New Series: Best Practices

This is a topic to discuss best practices, norms and guidelines for the new series data. I'm going to lay out some thoughts here, and raise some questions. Go ahead and add yours.

Okay, let's start with series and combinations.

Series Language Combinations

My starting belief is that there should be one series for every series, not multiple series by language, as was the case with the old series structure. This is the goal of the new system, and I think it's a noble one.

So, for example, I think it's good that all the language variants of the Twilight Saga have been combined. One is better than many, and many of the non-English ones were very partial—often just one or two of the works.

If there is an exception, it should revolve around there being some material difference in how the works are sorted--that, in Albania, the order is always different. If such a thing exists, okay but I want to see it.

Other Series Combinations

Otherwise, series should be combined. If there exists both "Lord of the Rings" and "The Lord of the Rings," we should combine, or, if combination adds no data, just delete one.

I think we can make an exception for notable reorderings, such as having two Narnia series. There is a relationship option "is a reordering of" for that.

That said, we should NOT be creating frivolous reorderings. We're not creating new series because Joe-Blow thinks you should read a series in a different order.

Should the primary Series Name be the language under which the books were first published, or something else?

I see that under Edit Series > Basic Info, one data field is Original Language of Series. This applies a label to the series using a pull-down menu. That label is distinct from the language used in the actual Series Name data field, which is a free text field (and in principle could contain text in Swahili even while the selected label is English). Is the Original Language of Series field meant to reflect the publication language, or is it meant to label the language used by the person creating the series name?

Related: When combining series, is there an easy way to identify which series name (among several candidates in various languages) should be the primary into which others are combined?

>3 elenchus:

Good question. I'd say the primary should work like work titles do—the most common name. The Wikipedia name is a good guide. We shouldn't use an unfamiliar name because by some abstruse argument it is "right." The other names should, however, be added as alternates. If nothing else, those names are in the search index.

I see that under Edit Series > Basic Info, one data field is Original Language of Series. This applies a label to the series using a pull-down menu. That label is distinct from the language used in the actual Series Name data field, which is a free text field (and in principle could contain text in Swahili even while the selected label is English). Is the Original Language of Series field meant to reflect the publication language, or is it meant to label the language used by the person creating the series name?

So, the drop-down is doing double duty. When you create a new series the language you select there also determines the language of the series name you enter. And it's the original language of the series. I'm of two minds about it, frankly.

Related: When combining series, is there an easy way to identify which series name (among several candidates in various languages) should be the primary into which others are combined?

Good question. I'm not sure how it handles when combining adds names to language it already has. I know that it always has one primary, and that this can be changed.

>2 timspalding: we should combine, or, if combination adds no data, just delete one.

So rule 1 of combining series should be, delete if no new data (Occam's Rule of Combining).

If two candidates are identical except for Series Name, do we get to pick which we keep?

Does a series with identical data (same works, no extra works in either series) but in a different language count as identical, or is the different language "new data"? I'm thinking we should just add the new Series Name, without combining the actual series, but not clear on how to do that.

Series vs. Publisher Series

Please note that the definition of "Series" vs. "Publisher Series" has NOT CHANGED.

"Publisher Series" is for series where some or all of the works have been published by multiple publishers. "Penguin Classics" is a Publisher Series, because Herodotus and Jane Eyre have been published by many publishers. Another way to think of it is that some of the books in those works do not belong to the series.

The For Dummies series is not, however, a publisher series because while Wiley is the exclusive publisher of the series, every For Dummies book is part of the series.

Clear?

Incidentally, this redo is surfacing a LOT of publisher series miscatagorized as series, often non-English ones. Edit their "Basic Info" to change them to Publisher Series.

>5 elenchus:

The series name in the second language counts as new data, and if you combine the series, there will be a checkbox to add that series name to the list on the series you are combining it into (if it isn't already listed).

To add names without combining, you go to the Series Names page in the Edit menu.

So rule 1 of combining series should be, delete if no new data (Occam's Rule of Combining).

Yes, if truly no new data. But you'd think that at least the series name would be new most of the time.

If two candidates are identical except for Series Name, do we get to pick which we keep?

Yes. Ditto when combining—you decide which is combine into the other.

Does a series with identical data (same works, no extra works in either series) but in a different language count as identical, or is the different language "new data"? I'm thinking we should just add the new Series Name, without combining the actual series, but not clear on how to do that.

I *think* that can't happen, becuase one of the jerry-rigged thing about old series was that this wasn't fully possible.

I'm thinking we should just add the new Series Name, without combining the actual series, but not clear on how to do that.

Maybe. These are going to be rare, though.

>2 timspalding:

For your Narnia example, which series would the non-English series be combined into? Would we compare the series and pick the English series it most closely matches?

Group Names

Group names are not currently translatable. I will make them so in the future. The goal, however, is that we circle-up on some common ones.

Group Order

The "Core" always goes first, and every series ought to have a core. (The software does not currently force this, although a series without a core gets no shelf.)

I believe the "Collections and selections" category should go last. In theory, this can be renamed to "Omnibus Editions" or whatever. I chose "Collections and selections" because many works could be slotted into it, but the collection/selection distinction is too subtle for automatic action.

An example: I re-sorted the groups on https://www.librarything.com/nseries/2551/The-Raven-Cycle

>7 shadrach_anki: To add names without combining, you go to the Series Names page in the Edit menu.

Thanks for that. For those rare cases that qualify, am I right in thinking I should do that step to add the name, then go back to the duplicate series and delete it? This would retain the new info of the new name, while deleting the extraneous series from LT (remove clutter).

>11 elenchus:

In such cases, is there a reason not to combine?

>12 timspalding:

That is my point of confusion. If combining effectively rids us of clutter and retains the unique name, there is no reason. I wasn't sure the two approaches arrived at the same place.

>13 elenchus:

There's no real difference. I suppose combination has one advantage--it's noted on both histories. But both can be undone, and both are finable on the site search, at least for now. (I plan to hide deleted and dormant series from site search, unless you do something to show them; they clutter things up.)

>6 timspalding: : "Incidentally, this redo is surfacing a LOT of publisher series miscatagorized as series, often non-English ones. Edit their "Basic Info" to change them to Publisher Series."

The opposite is true too, sometimes. For example by the For Dummies jurisprudence Les Cahiers de l'Herne should be a series, not a Publisher Series. Any chance those will be imported in the new system at some point ? I'm willing to do the work to re-enter the data but I'll feel bad about it if it gets done automatically later.

>15 Kuiperdolin:

They're in the new system. Both "Series" and "Publisher series" are in the new system.

Ok, I see it now.

As far as I can see the only way to see a publisher series in the new style is to click add/edit under series/work relationships. If you click on the series name in the CK field it takes you to the old version.

>10 timspalding: It seems like what is the "Core" of a series may be obvious in some cases but subjective in others. Just use common sense/best judgment? "Collections and Selections" is broad enough that it can handle subsets and supersets, so Core doesn't have to be either the smallest or largest components. And I see that in addition to selecting Core or Collections and Selections the user can add an addition group if appropriate?

>18 DuncanHill: : in the old version there is a link to the "Related new series", on the right side. I missed it too at first so maybe it's not ideally placed.

Question:
Author has 2 books in a series, then changes the name of the series. Do we stick with the old name, change to the new name, or create and link?

Thanks yes, I just worked it out, we have to go to the old series on the way to the new one! Two clicks instead of one.

1. How do you add a book to an existing series?

2. How do you create a new series?

>23 lilithcat:

You can add a work to an existing series either from the series page (Organize Series under the Edit Series menu) or from the work page (Add/Edit under the Series and work relationships section).

You can create a new series under the Edit Series menu on any series page, or from the aforementioned Add/Edit menu on the Series and work relationship section.

Where are the dates for the "Publication" order coming from. Looking at https://www.librarything.com/nseries/3587/Jesse-Stone, there is one that is way out of whack but I cannot see where this 1994 for #11 is coming from. It is not using the Original Publication Date as I expected.

>25 AnnieMod:

Similar question asked (and answered) in another thread, here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/321038#7179244

I've been reviewing My Books --> Series and found a series that isn't a series at all. It's more a grouping of 3 books under a topic (tags would be more appropriate).

Okay to delete a series like this?

>26 elenchus: Thanks :) Missed that one.

Should the series with subseries all be combined and then structured accordingly, or is there a reason to maintain subseries as separate?

Currently looking at The Black Company, where there are 3 subseries within the larger one. Also, most translations are only of the first subseries. Combine everything and divide core into three subseries?

BTW, love the new interface and features

ETA: I would swear I saw a way to indicate subseries among core titles, but now I don't see a way to do it. So do we maintain subseries as separate - in this case one series page for entire Chronicles of the Black Company and one each for Books of the North, Books of the South and Glittering Stone?

Shouldn't publication order series be combined with the main series instead of linked by relationship? I'm not sure if series like the one linked below were automatically linked or if Tim wants it as a related series.

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/9627/After-Such-Knowledge-Publication-order

I haven't ready every single post, so I apologize if this has already been asked.

Are short stories, novellas, etc. supposed to go in the Collections & Selections category? I, personally, would think it would be better to put them in the Core group, since they usually are part of the story and timeline of events. But, obviously, there might be something I'm missing.

>18 DuncanHill: As far as I can see the only way to see a publisher series in the new style is to click add/edit under series/work relationships. If you click on the series name in the CK field it takes you to the old version.

Good point. I have added them in on work pages, as follows:

>19 scott_beeler: It seems like what is the "Core" of a series may be obvious in some cases but subjective in others. Just use common sense/best judgment? "Collections and Selections" is broad enough that it can handle subsets and supersets, so Core doesn't have to be either the smallest or largest components. And I see that in addition to selecting Core or Collections and Selections the user can add an addition group if appropriate?

Yes, I think. But let's discuss. Got an example.

Author has 2 books in a series, then changes the name of the series. Do we stick with the old name, change to the new name, or create and link?

I don't know. Is the change generally accepted? I'd go with the new name but, critically, you can provide the other as an alternate.

Where are the dates for the "Publication" order coming from. Looking at https://www.librarything.com/nseries/3587/Jesse-Stone, there is one that is way out of whack but I cannot see where this 1994 for #11 is coming from. It is not using the Original Publication Date as I expected.

The publication date comes from book data—Amazon, Bowker, Overcat, library records and CK. It's a very complex weighing of factors—the data always disagrees—which then "bubbles up" from ISBN to work. In its broadest outline, it's the date the most book records say it is. But it gets complex from there.

I'm going to investigate why this one isn't working.

I've been reviewing My Books --> Series and found a series that isn't a series at all. It's more a grouping of 3 books under a topic (tags would be more appropriate).

Yup. Might be a publisher series, though, so maybe Google it.

>29 SandraArdnas: Should the series with subseries all be combined and then structured accordingly, or is there a reason to maintain subseries as separate?

I think there's often value in subseries. It depends. But I don't know the series. Can anyone speak to it?

Are short stories, novellas, etc. supposed to go in the Collections & Selections category? I, personally, would think it would be better to put them in the Core group, since they usually are part of the story and timeline of events. But, obviously, there might be something I'm missing.

I think it depends. I think the "core" should represent the normal, simple understanding of the series. That's usually a bunch of novels. If someone later published a story online that, yes, is involved in the same timeline but is in no way central to it, supplements it somehow, is that really "core"?

Got an example?

