add "Other..." so people can do that. I don't see any objections, really, so long as we can prevent misuse of it, like people using it as a way to represent edition-level information or series.

The objection I see is that when adding relationships people are presented with a daunting list of choices and when they read them they can't figure out the differences between them, so they give up.

So, with all this data, the question is "what use is it?"

Structured data is useful because it can be seen singly, aggregated, and because it can influence the creation or presentation of other data, eg.

Seen singly: Oh, I didn't know Grendel is a retelling of Beowulf!
Aggregated: Here are the most popular parodies on LibraryThing!
Influencing creation of data: Did you enjoy Twilight? You might be interested in this companion to it!

But not all relationships have the same value. You can't, I think, tell whether someone wants a parody of a book by whether they liked it or hated it. And while it's useful to say that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it might be more useful to also say what the relationship is in more detail.

27> Isn't a retelling just a tighter form of inspired-by? I mean inspired-by can mean just about anything from reusing a theme to similar characters to a very close following of the original story. Can you think of any cases where if there was a retelling relationship that an inspired-by relationship wouldn't also be appropriate?

The objection I see is that when adding relationships people are presented with a daunting list of choices and when they read them they can't figure out the differences between them, so they give up.

So, I propose telling them to choose all the ones that apply, and not to lose sleep over it. :)

Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker and Godslayer are a two-part story that looks at The Lord of the Rings from the perspective of Sauron, though in an original world rather than Middle-Earth. They’ve subsequently been published in an omnibus, The Sundering, so I was able to identify the two original books as contained in the omnibus and then identify the omnibus as a reply to Tolkien’s work. Had the omnibus not been published, though, should I have independently listed the two books as replies to Lord of the Rings? It might be good to be able to link to series for this purpose.

In the case of work A is a reply to work B and work A contains work C, it would be good to display the “reply to B” information on the work C page.

Had the omnibus not been published, though, should I have independently listed the two books as replies to Lord of the Rings? It might be good to be able to link to series for this purpose.

Yes, although when the series is only two books long, I don't see the problem as that severe.

I had no idea about those books. See, this is a cool feature!

For "replies" I really want to know the longest "chain" of them—when A replied to B replied to C replied to D... :)

>33 timspalding: - heh, I was just going to say the same thing; I'd never heard of these either!

Structured data is useful because it can be aggregated, and because it can be used

Yes.

All those suggestions are good, though I would say that #2 is the sort of thing that we should just see on the work page; hence my point about grouping those types of relationship separately.

And please keep this point in mind when considering things like default Read and Owned collections, and all the possibilities for the date fields. Not to mention ratings! There's so much data on this site that you could be taking advantage of, and other interesting data that you refuse even to collect. Add more sort and filter options everywhere. Extend Zeitgeist lists. Etc.

You learning PHP by any chance?

So, I propose telling them to choose all the ones that apply, and not to lose sleep over it. :)

Then we just get into noise. Do we really want to see every retelling listed as inspired-by as well?

The other problem is that if you break it down too finely, it's possible that none of the fits will be perfect. I've already encountered that problem a few times (and it's now exacerbated by the fact that one of the relationships changed).

>37 timspalding: Who?

34>

What I want to know is who wrote A in each chain of sufficient complexity. Thales, perhaps, for philosophy. God for religion (not too useful, that one). But what about literature, what are the relationships (response, inspiration, etc.) that stem out from, say, Homer?

You could build genealogies of influence -- family trees describing the intellectual patrimony of philosophers, writers, great books, etc. -- all based on the work relationships. To keep things simple, you'd probably have to pick a work and then trace upstream and downstream from that node...

>40 SilentInAWay: In a similar vein, another thing that I'd love to see is genealogies of user recommendations (based on a "who suggested this book" field). It would be fun to see that User A received a book from Early Reviewers, and three other users read it at her suggestion, and then suggested it to four others....

(I know, I'm straying from the point here. Sorry.)

>40 SilentInAWay: - that's fantastic! I agree, that would be a really cool feature.

40> Yes! and just imagine when we will get visualization for it, mindmap-style, watching, oh, I dunno, almost the entire fantasy genre unfold from LotR, or the western canon from Homer...

Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but you get the point.

So far:

Contains (8196)
Reference guide/companion to (201)
Is an adaptation of (135)
Was inspired by (120)
Is a retelling of (44)
Is a (non-series) sequel to (40)
Is a supplement to (29)
Is an abridged version of (28)
Is a parody of (26)
Is a student's study guide to (19)
Is a commentary on the text of (15)
Is a concordance to (13)
Is a reply to (11)
Is a study of (5)
Is a (non-series) prequel to (4)
Is a teacher's guide to (4)
Is an expanded version of (3)

>44 timspalding: Can we see the lists of which books are in which category?

I'd also like a list of which relationships I've personally made, since there are some now reference guide/companions that need to be changed to studies.

>44 timspalding:

Yeah, both on it's way. May be delayed by need to drive down to Boston. That list was a stepping stone.

Thanks :)

It would also be nice if the edit button let us change the relationship type, rather than just giving the option to delete it.

16> No, I think it's fine. I think it's going to be a useful guide to what needs to be combined, for starters. And I'm thinking that, when we combine them, we can choose to sink the relationships "down"--from work-to-work to an attribute attached to the expression. Man, this gets brain-wrinkling fast.

If I'm reading this right, this is also what I was suggesting in #11.

ETA: Actually, on later re-reading, probably not the same.

"daunting list of choices"> This may be a bit elitist or snobbish, but I'm not going to lose any sleep that people who would find that list daunting (especially if there's a nearby link to the help page) aren't in there mucking with the data...

**Tangent Alert**

I mistakenly mused that Thales would be the start point of a philosophy chain of influence. Actually, I don't believe that Thales even wrote down his ideas (there's certainly nothing extant), so there's no work to based the relationships upon. The same goes for Anaximander (one fragment remains) and Pythagoras. So I suppose that our imagined philosophy chain would be anchored by Heraclitus (for whom books have been constructed out of fragments quoted by other writers).

Now if there were only some active LT-ers who understand the relationships between specific works of philosophy...

Two questions/comments:

I'd really like a way to connect a work to a series or more than one series to each other. For example, the series Lucifer was inspired by the Sandman. (Well, spun off from might be a more accurate relationship, but that doesn't exist.)

I have have a bunch of books that are retellings, adaptations, or studies of the Bible and other religious tests. There is no authoritative Bible for me to link it to. Is there a good way to record these relationships?

>48 brightcopy: Meh. I think forcing people to choose from overly-fine options is just as likely to deter the perfectionists while presenting no problem to people who aren't so concerned with accuracy.

#50 I was wondering similarly about books that are retellings of folk tales or fairy tales - hard to find an authoritative work to link them to, as the original tales are usually published in collections rather than singly.

For example I wanted to link East aka North Child by Edith Pattou to the Norwegian folk tale 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon', the former being a retelling of the latter. There are a great many works with the title East of the Sun or variations on that. Some are also retellings of the original tale, one at least is an edition of the collection of tales made by Peter Asbjornsen, containing the tale in question but many others also. Neither of these options is appropriate to link back to. There are some other works which may contain the tale alone, but there is too little information to tell whether this is so.

This may be partly a matter of waiting until the treatment of 'short stories' is sorted out? But I think there a slightly different matter of how deal with stories/tales/myths which originated perhaps in oral culture before being collected/written down often in more than one version, and which have inspired many a retelling, parody or other kind of work since.

There are lots of retellings for the Biblical story of Job, but there isn't really a good master work to link them. This seems like a pretty rich example, but if the different versions link to a different commentary version, then the richness of the feature might be lost.

I'm also looking for a basic 1001 Nights.

> 33 Had the omnibus not been published, though, should I have independently listed the two books as replies to Lord of the Rings? It might be good to be able to link to series for this purpose.

Yes, although when the series is only two books long, I don't see the problem as that severe.

What about when the series is 40 books long?

I asked this with some examples (Vorkosigan Companion, Dragonlovers Guide to Pern) in the old thread. Is the answer really to add these to every single book in the series?

>18 _Zoe_: Most times I would agree with you, if I have already read or own the work I'm not that interested in finding out which other works might contain it.

However, sometimes you read a book or have it recommended to you and want to purchase - only to find it's out of print or otherwise difficult to obtain. This feature could be a useful way of tracking down a more readily available work containing the item you require - not to mention there's sometimes a cost saving to be had if you would likely buy some or all of the other works contained in an omnibus edition.

It could also be useful in determining that the new title by your favourite author is not actually a new work :)

>56 Nerilka: Right, they're both useful, but in very different situations. I'd like to be able to move them around the work page separately, close one when not needed, etc.

55>

I asked about a similar issue for the Aubrey/Maturin books, and Tim said to hold off and wait for a series-level relationship field.

"It could also be useful in determining that the new title by your favourite author is not actually a new work :)"

Are you meaning omnibus contents or alternate titles?

A specific question just to make sure I understand this, because I am not too swift about this stuff:

Is The Final Days a non-series sequel to All the President's Men? The Final Days describes how Nixon resigned as a result of what was uncovered in All the President's Men.

Thanks,

k4k

ETA: The only thing that doesn't fit your definition is that they are both by the same authors.

54>

That's tough, the 1001 Nights is a mess with so many abridgements out there. The recent Haddawy translation is at least well-defined rather than a constantly shifting mess of combination and separation, but because he worked from an early manuscript it doesn't have a lot of the most familiar stories.

It's a case where I'd love to be able to say that X, Y, an Z are abridgements of A, but there's no single platonic A out there. (I'm sure this is what you're struggling with, as well.)

I'm hoping this can eventually be used to clean up the author pages, so that the really distinct works are highlighted. (Yes, I know that technically half of the Iliad is "really" a distinct work from the whole Iliad. But it makes the author pages very messy.)

>61 lorax: Yup, it's definitely a mess!

Why are "Contained Inside" and "Is Contained In" different things?

For example: http://www.librarything.com/work/44326

>59 infiniteletters: I was thinking about omnibus contents. Sometimes it's just not immediately obvious that a "new" title is an omnibus of earlier works.

