Format changes I: See and change your formats (PART 2)

I'm continuing the topic. It got too long for easy use.

I've fixed it so that "Not set" and "Unknown" are now separated.

I'm continuing the topic. It got too long for easy use.

I've fixed it so that "Not set" and "Unknown" are now separated.

>1 timspalding: >2 timspalding: Don't worry; it happens to me all the time.

I'm a bit stumped on how to deal with my comics when it comes to correcting the format. On the one hand they are mostly either paperback or hardcover in terms of physical format (a few are albums, none are comic book issues), but on the other hand they are a different medium from pure text - I notice that printed music is its own category, with paperback and hardcover suboptions. I've shelved them separately from text-based books, so my instinct is to make a new format for them, but what was the intention behind the system already in place?

I raised the same issue in the old thread. I've defined the format 'Seriealbum' under Books. They're definitely not paperbacks. I think bandes-dessinées are less common in the USA, it's a very European format.

The mess is the phrase "paperback". LT should change it to "soft cover".

>6 rainerc:
Probably wise. Also will avoid the chime and potential confusion with 'paper book'.

I would prefer print book for paper book.

But isn't an e-book a kind of a print book? it displays printed letters, just using electronics rather than ink and paper.

"Paperback" is just a much more common word than "softcover." It's 120m vs. 20m in Google, and 278k vs. 32k in LibraryThing tags.

As for "print book" it isn't immediately obvious what it is. Out of context at the head of a list, it would sound like a book of prints. Paper book is the term people are now contrasting with ebook.

Ultimately, if you don't like the formats, add one.

>10 timspalding: "Paperback" is just a much more common word than "softcover." It's 120m vs. 20m in Google, and 278k vs. 32k in LibraryThing tags.

That's because when the softcover really is an ordinary paperback, which usually is the case, people will tag it as such. But softcover is needed for when it is not an ordinary paperback, but for instance a comics album. It's like looking at tags and claiming that that 'paperback' is a much more common term than 'book'.

Tim, Is power edit ready to be used with media?

>11 anglemark:

Look, any taxonomy is open to criticism. The flip side here is that, if we had softcover, people would want a "paperback" underneath it, to distinguish it from comics. "Softcover" would be one of those in-baseball terms that end up in some taxonomies only to have something beneath it.

A paperback is always a softcover but a softcover is not always a paperback.
Rather than have the term 'Paper Book' on the second level I think you should have the two terms 'Softcover' and 'Hardcover' (or Softback and Hardback). You can add further descriptions under these terms. I would like to be able to distinguish between perfect bound and wire stitched (stapled) books.

My hesitation lies in whether this field is intended to be primarily a physical description of the work in question, or if the content enters into it as well. If it is all physical, then I'd mark my comics as paperback or hardcover or album as applicable. I can't figure out the intent from the taxonomy list alone. It seems mainly to be physical, but the inclusion of printed music as a separate category, with its own paperback and hardcover options seems to say that content matters in some cases.

>10 timspalding: There's always e-book and tree book. Of course, then you would have rag paper, vellum and papyrus mucking up the terms.

from 312 on the previous thread - Thank you so much for providing the ability to have the complete media list by default - really helps.

>13 timspalding:

"Softcover" would be one of those in-baseball terms that end up in some taxonomies only to have something beneath it.

Something like "Paper Book" then?

Why not make the book options something like: Book - Hardcover / Softcover / Audio / Ebook / Other/ Unknown ?

At least that would give a basic second level description that covers all book options. 'Paperback' would still be an third level option - but under 'Softcover' rather than 'Paper Book'

You need to cover magazines/journals/newspapers somewhere so how about a first level option of 'Serial' (or 'Continuing Resource' as MARC refers to it now). Comics might fit also nicely into this section.

Here's the way MARC splits up their material types:

MARC 21 Format. The bibliographic format contains data elements for the following types of material:

Books (BK) - used for printed, electronic, manuscript, and microform textual material that is monographic in nature.