Example for a series with a lot of stories: https://www.librarything.com/nseries/126/In-Death

None of the stories are central to the line but they fit on the correct places (timeline-wise). The anthologies obviously should get out; are the novellas themselves core series or not?

In the best world, this is the case where the user can decide where they personally see these novellas but this is too much to ask I guess :)

>34 AnnieMod: In the best world, this is the case where the user can decide where they personally see these novellas but this is too much to ask I guess :)

This the feature, though. You should order them in their correct timeline. The user then choses to see the series "Grouped" or not.

>33 timspalding: So in the case of the Moomintrolls, would the novels be considered the "Core" and the comics are an addition group?

>36 PawsforThought:

I don't know the series well enough. Others?

>35 timspalding:

Ungrouped also puts back all collections and omnibuses and other stuff.
I am hoping for a way to be able to see:
- Just the novels
- Novels + stories (aka everything that is part of the timeline)

Some creative numbering probably will do the trick (similar to how it was done in the old world).

Combining series in different languages. I feel that the series to be combined into should be the original language series even if it's incomplete.

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/5107/The-Accursed-Kings is the English translations of the volumes in https://www.librarything.com/nseries/7106/Les-rois-maudits

The English version of the series has been kept, not the French version. To me, that's a clear case of Anglocentric imperialism. It may not be comfortable for people to read a foreign language but that is the original source.

Alternatively, preserve the original series name in the English language version name 'Les rois maudits (The Accursed Kings)'.

I don't know; translations are a knotty problem. What do others think?

Another thing, publisher series (especially in role-playing games). A couple of years ago, I did a lot of work combining various Judges Guild titles and sorting and ordering them (they were a huge mess). I added everything to https://www.librarything.com/series/Judges+Guild and created several series of titles by game system, and also a Publisher series which had everything by catalogue number (https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Judges+Guild).

Should the new series should be based on the old publisher series by catalogue number with the various specific system series grouped into it?

I'd hate to loose this information - often catalogue numbers are the way to disambiguate different editions of the same title where the title does not include the edition information. GURPS Space is a case in point - this world book has been attached to different editions of the core rules, being revised to fit the new core rules for each release.

You also have the situation with the various Gloranthan roleplaying games, supplements and fan publications. They all need to be kept together, but they also need to be split by edition, publisher, etc. (I'm not going to get into the various D&D series...)

> 39 : That problem does not come from which series as combined into which (full disclosure, I did the combining and folded the series with the least entries into the one with the most) but from the Original Language in the Basic Info being set to English. I set it to French and now it appears under the original title.

>41 Kuiperdolin: Great! Thank you - that makes sense setting Original Language. I wasn't thinking about the reason when I saw the drop-down.

(Memo to self - must check other translated books in series I have to see which language the series is in...)

>33 timspalding:

Short stories.

At the moment some series are showing with some short stories in core, and some in 'Collections and Selections'. I have seen some series where they are all in Core, and some here they are all in 'Collections and Selections'. I have also seen some where they are in a new group 'Short Stories'.

>34 AnnieMod:

Yep the anthologies should be taken out IMO. They contain more than just In Death stories, and the novellas exist in the series as an item in their own right.

I know what you mean about some may want to see the short stories/novellas fit in the correct place for those series in story/universe chronological order and some may want to see the short stories and novellas as separate.

The https://www.librarything.com/nseries/697/Rivers-of-London series is an interesting one. It looks like the novels have been separated from the comics which have been separated from everything else. Now this is IMO one consistent chronology (see Wikipedia) and I guess some would want to see them altogether. I am also not happy with the short stories and novellas being put in 'Collections and Selections' - they are neither a collection or a selection. I think I would favour a Short Stories group for those. I might even make a case for the two novellas (both published as standalone books) to be moved back into the Core.

It certainly isn't straightforward to deal with these sort of series.

It would have been nice if we could have had multiple groupings - but that would have probably made the UI a lot more hairy, and certainly would have taken quite a lot longer to implement.

>36 PawsforThought: The Moomintroll books and the comics are two different, related series, of equal primacy. Basically, the comic is a spin-off set in its own related universe.

>43 andyl: I looked at that page last night and closed it pretty quickly. Strictly speaking, some of the shorts are contained within certain editions of the novels (the Waterstones hardbacks), so they could be described as selections.

How do groupings work between series? (by the way, how do you create the series touchstone?)

I'm looking at https://www.librarything.com/nseries/1647/Uplift-Saga which contains a GURPS worldbook as part of the core series. If I create a group - Related work - and set that volume to be in that group not the core group, how will it display in the various GURPS series it's in? (There it would be 'Worldbook - Licenced' as opposed to 'Worldbook - Generic', and ideally ought to be grouped as 'Setting - Space', so yes, I would support multiple groupings).

>43 andyl:

No need to look at Wiki for that one :) Whoever butchered the Rivers of London series this way had never read the series... or if they had, they are ignoring parts of it. This kind of "editing" had made me given up on fixing series awhile back. Looks like the new interface won't stop the vandalizing of series either.

The novellas need to be in their proper places - they are not side stories, they actually are part of the timeline... The graphic novels can be on the side but even they are technically in the master series numbering.

>45 Maddz: OK, I created the group in the Uplift Saga and assigned it to that. Checking the GURPS series, it hasn't been affected.

>45 Maddz:

Oh yeah, I forgot about some of the Waterstones hardbacks containing a short story. But then all the hardbacks (some with the short story, some without) are lumped together anyway. So there probably needs to be a bigger effort to clean things up - and people would probably try and lump stuff together again.

>44 anglemark: No everyone agrees with that. Some think they're all part of the same series.

>48 andyl: Without an edition layer, that sort of thing is a headache. As far as I am aware, it's only the 1st edition Waterstones hardbacks that contain the short story. Subsequent editions (in whatever format) don't. So the Waterstones 1st editions need to be identified and split out from other editions and then work-to-work relationships can be used to link the main story and the short story (which at least means casual users won't recombine them).

Urgh. If anyone has these editions, can they post the ISBNs?

A quick check on ABEBooks indicates the ISBNs are the same. The difference is the cover (at least for Lies Sleeping) - there's a sticker/patch.

>51 andyl:

Yep I have at least one of the Waterstones special editions and apart from the sticker there is nothing to distinguish it. It is a horrible practice from a cataloguing pov.

>49 PawsforThought: Well, there will always be opinions. But the world is very different in the comics, the cast is slightly different and even the characters are slightly different. It's very hard to think that they are one and the same series, conceptually, when they are set in alternate universes.

>52 anglemark: I don't have any real opinions on the matter, I just want to know what to do in instances like that where there are possibilities to pick from.

>53 PawsforThought: Since every case is different, it will either be decided by whoever is first to edit, whoever is most persisent, or it will be editor wars. I can't see a universal way of deciding this.

>54 anglemark: Sure, but since this is the "Best practises" thread, it might be a good place to air ideas of how to go about situations like this.

I have problems with Heimskringla. Technically, this is not a proper series, but rather one work which is often split into several volumes. It seems fairly common to split it into three volumes, containing the sagas numbered 1-6; 7 and 8-16 (there are English, German, Icelandic, Swedish and Finnish books combined along these lines, but that might of course not be correct in every case). There is apparantly also an English convention (not publisher-specific) to split it into two volumes, one containing 6-7 and one containing the rest, which seems very weird.

Should this still organised through series? If so, how?

The Mapp and Lucia series includes 6 books by E.F. Benson, creator of the series and its characters. The series also currently includes books by other authors featuring the same characters. These don't belong in the "Core" series, IMO. Should they be moved to a separate series or to a custom group in the Mapp and Lucia series? If the latter, is there a naming convention for a group of books like these?

The "Basic Info" page includes a drop-down to choose the original language for the series. Where does this information appear on the series page? I can't see it but maybe I'm missing something.

>56 andejons: Are there any editions that have the whole work in one volume? If so, I'd argue for removing the series and having the split versions in the work relationship instead.

>32 timspalding: Thanks Tim, that's good.

>57 lauralkeet:

Some Bensonites are probably quite particular about what they include and what they don't.

I suppose that a separate grouping would be good for the 'continuations'. Maybe just for those sequels that have the blessing of the Benson estate.

Then there are the unauthorised Mapp and Lucia stories of which I would include the L.C. Powell work on the current series. But there are more than that which are currently not part of any series for example Lucia's Crusades, The Complete Tilling Tales and Three Cheers for Lucia! plus more which are currently not catalogued on LibraryThing. Maybe these could be another grouping again.

>61 andyl: Distinguising between authorised/unauthorised sounds sensible. Is there a definitive source for what's been authorised?

Curious as to why in Your Books in the series column it shows what I think is the EAN. Not in every entry, just some of them. For instance

https://www.librarything.com/catalog/perennialreader&deepsearch=Deanna+Raybo...

>57 lauralkeet: >61 andyl: >62 lauralkeet: Speaking as someone who reads quite a few series that have been continued by another author, I never want to see those continuations as part of the core series. They just simply are not. Robert Goldsborough may be a fine writer, but I have little interest in reading his ongoing continuation of Rex Stout's magnificent Nero Wolfe series. Ditto for Anne Hillerman's continuation of her father's Leaphorn/Chee series, or Sophie Hannah's continuation of Hercule Poirot. I would be very unhappy to see those lumped in with the original authors' works.

Now, a related series, clearly named, that could be accessed from the original series page? That seems a perfectly reasonable solution that's now available with the addition of series relationships.

>57 lauralkeet: I've come across this issue with The Famous Five novels by Enid Blyton. Apparently there's a whole pile of sequels written by other people. I don't see why these books should be in the same series s the original Blyton books - a separate "sequel series" (which can be connected via series elationship) seems like a much better idea to me.

>64 rosalita: That's exactly what I was trying to say.

>66 PawsforThought: Thank you! I wasn't sure I was explaining myself very well, so I'm glad it was understandable.

>59 PawsforThought: You could do that, but that would lead to a loss of information, as "contains" doesn't show exactly what is contained and what is not.

>64 rosalita:

Oh yes. Now we have series relationships a lot of what were originally lumped together works should be separate series and a relationship set between them.

> 69
The opposite point of view would be that now we can divide series into more meaningful groups, so we won't need so many distinct sub-sub-sub-sub series...

>64 rosalita:, >65 PawsforThought: I tend to feel the same way about my series. I have no intention of reading the non-Benson Mapp and Lucia books and would rather see them represented separately.

>69 andyl: series relationships
So, if I were to move the Tom Holt Lucia books to their own series, it looks like I could add a relationship to show its connection to Mapp and Lucia. The relevant options are "is a sequel to" or "was inspired by" and I'm inclined to go with the latter. Is that what you were suggesting?

Variant Divisions in Different Language Editions

How should we now handle book series that are divided differently in different series? For example, when six books are published in one language and published as a trilogy in English, does that make two, related series? Is either considered a publisher's series? Where should additional works (anthologies, audio dramas, etc.) go and does the primary language or the publisher's location make a difference?

Possibly because of selection bias, I'm seeing this the most between French/English and Japanese/English series.

>46 AnnieMod: you obviously have a very different understanding of core than I do. (no I've not edited the series, but I support it's current division). I've read some of the novellas and short stories, they aren't core sometimes focus on different characters etc) and don't effect the understanding of how the novels flow together. (there is a similar issue with the dresden files. However I do agree it would also be useful to know how they sit in the full series and the (ungrouped) option works very well for this.

