Adding sets (does stuff to my OCD)

Today I received in the post my long awaited Winnie the Pooh set, and I immediately ran into a problem with uploading it.

Should I upload the set as a whole (which I did with both Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy as well as Scott's The Raj Quartet)? The three books then count as one here on LT.

OR should I upload them as individual books? There seems to be a plethora of Winnie the Pooh combinations here on LT, but none have the same combination of books or are the FS versions. Hmmm.

How do the rest of you deal with the sets? Do you add them individually or together?

(My OCD demands that if I upload these separately, I must re-enter the other two sets in the same way.)

I must confess that I add each individual volume, as well an an entry for the entire boxed set. So my library numbers are slightly off, but I prefer having the set as well as the individual volumes represented.

cindy

> 1

I add sets as sets with appropiate notes in the Comments field as to the actual composition. Any information entered in Comments is searchable, so individual volume titles are indexed. Works for me.

> 2

Ooooh, part of me likes the idea as I love scanning and uploading the covers. That way I would get both the individual book cover and the pretty box cover as well ... but my numbers would be off and that would give me sleepless nights. It would be lovely if one could have two pictures per book ...

> 3

That was how I started out, but now I'm wondering if it was a good idea. I also purchased Durrell's Alexandria Quartet as a set, but uploaded them individually as they are in separate slipcases. Now that I think of it, I wonder if it is the slipcases that are confusing me and I made my initial decision based on "one slipcase = one work" when that is not necessarily true, or at least not the whole truth.

I'd like to know how others are dealing with it, but I'm leaning towards adding them separately as I really shouldn't have the slipcases decide what is what.

> 4

In my opinion, one slipcase with more than one volume equals a set. Separate volumes with slipcases each equal a series.

> 5

But I have the du Maurier books purchased in individual slipcases, but also know (because I have seen them on ebay) that they at one point were sold together in one slipcase. This kind of change of packaging makes for grey areas galore! And restless nights, I must add.

Oh, I entered the Milne books separately as I wanted the covers displayed, so now I have to make a decision about the other slipcase-cohabitant sets/series.

For people with OCD, like probably all of us, LibraryThing can be both exhilarating and cause the utmost in despair. When I first started on LibraryThing, I was not aware that choosing a different cover on the editing page could actually change your ISBN and book details! I changed a ton of covers to get sharper images before realizing that and am STILL trying to fix that little problem. I have since learned that even when I am choosing a different cover off LibraryThing, it is best to drag it to my desktop and upload it like it's my own pic. Otherwise, there may be problems. That little mess may never be totally resolved.

cindy

> 6

I'm afraid you won't find a global solution. I also take into account the year of publication. Sets tend to be published together while series are published over a number of years. In the final analysis you have to be happy with whatever criteria you follow... However, don't be upset with me if I mention that pretty covers is not a very scientific norm!

> 7

Oh, I now only use my own scanned images! I think I chose some here right at the beginning (first day of cataloguing, I think) but soon discovered that they can get removed or (if from Amazon) changed.

> 8

Ah, now, Antonio, 'tis all about pretty covers, d'you know? Haha, it may not be scientific, but truth be told I have "hid" or "lost" some ugly books through the years. And bought some simply because I loved the cover, the most recent ones being Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke -- I simply had to own the first one because the cover was so stunning, and when the sequel arrived with an even more stunning cover I again had no choice in the matter.

Official Scary Thread

>1 Ephemeralda:

If you use the "National Library Of Scotland" as your data source and put something like "The Complete Winnie The Pooh", "Folio Society" in the search box you will get the Folio Society set.

I add them individually - sets are all nice and so on but then I never know what I really have. So single books it is :)

> 10

BOO!

> 9

A kindred spirit! The covers, the covers. I've waited months and months to buy new books by favourite authors because I just could not bear the original cover. Can't help much with the whole set entry issue, I only have one (LOTR) which I entered as three books because they are, and my library is an unscientific mess. I tell myself that I'll go through it and sort out the innaccuracies, but it's yet to happen, the Folios being the exception and attended to. The only thing that must be correct or I start twitching involuntarily is, yes, the cover.

I do as malinablue said in post 2. I use the "Private Comment" section to note this for futue reference. I do this for a book which contains more than one work (we enter books, but combine works). If I have Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in one volume, I enter each work and the book which contains the two works - three entries, total.

I do this primarily because it fits the primary purpose of LT - to bring together people with like books in their library. So, if I have both parts of Don Quixote (one volume or two), I want to connect with folks that have both, but also with folks that have only the first part (which is not uncommon).

The other reason is less of an issue, now that LT added 'collections'. I can add a mulitvolume set as individual books (which they are, BTW), and then use the 'collections' capability to establish the complete, multi-volume work. However, if it truly is a multi-volume work (such as Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), it's reasonable to enter only the one work, regardless of the number of volumes.