Continuing resources (CR) - used for printed, electronic, manuscript, and microform textual material that is issued in parts with a recurring pattern of publication (e.g., periodicals, newspapers, yearbooks). (NOTE: Prior to 2002, Continuing resources (CR) were referred to as Serials (SE)).

Computer files (CF) - used for computer software, numeric data, computer-oriented multimedia, online systems or services. Other classes of electronic resources are coded for their most significant aspect. Material may be monographic or serial in nature.

Maps (MP) - used for all types of printed, electronic, manuscript, and microform cartographic materials, including atlases, sheet maps, and globes. Material may be monographic or serial in nature.

Music (MU) - used for printed, electronic, manuscript, and microform music, as well as musical sound recordings, and non-musical sound recordings. Material may be monographic or serial in nature.

Visual materials (VM) - used for projected media, non-projected media, two-dimensional graphics, three-dimensional artifacts or naturally occurring objects, and kits. Material may be monographic or serial in nature.

Mixed materials (MX) - used primarily for archival and manuscript collections of a mixture of forms of material. Material may be monographic or serial in nature. (NOTE: Prior to 1994, Mixed materials (MX) were referred to as Archival and manuscript material (AM)).

I can't say I agree with it all - Audio books under Music? - but it's an interesting read.

MARC would also have 'Video Recordings' under 'Visual Materials' - presumably together with posters and postcard books?

And they list atlases, sheet maps, and globes under Maps.

I disabled this immediately. I didn't want it, and don't like it. It would be nice if stuff like this were opt-in in future, rather than opt-out.

>14 newcrossbooks: >18 newcrossbooks:
But (softcover, harcover) are a further level down, conceptually, than ebook, audio, paperbook etc.
They describe the binding of the paperbook, not the fundamental media.

I understand why LT needed to have a way to tell books from music from films, but I don't see the value of bending the field to also discriminate the type of binding. If that's important to some people then they can use tags for it.

Tim, Is power edit ready to be used with media?

Yup. See https://www.librarything.com/topic/193220

Thank you. I'll give it a try here shortly.

I've now seen that this field is also intended to help combining, so then I'll definitely mark my comics as comics - Neverwhere the comic is different from Neverwhere the book and Neverwhere the TV series.

>20 Crypto-Willobie:

But (softcover, harcover) are a further level down, conceptually, than ebook, audio, paperbook etc.
They describe the binding of the paperbook, not the fundamental media.

First - 'Paper Book' is not a good description for physical book media - books are not all made of paper.

Second - I don't think the terms hardback and softback are really 'a further level down, conceptually, than ebook, audio...', they're simple descriptions of the book format. If you're buying a book I think most people look to see whether it's available in hardback, softback or as an e-book or audio book.

Amazon, for instance, lists its book formats as: Book Format: Paperback|Hardcover|Audible Audio Edition|Kindle Edition

You have to remember that, until very recently, books were always available in some sort of physical form (the 'Paper book') and that the overwhelming majority still are. Surely the fact that you're cataloguing something under the heading 'Book' can be taken to mean that there is a 'Paper Book' available? The next level is the basic format - and I would argue that Hardcover, Softcover, Audio, Ebook are similar basic format descriptions.

'Hardcover' and 'Softcover' are basic options that simply describe the format of the book that is being catalogued - they're not terms that really 'describe the binding of the paperbook'. The level under 'Softcover', for instance, might list 'Paperback' (for standard glued paperbacks), 'Stapled' (for wire stitched books), 'Spiral Bound' (for metal or plastic comb bindings), 'Folder' (for pages held in a folder or a ring binder), 'Flexible Binding' (for non paper covers), 'Other' and 'Unknown'.

Recommend "Medium" be included in the "Your book information" window on the "Main page" of a book.

>25 newcrossbooks: You have to remember that, until very recently, books were always available in some sort of physical form (the 'Paper book') and that the overwhelming majority still are.