I don't think "contained in" will highlight alternate titles, as a retitled work is likely to be combined as an edition of the existing work anyway - unless the retitled work has some considerable differences from the original. I wouldn't expect to be able to create a relationship between original and alternate title of the same work.

No that we have work relations, is there better justification for separating out certain editions or variants, such as the Burton translation of 1001 Nights? In some ways, that's as much Burton's work as it is the traditional tales in their original Arabic. Also, as noted, plenty of other authors and publishers have tackled the original source material, with dramatically variable results.

Similarly (uh, oh; here it comes!), Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, Robert Fagles' translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and Bayard Taylor's translation of Goethe's Faust each seems to be a distinct work (and, in the last case, extensively interpreted and annotated -- at least in the edition of Taylor's Goethe's Faust that we have). And where do we put the Charles Scofield's editions of the Bible?

On the question of adaptations vs. inspired by, consider Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad or Mark Richardson's Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, each inspired by The Odyssey and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, respectively. For adaptations, consider the works of Howard Pyle, C.S. Evans, The Brothers Grimm, and Robin McKinley (Deerslayer). It may be that the line between "adaptation" and "inspiration" is hard to discern; but, in each case, the point seems to be that the works are related, and not as much exactly how so.

I'm interested to hear others views, particularly if I'm wrong. Thanks!

>66 jasbro: Briefly, no. See rule #3.

I think Tim said editions etc. will come in about a month.

i haven't read all the posts in this thread yet so someone might have addressed this already, but what is the main difference between "(non-series) sequel" and "inspired by"? the examples given on the HelpThing page make them seem like the same thing.

64> Why are "Contained Inside" and "Is Contained In" different things?

That's REALLY odd. For those who haven't seen, here's what is listed in Troilus and Criseyde:

Contained inside
The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Riverside Chaucer by Geoffrey Chaucer

Is contained in
Troilus and Criseyde (Norton Critical Edition) by Geoffrey Chaucer

These would appear to be redundant. There should only be Contains/Is contained by.

Was "Contained inside" part of the older BETA stuff?

ETA: I notice "Contained inside" is in the screenshot at the top of the previous thread. But I just created a new one and the reverse linkage is "Is contained in".

Tim asked in the other thread "Any suggestions for visualization options? "

this probably ISN'T really what he was asking, but the thing that i would LOVE to see is an updated catalog option where omnibuses and box sets were expandable in the catalog view. as in, regular catalog view would show the omnibus/box set and then there would be an ">" or "expand" button that would display the works contained in said omnibus/box set, with their own data and review options.

pony yes, but it's a prize winning pony, i do believe.

ok, found one that's stumped me.

i have The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle and The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version, also by Beagle. The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version is the original story that Beagle wrote decades before rewriting and publishing what has become The Last Unicorn, but now both are in print. what is the correct relationship in this sense? The two are VERY VERY different stories, with only the main (title) character carrying over from one to the other. but The Lost Version was what inspired Beagle to do the rewrite and publish The Last Unicorn.

so.... is "inspired by" the correct relationship? or would it be a supplement?

would it be wrong to seperate The Da Vinci Code: Special Illustrated Edition out from the other Da Vinci Code editions so that it can be more correctly related as a supplement? that would be the right relationship, yes?

73> No no no, that would be wrong. The special illustrated edition isn't a new work. It's a new expression, I think? but it's not a new work. So don't force it into a new work just for the relationship. (See general principle #3)

>74 keristars: oh, right. that's what happens when you skim read something...

That's REALLY odd. For those who haven't seen, here's what is listed in Troilus and Criseyde:

Minor error. Apologies. All set now.

77> Thanks. Another relationship bug report here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/109825

>68 leahbird:
Joyce's Ulysses was inspired by The Odyssey, and uses some themes and patterns from it, but it can't really be thought of as a "sequel" to as it doesn't have the same characters, setting, etc. OTOH, the Aeneid, while inspired by the Iliad, also has some of the same characters, is set right after, etc. so it is a sequel.

I see that there are three distinct set of relationships - thematic, reference/academic and organisational.

Thematic
Is a retelling of
Is an adaptation of
Is an expanded version of
Is a parody of
Is a reply to
Was inspired by
Is a supplement to

Reference/academic
Is a study of
Is a reference guide/companion to
Is a commentary on the text of
Is a concordance to
Is a student's study guide to
Is a teacher's guide to

Organisational
Contains
Is a (non-series) sequel to
Is a (non-series) prequel to
Is an abridged version of

I think I prefer the terminology of "internal" vs. "external" relationships that was proposed elsewhere.

79> Homer wrote The Iliad, Virgil wrote The Aeneid. They're also written in different languages, at different times. Is it really appropriate, then, to call The Aeneid a sequel? It sounds lore like an "inspired by" relationship to me.

(And, in the interest of full disclosure, I think I'm the one who identified Scarlett and Rhett's People as sequels to Gone with the Wind; but those two were expressly written as sequels for copyright protection reasons, under contract with the Mitchell Estate.)

>82 jasbro: If they were written by the same author, it would just be a regular sequel (listed in the CK series field), not a non-series sequel.

I think I may have asked this before, but is there a way to list something like "contains an excerpt of," in cases where an anthology contains part of another work, but not the whole thing?

>84 rsterling: - not at the moment, no. It's been requested, so it's possible that we'll add it at some point.

Someone has entered The Sundering as a reply to The Lord of The Rings. Shouldn't it be inspired? Also, the two works that are parts of The Sundering are listed separately as inspired by.

>86 jjwilson61: I think so, yes.

I'll just repeat that I'm hoping for a way to change relationships rather than deleting and re-adding :)

87> Jeremy, please indicate the post that you're responding to.

>89 jjwilson61: - sorry, I added it!

>80 Noisy:, 81

I used the terms "internal" and "external" basically in response to Zoe's original breakout of relationship types in post 12 (above). I now realise those terms could change meaning depending upon which work is taken as reference point, with Work A's internal links becoming external once I shift my gaze to Work B. Unless an arbitrary choice were made for an Ur-Work (Ur-Werk) in any given constellation, which is neither feasible nor desirable.

I still like internal / external, but I see Noisy's 3 categories as equally useful, in different contexts.

All of which reinforces my wish for a graphical representation and terminology for the various parts / wholes of relationships. Not only work-to-work, but work-to-expression, work-to-series, etc. I'm still thinking about it and would love to see attempts by others.

ETA could, with reference to container/contained in, etc.

don't know if i am right here, so I definitely hope.

First of all:A really really great feature, I think it's amazing. Though, where can I actually find it. I mean, on the work-page where do I have to go to actually see the relations and maybe add to them? I feel so stupid....

I was seeing an internal relationship as one where both works contain some of the same text (possibly in translation), while an external relationship doesn't have significant overlap.

> 92: On the work pages, just above common knowledge.

...And another thing by Eoin Colfer was originally included in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series.

Would it be more accurate to remove it from the series and add a W2W relationship instead?

Well, it seems to be an authorized sequel. If so, I would leave it as is.

>93 _Zoe_:

Ah: so the significand is the "thingy", to use Tim's term, not the works related as sharing (or differentiated by not sharing) that thingy. A third way to refer to these relationships!

ETA Or fourth given that Jeremy's list in OP is divided into unnamed categories.

> 77

Ta, thanks Tim!

61, 63 > We'll probably won't resolve those kinds of entanglements (is that a word?) with relationships at this point.

What's probably needed for those hard-to-define works that have been anthologized, edited, reissued and restored half around the world and back is an optional additional layer like the much debated 'superwork' (although I prefer 'complex work' myself) that would contain all textual variants of what is nonetheless a single, identifiable concept. But that is another matter entirely.

>97 elenchus: Either way, I hope they'll at least be reordered soon. What's the thinking behind the current order?

Great feature, been waiting for it for many time, but it doesn't seem to work as I expected to.

For instance, I own "The Count of Montecristo, vol. 1", and "Vol. 2". If I add the work-to-work relationship of "Contains" on "The Count of Montecristo" work, in just one volume, shouldn't I become automatically the owner of that work?

Well, that's what really interested me at the beginning, in order to see more accurately my prizes and the relationships with other Libraries. I don't understand why just for having "The Castle of Otranto" included in a compilation, I won't be able to compare myself with the readers of "The Castle of Otranto" in a single edition. Or if having the works of Shakespeare separately, I can't be like the owners of the "Complete works of William Shakespeare".

>101 serranouaille:

i believe that is the kind of thing that this is working up to. it's just going to take a little time to rework everything.

What relationship would be appropriate for a follow-up study?

I have two examples in mind: Middletown - Middletown in Transition and Fanshen - Shenfan. In both cases the second book is a follow-up to the first. I suppose I could use the series feature, but I don't really like series for two books.

>101 serranouaille:/102 - Exactly. That's the next step. Things like single volumes of multi-volume works, and other relationships like those described in #101 will be handled in the editions/expressions relationships.

104> At some point you may want to add that as a note to your first post. That topic keeps coming up over and over again in the various threads.

104> Except that Tim seemed reluctant to implement that part of it. I'll try to dig up the posts.

ETA: Here it is, from the original thread, http://www.librarything.com/topic/109724#2512234.

106> You're confusing using it with recommendations (which Tim expressed reluctance about in that link you provided) and using it for your catalog listing (which is what is mentioned in 101). Here's where he explicitly describes how this is how your catalog will eventually work to pull in things you own via contained relationships:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/109724#2513154

Here's where he explicitly describes

Well, here's where he (I) currently envisions it. I'm not absolutely set on anything, but it's my—indeed our—current notion of how it will work.

Nitpicker! :P

Given that my answer is so often "ah, well, figure it out, don't worry!" I think I am the farthest thing! :)

Yeah, I'm afraid I'm probably much more the nitpicker than Tim is! :-)

Really missing an option to indicate relations between dead language editions and modern translations. Next phase?

>112 Nicole_VanK: - Yes, next phase (expressions).

Would Great Books of the Western World be considered a work which contains its volumes?

Just to confuse the issue, Great Books of the Western World is currently defined as a series. Furthermore, it is a series which contains itself as its second work! Fortunately this is not Russell's Paradox, or the LT servers might be emitting sparks as on Star Trek, but it is an infinite regress.