>72 aspirit:

Unsurprisingly there are also examples within the same language but reflecting different publishing geographies. I came across James Herriot's series on his Yorkshire veterinary experiences: originally published as six books in the UK, but as three books in the US. I suspect there are similar examples for Spanish language series between Europe and South America, Francophone editions, and so forth.

>74 elenchus: the USA seems to prefer longer works in shorter series. I admit as someone in the USA that it's my preference.

However, combining works 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 into a series with a volume 2 in the core feels wrong for reasons I can't articulate well. It looks confusing? It hides which languages are available in which editions? I'm not sure.

>75 aspirit: combining works 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 into a series with a volume 2 in the core feels wrong for reasons I can't articulate well.

I think you've identified a real issue. The Herriot series was handled by creating two separate series, one UK and one US. I left them that way for precisely the reasons you mention. I have my preferences, but I don't have a firm idea of a best practice suitable for LT overall.

>72 aspirit: I was cleaning up a few series and what I did was create a new group called "French editions" and move them all there (out of the 'Core' group).
You can check the Liveship Traders series as an example (where a trilogy was published as 9 books!):
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/1028/The-Liveship-Traders

Regarding where short stories and novellas belong, I think it should probably be handled on a case by case basis and even then it might not be clear cut. In The Chronicles of St. Mary's series there are some shorter works which are just fun one-offs that can be skipped and some where major events occur and skipping them would be like skipping episodes of a TV series--sure you can catch up, but you'll be left wondering why characters who had been missing and presumed dead for four books are now walking around with chickens.

>78 amanda4242: walking around with chickens

That's a great neologism.

>79 elenchus: It probably says a great deal about the series that there is literally a guy who was presumed dead and is now frequently found in the company of a chicken named Angus.

>77 ScarletBea: You want to be careful with those Robin Hobb French editions - I think some could be graphic novels. I was finding that with The Farseer Trilogy - there's 10 graphic novels in French which are being translated to Dutch as well (https://theplenty.net/wiki/index.php/L%27Assassin_Royal_(graphic_novels)).

Yup: here's the Liveship Traders: https://theplenty.net/wiki/index.php/Les_Aventuriers_de_la_Mer

And here's the publisher: https://www.soleilprod.com/recherche.html?type=catalogue&q=Robin+Hobb

https://www.franceloisirs.com/auteur/robin-hobb/page-1 for the regular novels.

>64 rosalita:

While I agree with you on those, there are also the Robert B. Parker series or the “The Wheel of Time” where the other authors’ continuations are authorized (and a real continuation of the main series) and not having them in the main series is incorrect at best.

I was thinking about the Percy Jackson series in particular. There are short stories in there that I'm pretty sure are a part of the broader timeline and deal directly with the characters and events.

There's a lot to this new system. It's so exciting and makes things so much cleaner and easier, but it's gonna take a while to figure out all of its moving parts, I think XD. For instance, I had NOT yet checked out the difference between the Grouped/Ungrouped feature.

I agree with others that it makes sense to take it on a case-by-case basis, but, yeah. Otherwise, the Grouped/Ungrouped feature is perfect I think *shrugs* .

>82 AnnieMod: The Goldsborough continuation of Rex Stout's series is authorized. Anne Hillerman's continuation of her father Tony's series is authorized. Sophie Hannah's continuation of Christie's Poirot is authorized. To me, that's irrelevant. I don't want them listed in the original series.

>84 rosalita:

And if the two cases I listed above do not have the continuations in the core series, then I would consider that a mistake and fix it.

Series later expanded by the author: should the Core be the original set of works, and later works be noted separately in some fashion? Should there be two distinct series, one with the original set, one with the complete expanded set? Should the original set be deleted, since it's fully encompassed in the expanded set?

There are many such examples, I'm raising the general case in hopes of identifying some basic best practices. I anticipate there is not a single best practice but perhaps two or three based on general similarities, e.g. a single author might be treated differently than an "authorized" author contributing works later.

Random example: The Arthurian Merlin Saga. For a long while it was a Trilogy, and I understand intended as such by Mary Stewart, but there are now at least five works in the Saga.

>71 lauralkeet:

Yep. That would work. I would probably also note that the Holt ones were with approval of the Benson estate.

>74 elenchus: and >75 aspirit:

The US preferring longer works isn't my impression from the SF&F genre. A number of series were published in the UK in fewer volumes than the US. Take a look at https://www.librarything.com/nseries/6371/ASH-A-Secret-History where the book labelled Omnibus 1-4 in "Collections and Selections" is the UK edition where it has never been issued in smaller chunks. Similarly https://www.librarything.com/nseries/23350/Kingdom-of-Outremer the US use more volumes than the UK. I think the same is true for paperback (at least) for the https://www.librarything.com/nseries/175/The-Baroque-Cycle where the US paperbacks have been split into multiple volumes but the UK ones were not. So I would think it is a bit hit and miss at guessing which market prefers longer volumes. If the Herriott books were all in one series I would prefer that the Core to contain the UK books because that was the original publication, but separate series and a relationship (which I have now added) works well.

>85 AnnieMod: Then I guess I can only hope we don't read the same series. I have no appetite for edit wars.

elenchus (#86)

Series later expanded by the author: should the Core be the original set of works, and later works be noted separately in some fashion? Should there be two distinct series, one with the original set, one with the complete expanded set? Should the original set be deleted, since it's fully encompassed in the expanded set?

Continued by the same author? I think it's all core. The example I'm thinking of is Earthsea - it was originally conceived as a trilogy, but LeGuin later wrote a fourth twenty years later (Tehanu), and a fifth ten years later still. (There's also a collection of short stories and a few additional short stories not in the collection. The five novels definitely belong in Core, and I don't have strong feelings about the collection. But I don't like the idea trying to figure out whether a lengthy gap between books was that the author just didn't have anything new to say for awhile vs. had writer's block vs. had Life Stuff happening and couldn't write for awhile.

I'm not sure why, after phrasing it this way, you then say I anticipate there is not a single best practice but perhaps two or three based on general similarities, e.g. a single author might be treated differently than an "authorized" author contributing works later. - they are obviously not the same, so why are you asking about both in the guise of asking about the former? I'd say there are three cases:

1. Original Author comes back years later and writes new books. Core.
2. Original Author authorizes someone to continue the series. There may be a co-written transitional book or two. Core.
3. New Author comes along later and adds more books without the knowledge or consent of the original author. Probably not core.

>88 rosalita:

Me neither - and as I said - on the ones you listed I agree with you. For the ones I listed, they are closer to "multi-author" series at this point than to "a main series and a continuation". Especially Jordan's. Not being able to see them in a complete list will make the series here meaningless for these.

>89 lorax:

Your three cases look good to me, as do your suggestions of which is core / which not.

Does that reflect a consensus, or do others see additional cases? Different ideas of which are core?

elenchus & lorax,

Does "Original Author" include or exclude the copyright holders who may authorize continuations after the author is dead?

>92 Carmen.et.Error: I would say it's core if authorised by the author, if authorised by the copyright holder only if working from an outline or notes from the original author.

Case in point - the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. The last book The Painted Queen was incomplete at Peter's death and was completed by Joan Hess with the blessing of the estate. I would consider it to be a core work although it reads more like Joan Hess than Elizabeth Peters.

Ditto Money in the Morgue by Ngaio Marsh. This was completed long after her death from notes and chapters found in Marsh's papers.

Otherwise, the titles are a franchise and should be marked as such and not included in the core works.

Unauthorised continuations of PD works are essentially fan fic and should not be included in the original series unless we can get a clear link to an 'Inspired by' series.

The Jane Austen pastiches and mash-ups would be examples as would Sarah D'Almeida's Musketeer's Mysteries.

To >83 Carmen.et.Error: and others previously discussing short stories and novellas. I agree that it should be a case-by-case basis, but for novellas especially, it makes sense to look at member numbers. If a only a small fraction of people reading the series novels have the novellas, then I have trouble justifying the novellas as "core", no matter how central the characters they follow.

>87 andyl: Thanks. I created the "inspired by" series. What's the best way to note authorization by the Benson estate?

>95 lauralkeet:

I would put that in the description

>96 andyl: thanks -- done!

Any thoughts on how comic books should be handled? (I've put in a lot of work organizing a lot of them over the years, and have been dreading this day.)

I would personally see the individual issues as the "core" series, and put any collected editions under the "collections" heading. Having said that, the overwhelming majority of the data on LT comes from the collected editions, and from the way most series get written up here, it's pretty clear that most LT users feel the collections are the "real" series. At the same time, many series never get collected, and some series may even leave issues out of their collected editions! Even if I take the approach that I feel is correct (individual issues = core) the result will be that you'll often end up with a collections section that has more content than the core section.

(Also, what is meant by "collections and selections"?)

>98 saltmanz:

I agree that the core for comics are the individual issues but I also feel like people will disagree as most people don't use LT for individual comics.

>98 saltmanz: I've been putting individual issues as Core and collections as Collections and Selections. My library is overwhelmingly collections, but I think of them more as omnibus editions.

I put in a lot of work sorting out Hellblazer and can't really see why the few dozen collections should take precedence over the nearly 300 individual issues cataloged even though there are more copies of the collections. When you factor in that some of the collections skip issues and others contain spin-offs, it just made the most sense to me to make the issues the core of the series.

>100 amanda4242: I've been thinking about comics series as well and am torn. A popular well-catalogued series like Hellblazer might be perfectly fine with the individual issues as the Core and the collections as not. But some others that are less popular have scattershot entries for the individual issues, so it would be weird to me to have issues #1,2,3,7,8 in the Core and collections containing issues #1-24 as not (with a lot of what they are "collecting" not present in the Core).

I have already seen examples of each yesterday/today and I've been cleaning them up with whichever seemed best for the particular one. Also I'm too lazy to swap 100+ issues from one to the other unless I really feel strongly about it.

>101 scott_beeler: I can see your point. For my part, I'll probably continue to set issues as Core but I won't change a series if someone else has taken the time to set it a different way.

And now I'm thinking about TV series: in almost all cases people catalog a season collection, but I've also seen some series where every individual episode has been entered. Should the season be Core or the episodes? I'm leaning towards season as it's (thankfully) rare for people to catalog episodes.

For a Publisher Series, is the Original language supposed to be that of the series, or the original works ? The latter is more obviously problematic (many publisher series have books in translation from different languages) but the former can have isues too.

Consider the Loeb Classical Library : it has bilingual books in English-Latin and English-Greek, what should the language be ?

I'm inclined to put English (if only because language determines the page title, and everyone refers to it as "the Loeb library", which is the English title, and not whatever pig Latin or Greek equivalent you can make up)... But I'm not sure I can put it down to an objective criterion.

I really really dislike what happened to this series: https://www.librarything.com/nseries/9286/The-Chronicles-of-St-Marys

Someone decided to pull ALL short stories out from the core but in the process lost their place in the series. These used to have a label of "novella" but a sorting order of 7.5 for example and in this specific series it DOES matter because the stories and novels spoil each other if you go in the wrong order. Would it have been too hard to retain the numbers so someone can actually find this page semi-useful?

So whoever is working on these things, can we please stop losing information when you reorder things?

PS: They are in place for the "ungrouped" so the data is still there. Maybe we need a discussion on labels for these cases? It will be a lot better if the numbers are visible in "grouped" mode.