It depends on how you define book, but I'm confident "overwhelming" is false, that a huge number of works that used to fill government repositories and corporate libraries are never being printed. If you start to count novel-length works published to a general audience online, I'm not sure even majority is.

If you're buying a book I think most people look to see whether it's available in hardback, softback or as an e-book or audio book.

What format an e-book is in is quite important; a Kindle book is quite different form a PDF file; the only reason Amazon doesn't have to make that distinction is because they sell only one format of e-book. Same thing with an audio book; digital-only MP3s are very different from physical media, and CD audio on CD very different from CDs full of MP3s. "Hardback" and "softback" is hardly more important.

I want to be able to use the media field to be able to differentiate between a novelization and a graphic novelization, so I too will be putting all my graphic novels under "comic book".

ETA:
Oh, wait NO. Darnit! "Comic book" is under "paper book". No good. One of my graphic novels is an ebook.

I think I'll invent my own Comics hierarchy under "Other" and use power edit to change them later to whatever official thing happens when something official does happen if it ever does. Which I hope it will.

Sorry if this has been discussed before but should atlases and street maps in book form like the A to Z series be classed as maps or as books? I lean towards the latter.

>27 prosfilaes: a huge number of works that used to fill government repositories and corporate libraries are never being printed

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Just because libraries now don't stock physical copies of some works, and you have to study many things like journals online, doesn't mean that they're not available as printed resources elsewhere. I've looked up the world figures for ISSN publications for 2014 - there were 1,625,560 ISSN numbers issued for printed texts and only 154,745 for online (remote) texts. Bearing in mind that electronic and printed versions of identical texts have to be assigned different ISSN numbers the overwhelming majority must be considered to be available in printed form.
http://www.issn.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Records-per-medium.pdf

As for 'novel-length works published to a general audience online' - I don't really have any experience of them but I'm sure most people still think of a book as a physical object.

For a long time the basic format options for books were softcover or hardcover - audio and e-book are just recent additions to these format options. Would this listing really look so odd:
Book: Pride and Prejudice
Initial Format Options: Hardcover, Softcover, Audio, E-book, Other, Unknown

This gives far more information on the second level and leaves much more scope for format descriptions in the third level than using a blanket descriptor like 'Paper Book' (which for my parchment books is not a valid descriptor anyway).

>30 newcrossbooks: I've looked up the world figures for ISSN publications for 2014

Sure, for things with ISSN numbers. That's a sample biased towards expensive works that can justify printed copies.

I'm sure most people still think of a book as a physical object.

If you think of a book as a physical object, then most books are physical objects.

In my hobby, DriveThruRPG has 15,000 works available in PDF (for at least a modest fee, to make it closer to the concept of "book"), and some 3,000 as print, and that's as Print on Demand. Some small fraction of those are available in non-PoD print formats; I'm guessing less than 300 in the entire industry.

Overall, it's been four years since Amazon started selling more Kindle books then physical books.

audio and e-book are just recent additions to these format options.

The audiobook is a hundred years old; the Three Little Bears was released on wax cylinder in 1915. The Library of Congress started wide-scale relatively long-format audio recording for the blind in 1930.

In any case, when designing a new system, now is a chance to support recent additions, not marginalize them.

>1 timspalding: I've fixed it so that "Not set" and "Unknown" are now separated.

Was this a change in display but not the underlying data?

I'm not sure I was consistent in choosing "Unknown" or "Not Set", and I see at a quick glance that my Wishlist entries now are partly "Unknown" and partly "Not Set". They were all displaying "Unknown" after I manually set them all.

>27 prosfilaes: >31 prosfilaes:

ISSN numbers are issued free and are not reserved for 'expensive works that can justify printed copies'. You suggested that a 'huge number of works that used to fill government repositories and corporate libraries are never being printed' and I was trying to show that most journals, I assume this must be what you were referring to, are still available as physical copies (When it comes down to it most items with ISSN numbers aren't actually classified as books).