How can one delete erroneous entries from a series?

> 114

Great Books of the Western World is currently defined as a series.

Well, it shouldn't be.

Heh. Good one.

I think I've solved the second question, by removing the (2) in the series field, which puts the entry at the top of the series list, but without a number.

As for the first, I guess I would think of it that way ... others?

Worldcat seems to list it as a publisher's series.

That was also my first thought.

Well, it shouldn't be.

Why, exactly?

> 118

Seems to me that it would be a publisher's series, not a regular series. The works don't bear any relationship to one another, other than that they are public domain and the EB decided they were all "Great Works".

(It occurs to me that the Wiki "series" page needs some editing to reflect that we now have publisher's series.)

There is no consensus on definitions for series and publisher's series

Tim, you commented a bit in this thread, but basically said what we already knew which didn't help resolve the issue.

> 118: Because for several of them there are other editions as well.

>119 lilithcat:

Yes. I didn't mean a regular series. They are a publisher series. I thought you wanted to use relationships for it.

Eventually, we will want to make series apply to other levels--to manifestations and editions. That'll allow us to avoid the distinction between series and publisher series.

122> That'll allow us to avoid the distinction between series and publisher series.

Right. Though there have been multiple mammoth threads in which it is argued that ALL editions of works originally created for a publisher series are still members of that publisher series. So that question is going to have to be solved when this comes about (if you're going for consistency).

107> You're confusing using it with recommendations (which Tim expressed reluctance about in that link you provided) and using it for your catalog listing (which is what is mentioned in 101).

No, the poster in 101 said, Well, that's what really interested me at the beginning, in order to see more accurately my prizes and the relationships with other Libraries. I don't understand why just for having "The Castle of Otranto" included in a compilation, I won't be able to compare myself with the readers of "The Castle of Otranto" in a single edition. Or if having the works of Shakespeare separately, I can't be like the owners of the "Complete works of William Shakespeare".

He, or she, is clearly interested in work relationships as well which is the part that Tim said he is reluctant to do.

ETA: Also, if Tim meant to link to something in 108 I can't see the link.

I have a couple of questions. But first, this is a really encouraging development, thanks for all the hard work put in. I am still itching to have a go at short story anthologies, so I am pleased to hear they're also on the agenda. I might even be moved to haiku once more.

I tried out this new feature on a few 2-in-1s I have in my catalogue. Some of them (example) I entered back in the day, when LT buried "other authors" way down the page, and they appear in the catalogue as if written only by the first named author. Are these ever going to get cleaned up/be possible to clean up ourselves? Or should I delete and re-enter them? If I am not the only member who owns the book (different example) would deleting and re-entering my copy even help? And what should I do about books (which I don't own) with mangled author names like Cree/Shaw?

Other question. Mills and Boon have released a couple of "hidden 2-in-1s" (just to annoy me?!). The title on the spine and front cover of the book only lists one novel inside, but they've also thrown in a freebie full length novel (an earlier work by the same author). E.g. The Vanishing Viscountess by Diane Gaston. If you look at the editions for the work with this author and title, you will see the "normal" American release (0-373-...) mixed with the "stealth 2-in-1" British release (0-263-...) which also contains The Mysterious Miss M. I've catalogued my copy separately and can now add in work-to-work relationships. Should I also attack the above editions list and separate out the other British 2-in-1s, and combine them with mine?

>124 jjwilson61:

Tim was quoting/replying to lilithcat in #115.

124> Okay, perhaps a stack trace is in order to debug the confusion. :D

Message 101: serranouaille
Great feature, been waiting for it for many time, but it doesn't seem to work as I expected to.

For instance, I own "The Count of Montecristo, vol. 1", and "Vol. 2". If I add the work-to-work relationship of "Contains" on "The Count of Montecristo" work, in just one volume, shouldn't I become automatically the owner of that work?

Well, that's what really interested me at the beginning, in order to see more accurately my prizes and the relationships with other Libraries. I don't understand why just for having "The Castle of Otranto" included in a compilation, I won't be able to compare myself with the readers of "The Castle of Otranto" in a single edition. Or if having the works of Shakespeare separately, I can't be like the owners of the "Complete works of William Shakespeare".

Message 102: atlargeintheworld
>101 serranouaille:

i believe that is the kind of thing that this is working up to. it's just going to take a little time to rework everything.

Message 104: jbd1
>101 serranouaille:/102 - Exactly. That's the next step. Things like single volumes of multi-volume works, and other relationships like those described in #101 will be handled in the editions/expressions relationships.

Message 106: jjwilson61
104> Except that Tim seemed reluctant to implement that part of it. I'll try to dig up the posts.

ETA: Here it is, from the original thread, http://www.librarything.com/topic/109724#2512234
<<brightcopy's note: Here's the post you linked to from Tim:
For the case that we're dealing with now--book-length works--it does make sense for recommendations to act as if we own the constituent parts.

So, my opinion is that, for right now, it's not necessary to delve into component works. The advantage is not great, and I can see clear disadvantages. For example, the basic algorithm is "people who have read these things, read that." All things being equal, every book you have gets one "vote." (In fact, the vote is bent by the popularity of the book.) In any case, if we counted component pieces now every omnibus would get six votes, as it were. All this needs to be worked through. It's worth adding that this is truly virgin territory. Libraries don't effectively track and never use container/contained relationships. Neither does Amazon, etc.
>>

Message 107: brightcopy
106> You're confusing using it with recommendations (which Tim expressed reluctance about in that link you provided) and using it for your catalog listing (which is what is mentioned in 101). Here's where he explicitly describes how this is how your catalog will eventually work to pull in things you own via contained relationships:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/109724#2513154
<<brightcopy's note: Here is the post I linked to from Tim:
I think the catalog is going to have some sort of switch, between just showing your books and showing their contents. In one view, you'd alphabetize by author and see together only the books you have with Steven King as their author. In another, you'd see all the short stories too. It might be useful to have a mode that "splits out" all novels, but keeps the short stories and so forth "in." We can jump over that bridge when we come to it.>>

With all the context, do you see how Tim was talking about now wanting to use contained in/by for recommedations? And how he is in favor of using them for the Your books catalog view, which is what Message 101 that this whole thread was about was asking for? Perhaps you read 101 as different than I do, because I don't read it being about recommendations at all. When they talk about comparing their library with others, I take it to mean things like "Members with your books", not recommendations.

Now, I admit Tim never addressed "Members with your books" specifically, but spoke in terms of your own catalog view. But that's not what you linked to in your post above; you linked to a post about recommendations, so I have to assume that's what you mean. Perhaps Tim would like to weight in on the MWYB question.

And as far as 108 goes, he was talking about the post I linked to above where he envisioned the Your books view switch that toggles between stuff you physically have (well, physically is a proxy to "have cataloged"), versus those works and works contained within them. He was just nitpicking because I used "explicitly" when I really should have said "specifically." :P I just meant he was addressing that topic specifically, not that he was committing to a specific plan for implementation.

Hope this helps!

(And Tim - if nitpicking is a sin, then this post just proves I'm going to wind up in the tenth circle of hell)

According to Danté there are only nine circles of… Oh, wait… Ok *holds hand up* nitpicker!

128> :D

Yeah, Danté, being the slacker that he was, left out number 10: Pedants.

126> Tim was quoting/replying to lilithcat in #115.

I really doubt that Tim was replying to post #115 in post #108.

ETA: Did you think I meant post #118? I really was referring to post #108.

127> Well if you can make sense of Tim's post then you're a better man than I since the sentence in bold and the first sentence of following paragraph directly contradict each other, but from later comments I think he meant the latter.

And when I was talking about social connections I was talking about both recommendations and MWYB, it's just inconvenient to keep having to mention both of them all the time (and there are probably other types of social connections I can't think of at the moment).

131> Well if you can make sense of Tim's post then you're a better man than I since the sentence in bold and the first sentence of following paragraph directly contradict each other, but from later comments I think he meant the latter.

You know that Tim uses bold for quoting people he's replying to, right? I've always found it confusing as he's pretty much the only person on the internet I've ever seen do that (congrats on your uniquity, Tim!). I think you mistook what he was quoting for what he's saying. That would explain your comment about 108 in 124 as well.

Tim> Can we pretty please change the wording for "Contained inside" to "Is contained inside"? It's been commented on before (and in BETA) that this wording is ambiguous. If I see:

Work A

Contained inside
Work B
Work C
Work D

It's really easy to misread that as Contained inside Work A are Work B, Work C and Work D.

Much better would be:

Work A

Is contained inside
Work B
Work C
Work D

This wording is much less ambiguous and mirrors the wording you use for other relationships, such as "Is expanded in", "Is parodied in", etc. It seems like you did that for a little while but then switched back to the "Contained inside" wording.

>133 brightcopy: Yes

The first time I saw "Contained inside," I thought it meant "Contained inside this book is/are..." rather than "This book is Contained inside of..."

(On the other hand, it didn't take very long to self-correct this misreading)

132> Thanks for clearing that up. I've seen his quoting habits before but I think what confused me is that he usually specifies the post he was quoting from and in neither of the two above cases did he do that.

135> No problem. Personally, I think a bug report should be filed. ;D

Back to the subject of the thread:

Does a teacher's edition of a book count as a teacher's guide to it, or should this go in one or more of of the other relationships? Or should it be all of the above?

How are annotated editions supposed to be handled? They haven't really been fully discussed yet. "Contained in" is one option, but doesn't really seem to fully capture the actual relationship of annotations. "Is a study of", "Reference guide/companion to" and "Is a commentary on the text of" don't seem very applicable.

Given how common annotated editions are, should this possibly be its own relationship? I'd say it's far more common (and possibly interesting) than parodies.

Good point there, about the parodies. I would be far more interested in an annotated edition (I already have at least three) than a parody. And there do seem to be more of them coming out these days.

>136 brightcopy:-138

But this is really the NCE question. What degree of annotation, commentary, contextual material, etc. makes something a different work vs. a different edition of the same work. I don't think there can be a general answer to this question, so I'd want to look at cases.