Os.

> 14

Oh, I might do like you and Malinablue and add my box sets as well. In my case that would "add" three to my total number, but if I tag them it would be easy enough to see what the number is "off" by, something I can't see at all at the moment.

But, Os, I couldn't work out at all what you mean by the 'collections' capability ... Things are getting complicated, or am I just missing something obvious?

>15 Ephemeralda:
In the "Your Books" tab, top left there is the "Collections" button, which defaults to "all collections". LT have defined some generic ones, eg Currently Reading, Read But Unowned etc, but you can edit these and define your own collections.

What Os is suggesting is that you could (for example) add all your Du Maurier books as single volumes but then create a "Daphne Du Maurier" collection which will show you all the sub-volumes in one view.

I love LT - makes you realise there are other people out in the world who worry about the same strange things that keep you up at night.

I catalogue both the set and the individual volumes. I add the individual volumes normally, then I add the set to a special collection I have called "Phantom Library", and remove it from the default set "My Library", so while my total number of books registered in "All Collections" is higher than the number of books in my library, the number in the "My Library" collection (which is the first one that shows in your profile) is always correct. I even also occasionally use this phantom library to add individual volumes from an omnibus, so that for long series of works they come up as complete under the 'series' feature (since it really irks me when my series look incomplete - how is that for OCD?). It's useful because the 'ticks' come up in a different colour, so you don't get confused about which books are in your 'real' library and which ones are in the 'phantom' library.

> 17

Creative library and information science! ;-)

> 16

Aaaah, those collections! I thought there was some new feature of which I wasn't aware.

> 17

I see what you're doing ... and might just implement it. I only have three "boxes" as of yet, so it isn't like there is a huge discrepancy, but I do have quite a few omnibuses and adding the individual books there would be, like, totally useful. And I like it even more if the ticks show in different colours ... I will experiment immediately.

> 18

Ah, the science, the science!

EDITED TO ADD: Skulduggery, when you add the individual works that you have in an omnibus edition, do you just add whatever edition shows up, or will you "force" it to have the same ISBN as the omnibus? If the latter, surely that would mess things up in the LT database. Perhaps I'll just add them manually and leave them "naked".

For me it depends how they usually regarded. Thus the Winnie-the-Pooh books or the Raj Quartet are catalogued separately, whilst Gibbon's Decline and Fall or Churchill's World War Two are each catalogued as one. I would catalogue the Daphne du Maurie set, His Dark Materials, and the Alexandria Quartet all as individual volumes. The FS use of slipcases is simply part of their marketing and has nothing to do with how I regard the books. Anyway, they change: my Gibbons is are all slipcased separately, whereas they are now in 2 sets of 4.

Just added a new Collection called "Sets". I'm moving to double counting.

> 21

Someone else got going sorting sets and omnibuses with this thread, I see!

I went with Skulduggery's idea of a "Phantom Library" collection which is not added to "My Library". In this collection I have two tags going: "Box" which is for books that came in a single slipcase, like His Dark Materials, and "Omnibus" which lists the works inside books with more than one work, like Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy and other Everyman Library omnibuses.

I just realised that this is a good way of adding works found in short story collections.

Off I go ...

Individual books will go into "My Library", sets into the new "Sets" collection, and I'm planning on adding a third new collection to handle individual works that are part of a collection. It always bothered me that LT would "pretend" that I don't have a work that I do own, only as part of a collection. The book count for "My Library" will eventually become accurate since I have a number of multi-volume sets that now count as one book, e.g. Gormenghast Trilogy.

>15 Ephemeralda:, 16

Sorry for going offline for so long. What I was actually suggesting was not creating a 'Collections' entry for a set, but using the 'Common Knowledge' 'Series' capability to identify the various volumes or works making up a multi-work volume or multi-volume work/set. Sorry for the confusion. I'm editing my original post to replace "Collections" with "Series".

You can find the place to create a series in the common knowledge section on the main page for a work. Often, what you're looking for has already been created, but it's easy to create what you need, if not.

Here's an example - http://www.librarything.com/work/book/83024959
You'll see the series info near the top. If you click on this link, you'll see the volumes in the series, as well as the set ('omnibus' in place of the order number). Back at the main page, scroll down past the 'LibraryThing Recommendations' until you find the 'Common Knowledge' section. Here is where you can enter series info for the work.

Hope that makes more sense.

Os.

>19 Ephemeralda: Glad you're having fun :)

When I add individual works from my omnibus editions into the phantom library, I keep the isbn field empty or, s you so delightfully put it, 'naked' (since I don't consider it a 'real' book, and - like you - I don't want to stuff up the LT database). And I upload the actual cover from my omnibus edition, and note in the comments field which book it's in.