And of course Amazon sells more kindles than physical books, although I don't think the sales figures include books sold through their marketplace, but most of their kindle books are also available as physical books. Overall in the UK it is said that about 1/3 of all new book sales are now of e-books. That still leaves 2/3 of books sold being physical books - and doesn't count the second-hand market. There are estimated to be 2,200,000 new titles (or new editions) published each year throughout the world.

But none of this really matters - It's not a competition to suggest what format is the best.

I'm simply trying to suggest that 'softcover' books should be treated as a different format to 'hardcover' books. The 'paperback' (in its perfect bound form) was the e-book of its time and revolutionised the book selling industry in the mid to late 20th century. It was the ultra-cheap softcover book that enabled the general public to buy books that they could fit in their pockets, take on holidays, read on the beach, on their way to work... This was achieved by changing the way the book was made and sold. Most paperbacks were 'throw away' books which were not designed to last and printed in large numbers. Of course not all 'softcover' books are perfect bound paperbacks, but the vast bulk are - both in terms of titles and numbers sold.

Splitting the second level of formatting in this way (Hardcover, Softcover, Audio, E-book, Other, Unknown) gives a good basic description of the book format on the second level and enables many more options to be used on the third level. It also removes the dreadful 'Paper Book' format - which to me is a bit like listing all e-books under a 'Kindle' heading.

You say 'when designing a new system, now is a chance to support recent additions, not marginalize them'. If anything you seem to be the one trying to 'marginalize' physical books - I'm just trying to suggest ways of improving the descriptors so that it's easier to work out exactly what sort of format of book is in the catalogue.

I suspect there would be a practical difficulty with eliminating the "Paper Book" category – it's not usually possible to tell from a library record whether a book is hardcover or softcover. Often both formats are combined on a single record, and even when a record covers a single format it may not indicate which.

>34 Edward:

Very true.

The brief mention above about the age of the audiobook made me suddenly wonder how "read-along" kids' books get classified. I've got an old Transformers storybook that comes with a vinyl recording of the story. Is that technically "Multimedia"?

Beats me!

>36 saltmanz: Strictly speaking, yes!

@38: I mean, yeah, just by definition, right? :)

I feel like "Paper book with audio recording" is most accurate, but then that opens up a whole 'nother can of the proverbial invertebrates. (Would my Tom Lehrer boxed CD set be "CD with hardcover book"?) I'll probably just end up manually changing it to "Paperback with vinyl record" or somesuch.

I will just complexify the books / printed discussion with a couple of other categories:

(1) short texts. For instance, short stories, which are sometimes included in books, sometimes disseminated as individual works online, sometimes printed as chapbooks. I have trouble thinking of very short (text) works as "books".

(2) reports. For instance, white papers, green papers, shareholder reports, legislative analyses, policy reports; produced by governments, organizations, businesses. These text works may be of various lengths, and produced electronically or in print (perfect bound, staple bound, spiral bound, hardbound, etc.).

Yeah, the top level was original "Texts," but we simplified it.

>34 Edward: >35 timspalding:
If it's not known if the book is softcover or hardcover then can't it just be put in the classification 'Book - Unknown' ? (or just left on the first level 'Book'?).
(I think all levels of the Taxonomy really need 'Other' and 'Unknown' options)

>10 timspalding: As for "print book" it isn't immediately obvious what it is. Out of context at the head of a list, it would sound like a book of prints. Paper book is the term people are now contrasting with ebook.
Out of context, at the head of a list 'Paper Book' sounds like a paperback - and clearly doesn't cover non-paper books. WorldCat uses the term 'Print version' - but then this doesn't really cover non-printed books (eg manuscripts).

And what about adding a 'Series' option to level 1 of the taxonomy? This would be a better place for magazines, journals and zines - and could also be used to catalogue newspapers, annuals and comics (but not comic books that aren't serials or graphic novels so it wouldn't keep everyone happy...)