If it's still the same work, then obviously there is no relationship as the two editions should be combined. If separate, I think the annotated should contain the main work, but perhaps should have other relationship as well.

As I suggested before I think Contained-In should be reserved for those cases where a work contains other works, not just extra text like annotations or an extra chapter. To use Contained-In for the latter makes it less useful (or at least more complicated) for eventually using the relationship in Recommendations or MWYB.

139> Yeah, I agree for the most part. Though a straight up critical edition is somewhat different than an annotated edition, and the NCEs seem to have aspects of both. I'm wondering if they should be lumped together in a "is a critical/annotated edition of" ("is a critical or annotated edition of"?) or if they should be two separate things. Though like I said, NCEs seem to be a bit of both and are possibly one of the most ubiquitous. Maybe there's no real value in trying to keep them distinct.

140> Once again, agreed. I find this is especially true of critical editions, as the more straight-up "critical edition" is very much about very specific versions of a text which might actually get combined together under LT rules (especially for ancient ones).

I suspect that, once we have expressions, the "common practice" rules for what makes a work unique will have to be revisted for borderline cases.

Edition with scholarly footnotes
Mildly Annotated edition
Heavily annotated edition
Critical edition

Right now combiners have only two choices -- same work or different work.

If I understand their intent correctly, expressions will allow for a more complex stratification within the definition of a work. Many texts that are currently treated as separate works may well become recast as different "expressions" of the same original text (and therefore part of the same work).

142> The only problem I'd have is that there seems to be a couple of different kinds of "critical edition." One seems to be much more about trying to get to the heart of the original text of a work that has been published in many different variants (like Shakespeare's plays). Another seems about providing supplemental material related to a given work (e.g. Anne of Green Gables NCE). Either may or may not include annotations.

I think expressions may not impact separating into different works on these as much as it does others. A lot of these contain not only different versions of the same core text, but differing and substantial supplemental material that is added to the work to come up with the new one.

I think you're definitely right about the critical editions (the NCEs being the most notorious example), although there will undoubtedly be much discussion.

On the other hand, I can imagine texts like "The Pop-up Kama Sutra" and "The Annotated Alice" becoming different expressions of their respective originals, rather than separate works. Will the cocktail party test have to be revised once we have expressions?

In other words, will "social" distinctions be largely handled via expressions, rather than worksplitting? Will the dead language exception go the way of the dodo, with The Oddysey becoming an expression of Ὀδύσσεια?

Can we pretty please change the wording

Well, since you said "please." :)

Fixed.

145> Thanks! And since you were so nice to do it, I updated the HelpThing page.

Speaking of which, after updating this page I might have a few other language suggestions. I'd post about it now but I have to store up some "pleases"...

Is a companion book for a tarot deck a supplement or something else? In a companion book, there are descriptions about what is depicted in each card image, what symbols are in a card and what a card means in a tarot reading. There may also be information on the creation or origin of the deck, tarot spreads, and other things.

Is there any difference, if the companion book was written by the deck author or by someone else?

>147 inkcrow:

Since a tarot deck is not a book, I don't think there is a relevant work-to-work relationship.

But the deck isn't a work, is it? I'd say the companion book is a reference guide and the deck is a deck of cards. Or?

149 > Yes. Work relationships, in my opinion, only applies between cataloguable works. A London travel guide isn't a 'guide' to a wok called 'London', neither is a book of Picasso's paintings any kind of 'adaptation' of his original paintings.

...But now when I think about it, most modern tarot decks are published with an ISBN, aren't they? That means they can be catalogued, which makes it a bit trickier - but in my opinion they still probably shouldn't be, and I'll stand by what I said above.

Yes, modern decks have ISBNs. LibraryThing works well for cataloguing tarot decks. There are both antique and newer decks in libraries.

Yeah, well ISBN or no ISBN, I'll be keeping my tarot decks out of LT. I fully agree with the first paragraph of #150.

What products are eligible for ISBNs?
ISBNs may be assigned to books and certain other items commonly found in bookstores. Non-book items eligible for ISBNs include e-books, audio books, calendars, bookmarks, software, greeting cards, and instructional and documentary DVDs and videos. ISBNs may never be assigned to music CDs, articles of clothing, foods, medicine, or stuffed animals, among other items.

http://www.bowker.com/index.php/supportfaq-isbn/350-faqs-isbn-general#10

So, no, an ISBN does not automatically mean it fits into LibraryThing and won't be a problem when features designed for books are applied to it. And plenty of stuff that does fit in never got an ISBN.

154> bc beat me to it, but what does having an ISBN have to do with being catalogable on LT.

> 151

There are stuffed wildcats in libraries, but I wouldn't catalog one on LibraryThing!

154> Nothing, really. Just as bc said in #153, there are bunches of stuff with ISBNs that don't belong on LT.

I know that anything could in theory be entered into LT manually, even if it shouldn't. What I was getting at, I think, is that the presence of an ISBN means compatibility with the add/import features, which in turn might be interpreted as it being an acceptable item for classification. One might argue that a tarot could be considered a loose-leaf art publication, or something...

Anyway, I suspect that this issue has been discussed in greater depth elsewhere, so I won't muddle this thread with my ramblings about it any more.

What do you do if a whole series is based off a book? Robert Hans van Gulik translated Celebrated cases of Judge Dee, and then went on to write a whole series about the main detective. Should all of them be non-series sequels, or just the first one? It's right now all in one Judge Dee series, but other people have written non-series sequels to Judge Dee, so I wanted to split it out.

Likewise, the Solar Pons books were inspired by Sherlock Holmes; should all of them link back to Sherlock Holmes? And if so, is it cheating to link back to the omnibus, instead of some individual books?

157> And if so, is it cheating to link back to the omnibus, instead of some individual books?

In my opinion, it's just the opposite. I think it likely we'll get some sort of "trickle down" relationships eventually (we already do for Contains, when it says "indirect").

157, 158> Tim has said to wait on these until he creates series-to-work relationships. And I think the trickle-down should be from the series, not from the omnibus, which in these cases would just be a stand-in for the series.

brightcopy: So, no, an ISBN does not automatically mean it fits into LibraryThing and won't be a problem when features designed for books are applied to it. And plenty of stuff that does fit in never got an ISBN.

I understood what Jannes meant. If you talked about me, I just specified that they have an ISBN, when other person asked about it. Then I told about my cataloging experiences.

lilithcat: There are stuffed wildcats in libraries, but I wouldn't catalog one on LibraryThing!

The Library of Helsinki has tarot decks in its collection. They are serious items, which you can loan.

It is not your business, if I catalog tarot decks on LibraryThing.

I am not asking to have a new, special relationship for tarot decks and companion books. I am just trying to find out how to use existing work-to-work relationships in a well-describing way. This discussion has gone out of topic.

There are tarot decks on LT and as such they are works. Whether I aprove is not the point.

I would call the companion book a commentary, but since commentary explicitly says "on the text of"* I would be reluctant to use that.

* why is that by the way? surely a commentary might also be about illustrations for some works

160 >

As you said, it's none of my business, and neither do I care much, what you catalog on LT. But I can't resist pointing out that just becuse something is possible to loan in a library it doesn't necessarily mean it's suitable for inclusion in a book catalog. Libraries holds all kinds of stuff: Music records, movies, games, toys... I once worked in a small public library that had Trekking poles available for loan.

But as BM said: if it's here, it's here. A concern now is wheter all Tarot decks should be concidered expessions of The tarot deck, or if they're individual works, and if the later what kind of relationships there are between them.

> 162 wheter all Tarot decks should be concidered expessions of The tarot deck,

God no.

Card decks are a (*ahem* non-book) medium. Tarot decks are a genre within that medium. There is no ur-Tarot deck, although some scholars have been at pains to identify one.

148>

Since a tarot deck is not a book, I don't think there is a relevant work-to-work relationship.

Non-book works have always been permitted, though.

One could presumably list those accursed perfumes named after characters in Good Omens (which thus clutter up search) as "inspired by" the book. If Tim is going to say that perfumes and bobcats and tarot decks are permissible to list on LT, he can hardly say they can't have relationships.

What you do with your catalog is your business but relationships are a common feature so don't be surprised to find that someone has deleted it. On the other hand I don't see any particular reason that would bother to do that.

163 > Sorry. I was under the impression that most tarots featured the same suits and the same major arcana figures, and that the difference was mainly one of illustrations (just as a new illustrated edition of a book doesn't make it a new work). Wikipedia, however, tells me that I'm mistaken.

164> Oh, those perfumes... I had forgotten about those. Well, that's really the final word then, isn't it?

>160 inkcrow:
Why not "Reference guide/companion to"?

>167 eromsted:, yeah, I tend to agree with reference guide/companion to for this one ...

I said that first! ;p

>169 anglemark: I agree with you too :-)

Any thoughts on my cases of follow-up studies in message 103?

***
Gack. Took three times to get the link right.

160> It is not your business, if I catalog tarot decks on LibraryThing.

Nope, none of my business. Not like it affects me in any way. Not like it sidetracks discussion about things that are actually the intended purpose of LibraryThing. Nope, not at all.

>171 eromsted: - Good question. Series, I suppose ...

172 > That's not really fair. She asked an earnest question, which spurred some of us into a discussion that went somewhat of topic. Hardly her fault, or the fault of anyone who catalogues non-book material.

I apologise for my part in it if it annoyed people, hopefully I'll have nothing else to ad about it.

174> It's a distraction, plain and simple. This is true for all sorts of non-book stuff that gets put in LT. If people really did just catalog tarot decks and movies and perfumes and stuff and keep quiet about it, at least the distraction would be minimized to just annoying the Combiners who are out there trying to make Works work right.

I'm dropping it from this point on. Hopefully, not much more time will be wasted on figuring out how relationships apply to these non-books and will instead focus on the burning questions, such as whether or not Norton Critical Editions actually contain anything or not.

whether or not Norton Critical Editions actually contain anything

I would certainly hope so ;-)

If people really did just catalog tarot decks and movies and perfumes and stuff and keep quiet about it, at least the distraction would be minimized to just annoying the Combiners who are out there trying to make Works work right.