>103 Kuiperdolin:

Loeb is tricky. I wish we could have two core groups because this series is a prime candidate for it - one for the Greek books and one for the Latin ones.

But yeah - I think English will be the best language because of the series name. Publisher series languages should really be based on the publisher (unless they are in a foreign language for them) I think...

>104 AnnieMod: I wasn't happy with that either.

>106 amanda4242:

It feels like some people do not stop to think or look at what they are leaving behind and just keep converting and splitting for the sake of converting and splitting. Half of the series I looked at and which had had some "fixes" done look worse than they used to -- the core series at the top is there; everything else is either in this state or worse. This will take days and months to fix later...

>105 AnnieMod: It is possible to create another group and just call it Core - Latin or Core Greek.

AnnieMod,

They might have gotten rid of the numbers because they can move the items up or down in the list in the Organize Series section, so that when they are ungrouped, everything can be displayed in the right timeline of events.

>109 Carmen.et.Error:

Which makes the page as it is almost useless for anyone casually stumbling onto it. I know to click on ungrouped to see the order. A new user won't - they will just look at the mess and go and find a better place for finding series reading order.

>108 SandraArdnas:

I know that you can :) But which will remain as the "core" and which gets a special name? :)

>107 AnnieMod: I've left the novellas and short stories in a separate section but have added back the ordering numbers. As I mentioned up thread, this is a complicated series because some, but not all, of the short works cover major events in the series and should be considered Core.

>112 amanda4242:

I did not want to touch it so people can see what I was so unhappy about but yep - that's what I would have done as well. Thanks for fixing it.

>113 AnnieMod: It's not an elegant solution, but it seemed like the best way to show that the short works are important here without getting into an edit war by putting them all back in Core.

Because of the discussion in the New Series 1.0 Main Topic thread, I'm bringing attention to >30 aspirit: for "reordered series" that are merely the publication order. What's the consensus: leave those alone or delete (through combinations, as needed)?

>115 aspirit:

Long term: combine - that is the whole point of having the toggle up there, isn't it?

For now: leave as is because of that annoying bug that Tim is still to fix (I think?) that pulls wrong and unfixable dates from somewhere? :)

>115 aspirit: Leave it for now. It's useless until that bug gets fixed.

>39 Maddz: Combining series in different languages. I feel that the series to be combined into should be the original language series even if it's incomplete.

It doesn't really matter. When you combine, it will ask you if you want to add the differences. You do. It will also allow you to add the names in different language. If there's an English name, it will show up by it on the English-language site.

>40 Maddz:

I don't see any reason you should change. Perhaps I'm not understanding the question?

At the moment some series are showing with some short stories in core, and some in 'Collections and Selections'. I have seen some series where they are all in Core, and some here they are all in 'Collections and Selections'. I have also seen some where they are in a new group 'Short Stories'.

So, I think it can go either way. The goal of "core" is to represent the core of the series. A group like "Short stories" can be helpful as a series get large and unwieldy, and includes all sorts of minor add-ons that aren't part of the normal series experience for most readers.

It would have been nice if we could have had multiple groupings - but that would have probably made the UI a lot more hairy, and certainly would have taken quite a lot longer to implement.

Yeah. It's a non-overlapping buckets model. I think the best way to think of this is "What should a user who wants to find out about this series see?"

>36 PawsforThought: PawsforThought: The Moomintroll books and the comics are two different, related series, of equal primacy. Basically, the comic is a spin-off set in its own related universe.

How about a top-level series, then two sub-series?

How do groupings work between series? (by the way, how do you create the series touchstone?)

Works are single brackets, authors are double, series are triple.

>56 andejons: I have problems with Heimskringla. Technically, this is not a proper series, but rather one work which is often split into several volumes. It seems fairly common to split it into three volumes, containing the sagas numbered 1-6; 7 and 8-16 (there are English, German, Icelandic, Swedish and Finnish books combined along these lines, but that might of course not be correct in every case). There is apparantly also an English convention (not publisher-specific) to split it into two volumes, one containing 6-7 and one containing the rest, which seems very weird.

Honestly, I wouldn't. I'd do this with work-relationships. To take a simpler example, I wouldn't make an "Iliad" series either, although of course there are various splits.

>58 lauralkeet: The "Basic Info" page includes a drop-down to choose the original language for the series. Where does this information appear on the series page? I can't see it but maybe I'm missing something.

Yeah, it basically doesn't, which is probably a problem. As I wrote elsewhere, I'm reconsidering how this works. It's certain that the original-language menu decides the language of the name of a new series. But once a series exists, that field has little effect. You really only see it when you seek to combine two series.

I'm thinking it over.

>61 andyl: I suppose that a separate grouping would be good for the 'continuations'. Maybe just for those sequels that have the blessing of the Benson estate.

Yes, and you can specify that with a series-to-series relationship. This is the right use for that.

>63 perennialreader: Curious as to why in Your Books in the series column it shows what I think is the EAN. Not in every entry, just some of them. For instance

Fixed. It should not have been there.

>72 aspirit: >74 elenchus:

If necessary, two series can be created. But I would question how often it's really needed. See Lord of the Rings for one solution—segmenting the weird, rare Japanese editions off.

While I agree with you on those, there are also the Robert B. Parker series or the “The Wheel of Time” where the other authors’ continuations are authorized (and a real continuation of the main series) and not having them in the main series is incorrect at best.

If these decisions are angsty, you can make series and subseries for each author involved. I don't know your series, but this is how I would handle the authorized Bond novels.

I was thinking about the Percy Jackson series in particular. There are short stories in there that I'm pretty sure are a part of the broader timeline and deal directly with the characters and events.

I'd be careful. If most places list the series as including the books, and the short stories are online things, or stuff tucked in other books, I'd definitely not treat them as core. Just because something is part of the same world and timeline doesn't make it core.

To >83 Carmen.et.Error: Croselan: and others previously discussing short stories and novellas. I agree that it should be a case-by-case basis, but for novellas especially, it makes sense to look at member numbers. If a only a small fraction of people reading the series novels have the novellas, then I have trouble justifying the novellas as "core", no matter how central the characters they follow.

This would be my approach too. If some works have 1000 copies and some have 12, the 12s are not core, however much die-hards may value them.

Any thoughts on how comic books should be handled? (I've put in a lot of work organizing a lot of them over the years, and have been dreading this day.)

I think there are some series that are so complex that you should just keep it all in core. It's a welter. The purpose of the "core" idea was to allow people to see the series as it's commonly understood, not have the Japanese edition three people have, the web-only two page short story and the omnibus editions gumming that up.

One thing I would NOT do. Do not have the core be individual issues which, actually, few have, and the stuff people have exiled from the core.

This was my theory with Persepolis—I put the much-held books as core, and the individual editions outside of it. I'd be interested in comments; I figured someone would object.

>103 Kuiperdolin: Consider the Loeb Classical Library : it has bilingual books in English-Latin and English-Greek, what should the language be ?

It should be Greek, because Latin is bad.

See above about original language, though. I'm torn. Still, I'd go for English here. Also, the language list is currently the short list of languages which doesn't include ancient Greek.

I would have three series, though—all, Latin and Greek.

>104 AnnieMod: Someone decided to pull ALL short stories out from the core but in the process lost their place in the series. These used to have a label of "novella" but a sorting order of 7.5 for example and in this specific series it DOES matter because the stories and novels spoil each other if you go in the wrong order. Would it have been too hard to retain the numbers so someone can actually find this page semi-useful?

But you can see that order when you choose ungrouped, no?

Please excuse if this has been covered already; I can't keep up with all those posts :)

How do I fix a series where the person entering the series title didn't input the order correctly in parentheses, but added a semicolon instead, so every book in the series is its own series?
Example: https://www.librarything.com/nseries/286215/Biblioteca-di-teologia-contemporanea...

There are 72 "series"! How do I combine them? In "olden times" I would've simply changed the semicolon to parentheses ... And wouldn't combining all of them create false information as to how many variations there actually are?

If this has been answered already, I would be grateful if you could point me to the relevant post number! Thanks in advance!

>118 timspalding:, >104 AnnieMod: - I think it would be good to see the numbering when they are in grouped mode. I'm not sure how this is achieved?

>118 timspalding: But you can see that order when you choose ungrouped, no?

And a user who uses LT rarely will know to click on that? :)

>120 reading_fox:

I agree. You add them to the label basically -- you cannot use the | format (as they do not slide where they should because they are in their own group) so you stick it to the visible part -- >112 amanda4242: fixed that one. A bit clunky maybe but at least they are visible:)

When combining the series names in different languages, someone made the German name the main one, instead of English which is the original language.
How do I restore the English name as the main one?

I've tried several options but nothing seems to work...

http://www.librarything.com/nseries/3104/Die-Feuerreiter-Seiner-Majest%C3%A4t

>122 ScarletBea: "Edit series=" -> "Basic settings" Then choose English in the list of languages for "Original languages of series".

>123 PawsforThought: Thanks! I see someone (you?) has already done that

timspalding (#118):

(discussing whether novellas and short stories should be considered "core")

If some works have 1000 copies and some have 12, the 12s are not core, however much die-hards may value them.

Plenty of people don't enter works shorter than novel-length, though, even if they have them or have read them.

>124 ScarletBea: Not me. Some other kind soul.

> 119

That's a hard problem. I don't see an easy way not involving combination and/or deletion.

While I understand that this case is harder, I think the average case is easier.

Has anyone created a summary of the consensus reached for best practices yet? Because right now, a lot of people are digging in, but the help page doesn't have the rules yet.

>75 aspirit: My suggestion: Combine all the various publishing of a group of novels, but create a grouping for each of the countries to show the different published options. This allows all books that relate to that series to be together, limits the number of series, and reduces the edit wars of what should be where. Make the labels specific: UK Book 1, US Book 4, German Book 3.2.

>64 rosalita: My suggestion: Again, grouping. The core is the novels written by the original author. The continuations and additions go into a group labeled "Continued by Another" or some such. Keep the numbering going. This would be good with Robert Jordan, Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern, and all the others listed.

Short Stories versus Novellas: Here's the thing. Some people see the core as JUST the novels. They don't seek out all the extraneous side material or extra stories written for it. So they'll want the series with JUST that. My suggestion: Grouping and labeling becomes important. If the short story or novella is pulled to a group, make sure it says "Short Story {place in order}" or "Novella {place in order}" and make sure they fall in the proper location in the organization window. So when someone hits Ungroup, the short stories and novellas fall into the proper locale. Omnibi and box sets should be at the bottom.

Anthologies: Can we PLEASE remove these from the series now? They really don't belong.

>118 timspalding: I think it's a matter of not seeing the Publisher series link on the new series page.

>128 gilroy: I like that suggestion for publishing groups. I'll try it with Twelve Kingdoms this evening.

Yes, please, let's get the multi-series and mixed timeline anthologies out of the core series.

>128 gilroy: Anthologies: Can we PLEASE remove these from the series now? They really don't belong.

I had been kicking out anthologies from any series I had been fixing (except complete in-universe anthologies of course). The story (if added individually) is in; the book that contains stories from 3-20 universes does not.

"My suggestion: Grouping and labeling becomes important. If the short story or novella is pulled to a group, make sure it says "Short Story " or "Novella " and make sure they fall in the proper location in the organization window. "

I would say to also keep the numbering visible for the stories - I should not need to know to ungroup to find which novella is 7.5 and which one is 32.5.