>40 lquilter:
(1) short texts. I've a number of articles taken from magazines or papers taken from journals which I've been listing as 'extracts'

(2) reports. The 'Media' type is really physical format, not content, so these would be listed under the format of the book (perfect bound, staple bound, spiral bound, hardbound...). Some, like shareholder reports, may qualify as being part of a 'Series' (or continuing resource) so might be qualify for a special header under a 'Series' heading. (see 42).

For my items that are stapled (not saddle stitched, just stapled in the corner) or in prong folders, three-ring binders or other similar things, I've classified them as unbound.

>28 LShelby: yeah, all my comic books/graphic novels are electronic, so can't go under the standard category: Paper book - Comic book.

I've been checking to see why the format of a lot of my books have not been set automatically.

Most listed as 'Not Set' are manual entries, but I've also found some sourced from SUDOC, University of Quebec, Italian National Library Service and a lot of 'periodicals' sourced from the Library of Congress, Yale University, Michigan State University and SOAS.

Most left in the 'Paper Book' category are non ISBN books but there are quite a lot of books with ISBN, and mainly sourced from the Library of Congress, that have not been categorised further. If I put the ISBN into the amazon.com search it gives the correct format (hardcover or paperback). I understood that this was the basic way that the format was obtained so why are these books not getting categorised further?

A small sample sourced from the LOC and listed as 'Book - Paper Book':
9781926585987 - A Story in Stones - (paperback)
9780765800404 - Internal Rivalries and Foreign Threats - (hardcover)
9782869780422 - An Economic History of Ethiopia - (paperback)
9781599070230 - Unionists and Separatists - (paperback)
9780520046139 - Ethiopia, Great Britain, and the United States - (hardcover)
9789652293657 - Black Jews, Jews, and Other Heroes - (paperback)
9781569020937 - In the Land of Solomon and Sheba - (paperback)

>46 newcrossbooks:

Tim talks about this on the other thread, but library records do not generally record hardcover vs paperback data; while you can look up the ISBN on Amazon and retrieve that data, LT doesn't "mix levels" this way; if your own catalog has less-detailed data for format (like "Paper Book") LT will not look up the ISBN-level data. (While if your own catalog has no data it would do so.)

>46 newcrossbooks: Thanks - I'll take a look and see what's going on with those. There may be some bugs in the detection of media for UNIMARC records.

Now we can more easily enter movies, it would be helpful if 'Director' and, perhaps, 'Screenwriter' could be added to the drop-down list of roles for the author slot.

>49 abbottthomas:
And, if my magical talking pony wish were granted, a larger entry field that could handle a whole list of actor names (semicolon-separated) at once. It makes sense to enter a work's authors (translators, editors, cover illustrators, ...) individually, but there are many more actors involved in a movie.

>50 Petroglyph: For myself, I don't see actors as appropriate members of the 'Author' or 'Other author' fields. I have held off erasing such entries on a live-and-let-live basis, but the practice grates. I generally put a cast list in the 'comments' field and will sometimes use tags for particular favourites.

Full casts under the title as 'other authors' would, I think, look rather untidy, but LT is a broad church ;-)

>51 theabbottsmusick: I like your idea of the comment field. It's much more friendly to the task. Also tags! I love to see the crossovers of actors in my movies, so tags would help me with that.

I can't wait to have the time to enter them here. I had them all numerically organized at one time, on my computer and in a lovely notebook I made with images of the movie posters, descriptions and such. Then VHS became a dead thing, to be replaced by CD and now Blue-ray, plus, my children grew up and raided my collection (well, a lot of them had been given to them for gifts), so now it's just a mess.

I don't buy many movies now, but I look forward to having a way to organize those I have left.

I wish people wouldn't enter the studio as the primary author: Paramount, Disney, MGM, etc. That seems more equivalent to the publisher to me.