Well, that and anyone who searched on a term that was used in the "titles" of perfumes and whatnot, and had them cluttering up the results. (This is less bad than it was with the old search, and since some wonderful person combined all the "Good Omens" perfumes so that they only show up once rather than twenty times, but it's still my primary beef with the practice. DVDs are a different issue.)

I've got five or six packs of cards, I think: some Waddingtons and I think some Hoyles from when I was in the 'States. They're printed material, I suppose ... ;-)

Likewise I wouldn't personally catalogue maps on LT, but several people do. I guess they're sort of library material, if you're into geography. It's all a matter of perspective.

Anyone want to take a look at my questions in 125? Cheers.

> 130. Yeah, apparently I can't read, and thought you said 118. Well deduced. :)

125> The other author question is separate from Relationships and has been discussed on other threads. Let me see if I can find one.

ETA: You can try this thread, http://www.librarything.com/topic/108733.

I'm just about to revisit some science fiction authors, so the 2-in-1 problem is something I'm going to be hitting pretty frequently. I haven't applied much thought to it yet.

Are there any problems other than the co-equal authors. It seem to me that the two-works-in-one is handled by the Contains work-to-work relationship (that is as long as both contained works have been separately published).

And the co-equal author problem is the same as for anthologies, although in the case of doubles there isn't an editor to fall back on.

183> I think one problem mentioned in another thread is that some of these are only published in doubles, or the version published in doubles is cut down because there's a much smaller page limit.

> 183. Bear with me if this sounds stupid... I suppose I was wondering how carefully people were adding books like these to their catalogue. If they add the wrong edition they could unknowingly add two works to their collection, of which they only own one.

If the book that you find through a library/bookshop catalogue search is called "Alice in Wonderland," you don't expect it to be a 2-in-1 that also contains "Through the Looking Glass."

If I separate out that ISBN/edition of "Alice in Wonderland" from the others, and state that it contains both AIW and TTLG, I might inadvertently add a work to some people's catalogues that they don't really own.

In all I am probably just being too cautious, and should just do it.

At least in my particular case I do not have the issue of abridgement to be concerned about as in #184.

ETA: thanks for the link in #181. It sounds like the issue is well in hand. The data we're adding when listing constituent works might actually help.

Apologies if this has been covered, couldn't see it in a browse through.

What do we do with works that a commentary on *part* of another work? For instance, I think it would be quite useful to have all the commentaries on the Gospel of John linked together in some way, but distinct from the commentaries of the Gospel of Luke.

For the gospels, I do have copies of the individual books bound separately, so I could do a work around, but I'm not sure that will work for all the Biblical books, or other multi-part but usually bound together works.

TimC

>186 tcarter:

If the Gospel of John is identified as "contained in", you can make the link from the commentary to that work. You imply that in your post.

For other books not existing as separate works, I believe that situation will have to wait for the expressions layer, which Tim indicates is pending. There are posts above and elsewhere on FRBR and the meaning of expressions, and how they might fit into LT.

See here for a lengthy discussion:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/109523

>187 elenchus:, thanks

On a completely different issue, having just spent five minutes making some of the work-work connections for the many Disney and other works inspired by The House at Pooh Corner, is there a method for bulk selection on one screen, rather than having to flit back and forth?

188> Sadly, no.

>188 tcarter:, 189

Perhaps a relief, too: imagine the damage done inadvertently, out of ignorance, or from spammers.

All Terry Pratchett, HP, and Lemony Snickett books "contained in" my spiffy new YA Sci Fi book, as a means of drawing attention to it. Yay!

What effort would be required to un-do something like that?

190> I'm thinking "delete * from relationships where book='spiffy new YA sci fi book'".

Or something like that.

When I look at L. E. Modesitt Jr.s authorpage, I am informed that: "You have 1 book and 1 works by L. E. Modesitt Jr.."
But the book I own is an omnibus containing two works.
I would expect that the Authors page reflected this work relationship that someone has painstakingly registered, so that the books = 1 and the works = 2.

This is the same situation for all the omnibus/author combinations I own.

I am a bit uncertain how it *should* count. Two examples:
I have 17 books by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of them an omnibus containing two works. But I have one of those works in a separate edition too, so I am not sure whether it should count twice in the work, or only once (currently it says 17 books, 17 works).

I have 41 books by Terry Pratchett, one of them an omnibus of three works, but when I look at the author page it says I have 40 books and 40 works. When I follow the link I see 41 books in my library, although one of them (not the omnibus) is in the "Read but unowned" collection.
If the "Read but unowned" collection is not counted towards the "You have xx books and yy works by zz" it seems strange that it is on the list when following the link. If it is, the counting is flawed.

192> Right, but I'm sure there are plenty of people that would want it the reverse, and not have LT claiming they had works that they don't. I wonder if they'll be a toggle like in the catalog view as Tim has talked about? Or maybe they'll be a second line or additional text. Something like

You have 1 book and 1 work by L. E. Modesitt. You also indirectly have another 2 works from this author.

The wording is pretty crappy but I hope that conveys my meaning. Having quite a few omnibuses, one of the things I'm most looking forward to is LT being intelligent about this indirect "having."

192>

Relationships aren't yet reflected in that count; what that's intended to do is to distinguish when someone has multiple copies of the same work. (So, for instance, because I have two copies of Larry Niven's Ringworld -- one is the first printing where the Earth rotates backwards -- I have 8 books but only 7 works by Niven.)

194> And because if it said only "You have 2 books by this author." or "You have 1 work by this author.", you'd get one faction or the other (understandably) complaining because they want it the other way. I think that's why the contains relationship will wind up just sticking more wording on, rather than replacing the existing wording.

195>

Right, for a long time it did just give the one number (I forget which), and Tim changed it because there were so many reports that it was "wrong".

Lorax & Brightcopy, thanks for the explanation. I somehow assumed that the work relationship had been fully implemented, and so I was confused. Now I am just disappointed:-)

197> Give it time. There's been so much added to LT in the last two months that we really could use a bit of a breather. :)

The D. Case is a novel inspired by Dickens' Mystery of Edwin Drood that also contains the latter's complete text. It seem to me that both the "contains" and the "inspired" relationships are fitting, but only one can be entered.

I haven't tried, but would it not be possible to establish two separate relationships that just happen to involve the same two works?

James Keeline

Not so far as I can see. If The D. Case contains The Mystery of Edwin Drood, there is no visible way to add the it was inspired by Drood. The drop-down menu doesn't allow one to select a work that already has a relationship entry.

>201 TomVeal:

I had this problem before (in my case it was "contains" and "is a commentary on"), and I was told it should be possible. I went and tried again, and lo, it was.

How did you do it?

i know this has been discussed but i can't find where so i'm asking again. has there been a consensus on how to deal with books that relate to an entire series? for example, Amelia Peabody's Egypt: A Compendium is an anthology of background essays related to the series which is currently listed on the series page as a companion book.

are we leaving books like this that way for now or should i go ahead and take it off the series page and relate it to, say, the first book in the series?

eta: i also never received an answer on how to relate The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version to The Last Unicorn (mentioned here). does this mean everyone is as confused about it as me or did it just get overlooked?

#204

I think we decided it is best to wait. Apparently Tim is thinking about (or maybe even working on) book-to-series relationships.

Regarding the two versions of The Last Unicorn, I think that it would be most useful and least misleading to treat the later work as an "expansion" of the earlier one, with a note in the disambiguation box describing the actual relationship.

@206

the wording for expansion is "work b is an expanded version of work a." since there is so little actual correlation between the two stories, that doesn't really feel right. i see what you're saying, but i feel like there must be a better way. not that any way will be perfect.

204-207> What this would really be, I think, is a "reworking". Tim had pretty much already decided to create that relationship choice in the previous thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/109724#2512573

But it seems to have been forgotten.

Yeah, pretty much all the expansions are actually reworkings. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that all of them could be comfortabyl reclassified as reworkings.

But there's a very clear difference between a 250 pages story that's reworked into another 250 pages story, and a 15 pages short story that's expanded into a 400 pages novel. So both terms are justified.

Either way, I think we need reworking. Reworking could conceivably be an umbrella term that includes expansions, substitutions, reversions and revisions whilst it's a bit of a stretch to put them under expansion. Anyway I have already put expansion on some that just have substituted passages and reversions to authors preferred text rather than actually expanded.

Besides we aren't supposed to be cataloging individual short stories yet.

211: Yes, but other people have, so I have no qualms about using their catalog. :)

Does all that could fall under "reworking" imply it's the same author who reworked his own work? While in the case of "abridgement" it's usually done by someone else?

213 > No, I don't think so. Authors have been known to abridge their own work, for various reasons. As far as I can tell no work relationship depends on authorship, for the time being.

Okay, but the other one - can someone else rework another author's work? Otherwise an abridgement would just be another reworking.

My test case is Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.

In this case, the original Danish by Peter Høeg was translated to create Smilla's Sense of Snow, but he didn't like the translation so he improved it to create a new version - 'Miss Smilla's Sense of Snow'.

@ angelmark, Musereader

i think reworking would be a great idea to include. it is a nice umbrella term that will encompass a lot of fiddly cases like this one.

can someone else rework another author's work?

I would call that an adaptation.

>218 Nicole_VanK:

It may be subtle, but - as I pointed out in 216 - in at least one case the author has reworked the translation done by another person, and that certainly isn't an adaptation.

> 219: I freely admit I know nothing about that work. But it would seem to me that he either simply make a better translation, or - by adding stuff - an adaptation or a retelling.

But don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that's how it is. Just throwing ideas around in the hope we will reach a better understanding for dealing with these edge cases.

FYI, I added an RSI for reworking. Hopefully it will be added ASAP. YMMV.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/110456

I think we're a bit too caught up in semantics here. I might be missing something, but I don't see anything mentioned above that couldn't be covered with the current relationships:

(mostly) added stuff = expanded
(mostly) removed stuff = abridged
(mostly) changed stuff = adaptation

"Revision" might be useful since adaptation, to me at least, implies some sort of broader change in form, medium, or something like that, but I'm not very certain (English is not my first language). I'm sceptic of introducing "reworking" since broad and overlapping relationship types will probably just add confusion and make us loose specificity.

in any case, the agent of the changes to any work is irrelevant to the relationships- it could be the author, an editor, or his cat. The way I see it, it doesn't matter since it is the relationship between the works, not the activity that created it, that is the focus.