The continuations and additions go into a group labeled "Continued by Another" or some such.

I still do not see why these cannot be in the CORE... If the consensus is not to then fine but for some series they are real part of the core series (Wheel of Time for example).

>130 aspirit:

That's one series that I was quite reluctant to touch, just because it felt like such a tangle of options.

>131 AnnieMod: Drat, I used the wrong brackets. I meant to leave the numbering system in place. Let me edit my post.

I have no problem leaving the other authors as part of the main core, but others have argued against keeping them because they aren't the original author. Maybe it's a case by case basis. For instance, Pern, I won't touch the continuation by McCaffery's son. I gave up on Wheel of Time after book 5, but it was the best series I knew to try to build an example with for those who wanted it split.

>118 timspalding: Regarding comics

The way you have Persepolis looks good (although I think The Complete Persepolis should be up in Core), but that's a short series with only a few collections. When you have a series that's been running for decades with dozens of collections, it gets a lot more complicated.

I think it's less important to have a site wide style than it is to simply be consistent within a series.

>128 gilroy: Anthologies: Can we PLEASE remove these from the series now? They really don't belong.

Gods yes!

>128 gilroy:
>134 amanda4242:
Anthologies: Can we PLEASE remove these from the series now? They really don't belong.

I understood one of the main uses of the Series was as a reference to assist in knowing what to read, in what order, and which books (works) to obtain in order to do that. Anthologies are helpful for both, and if they don't appear on the Series Page at all, we lose that functionality.

How would anthologies be documented, if removed from the series? Sincere question, not meant to be snarky or whatever.

>132 shadrach_anki: oh, I am already feeling less optimistic with this series. But maybe it will feel fun at the end.

Join me in the sandbox, will you?
https://www.librarything.com/topic/321136

>135 elenchus: I would think the short stories would be on the series page, and a user who notices and wants to read that story could go to the story's page which hopefully would have Work Relationships showing what anthologies or collections contain that story.

>135 elenchus: Look at the work-to-work relationships. I understand the reasoning behind adding anthologies to series, but they create a lot of clutter with unrelated series and authors, especially with frequently anthologized stories.

ETA: if a story hasn't yet been catalogued then I think it's fine to add the anthology in which it appears to a series.

>131 AnnieMod: >133 gilroy: As someone who was quite emphatic about not feeling that continuations by other authors belong in the core group, whether authorized or not, I've done some further thinking and have somewhat moderated my stance.

Given that the continuations should all be clumped at the end of the Core group when viewing in publication order, I feel more comfortable having them included in the same series as the originals. As long as the author is clearly labeled in the listing (and all of the series I've looked at, it is) then I can just ignore everything after Rex Stout's last Nero Wolfe title.

What I would really hate would be to see them scattered amongst the original books, as they may be in a custom order that uses internal chronology (assuming a continuing author sets one of their books during an earlier time, as Goldsborough has occasionally done) but I can just choose the other viewing option (hopefully as a global account setting, as has been discussed previously).

>139 rosalita:

Here are two examples from my catalog:

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/6147/Sunny-Randall
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/3587/Jesse-Stone (although I wish Parker was up as an author - his books are now a minority...)

Splitting them out does not give us anything besides a new split. They continuations are neatly tucked at the bottom and even though you can stop after the originals, they do not distract. Now - if these get reordered (if someone writes an earlier book for example) and we do "chronological order", that is a different story.

Look at https://www.librarything.com/nseries/60/Wheel-of-Time

Someone did the "Continued" split and this just feels... wrong. It gives you an idea that you can stop after the first 11 and that will be like walking out from a movie 20 minutes before the end.

What I would really hate would be to see them scattered amongst the original books

That I would agree with. :)

>135 elenchus:, >138 amanda4242:

All anthologies I kicked out had both the anthology AND the story/novella in there. May just be the way the series I read work :) And all of them have the relationships already set.

>134 amanda4242:

Persepolis is not a classical case for comics though - it was a Graphic novel and was never published in separate floppies. The 4 initial volumes are French-style albums which are a different kettle of fish from a US style floppy-issued comics. So we are talking about different things.

I am fine with leaving collected as Core and making a separate "Single Issues" group for the singles for US-style ones... (after sleeping on it).

>142 AnnieMod: Yeah, I don't think it's is a good test case for comics, but Tim cited it in his reasoning. Should we have different practices for short series like Persepolis and long running titles like Batman and Superman? Collections of a title that's been running for decades can be complicated to sort out.

>134 amanda4242: Why do you think The Complete Persepolis should be in the core? It's a collection so it makes sense that it's in the collection group.

Regarding anthologies, I'm glad I'm not the only one who wants them gone from series, but I've been reluctant to remove them because I didn't know if I was alone in that view.

However, while many of you seem to be perfectly fine with having non-original authors' sequels in the core (or the series at all) I'm not fond of that. I've thankfully only come across a couple in my series so far so it's not yet a big issue, but I'd prefer it there was a separate "sequel series" created and linked via relationship.

>144 PawsforThought: The two works in the core are also collections, so it just seems inconsistent to me to have one collection in a separate group.

>145 amanda4242:

They are and they are not. The series has 2 volumes. Each was initially published in 2 parts and then collected. So technically the 2 works are not collections but the complete "works" as designed - think of the 4 initial releases as split volumes and not as individual works. So the only core ones here should be the two complete volumes IMO.

>144 PawsforThought:

Sequel series are different from "continued series" though :) But it depends on the series.

>143 amanda4242:

Yeah, I know. But I think this is part of the problem - using a non-standard series to make up rules for a different thing :) The DC series are a mess as is... I am still on the fence on what goes where.

>146 AnnieMod: It's a continuation written by someone else. How is that different?

>147 PawsforThought: Direct continuation exactly where the original left off vs. sequel series "in the world of" style.

The first is part of core for me; the second is not.

>146 AnnieMod: My view of Persepolis is one of someone wholly ignorant of it's publishing history. It looks odd to me, but someone clearly took the trouble to arrange it so I'm certainly not going to change it. :)

I think as long as the organization is consistent within a series it probably doesn't really matter if it's collections or issues which are made the core.

>140 AnnieMod: I made the change to Wheel of Time as an attempt to show how it could work. (And because it was the only one I had enough knowledge to adjust.)

>150 gilroy: OMG! The Wheel of Time series page is finally readable!

>150 gilroy:

Understood. I still think 12-14 belong to the core but at least all the others are now out so... much better than it used to be.

Can we get an official ruling on anthologies in a series, please? I added the short stories to the World of the Marrok series and, against instinct, left the anthologies in a separate group, and now someone has added all the anthologies into the core group and shunted the stories to a separate group. I can understand moving the stories to a new group, but adding the anthologies to the core seems especially silly since the novella Alpha and Omega has been published separately and most of the stories have been collected in Shifting Shadows. *sigh* I suppose I should be glad they didn't delete the stories again.

>153 amanda4242:

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/170

I agree with you on this one - this is awful.

>151 amanda4242: I can't take complete credit for all the adjustments. Much of the blather that's down in the collections and selections were done by others. The Continuation section and the excerpts sections I created.

Looking at the collections section I realized my thought on languages might not work as well, because I'm seeing multiple languages in those multi part books.

>152 AnnieMod: I agree it should be part of core, but it shows what "could" be done.

>155 gilroy: I'm just so happy that I can *finally* understand that page!

>155 gilroy: Yep, understood :) The first time I pointed out to it, I did not realize it was done as an example :)

Comics (again)

I think Mike Carey's Lucifer might be a good title to look at for best practices; it's a relatively short series--a three issue prequel mini-series, 75 regular issues, and one special. The collections are one TPB for the prequel, an eleven volume series of TPBs, a five volume series of TPBs, and one volume of a hardcover omnibus.

Prequel mini-series: Lucifer: The Morningstar Option
Issues: Lucifer Comic
11 volume TPBs: Lucifer TPBs
All collections: Lucifer

Thoughts?

And who would like to sort out all of Michael Moorcock's series?

>158 amanda4242: I'm not convinced that the best way to handle it is just to split the issues and collections into completely separate Series pages. Having a separate Series for just the TPBs I'm OK with, simpler to read for people who don't care about the single issues. But I would like the collections in the "Lucifer Comic" Series as well, as Collections/Selections, especially if the numbering is put in so as to tell the user what issues are contained in what collections (1-6, 7-12, or whatever). Right now since they don't overlap there's no link between the Lucifer Comic and Lucifer TPBs series; I think the only reason Lucifer Comic has a "related to" link to Lucifer is because the "Nirvana" special is listed in both. They are certainly related, and I suppose you can add that relationship link by hand even if they don't overlap, but even so I think it would feel like they're being kept apart when they're really the same content just in different sized chunks.

One other thing I definitely don't like is the inconsistency in how the Lucifer series page uses TPB number for the Core (1, 2, 3, ...) but the issue numbers for the omnibus and the larger books in Collections/Selections (1-13, 14-28, ...). Either is OK with me but I want consistency within the page.

>160 scott_beeler: I'd like everything in one series, but I wouldn't be averse to having one series with everything and a subseries for the collections and/or issues.

I'm definitely in favor of adding the issue numbers on the collections--I did that on Hellblazer and think it looks pretty nice.

Hypothetical series pages:

1. Series with all collections, issues, special, and prequel.

Have the issue numbers on the collections and different series of collections in separate groups. Should the eleven volume series be the core? I must confess I favor making the issues the core because then I see all of the beautiful covers, but I'm not going to be put out if people prefer collections over issues for the core.

2. Series 1 and a subseries for all collections.

Again, putting the issue numbers on the collections. And which should be the core?

3. Series 1 with a subseries for collections *and* issues

The more I think about it, the less I like the thought of having three series for one title.

>161 amanda4242: So I'm in favor of your option 1 so that the issues and collections are in the same Series. For a fairly popular series like Lucifer having the separate subseries "Lucifer TPBs" I'm fine with as I said above (so that's bringing in your option 2) but I personally wouldn't bother doing this for less common series.

Tim mentioned that he liked having the collections be the Core because they're pretty much always more broadly available and owned. But you're kind of selling me on having the issues be the Core. For now I'm just kind of organizing such series in the way they seem to be naturally set up after the transfer from the old system (which is sometimes one and sometimes the other) and not doing any flip-flopping of the majority of the entries.

>162 scott_beeler: Aside from liking pretty pictures, I do have logical reasons for preferring issues over collections for the core:

•It's not uncommon for collections not to, well, collect every issue.

•A series of collections might be cancelled before it's finished and years later a new series of collections might start up that has all of the issues, but organized differently than the previous series. Should the cancelled series be the core if a lot of people have it catalogued, or should the second, less catalogued series be the core because it has all of the issues?

> 163 Yes, good points.

>162 scott_beeler: >163 amanda4242:

I think that it will come down to "floppies owners" vs "people who mainly read collected comics (if at all)".

For American comics, I believe that floppies should be the core series; all collected should be in "Collected/TPBs" group (and maybe pulled into a separate series). TPBs collect in weird order, skip issues (sometimes because the issue is a crossover, sometimes for permissions issues, sometimes (especially with older comics), thing do not get collected. And if a comics get cancelled mid-ark, that last ark won't be collected.

Now... talking about LT, most floppies owners don't have theirs here for various reasons - I don't for example. Part of why was the old series structures and part of it is sheer numbers (and when I tried to add some ~10 years ago, the site was even worse for comics (no other writers and so on).