>51 theabbottsmusick:
I can see that: that mismatch between book-type metadata and movie-type metadata is what's kept me from entering any of my movies here (well, one of the reasons) -- hence my wish for a dedicated actors field. On the other hand, I do feel that it doesn't make much sense to encourage members to catalogue libraries with multiple media types without providing at least a few separate fields for the diverse kind of metadata. But perhaps those are coming; the extent of the changes these new features will bring is rather unclear to me.

Using tags to record actors, to me, seems overburdening the field with information that could easily be handled elsewhere; comments are less accessible as they don't come with the clickability, comparability, or the dedicated list page (where they can be sorted in various ways).

If Tim were to add a field for a complete list of actors then I think it should go in Common Knowledge.

Actors in CK together with their roles?

Al Pacino - Carlito Brigante

?

>56 JerryMmm:

I like that approach best. Keeps the clutter out of author, but actor is closely tied to character which by precedent and common sense is a Common Knowledge field.

>57 elenchus: Just use the current Characters field and add the actors name in parentheses then.

I think segmenting actors out is a good idea, but it can't be achieved. Library data catalogs authors, screenwriters and actors in the same fields, usually without any indication of their connection to a work, so anything taken from a library is going to have this data in author fields. We could do better with Amazon data, and we will be--marking the "role" as "author." But removing certain types of contributors from the work level isn't going to be possible.

>58 jjwilson61:

I may do that, though I'm not sure how much effort I'll take beyond cataloguing the films I own. I'd rather spend time in CK of books I care about.

>59 timspalding:

Ah, that explains the limitation.

>59 timspalding: In theory, library data MIGHT have roles for personal names in either subfield e or subfield 4 of the x00 tags. In practice, I can't say I have ever seen those subfields in use.

Yeah, we did a little study on it. Very very rare.

I very much like this new feature but would like to see a classification for information presented in virtual form, such as a PDF formatted document. I am puzzled by the classification of 'multimedia' when in fact most/all alternative media formats are explicitly covered elsewhere - or is this where the PDFs would go? and what is intended by 'software'? Is this intended as the placeholder for hard publications e.g. CDs that carry software applications e.g. MS-WORD?

>63 geneva62: PDFs are ebooks

Multimedia is things with two or more forms of media. Books with tapes/CDs/software. Games with boards/playing pieces/instruction booklets. Divination cards with instruction booklets. Lots of schools have extensive multi-media.

I am still unsure. Should I set all my, say, films/DVD/Video/etc. which I have in a separate collection, using the Media option.

Initially I jumped in too early.

When I added a film/etc. soon after this new feature was added, I found I could not combine it with similar copies of the same work.
I reset it to unknown" and the combination worked :-)

I just figured that the system might take a bit of time to settle down.

Well a few weeks now. What should I do?

Should I set everything in my DVD collection to the appropriate media or NOT?

Probably a more difficult question. I marked ALL my DVD's/etc. with a designator after the Title (DVD in my case)
Should I go through all 700+ title and remove this post-nominal and recalculate names etc. etc.

Seems like a lot of work...to what end?

Guido.

>65 Collectorator:

How long before I will be able to see the changes I have made to my catalog reflected in the editions pages of works?
examples

Sorry. I don't understand what you're saying. What editions are in a work is immediate—or at worst a lag time of maybe 20 seconds. The counts on editions are not immediate, however.

Shall I start separating editions based on what I see in works such as

Yeah. If it's possible to separate the video and the book, this is how to do so.

When I added a film/etc. soon after this new feature was added, I found I could not combine it with similar copies of the same work.
I reset it to unknown" and the combination worked

I need an example of that. I can see no way that it would be true, but I'm willing to be shown.

Should we start adding video recordings? (DVDs) I'd like to, but I just searched for Star Trek TNG Season 1. I couldn't find as ISBN or anything, and searching by title, I couldn't find it, and a lot
of books came up. (Using amazon as a source). Is there a way to say I am searching for a DVD?
Or do I just need to wait for further improvements?

>69 Collectorator: As I understand it only the top tier of media types will show up in the edition line, and I'm not sure if Book will ever show up there.