>218 Nicole_VanK:

Not so sure that that is always right; what about things like stories that has been written down in different forms independently? Much of the Poetic Edda and the Nibelungenlied is basically the "same" story, and there's no good way to show that relationship right now.

Well, no. Okay, I know there is a treatment of the same material as the "Niebelungenlied" in the "Poetic Edda" - but it's only a small part of the latter.

For separate parts of the "Poetic Edda" dealing with the same I would agree. Both are, in all probability, retellings of a work no longer preserved.

p.s.: Essentially the Volsunga Saga is also a treatment of the same story.

p.p.s.: Okay, touchstone really refuses to function. But the work is there.

Many early SF was edited by editors, bits rewritten, bits removed. Notably the last chapter of Podkyne of mars (Heinlein) was changed and Magician had a significant part of it removed. there are a number 'writers edit' edition of a books around (analogus to a 'directors cut' in movies. Early novels by writers are rehashed and retrofitted to fit into a later series, writers have even stripped back to the concept and characters, totally rewritten and rereleased.

Adaptation suggests to me a change of media or other significant change not by the author, but a reworking suggests changes done by the author.

Smilla seems to be a translation thing, there are multiple translations of other books, how are they dealt with?

When you "adapt" a work, you modify it to make it suitable to a different set of conditions. That's why the word "adapt" is used rather than just "change." Check out some dictionary definitions of "adapt."

This is why things like taking a book and creating a screenplay off of it is called an "adaptation". It's also why simply taking one movie and remaking it as another movie is not typically called an "adaptation." The only way I think it could apply is if you took a short story and adapted it to novel length. But that's already covered by the term "expansion."

And yes, it is semantics. That's the entire point.

Yep, "adapt" is much closer semantically to "transform" than to "modify".

> 226: Yes, I do essentially understand the concept of "adaptation". But I'm not a native English speaker, and we seem to have some translation problems even there.

Ultimately "adaptation", in international usage, will simply mean that something got adapted - "how" or "to what" are entirely different things.

You don't adapt a book to a book, you adapt it to a film, tv show, graphic novel, play game ect.

Revision is like what this guy liked to do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brunner_%28novelist%29

228> Ultimately "adaptation", in international usage, will simply mean that something got adapted - "how" or "to what" are entirely different things.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you're trying to say here. If people don't understand the difference, what it will mean is that some people will put in relationships that aren't actually adaptations, while other will come along and delete them (and hopefully re-enter with the appropriate relationship). I'm not sure how this is any different than non-native English speakers (or native English speakers for that matter!) misunderstanding any other concept on LT.

Adaptation is Richard mathesons I am Legend to the will smith film of the same name.

Revision is more like what 2001's planet of the apes is to 1968's planet of the apes or 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man to 2007's I am Legend. Same concept and plot, but in books it's usually done by the original writer.

231> Just to add to that, in films this is typically called a "remake". In music (well, other than something like an orchestra), it's a "cover". I don't think (in English) there is any book-specific term other than perhaps "retelling", as books are not (thankfully) frequently re-written years later by other authors to cash in on someone's nostalgia.

226-227 > Thanks, that was a good and clear explanation.

Okay, so do I understand things correctly if I say that we have three different scenarios here?

- adaptation - change of form - like "movie based on novel"
- "remake" - a work with the same basic elements and narraitve - like a move franchise "reboot", or something.
- "rewrite" - an alteration of text that is neither an expansion or abridgement - like a "director's cut" kind of thing.

...or am I still confused?

(It hurts my librarian pride greatly that I have to resort to movie analogies here...)

On revision/rework etc.

Obviously this would apply to fiction such as PKD's Radio Free Albemuth which was reworked into VALIS.

Other types of revision/rework are also possible.

Non-fiction books are often revised and sometimes the revisions are too big for the rework to be considered the same book as the original.

RPG books also can have quite large amounts of rework and sometimes have different rulesets.

I wouldn't consider any of those an adaptation.

233. I was using film remakes as an analogy. (a remake is to films is what a rewrite is to books) but actually 'directors cuts' are more analogus, like there are significant changes between the standard and directors cuts to Blade Runner.

{quote}- adaptation - change of form - like "movie based on novel"
- "rewrite" - an alteration of text that is neither an expansion or abridgement - like a "director's cut" kind of thing.{/quote}

those two definitions sound right.

229>

You don't adapt a book to a book, you adapt it to a film, tv show, graphic novel, play game ect.


What, then, do you call simplifications for children? There are lots and lots of adaptations for kids of "classic" works; they're not abridgements, because it's not just that they are shorter, what's left is also simpler.

>237 lorax: - that's right. The text we've got currently for "adapation" reads:

"Use for cases where Work B is an adaptation of Work A in a different format or for a different audience."

It just struck me that some of the aspects of a reworked or revised work will probably be covered as expressions when they are implemented, as discussed in http://www.librarything.com/topic/109523, but I think many of the examples used in this thread would still merit new works.

Jeremy,

What would you use for the relationship between Radio Free Albemuth and VALIS? There is obviously one. I am not sure that "retelling" is right - the books differ markedly. In actuality there is a funny time component as well. Radio Free Albemuth was reworked into VALIS, although VALIS was published 9 years earlier than Radio Free Albemuth.

240> RFA/VALIS is a prime example of reworking. In the previous thread, Jeremy agreed with Tim on some of the distinctions:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/109724#2512607

For all those who say "but isn't that just another form of X" - well, SURE, if you abstract it enough. But the point is that there's richer data here, so why not capture that? We could boil down everything to "A is related to B" and be done with it. But I find it far more interesting to actually know exactly HOW it is related.

>240 andyl:/241 - yeah, reworking seems right for this. The option's not in there yet, though, so for the moment just set it aside.

I was taken by Jonathan Raban's treatment of his ship's library in _Passage to Juneau: a sea and its meanings_. There are times when the documentation of a particular library has historical importance, for example in recreating Jefferson's original gift to the Library of Congress or when it helps a scholar know what a particular novelist or scholar had access to at the time of writing another work. Can this less direct relationship be highlighted with the new feature?

244> I don't understand what you want. Are you looking for a work-to-library relationship? Legacy libraries do already document such a relationship but in a different manner.

> 243

That's a value of legacy libraries.

I don't think "author owned" (inv. "owned by author of") are powerful enough connections to justify a work-to-work relationship, in the absence of more specific evidence that could fall into one of the existing types.

i just came across Ella Enchanted the book being related to Ella Enchanted the movie... which i don't feel is a good thing. movie adaptations should remain CK data, correct?

#246

Yep - definitely agree with you. Movie / TV adaptations are adequately catered for by CK.

>247 andyl: good, cause i deleted it. ;)

Will we see awards check-marks reflect the new relationships?

more details: http://www.librarything.com/topic/108418

246/247/248> I'm not set one way or the other on movies. I wish they weren't part of LT to begin with, so we wouldn't have to figure it out. In fact, I had even put Nosferatu under the HelpThing page as one example of adaptation. I've changed it now to point to a script for a play instead.

Would anyone at LT care to share an opinion on this?

Yeah, movie adaptations should be dealt with in CK. But, I have a feeling people are going to be adding them this way too (and I'm not sure there's an easy way to block them from doing that). Tim?

Well, when that 'media type' checkbox shows up, the search lists for relationships can be filtered. That will get better over time as the checkbox gets filled in for more entries, of course.

If and when we get a "media type", my first request is an account level switch for "Pretend there is nothing at LibraryThing but books and audiobooks". :D

>253 brightcopy:

Oh yes, that would be wonderful!

And perhaps e-books?

255> Those are just books. As are braille books, large print, foreign translations, etc. "Electronic" is just a language spoken by computers. ;)

How about Dark Carnival and The October Country by Bradbury? The October Country isn't exactly a expansion or abridged version of DC, since it contains only 15 of the 27 stories in DC and contains some stories that weren't in 'original', but Bradbury didn't allow DC to be reprinted for years and years because OC largely reproduced it. Maybe OC is an adaptation or retelling of DC?

> 257

Those are simply two different story collections that happen to overlap. To my mind, there's no reason for a relationship entry. Eventually, it will be possible (I imagine) to enter tables of contents into LT, which will furnish all the needful information about what is in each.

I agree with 258; they're just overlapping anthologies.

Apologies if this is the wrong forum for this issue.

I want to create Work relationships for Geoff Ryman's "Love Sickness", published in two issues of the fiction magazine Interzone, from which "The Child Garden" was derived. However I am unable to find "Love Sickness" in the Work link dialogue box, no matter what search statements I use. It is findable from the generic search box.

>260 AlanPoulter:

Have you tried making the reverse links instead? The dialogue box offers you the capability of choosing from/to or to/from.

#260

I thought that we were supposed to leave short stories (and I guess novellas) for a little while until Tim has sorted out the system for handling them a lot better.

253>

Yes yes yes! I'd pay extra for that.

I see we're not supposed to create relationships where one of the "parties" is a film. (I expect this goes both ways, since the heading in CK is "related movies", which could also cover a movie a book was based on.)

What about audio/radio adaptations? I know they're not books, but they have ISBNs and Amazon lists them under audiobooks, so people may add them more readily than they do movies; and LT does have series pages for audio dramas (two examples).

I've connected up all the BBC radio adaptations of canonical Sherlock Holmes stories with "contains" relationships, mainly to make them easier to find (there are three "layers" and over twenty works).

My question is twofold:

1) Is it okay to link up audio dramas this way? (And if not, is making a series page an acceptable alternative?)

2) Is it okay to make "adaptation" relationships between audio dramas and the books they're based on?

I was just starting to do 2) with the Peter Wimsey audios, but if it's against the rules I'll save myself further trouble.

>>246 leahbird:

I'm the one who added the connection in the first place, because regardless of how *we* feel about people adding movies to LT, people do it anyway and we're stuck dealing with it. The CK data only connects to IMDb, and doesn't account for works that already exist in the LT system. Amusingly enough, when you linked to Ella Enchanted, the cover for the entry comes up as the movie tie-in cover (awful).