And then you have a bit of an issue with series collected multiple times. Which series of TPBs is the core? The first? What if the second set is a lot more prominent and reprinted? Keep it simple... If the TPBs owners do not like to look at the floppies, set a TPBs/HC only collection to the side...

Sorry, this got longer than I intended :)

>165 AnnieMod: I read collections almost exclusively, but I think of them as omnibus editions rather than the core of a series.

I've combined the Lucifer series with Lucifer Comic, but haven't deleted any of the series I mentioned in >158 amanda4242: so we still have them for comparison. I've made the issues the core, adding in the prequel series The Morningstar Option, put the different series of collections in separate groups, and added issue numbers to the collections. Let me know what you think.

While I try to keep single-issue series pages neat, I too don't have my single comics issues entered into LT, mostly because of the sheer numbers. I have taken to adding to my LT library TPBs which collect the issues I own, sorted into their own collection to distinguish them ("Your library (comics issues)" instead of the basic "Your library" where I have my actual TPBs as well as prose books).

I like Amanda's and Annie's insights, and I am pretty sold on the single issues as the Core for a lot of series, but I kind of doubt there's a one-size-fits-all solution to comics series pages, really. I mentioned before that some more minor series have only a small fraction of the existing single-issues present in LT, so if we make that the Core then the collections actually cover a lot more material than the Core entries. So for those I'd prefer the collections be the Core.

>166 amanda4242: I like the Lucifer series page, very nice.

>166 amanda4242: I was generalizing a bit - apologies if you felt excluded - it was not intentional :) Lately I read mainly TPBs as well simply because I was so behind on most of my series that by the time I got to the issues, the TPB was out :)

>167 scott_beeler:
Yeah, I think this will be one of those "depends on what we have in the series" cases. If there are 3 floppies and 10 TPBs, making the floppies the core series will look silly. On the other hand if we have most of the floppies or it is one of the big series (think Batman, Action Comics and so on, we do have enough floppies added to make it feasible. And their collections are... let's use the charitable words incomplete and overlapping :)

As long as we do not end up with editing wars, almost anything can work.

>167 scott_beeler: And then there are the cases where all of the issues are cataloged but no one bothered to put all of them in the series--see Preacher.

>169 AnnieMod: Not feeling excluded at all. :)

Regarding series language, some academic series (e.g. this one) have works that not merely have different original languages, but have never been translated to a common one. What should you set as the series (or publisher series) language? The majority/plurality one?

>148 AnnieMod: That's where we differ, I guess, because I wouldn't count a book written by someone else as core, ever. And usually not part of the series at all, ever. The only exception is if an author dies with a book unfinished and someone else helps finish it (but then it's half original author anyway).

All this talk of comics is making me want to pick a few up - I don't have time!

>172 PawsforThought:

Which is ok - everyone has their own understanding. :)

I wonder if there isn't somewhat of a timing issue on this - most of the series where I consider the later additions part of the core series are modern thrillers and crime series. The Nero Wolf ones are an interesting addition but I do not find them a real part of the series. The Spencer ones that Atkins adds to Parker's series on the other hand match the voice, continued the storylines and sometimes it may take me a while to remember if the book where something happened was Atkins' or Parker's.

And then there is Sanderson who finished The Wheel of Time after Jordan died. If he ever writes more novels in that series (or someone else does), I won't consider them core.

Not sure if that makes sense.

And comics are fun. ;)

I got a question, I don't know how to handle this:

There a single book by an author. That book was adapted for fim, it's also on LT. There are also 4 graphic novels of it. But in the end it's a single book, so should it really be considered a "series"?

http://www.librarything.com/nseries/353/Stardust
Stardust

>174 ScarletBea: Strictly speaking, no it's not. However, in the interests of keeping like with like, I would add the non-book items as a 'Related work' thus keeping them on the same page, or as a relationship (is an adaptation of) so each is a click away...

If you look at the Artesia page, I've split the RPG out of the core series as a 'Related Work' (originally it was as a 'Collection etc' but it's nothing of the sort). Eventually, I'll add the floppies as the core works and move the collections to 'Collections etc'.

>173 AnnieMod: I haven't read any of the series you mentioned so I'm not familiar enough to make a judgement on that, but you have a point about timing.

One of the series where I nearly saw red was Wodehouse's Jeeves series, where someone had added Sebastian Faulks authorized "in the style of" novel and another, which I don't know if it's even authorized, in the "Core" section. No.

And comics are great, but I have too much to read already.

°174 Yeah, I've seen that too, and I'm torn on it - I personally would never think of it as a "series" - just related (seems like a clear cut "is an adaption of"). But I don't know how others feel.

Not that I really want to circle back around to this series, but I have a question on Wheel of Time :

I noticed someone has catalogued the prologue only for books 8 through 13. To me, prologue suggests it is a excerpt from the book and not a story or book in and of itself. So I moved them into their own section. Grumbling says they should be part of core. What's the consensus?

Also, I want to look into a few of the RPGs. Right now, I'm looking at D&D 4th Edition. I'm leaving it marked as Needs Help (cause I'm not sure) but this is what I've done so far:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/8288/Dungeons-and-Dragons-4th-Edition

I guess I'm concerned I screwed it up. Some RPGs are very clear this is our core, all you need to play the game, the rest are extras and adventures you can use. And that's what I was trying to do. (3rd and 3.5 edition are going to be bears, as will AD&D)

I toyed with Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting and 5th Edition but stopped when I got lost.

>177 gilroy: From your description I'd agree with your view - a prologue is not a book in and of itself. But I haven't read Wheel of Time so I'm on shaky ground.

>177 gilroy:

Yep RPGs are a bit more involved. If I cared about D&D 4e I might want to see Campaign Settings separated from Supplements but that is a minor thing.

Because someone directed me here...

My understanding of "Core" is that if a person read all those works they would have read everything relevant, without duplications. Excerpts would involve reading the same thing twice, and some of the last WoT excerpts on that list are 100 pages or so from memory. I don't know anything about how they were available (pages online?) but I'd be surprised if anyone keeps both the prologue and the full book, unless it was signed or something.

I also strongly dislike the Sanderson conclusions being separated on the Wheel of Time, as the WoT story requires them for it to be complete, but someone else had split them so I left them separate.

"Core" really doesn't apply for things like Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy, and other TV/Movie tie-ins as I see it. But because this is (primarily) a book site I see the DVDs/VHS as a separate thing, even though they started the series. Also separate in my opinion are the books about the shows/movies and not those that tell more stories In the Universe of the show/movies.

> 174 ScarletBea, that's not a Series to me either, related material and adaptations don't make a series.

>180 Avron: If you are going to have a series for movies and TV series with tie-in works, then I would consider the movies and TV shows the core since everything spins off from them; I think it's also a good idea to have subseries for the different media. Take a look at the Highlander Franchise series as an example: films at the core, then separate sections for the TV series, novels, scripts, soundtracks, etc., and all subseries still there for those who only care about one part of the Highlander universe.

>174 ScarletBea: I also agree that the "Stardust" prose novel and movie adaptations are not really part of the series, though I think the graphic-novel works (the other 7 items in there now) do belong in the series page. There are already correct "adaptation" work relationships between them, so the novel and movie won't be lost if removed from the series page.

>118 timspalding: timspalding: I think it's a matter of not seeing the Publisher series link on the new series page.

Okay, I'll be adding this.

I had been kicking out anthologies from any series I had been fixing (except complete in-universe anthologies of course). The story (if added individually) is in; the book that contains stories from 3-20 universes does not.

Wait, the idea is that, if a book contains stories from two series, it's in neither. I don't agree with that at all.

>134 amanda4242: I think it's less important to have a site wide style than it is to simply be consistent within a series.

A-men! Different series will call for different approaches. The concept of "core" is fundamentally a prudential thing, not something we can make a hard rule about. Rather than a hard rule, we should keep the goal in mind--making series accessible to people. Another way to say that is "bringing some order to series." And another way would be "de-crazying some crazy series."

>143 amanda4242: >142 AnnieMod: AnnieMod: Yeah, I don't think it's is a good test case for comics, but Tim cited it in his reasoning. Should we have different practices for short series like Persepolis and long running titles like Batman and Superman? Collections of a title that's been running for decades can be complicated to sort out.

Yes, we should have practices adapted to the situation at hand. I did not indent Persepolis to be a model. Or rather, it may be ONE model.

>151 amanda4242: >150 gilroy: gilroy: OMG! The Wheel of Time series page is finally readable!

It is to me too. As far as I'm concerned, this is why we did series.

>152 AnnieMod: >150 gilroy: gilroy: Understood. I still think 12-14 belong to the core but at least all the others are now out so... much better than it used to be.

Yeah, my view too, FWIW.

and now someone has added all the anthologies into the core group and shunted the stories to a separate group

Look at "Activity" under the edit button on the right of the series. You can pinpoint exactly who did it and when. Then you can invite them here, to talk about it.

>174 ScarletBea: There a single book by an author. That book was adapted for fim, it's also on LT. There are also 4 graphic novels of it. But in the end it's a single book, so should it really be considered a "series"?

http://www.librarything.com/nseries/353/Stardust
Stardust

My opinion should not be considered as absolute, but, FWIW, I think your organization is an excellent one.

Also, it is SOOOO much better than the Old Series version https://www.librarything.com/series/Stardust+%5BGaiman%5D

For spin-offs, I think the critical thing is that sensible sub-series exist as sensible subseries. The Star Trek books are a thing. The movies are a thing. The soundtracks are a thing. We can have a superseries with EVERYTHING, but having separate subseries makes a lot of sense.

Is there any form of consensus about numbering formats and word choice in organizing series? 'Cause I can't see it and I personally *hate* it when things are called different things in different places (when referring to the saem thing.

Obviously, most of the time the numbering is straight forward (1, 2, 3, etc.) but when there are version of the same thing that's sometimes referred to as 1.1, etc. Except that when a novel has been published in several smaller parts some people label that 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and some people label it 1a, 1b, 1c.
Am I the only one who gets annoyed by this? (And confused.)

And just to note, if you use lower case initial letters in series, I will go in and change it to upper case.

>183 timspalding:

Wait, the idea is that, if a book contains stories from two series, it's in neither. I don't agree with that at all.

Really Tim?

So you think that a series A which contains a short work B should also contain magazine C, anthologies D-L (including best of year anthologies too) and collections M-S? For some works that could easily stretch to dozens of works.

Also some anthologies would also be in a dozen or more unrelated series by different authors.

That surely can't be correct.

Now as experienced users we would know that if it is a short story, to click through and check work-relationships to see what books contain the short story. Maybe there needs to be something (maybe a mouseover, maybe some other visual cue) to prompt people that the short story work is contained within other works.

>186 andyl: Hear, hear!

>186 andyl:

I think I agree with @andyl's thinking here, and wonder if this is another case where an Editions Layer would help. In that case, the short story Work could be in the Main series, but the various manifestations of it (Editions) would be detailed in the Work's relationships.

Without an Editions Layer, I see that basic disagreement (and potential confusion) persisting.

>183 timspalding: I disagree. Hard and fast rules are required. Otherwise, we start getting ratty data that we have to constantly clean up, edit wars because different people think what is "right" is only THEIR way, and in general the mess we had with series, characters, and awards in the CK.