>68 al.vick:
As far as I know, no, all sources in add books search only for books. You can of course enter other media using the manual option (http://www.librarything.com/addnew.php)

You can add DVDs and CDs using the UPC on the back, but you need to use a library source. They're hit or miss. Overcat is probably the best.

On Monday, we're unveiling searching for DVD and CDs on Amazon.

Sigh.

I know. What a catastrophe.

>74 lorax:

Silver lining: a more consistent and constrained dataset? I'm sure Amazon will introduce new issues for non-book media that we haven't seen (as frequently) for books. Even so, the non-book data should be more of a known factor, compared to the current state.

But I acknowledge the issue of non-book data is less of a concern, consequently ... easy for me to say.

(Replying to #16): "There's always e-book and tree book. Of course, then you would have rag paper, vellum and papyrus mucking up the terms."

...and then there's books liek this one, which I have a copy of, which is made of "DuraBook" material, made of synthetics created from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, which is theoretically "upcyclable," as well as being waterproof (and has been used to make waterproof books).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_to_Cradle:_Remaking_the_Way_We_Make_Things

...which also reminds me of many baby books made of plastic, foam, or cloth.

I guess there is still some work to do re. the new media field...

My settings :-) Media
Not set (483), Book (4,699), Paper Book (4,170), Audiobook (4), Ebook (9), Video Recording (340), DVD (1), VHS (1), Other (3), Printed music (1), Calendar (1), Software (1), Unknown (1)

Well I only have books and DVD's.

I do like that the printed music link (of which I have none) points to http://www.librarything.com/work/182971/book/55031895

Guido

>78 guido47: None of that is a LibraryThing bug. It's all bad data from your sources that's only going to be fixed if it's fixed by you.

We're lucky we don't have true AI; I suspect it would get very ticked about humans constantly feeding it bad data and then complaining about it just handling it.

>10 timspalding: Paper book is the term people are now contrasting with ebook.

Damn youngsters and their newfangled ways. What was wrong with dead tree book?

Question: Where should a hymnal go; book>paper book>Hardback or Other>printed music>Hardback?

>81 rgurskey: I have several (although none are entered on LT). I'd make my own category, but start it under Book>Paper Book/Hardback>Hymnal, or else Book>Paper Book>Hymnal.

ETA: Yes, I know that there's already Other>Printed Music>Hardcover, but that seems just a patchwork effort, rather than describing what it is. It's a *book*, after all.

Now I want to enter my hymnals. I guess it'll be a good Winter project.

I'm putting anything with printed music under printed music. It doesn't matter so much with hymnals, but when you get into musicals and operas, we want to be able to separate the sound recordings, video recordings, librettos (books with no music) and scores. So listing the music books separately will help.

Hymnals can be tough. The one I have is half hymns and half suggested unison readings. So although a large part of it is printed music, a significant part of it is not.

It seems to me there are only two reasons to worry about how media is set:

1. There exist different works with the same title in different media and you want your book on the correct work record. (I can't think of any time when hymnals would get into this problem, but if there were two hymnals with the same title, one with no music and one with, I'd make sure that my copy with music said printed music)

2. It helps you (You want everything with music near the piano or whatever)

If it's not helping in one of those two ways, I'm just leaving things "Not Set"

>85 aulsmith: 1) There are many hymnals with various editions Just words, words and melody, choir edition, words and accompaniment. So the question is whether these should all be in the same work or not. They are certainly designed to be used together.

>86 MarthaJeanne: Oh, dear. So there are. The music people are currently making arrangements for different voices or instruments different works. I don't have strong opinions on this but have been following the crowd. So currently they'd all be different works. I'd say the ones without music are Paper Books and the others are Paper Music to help the split.

This is neat. Being able to tell at a glance what everything is/was/will be (well, some of these are wish list/maybes, etc).

I see I have more ebooks than any other separate category, now, though physical books still out number digital.