I think creating work-to-work relationships in this matter is of value because it adds more information to the database and creates order among items that the LT system was not designed for (but has anyway), but I know I'm vastly in the minority.

>>264 235711:

I think adding audio dramas is perfectly fine because we allow audiobooks and the line between the two is so very, very thin. Even if we could decide where a work stops being merely an audiobook and becomes an audio drama, it's going to be very hard to enforce this. I think the impact of allowing audio dramas would be minimal, anyway, as I'm sure the overall number is pretty low (especially compared to say, DVDs).

264/265> I created a new thread to talk about this, with a title that should hopefully catch people's eyes who might otherwise just ignore this topic now that it's so long. I'm also hoping maybe it will catch Tim's eye whereas this one might not. Any chance you'd be interested in reposting your messages there, too?

Create work-to-work relationships for movies/audio dramas?

265:

I agree with you about the usefulness of book-to-movie relationships. But since I'm also someone who catalogues movies based on books I've catalogued, movies I've catalogued the novelisation of, and TV shows that have spawned books I've catalogued (always listing the director / producer as the author and putting "videorecording" in the title so as to minimise my contribution to the forces of entropy), if I were to argue for book-to-movie relationships it might be taken as an attempt to "legitimise" my "misuse" of LT, which is a discussion I'd prefer to avoid.

And yes, I agree that audio dramas have a much higher "edge case factor" than most video stuff. Not sure though whether you're talking about adding the relationships or the works themselves; you mention audiobooks but those are generally combined with the main work.

266:

Thanks, that might work better. I'll repost the message.

Noticing the "Contains" property in the work-to-work relationships got me really excited!

Wow - works I do own but that are contained in Omnibus / Complete Works / Anthology collections are reflected by this, and I will be able to benefit from the Series lists, the Author Cloud, the Tag Mirror, ... - right?

Wrong! At least for now this is not the case, and it looks like I better get started on creating that Phantom collection of books which hold all works contained in other books in my library. Sigh.

The contains relationship is really special and much more powerful vis-a-vis all the others, reflecting all of the works contained in my library.

It would be tremendous if there was at least an experimental view of "all contained works are works" that I could switch on instead of the default "only books are works".

With respect to recommendations, tagging, etc. I am happy if that is just left at the "only books are works" level. For example, if I have Pullman's His Dark Materials Omnibus, it should be fine if I only end up rating or reviewing the omnibus as a whole and not its individual books. I hope that this is not the reason for holding up the "show me all the works" perspective of libraries, which is a fundamental and game-changing new capability.

Is there anyway that the books contained in could be used for other things, such as recommendations and statistics (or awards)?

I am always unsure about audiobooks and audioplays. Do they belong to the original work or are they derived? In the latter case there should be the relations "is a complete audio version of", "is an abridged audio version of", and "is an audioplay from".

The same with graphic novels.

270> Graphic novels are always an adaptation of, because it's a change of format that necessarily loses or changes some of the information in the work.

An audioplay is also an adaptation of, always.

Regular audiobooks are murkier, because they can be strict readings of the text, or abridgements, or whatever, but you can't make a general rule for "audiobook".

>270 Liondancer:
Unabridged audiobooks should be combined with the main work. As such, there can't be any work level relationship between the original work and an unabridged audiobook.

Audio dramatizations can be an adaptation, but there was some discussion about whether we should be adding such relationships. See this thread for some of the arguments.

I suppose there will be edges cases between the two types. In that case you can hash them out in a thread or just use your best judgement.

There have also been discussions on adding a format field to your catalog for indicating things like audiobook - but I don't think anything came of those.

>271 keristars:

Many graphic novels are original works, no? Not an adaptation of anything.

Unless by "always an adaptation" you mean the work is the text and perhaps storyboarding by an author? I'd claim "adaptation" would be a distortion of the work, in much the same way it would be misleading to characterise a given composer's opera as an adaptation of the libretto rather than the opera being a work comprised of score and book.

Perhaps I don't understand how graphic novels are created, but to me the illustrator and writer are co-authors of a graphic novel, neither one adapts the work solely created by the other.

#273 by elenchus> i think they were talking specifically about graphic novel adaptations of classic stories.

Ah: my bad, lost track of the thread of the conversation, I guess. Thanks.

273, 274> Yes, the immediate question was combining/making relationships for various forms of a work.

Oh, funny! There's one work I can think of where the text (normal) book is an adaptation of the graphic novel! Hmmm, now that I think of it - several. Agatha H. and the Airship City is a novelization of the first three graphic novels in the Girl Genius series; then there are the Elfquest novelizations, which again appeared first as comics, then graphic novels, then text novels.

as Librarything can be used to catalogue dvds and cds, should you add the Soundtrack option to work-to-work relationship?
for example this work http://www.librarything.com/work/8924755 is the soundtrack of this movie
http://www.librarything.com/work/1001165

and what about an option Screenplay?

#277

Noooooo!

Just because some people do use LT to catalogue DVDs and (non book) CDs I wouldn't want to encourage it.

Cataloging non-book items is not forbidden, but it is not supported, and won't be the basis of anticipated new features or default selections in existing ones.

Screenplay "is an adaptation of."

What about operatic adaptations? I know that no type of recording should be linked to the source material, but there are various formats that could “count” – libretto under the composer, libretto under the librettist, libretto + other material, vocal score, orchestral score. Should any/all of these be linked to the original work or works?

I know that no type of recording should be linked to the source material,...

What do you mean by that? Audio recordings of books are combined with the book as long as it isn't abridged. And abridged audio recordings can be linked to the printed work using the abridged relationship.

I meant that I wouldn’t link a CD/DVD recording of an opera to the source material – a number of those are listed. But it seems like other entries could be sufficiently book-like to be linked as an adaptation of the original play/novel/etc.

Audiobooks are a bit of a special case. In general, I think the linkages are between printed material. So a published printed screenplay is an adaptation of a book. Or a printed libretto/score is an adaptation of a book, etc.

>283 brightcopy: -
Yes, that's what I was thinking - it seems like the printed material could qualify for work to work relationships. What would be the best practice in this case? Pick the most popular printed material (libretto, score) with the composer as author and use that? Some of the composer pages have a number of different printed material per opera.

This is all my opinion, but I'd say you pick the person (or persons) who wrote the material as the author(s) and link that as an adaptation. You could have multiple adaptation entries (one for libretto, one for score) if those existed as separate produced works. It's an imperfect solution, really. What would be ideal is if the entire opera (libretto, score, etc.) was published as a single work. Then you'd link that as adaptation. Then if those individual pieces were also published independently, they'd be "contained in" the whole opera work.

I think until Tim comes up with something for representing short stories, you should try to avoid breaking out pieces of the whole unless they were published by themselves. And if the score for some opera has never actually been published, hold off on cataloging it. I know, again, very imperfect.

Just out of curiosity, will will this feature be used to weed out recommendations? Today, I had four new recommendations:





The two critical ones for this post are the second and third. Here they are fully linked, and reproduced as exactly as my limited HTML -- and the Touchstone system -- will allow:

2. Don Quixote {Part 1 of 2} by Miguel de Cervantes
980 copies. 9 reviews. Average rating 4.34. Recommended Sep 25, 2011.
Why? | No thanks!
(close why) Recommendation based on:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

3. Don Quixote {Part 2 of 2} by Miguel de Cervantes
269 copies. 2 reviews. Average rating 4.65. Recommended Sep 25, 2011.
Why? | No thanks!
(close why) Recommendation based on:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Both works already have a work-to-work relationship specifying that they are contained in the version of Don Quixote I have cataloged (I checked).

So, is there any plan to keep books we have in larger works out of our recommendations?

It would be great if a work that is in my library as part of a larger work could be check-mark on a Book Awards page in Common Knowledge.

Ex: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles appear on the "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" Awards Page. They appear unchecked as if these works are not in my library. However, both are contained in THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES and THE COMPLETE TALES OF TERROR AND MYSTERY | The Complete Works Collection which is in my library. I created work to work relationships indicating as much.

I see that a couple others have already mentioned this so I am just adding my voice to those requesting it.

It would be wonderful if it checkmarked as appropriate throughout LT. The current workaround (which is, I admit, a lot of work) is to enter the contained works into a specific collection (I call mine Inclusions, others call theirs Analytics (library science word for "works contained within", apparently)) in order to get the checkmarks. It also allows me to rate and review separately, which is really why I'm doing it.

>288 jjmcgaffey: That's a good workaround. My library isn't so big that it would be unwieldy. Still, I will hope that the direct link happens someday.

It inflates the number of books I have to an imaginary number, though. I can't use it for the same reasons that I can't use the Wishlist collection (well, the Wishlist has the added problem of connecting me with people whose books I don't share).

I know most people don't mind this, but I do.

Yes, that is the downside.

It inflates the number of books I have to an imaginary number, though.

Or perhaps a complex one. You have 2580 + 1808i books.....

Damn, where is that Like button we all have been clamouring for...

292>

Nice.

i = sqrt(-1)

:)

James

not to be confused with an iPad

I'd love to see something new happen regarding work relationships. Especially the "Contains" relationship, but really, anything would do.

Just my 2 cents.

Is there a way to use this feature to connect two existing works when they are just alternate titles of each other?

I was editing the common knowledge page for The Rookie: A Season with Sidney Crosby and the New NHL and wanted to connect it to The Kid: A Season with Sidney Crosby and the New NHL, which is what the book was renamed on it's second printing. The contents of the books are identical, only the name was changed. I've noted this in the common knowledge alternate title/original title fields for both works, but it'd be nice to put a work-to-work relationship in as well.

Since neither book is a derivative of the other or falls under any of the other options, how would I link them?

If the text is the same, or even just mostly the same, the works should be combined. The easiest way is to go to the author page and at the bottom of the left-hand column is the Improve This Author box and within it you'll find a link for Combine/Separate Works.

Thanks for the suggestion jjwilson61. I wasn't certain if the Combine Works feature would apply to this.

Yup. If the only difference is the title then they're the same work.