>180 Avron:, >183 timspalding: I have no problem re-adding 12 through 14 back to the WoT core. I have a problem including the prologues (which each say they have an additional note from the publisher attached but are not full books themselves. Like freebie giveaways that a completist might keep, with the actual books.) As I understood what someone was asking upthread about the difference between an author continuing a series after the first author died versus making a "in the same world as" series. We had options.

If we are establishing the rule to just put all books of the series PRIMARY TIMELINE as the core, then it doesn't matter who the author is. But this would also affect short stories and novellas that explore characters not part of the primary timeline. They would need to be pulled from the core.

If I were to state a preference, short stories should be pulled into their own grouping with proper labeling "Short Story {place in order}". Novellas would need to be checked if they are part of the PRIMARY TIMELINE or not, then either placed in the order just with their order number or else placed in their own group, also tagged "Novella {place in order}" When one selects ungroup, these would then fall into their proper location.

>186 andyl: Absolutely!

>183 timspalding:, >186 andyl: This is why I suggested in the other series thread we need a way to indicate that a series is unrelated to another series - basically an 'anti' relationship which means that a series doesn't display in the overlapping series section. This would allow anthologies with series specific stories to be correctly included in the series without the resulting clutter.

At the moment, all we can do is set a relationship between two series - we can't say there is no relationship between two series.

>186 andyl: Yes!

>188 elenchus:
The problem is, there might be no edition such that the short story exists as a work in its own right, if it was never published by itself. I'd rather include an anthology in a series than leave a short story out completely because it's never been published independently.

>193 cjbanning: A story doesn't need to be published separately to be catalogued on LT. If the story hasn't been catalogued, then I have no problem adding an anthology to the series with a note saying which story it contains.

>193 cjbanning:

It's a good point about short stories and how they've been published.

An example of that is Hammett's The Continental Op series, and I've elected to handle it by defining the Core as one posthumous work (collecting all the short stories plus an unfinished / unpublished story draft), and two other works (one for each of the novels). These three works effectively represent the entire series, but in this case I'm not arguing they are the original publications. The short stories originally were published in separate issues of various pulp magazines, and the novels (while published separately) each incorporated four short stories that Hammett previously published alone. (There was some revision of the stories when writing the novels, as well as new material in each novel not adapted from any of his short stories.)

All of this detail to put this out there as a possible best practice for short stories, especially with the pulps but also many other authors and short stories. The main points in its favour:

> The Core includes the comprehensive set of stories by the original author.
> The novels are listed separately in Core for easy reference.
> The short stories are listed in Core by a collection which includes all stories.
(Another option is to pick two or more collections which together include all stories, but this wasn't necessary in this case.)
> The specific works selected for Core are more or less arbitrary.
(I selected works I don't own because I found them a more elegant solution.)
> Any other collections or selections can be added but left out of Core for clarity.
> The Series Description defines the series without committing to any specific edition.

Feedback welcomed, and I won't engage in an editing war if someone else thinks the series is best defined another way.

>195 elenchus: For me, short stories (and, as in the case of Hammett and other authors during the heyday of magazine fiction who moved rather fluidly from short story to novella to novel and back, the longer fiction as well) would usually be part of the Core of such a series, especially as in many instances not all of the stories have been collected and reprinted. Collections would go in the Collections and Selections group, as with the Tombstone & Speedy series I set up for the stories by W. C. Tuttle.

I think the proposal in >195 elenchus: wouldn't work all that well when there is no complete collection of the stories, or when the only way all stories have been collected and reprinted is in disparate volumes with overlapping contents. Where there are indeed sets collecting some or all of the stories, as with the several efforts reprinting Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin stories, I'd probably also consider setting up Publisher Series for those, too, where applicable (assuming they were published as a series).

ETA: I regularly catalog short stories, novelettes, novellas, and the like that I'm reading, so I've often already got a start on such works for series of interest to me. On the other hand, I can see why others might want to prioritize books, and I'm unlikely to worry about a series that someone has set up some other way.

>196 harrygbutler:

I definitely see your point about collections being unwieldy. I think listing each short story is equally unwieldy, not to mention that for many LTers the list (while comprehensive) won't be helpful. How do they get their hands on those shorts? They know the titles, but not which collections or omnibuses to purchase or borrow in order to actually read them. Diving into the various collections listed in the Collections and Selections group would answer that, but it's ... unwieldy.

I hear that your preferred handling of that is listing short fiction separately by title in Core, and the collections outside of Core. I am curious if there is an LT consensus around your proposal in Tombstone & Speedy, my proposal in The Continental Op, or a third way.

My preference, actually, is for both our proposals to be models, and each Series pick which of those works best. Having two or three predominant models is much better than countless options, if only in that it's more readily understandable for anyone looking at an unfamiliar series.

>197 elenchus: Right, it's complicated, and I definitely agree with you that different series likely would be best handled differently, so long as the organizational principle is clear. I guess it should probably be called out in the series description, but I neglected to do so with Tombstone & Speedy so far. If we could list those models somewhere once the best alternative approaches are agreed upon, it could be a real help to other people setting up series.

I do generally try to make use of the Contains/Contained In relationship between stories and the collection(s) where I read them or where they appear, and I always list the first publication in the publishing information for the individual story, which should help, but it would require a lot of clicking around to check on them all in a longer series, I agree. And of course, some stories may not be available short of buying a copy of the original magazine issues in which they appeared, or finding an online copy of the issues at, say, archive.org.

I've been looking through the series in my library, and it seems that there are series in foriegn languages that are subseries or maybe duplicates, such as https://www.librarything.com/nseries/522/Ballade-de-Pern.

Are there any plans to combine such things? Or is there a reason why this particular one is not a duplicated of the regular Pern series?

Would some of the Pern series be combined into one series? I mean there is a switch for publication vs. story order, so is there a need for a seperate series for publication order, and one for story order?

Just wondering what was desired in such cases. I was kind of hoping that the number of series entries would go down if there was a way to order them same series in different ways. I apologize if this has been addresssed already, I haven't had a chance to skim throught this whole thread yet.

>199 al.vick: Yes, I've discovered that some of my series have titles in French or German when I know the authors wrote in English.

As well as Ballade de Pern - okay, that's now been combined there is Autres Mondes de Pern which seems to be a series of one book. I switched the original language to English but do I have to change the series name as well? How do I know if someone was experimenting or if there was a different sub-series published in French?

Pern

>183 timspalding: >186 andyl: The anthologies

And some stories are anthologized so often that some series will end up with hundreds of anthologies added... If the short story is already added, why would we add to the series the 150 anthologies it was also a part of? If the story is not cataloged on its own, that is different but if you have the story/novella + 20 anthologies at the same position 7.5, it is just cluttering everything...

If we are going that route, we really should have had a third default group (Contains) so these can go there as opposed to each series doing what it wants...

Maybe instead a better connection between "related works" and "series" should be implemented so these automatically show up somewhere close by (link? additional menu?) but without cluttering the series page.

>189 gilroy: I would prefer to see 12 to 14 in the core. This is a specialised case where Sanderson was specifically commissioned to finish the ... um ... trilogy and was given Jordan's detailed notes for the purpose. However, it does work as it is.

Were those prologues published separately? I don't think I've seen any.

I think maybe the Autres Mondes de Pern was just a mistake, and should be deleted,

>201 AnnieMod: ... a third default group (Contains) so these {generic anthologies} can go there as opposed to each series doing what it wants...

I actually like that a lot. Treating omnibuses (collections of works from the same series or author) differently than anthologies (collections of works from various authors) would not add clutter to series with just one or two, and would vastly improve the organisation for series with "canon" works that are common outside of series works.

>202 humouress: Not really a specialized case. The estate of Robert Jordan asked Branden Sanderson to complete the series. Todd McCaffery was given permission by his late mother (even mentored by her) to continue her series. The Nero Wolf example is also the same idea. Core books continued by another author, with permission of the estate.

Again, I have no problem with them being part of the core. Honestly, I don't like the name of the label being Core. It only fits things like RPGs, which have Core Manuals to play the game. I'd rather see it named "Primary Timeline" or "Published Progression."

Based on the way they were catalogued, and the attached covers, yes, the prologues were published separately.

>205 gilroy:

Honestly, I wish it were just a group like any other group, and we could name it whatever made the most sense for that series. I can easily imagine series which don't really have a "core" at all, just several coequal groups.

>206 cjbanning:

Is it possible in the current system to ignore the default Core, and just use custom groups with whatever coequal names fit the specific series?

>207 elenchus: Yep, it's possible. The drawback is that core is the only group in which covers are displayed.

OK... anyone have the daring to go here?

Series: Tolkien's Legendarium

Core
1. The Silmarillion
2. The Hobbit
3. The Lord of the Rings

Selections
- Fellowship of the Ring
- Two Towers
- Return of the King
(with many further appendages and elaborations)

... because that's the way it really is.
The greater part of the Silmarillion was written (or at least drafted) before the other two; then the Hobbit was written with borrowings from the Silmarillion world; and then Lord of the Rings was written as a sequel to the Hobbit. And Lord of the Rings is a single novel (not a 'trilogy' of related novels) which for its initial publication was broken up into three volumes mostly for marketing considerations.

Anyone?

In cases where the collection/omnibus is held by far more members than the original works, should we still list the originals in the core? The Cowboy Bebop anime series has been entered with the collection as core (presumably based on holdings), which means I don't have checkmarks because my subtitled original volumes were relegated to the collections section. This underscores the gap with checkmarks not taking into account the "contains" relationships even if they are entered in CK.

>210 SchanleyMedia:

Hold on... no checkmarks outside of the Core group? That does not sound right and if true defeats the purpose of all those splits.

Looking at one of my own series where I have something in the non core group (Collections and Selections), I can see a checkmark next to it. Same for a custom one (Short Stories)

So if you are not seeing them, something else is going wrong.

>210 SchanleyMedia: If you aren't seeing checkmarks in a series then either the works haven't been entered in that series, or they have and your copies need to be combined.

ETA: or there's a bug.

I see checkmarks in the non-core group, but because somebody put the omnibus as core, in the graphical view at the top of the series page it looks like I'm missing the core. If I have all the core works in some form (either separately or as part of an omnibus), then I should have the checkmarks on the covers view at the top of the series page. Similarly, in The Dark Tower, I have the first four books in an omnibus, and the checkmarks show up next to the works in the omnibus section, but they don't show up in the graphics display up top because I don't have the stand-alone version.

>213 SchanleyMedia:

Ah, so you are talking about the covers at the top of the series page, not about the sections themselves.

Yeah... that works as designed...

The Related works had never been tied to series and ownership - we all wish they were but... :)

>213 SchanleyMedia: Oh, you're talking about checkmarks on the covers! Yeah, covers are only displayed for the core group so you won't see checkmarks if that's not where your items are.

>213 SchanleyMedia: I've organized Cowboy Bebop {TV Series} so the sessions are now the core. And I've swapped the brackets in the series titles for braces; we can now touchstone series and the brackets would interfere with that.

What? No covers for anything outside the core series? I... that's...

Well, I definitely think comics should have the individual issues as the core, now.

>217 saltmanz: Exactly my reasoning. ;)

>217 saltmanz: Aaaaand, all of the comic series I just checked out have the TPBs as the core, and all of the issues as the "selections", just as I figured would happen. I give up.

>219 saltmanz: Which series?

>220 amanda4242:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/97084/Lucifer-The-Morningstar-Option

From the history, this may be how those got populated initially - so maybe all the non-touched series will look like that...