A fascinating question and one we ocd sufferers could debate for years. I tend to treat works split in two for publishing reasons, eg Les Miserables, as one volume; otherwise I enter them as separate volumes, with titles such as "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol 1" and so on. I have entered most of my Folios manually by modifying a work or from scratch. I have assumed modifying another edition of the work to convert it to my FS edition doesn't stuff up the LT index, but I may be wrong - I figure if I am stripping out the IBSN, then it is fine.

More problematic are works with multiple authors, such as Journals of the Westerns Isles and the Folio Book of Short Novels. It took me a while to get those entered to my satisfaction, but then perhaps I should get a ilfe. :-))

I have inadvertently opened a can of worms, so it seems.

Surely it breaks down to database hierarchy here on LT? The tab says "Add Books", so that is what people do.

If we added works primarily and only after doing that specified the book or edition, this wouldn't really be an issue. Surely? Because it is all about works, really, isn't it?

I suspect it is easy to become too anal about these things. Is "Lord of the Rings" 3 books or one book? Is "A Dance to the Music of Time" 12 books, 4 books, or one book? I tend to regard a collection of novels bound by one cover, eg The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes as one book rather than listing each novel, even though the individual novels may have been published years apart. In regard to "The Lord Of the Rings", there are omnibus editions which have all three novels in the one cover, other publishers who have published each novel in a separate cover, and the Folio Society who have published the work as a "set", three bound novels in one slipcase. When my LOTR set arrives I suspect I will include this as one book, rather than three...just like I did with The Complete Winnie The Pooh and the Gormenghast Trilogy.

>27 Ephemeralda:

I hope that I'm not misunderstanding what you are suggesting, but by saying that "works" should be the top level, do you suggest that an anthology of short stories should be entered by adding each short story as a separate entry, given that one particular short story may have been published in different collections of short stories over the years. I can tell you that there is no way that I would go to that trouble. I would happily add a book like "An Anthology of Australian Short Stories", but would never add those 10 or so stories individually.

Anyway, interesting discussion

> 28

Eeeerrmm ... I see what you are saying and did wonder about it myself. I wasn't seriously suggesting a change, but rather voicing some thoughts to see if they would hold up under scrutiny.

I see the problem with short stories, and have myself added my short story collections simply as "books", However, thinking about it yesterday it hit me that I am clueless about what short stories I own and that adding them as "works" and referring to what book they are in wouldn't be a bad idea, as that would enable me to quickly search and find a specific one.

Thinking about it, perhaps I ought to have a collection which specifies "works", and let "My Library" indicate "Books", so to speak. That way I could keep my Winnie the Pooh and my Jewel in the Crown sets counting as one each in "My Library", but "My Works" would indicate the individual books as well as short stories and parts of trilogies and such.

Hmmm.

Edited to remove post because, on reconsideration, I thought it was silly. Sorry.

> 30

Okay, now I'm bursting with curiosity.

>28 SimB:
I tend to enter books or works based on what the author created, not the publisher. Just because a publisher combines two Mark Twain works in one binding doesn't mean that I shouldn't show up on LT as an owner of "Tom Sawyer". The purpose of LT is, at it's core, to bring together people who are reading (or hoping to read) the same works. Besides, if I don't enter it as "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" separately, I'm likely to buy another copy of "Tom Sawyer" because it wasn't in my database. An overly simple example, I admit, but you see the point.

Os.

HOLD IT!!!

This thread alerted me to the "Volumes" feature. If an edition has several volumes one enters it right there. Hmmm. It is getting late, so I'll investigate further tomorrow.

>33 Ephemeralda: Yes, how does one use the "Volume" field. I use '1' if I've entered the set individually; otherwise, I enter the number of volumes in the set if that's the way it's entered. I'm not consistent - sometimes I enter the books individually and sometimes as a set. That's why I like the idea of using a "Set" collection and adding some foolish consistency (the hobgoblin of my small mind?) to my entries.

If it is a separate book with covers and all, it goes in as a separate book. The only case when I did something different was for a 2-volume edition of a novel (non-Folio) that was always printed as one volume except for this edition.. and it had a slipcase and what's not so logistically it made sense. The Folio sets? Book by book.

I do have a Bits and Pieces (or something like that - I change names occasionally) collections for single pieces of novels/books that are published together so that I can write reviews and so on. Pretty much what Os explains above - except that I would have both the individuals and the whole book (the latter one for notes on where it is...)

>35 AnnieMod: Pretty much what Os explains above - except that I would have both the individuals and the whole book

That's what I do as well; just didn't mention it in my post. So, I end up with a slightly overstated total, both when more than one work is bound in one book, and when a work is bound in more than one volume. For me, it's not about the number of books/volumes/works. It's about thoroughly cataloging my books/works/volumes and in a way that will be included in a list of LTers who own a specific book/work/volume. I think that's pretty close to the original purpose of LT.

Os.