I have a problem with "create no new works" if the title was published separately at some point, but there are no records for it in LibraryThing. The e-book The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The Novels by Halcyon Press contains novels which were independently published at some point. If we are not to create records, then it is impossible to let people know that this novel has been reprinted in an omnibus and is once again available.

Not to mention that there are three volumes of The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The Novels, all sold separately, but I have found it impossible to make separate records.

First of all, any work with the same title up to a colon but different after the colon will get auto-combined by the system. This works well in most cases but there are cases where the works should not have been combined. If the works are really different then they can be separated easily enough by going to the Editions link in the left-hand column of the work page.

Secondly, your point about not being able to let people know that a novel has been reprinted isn't really relevant because that isn't something that LT does. All editions are combined into works so even when there is no omnibus involved you still can't tell without drilling down to the editions page when a new edition of the work has been published.

The point isn't that it is a new edition, it is that it is an available edition, when no other is listed. People might otherwise not know that this author ever wrote this book, let alone that they can get it and read it, perhaps much more easily than they can find and original. Perhaps that doesn't interest some, but it interests me. I don't suppose that one of LibraryThing's major purposes was to list titles in a series into an easily available list, but that's one of my main uses. (I work in a library, and inquiring minds want to know) I think that adding to the bibliographic knowledge available is a very valuable contribution, and it is the only reason that I put as much work into Librarything as I do. Otherwise, I'd just note that I have a book and skip almost all the Common Knowledge, or improving the author listings, etc. We don't have to do all that just to be a social network.

>301 PuddinTame:, 303
A few basic points.

LT is a catalog of the books it's members have entered, not every book in the world. It is a basic principle that you should have some connection to the books you list in your account. You should not just be duplicating some large general list. People entering everything in Project Gutenberg have been told to stop.

Short stories, poems, essays and other parts of anthologies are not well handled in LT. There was some concern when the work-to-work feature was introduced that people would begin copying the tables of contents of all of their anthologies into LT as individual works. This would both be messy now and it would create problems if LT ever introduced a formal system for listing the contents of anthologies.

That said, some people do enter short stories, articles, and other not-separately published works. And some people do enter works just to complete series or add covers or what have you. If it is important to you to have something listed on LT and you don't mind putting it in your catalog for only that reason, no one is going to stop you.

I tried to work on the combining issue, but it is beyond me, so I will post it in Combiners.

A big problem is that most of the editions are 0 copy. These are very hard to deal with. There are also no ISBNs.

>301 PuddinTame:-302, 303, 304
I have a collection called "placeholder" (ultimately it's a sub-species of Wishlist) where I keep books I have entered to flesh out a writer's works, or a series, but which I am unlikely ever to find or afford, or own for some other reason. That gets the 'missing' book on LT in a more or less proper manner. As for, say, collections of ebook novels, one might manually enter the individual novel title with {inclusion} after it and note in the comments or publication field that it is "from" or "included in," say, The Golden Age of Science Fiction.

As to "there was some concern when the work-to-work feature was introduced that people would begin copying the tables of contents of all of their anthologies into LT as individual works. This would both be messy now and it would create problems if LT ever introduced a formal system for listing the contents of anthologies," well, that ship has sailed. There are countless sub-book works entered, and sometimes it's not pretty.* I do it myself occasionally, though not often, and try to 'do no harm' by labelling them appropriately.

*For instance, I'll be investigating a new-to-me sci-fi writer and I'll notice on the author page that there are six reviews for this author's works. "Great," I think, "I'll check those out." But alas, it will turn out that those six reviews belong to just two short stories, not novels, and each story has the identical review triplicated, and those reviews are along the lines of "Don't glue your spaceship" or "Trouble in paradigm." Waste of time for me -- I want my clicks back.

I've got my sub-works in a collection called Inclusions - that is both books in omnibuses and (some) short stories in anthologies and collections. I mark the short stories (and novelettes, and novellas, when I can figure out which one a particular piece should be labeled) with {ss} (or {novelette}...) after the title. If we ever get a short works structure, I will happily delete all my short stuff - after transferring read dates, reviews, and ratings to the pieces in the new structure.

eromsted> You said "LT is a catalog of the books it's members have entered, not every book in the world. It is a basic principle that you should have some connection to the books you list in your account."

On what basis do you assume that I am entering books in my account that I don't own?

In general, I understand all the problems with essays, and poems, etc., but what was the point of creating of link for "items contained in another item" if we apparently aren't supposed to use it. Have the powers-that-be decided that links should only be made if there are five items or less? Most of the items, novels, remember, already have a record, and I still don't see the harm in creating a record for the couple of full-fledged novels that don't. Most of you have not addressed that. If nothing else, I would like to have a record that I own that novel, even if it is in an anthology.

I'm really beginning to rethink that amount of time that I spend putting information into my records, such a blurbers, that I personally don't give a damn about. I thought that I was helping to create a useful bibliographic tools.

>309 PuddinTame:
Basic principles are basic principles. They do not necessarily fully apply to your case. I honestly didn't quite understand what you were proposing to do from your message. I also didn't think it mattered exactly. Did you get to the end of my message where I basically said, do whatever you want?

I was trying to give the context for the "create no new works" dictum that you were worried about. But the bottom line is that as long as you don't do something radical on the level of entering all of Project Gutenberg, your catalog is your catalog and you can use it however you wish.

MarthaJeanne> Did you separate the books? Thanks so much!

303>

The point isn't that it is a new edition, it is that it is an available edition, when no other is listed.

I understand. I agree. Tim doesn't, and it's his site and thus his rules. He'll allow people to add perfumes, dresses, and stuffed bobcats, but draws the line at short stories if they're just for the purpose of the relationships

There's a loophole, of course. Should you decide that you want to indicate you've read or own those books, well, you'd be well within your rights to add them - short stories aren't universally forbidden. And once they're there, you or anyone else could use the relationship feature.

I posted it in combiners, and a couple of people have worked on it.

In using the relationships function, I've recently come across a couple of work relationships that seem worthy of inclusion at LibraryThing, but don't necessarily fit the current categories. Does anyone have any insight into how I should catalog these? Or is there a category that makes sense that could be added that is a little more flexible?

1. Madeleine L'Engle's The Love Letters contains extracts of The Love Letters from a Portuguese Nun (touchstone failure, so I removed it) which are believed to have been written by Mariana Alcoforado to Nöel Bouton, Marguis de Chamilly. L'Engle's novel overlays interweaves a modern story about a woman with a troubled marriage (who finds solace in reading Mariana's letters) with a fictionalized account of Mariana's story based on the letters.
I went ahead and added a relationship that L'Engle's version was "inspired" by Mariana's letters, but given that I'm not Madeleine L'Engle, it's hard to say categorically that the letters inspired her novel, or if she started the novel and then discovered the letters, etc, etc. Given what I know about L'Engle, it's probably fair to say that the letters inspired the novel, but then, I can't point to any documentation of this fact.

Alright, and that was the easy one.

2. The trickier one involves two books by Dorothy Gilman. The Tightrope Walker is a novel that revolves around solving the mystery of the demise of someone who turns out to be the "author" of The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. The main character in The Tightrope Walker's favorite childhood book is The Maze in the Heart of the Castle, each chapter starts with quotations from The Maze in the Heart of the Castle, certain characters in the Tightrope Walker are found to have been the inspiration for The Maze in the Heart of the Castle, and the lost manuscript to the sequel of the Maze in the Heart of the Castle is discovered as part of a pivotal plot point in The Tightrope Walker. All this would point to The Maze book "inspiring" The Tightrope Walker, except that Dorothy Gilman didn't write The Maze in the Heart of the Castle until 4 years *after* The Tightrope Walker (well, except clearly she was working on them simultaneously, because she kept the quotations from changing), and it's impossible for something to inspire something else if the first thing hasn't happened yet. Still, they are incredibly intertwined novels, and it's a pretty interesting piece of trivia for fans of Dorothy Gilman, except I have no idea how to add it in. If anything, I'd say that Gilman "expanded" the story hinted at and discussed in Tightrope Walker when she wrote and published The Maze in the Heart of the Castle, but quite obviously, that won't work either, since the term "expansion of" usually wouldn't apply when a significant section of the pre-expansion material is jettisoned (e.g., the main story in Tightrope Walker) for the expanded version.

In both cases 1 and 2, what's really happening is that at one end of the relationship there is a book/source, "a." And at the "b" side of the relationship, the main story is fed by and interwoven with the story of the life of the "author" of "a," while happening to quote the work "a" and discuss its writing style, plot, and the impact on its readers, etc. It's really an interesting style of book relationship with a largely meta quality.

I'd love for there to be something that somehow captures this relationship. Despite the name of the The Maze in the Heart of the Castle being right there in the Tightrope Walker (over and over), I never noticed that Gilman happened to have written a children's book by that title until I saw a review a couple weeks back. I'd love to own the Maze book, but it's out of print and tricky to find a copy. It would have been nice to have had on my list back before COVID when I regularly browsed used bookstores on the hunt for old editions of things in good condition.

Your second case sounds like the relationship of Fantastic Beasts to some of the Harry Potter books, but there is currently no work to work relationship set for them. Instead they have a series relationship. Perhaps you could set up a series for those works since they exist in the same universe.

Hmm. In isolation, I'd agree, Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter have a similar relationship as case 2. But Harry Potter is a full series in and of itself, and then the Harry Potter schoolbooks are a related series sub-grouping in the Harry Potter universe. I buy the way the HP example works, but with only two books total, it's a lot harder to justify a Tightrope Walker series to set up a "universe" when it really should be a relationship. Maybe non-series prequel fits the best out of a bunch of imperfect options.

>314 parlerodermime: I think "inspired by" is reasonable for #1.

With your description of #2, The Tightrope Walker looks like "a (non-series) sequel" to The Maze in the Heart of the Castle.

317 aspirit: Thanks for weighing in! I had thought of non-series sequels/prequels as being most appropriate for related works by different authors (like Flatland and Sphereland), but after 315 jjwilson61's comment about putting them in different buckets in the same series, I started to consider making The Maze in the Heart of the Castle a non-series prequel to The Tightrope Walker. Your comment made me much more confident in that choice, and I've created the relationship.

>318 parlerodermime: you're welcome.

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