Sad my digital comics are way over there under ebooks (I created a Digital Comic category; I mean, I do have 78 of them) instead of with the other comics, but it is a different format. Then again, I have four formats in one listed as comic books under Paper Book (floppies, paperbacks, hardcovers, and comic strip collections - all of which are different comic book formats).

Hmms. Maybe I'll add more categories under Comic book.

>82 Lyndatrue:, >83 aulsmith:, >84 PhaedraB:

I have a substantial collection of hymnals, many of which include a lot of other liturgical text besides the hymns. I'm still ambivalent about how to handle them, but I've mostly just been calling them hardcover books.

>92 Collectorator:

I'd say go nuts. Obviously that "consideration" will happen in two weeks (probably at the same time that allowing us to nest our own types under the current lowest level (e.g. "Paperback"), also something Tim expressed interest in allowing, happens).

Have fun!

ps. I love the new functionality and it's inclusion of wider media although I know there has always been heated debate about Librarything being used for cataloging non-books. However the term Library usually covers a variety of media formats - the public libraries I visited as a child in the sixties and seventies included periodicals, sheet music and music on vinyl so I don't find it quite the anathema that some do (although books is the reason I arrived at the site and remains my number one concern)

I am late to all of this but I have just used the power edit to set the majority of the non books items in my library.

A few quick comments, firstly to observe that in the UK almost nobody uses the term softback (paperback is the norm although technically not as accurate) and that I always thought of physical books (as opposed to ebooks or audio) as 'hard copies' - although I suppose technically no less open to interpretation than any other term mooted here.

I kind of agree with the previous poster that surely the overall heading is just BOOKS and that the basic formats they fall into are softback, hardback, ebook, audio or unbound and the next tier down would be the specifics like paperback, clothbound, boards, flexibound, boardbook, clothbook, bathbook, digital, cassette etc.. I have never though of periodicals (be it zines, magazines, comics, journals) or pamphlets etc as being a format of book at all so much as a separate form of published media entirely and therefore a classification of OTHER be it print or electronic.

Also I agree with an earlier poster that the ability to designate Tarot decks would be useful and also wonder if it might be worth having a sub format for Uncorrected Proofs? They don't always have their own ISBN and I have many listed under the HB ISBN which they relate to but which they are an uncorrected paperback proof of? (clumsy sentence but....)

Finally what would VCD's come under on the current menu of options as they are not the same as DVDs and I'm not sure if they qualify as a Laserdisc?**

**ahah! I have found the manual entry field and nested VCD under 'Video Recording' and Tarot deck under 'Other'

It's definitely Uncorrected Proof editions causing a hiccup in my listings as they are often entered the under the HB ISBN but annotated as uncorrected paperback proof editions, is it an issue if I amend my copies to paperback from hardback (in which case should I blank out the ISBN) or should I enter a separate user defined format?

I can't spot where it says about discrepancies between the summary information and media as shown in the media field in the 'your books' display option, not sure if this is the place to ask???

Specifically I have cleared all the Unset items showing up in the summary information but where the media field is included under 'your books' I have blank entries showing or items which indicate (for example) just Books and when I go into the edit screen they show as Not set

https://www.librarything.com/membermedia/Littlemissbashful - under Media Source line for Not set is showing zero

but when I go to

https://www.librarything.com/catalog/Littlemissbashful

https://www.librarything.com/work/84968/edit/44965275 - field shows blank, edit shows Not set

https://www.librarything.com/work/1121833/book/44965210 - field shows Book, edit shows Not set

>98 Littlemissbashful: The edit module defaults to Not Set when there is "green" information on your book or, evidently, if the field is blank. Since the field on your record doesn't say "Not Set" it doesn't show up in the statistics. If you save the edited work without updating the green or blank information, it will become Not Set (I think).

Evidently the program doesn't want you to have a blank media field. I'd recommend using "Unknown"

The only way I know to find the green entries is to manually scan for them in the catalog. I use the PhaedraB approach to this kind of problem: I won't look for them, but I'll fix them when I see them.