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/4646/The-Unwritten is a ... disaster

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/14543/Ultimate-X-Men-%5B2001%5D has the collections as core including some omnibuses (not touched since the migration so I am pretty sure this will end up the case - the migration sent the issues into collections and selections)...

>221 AnnieMod: Yeah, that's what most of the untouched comics series look like.

>203 al.vick: I think you're right in this case. But it's hard to tell for each case unless you delve into them - but I don't really know where to look especially when it comes to different sub-series groupings published in different languages

>205 gilroy: You make my point for me: The estate of Robert Jordan asked Branden Sanderson to complete the series. Todd McCaffery was given permission by his late mother (even mentored by her) to continue her series. :0)

Of course, The Wheel of Time storyline had an ending in sight which it hadn't yet reached whereas the Pern stories were ever evolving. That may be a criterion; to be 'core' it should fall within a story arc envisaged by the original author(s).

>221 AnnieMod: @Avron took care of The Unwritten and I've done The Morningstar Option and organized Ultimate X-Men {2001}. There are probably more issues catalogued in X-Men that haven't been added to the series yet; someone more knowledgeable than me will have to hunt them down.

>209 Crypto-Willobie: I definitely think the Lord of the Rings belongs in core. OTOH, Silmarillion doesn't fit first either by publication or reading order. No one should really start reading Tolkien with Silmarillion.

First, while comics are interesting, whatever decisions we make of a general nature should not be based on what comics need. Comics require different answers.

>185 PawsforThought: Is there any form of consensus about numbering formats and word choice in organizing series? 'Cause I can't see it and I personally *hate* it when things are called different things in different places (when referring to the saem thing.

A few thoughts:

1. I would avoid "book 1," "book 2" and so forth on a small series where you can just as easily just write "1", "2," etc. I'm going to make some of these phrases translatable, but these are usually unnecessary.
2. As regards 1.1, 1b, etc. I would be careful. These designations are often conventional, and shouldn't be "regularized" without intimate knowledge of the series.

>183 timspalding: timspalding: I disagree. Hard and fast rules are required. Otherwise, we start getting ratty data that we have to constantly clean up, edit wars because different people think what is "right" is only THEIR way, and in general the mess we had with series, characters, and awards in the CK.

I'm afraid this won't fly. We may want to discuss just what we're talking about--I'm not sure which part of my post you're disagreeing with. But I don't think we can decide on hard and fast rules for everything. The goal here is organization for the sake of use. Hard and fast get you a foolish consistency.

To take an example from above, I can understand why a you don't want to include anthologies if it's going to massively inflate and confuse the series, as would apply if some story in a particular series timeline were excerpted all over the place. At the same time, if a critical story were only or largely available as part of an anthology that crossed two series, it would be user-hostile to omit it.

This is why I suggested in the other series thread we need a way to indicate that a series is unrelated to another series - basically an 'anti' relationship which means that a series doesn't display in the overlapping series section. This would allow anthologies with series specific stories to be correctly included in the series without the resulting clutter.

This is indeed an interesting proposal. Suggest wording? How about "Is not at all related to"?

>193 cjbanning: >188 elenchus: elenchus:
The problem is, there might be no edition such that the short story exists as a work in its own right, if it was never published by itself. I'd rather include an anthology in a series than leave a short story out completely because it's never been published independently.

Indeed. Or if it's mostly available as part of something else. Say 1,000 signed copies vs. being in every bookstore in the country.

>198 harrygbutler: I guess it should probably be called out in the series description,

Yes, let's not forget that. There is a special description type for "Technical/Disambiguation Notices." If there's one, it shows up on the work-addition and series-combination pages.

What? No covers for anything outside the core series? I... that's...

No covers ON THE SERIES PAGE. We're looking to give people a quick visual representation of the series. We've looked at the data before. People hardly ever click forwards and backwards.

>226 timspalding: Regarding anthologies

It wouldn't bother me so much if we could dismiss unrelated series. The World of the Marrok has 10 unrelated series attatched to it because of anthologies--and most of the stories are in Briggs' Shifting Shadows collection. Why keep the anthologies when the stories are in a dedicated collection? Especially when the stories have been catalogued and you can easily put in notations for reading order?

>227 amanda4242:

No, I agree. I'll get on that soon. I'm working on the bug with series of more than 500 items. And it's 2:43am where I am! :)

>228 timspalding: Go get some sleep and then come listen to us complainers out on the west coast!

>209 Crypto-Willobie: I think you'll find that if you ask people if The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy or one novel split into three parts, the vast majority will say trilogy. Including myself.

>226 timspalding: I have yet to see anyone write "book 1", "book 2" in a series and if it was there I'd change it to just the numbers. But there are multiple instances of people using full sentences to describe what could just be called "omnibus" (for example).

And when people use similar numbering conventions for completely different things, there's bound to be confusion about what those actually refer to. Like the example I gave about 1.1, 1.2 and so on.
We need to talk about this.

An example when the same system is referring to two different things in the same series: Alice's Adventures - where 1b is used for a simplified version of Alice in Wonderland for younger readers and 2b is used for The Wasp in a Wig which is a previously "lost" chapter of Through the Looking-Glass as well as some extra material. Not only are these both placed in "core" (I'd put them elsewhere, but I haven't touched it yet) but they are different things so shouldn't be marked the same way.

I'm sure I'm the only one who care is people have written "13 & 16" instead of "!3, 16" or "5, 6, 7, 8, 9" rather than "5-9" so I won't go on a spiel about that, but the numberings and the phrases used is actually important for understanding what a book in series actually *is*.

And we should have some sort of consensus when it comes to group names too. I've seen movies grouped under "film", "movie", "additional material" and (unless it was a bad dream, and I've had a lot of those lately) "dramatization".

>226 timspalding: "This is why I suggested in the other series thread we need a way to indicate that a series is unrelated to another series - basically an 'anti' relationship which means that a series doesn't display in the overlapping series section. This would allow anthologies with series specific stories to be correctly included in the series without the resulting clutter.

This is indeed an interesting proposal. Suggest wording? How about "Is not at all related to"?"

A little bit clunky (although it fits with the other wording) - perhaps "Has no relationship with"?

Maybe put a bit of hover text with a brief note to say 'Select this option where the related series is not related to this series and consequently will no longer be displayed as an overlapping series on the main series page'

Also, I would suggest putting the option in it's own section at the end of the other option groupings (which hopefully will make it less likely to be selected by accident).

Talking about relationships, have we an accepted way to handle cross-overs? This is an issue with comic book series. I'd like to see the crossovers linked on the main series page, but not as a related series - perhaps we could have a new section for cross-overs (which would mean a new relationship option)? This is also a case for the ability to have multiple groups; an individual issue is potentially core and a cross-over.

>171 AndreasJ:
For series that publish books in multiple languages, I would love to see the language option "multilingual" which is available for books in the long drop-down list.

I could possibly see an argument for assigning the "original" language of English (or whatever) to a publisher series that publishes English translations of books written in a variety of languages (because the language of the publisher series is English).

However, there are plenty of series by academic publishers -- like the one you cite -- that aren't limited to a single language.

And then there are language-related series (e.g. 2001 Idioms, Teach Yourself Languages) and bilingual series (Penguin Parallel Texts or the Loeb Classical Library mentioned earlier) where it isn't easy to identfy a single "main" language of publication.

On a related note, I've been puzzling over what to do with the The Myths series in the new system. In the old series system it existed simultaneously as a regular series and several publisher series. The titles were commissioned as part of an international publishing project (hence the "series" status: all the titles were written specifically for the series). The Scottish publisher Canongate seems to have been the initiator of the project, but many of the titles were published simultaneously in other languages with publishing partners in other countries.
The issue is that there are a number of titles which have only been published by the non-English publishing partners (Anna in w grobowcach swiata, Graditelj), and one title that is included in the German series (Adam und Evelyn) has since been published in English translation but by a different publisher and not branded as part of the English "Myths" series.
So it seems like a case where the different contents of the English versus the German series is significant rather than a case of a series so far having been only partially translated. Should these be related series? It sounds like it isn't possible to have multiple, partially overlapping groupings within a series.

>226 timspalding:
Regarding stories in anthologies: one solution would be to let people create some sort of entries for things like novellas without having to catalogue them themselves.

>233 spiphany:
It sounds to me as there is one series, "The Myths", and several publisher series with a lot of overlap.

>230 PawsforThought:

But they'd be wrong.

I didn't think anyone would be willing to do it. Mostly playing devil's advocate, and making a point. I am however thinking of drafting a Tolkien mega-series that brings together all the Middle-Earth 'Legendarium' material -- not only the LotR series but also the History of Middle-Earth and the volumes extracted from the Silmarillion, etc. It'll be pretty tricky to describe the relationships between the various subseries and I won't live forever, so I may never get round to it.

>235 Crypto-Willobie: Saying "people are wrong" isn't a great way to get people to agree with your view, especially when the definition isn't clear cut (just because part of Silmarillion was written before the trilogy doesn't mean it's the first book). And whether the Hobbit is a prelude to The Lord of the Rings or the trilogy is a sequel is also subjective. As is, as I mentioned before, the trilogy vs. single novel.

Other people aren't wrong just because you think you're right.

>236 PawsforThought:

Well, as I said, I was in part playing devil's advocate. I wouldn't push my position on The Silmarillion. As to who's wrong, your position was that I was wrong, so we'll both have to get past that.

However, historical facts:

1. Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings because his publishers and fans clamored for a sequel to the Hobbit. The Hobbit was not written as a prequel or prelude to LotR. This isn't subjective.

2. Tolkien -- the author of Lord of the Rings -- wrote it as, submitted it to his publishers as, and considered it to be, a single novel. (Btw, the extensive Tolkien scholarly community completely agrees with this.) After LotR was completed and submitted Tolkien reluctantly agreed to allow his publishers to bring it out in three volumes to make it easier to market, and came up with titles for them. He was desperate to have it published because he hoped that if it was successful they would then publish The Silmarillion, which was more important to him -- and this seemed the only way forward .

Surely folks can distinguish between a single novel that is published in three volumes due to its length (as with many Victorian novels), and a series of three related novels which are structured as distinct works in spite of their connections, that is, a 'trilogy'. Anyway, I'm obviously not going to force the LotR Series to be changed or force folks to think more clearly on the subject, so no one has anything to fear here...

181 amanda4242

I understand your point about original material being the core. I don't have a problem with DVDs etc. being included on the list. But if someone told me a website named LibraryThing had a Star Trek series I probably wouldn't initially have considered the TV shows to be included even as an afterthought. I probably wouldn't have considered the RPGs either for that matter.
It should all be included. But I'm confident that the only things I'd have expected to see would have been the novels (mainly published by Pocket Books). So that's what I'd consider "Core"
Subseries is completely valid, I spent some of yesterday working on the TOS episodes.

231 PawsforThought "...written "13 & 16" instead of "!3, 16" or "5, 6, 7, 8, 9" rather than "5-9" so..."

5-9 could be seen as either books 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, or all those and 6.5, 7.1 etc. Specifying the individual works could be important on some series. Don't know where you've been looking.

>238 Avron:

"Specifying individual works" will be very messy when the collection contains a lot of works - even just three or four makes it messy and more difficult to tell (because you have to look at each number). Specifying a range (like 13-16) is cleaner and still easy to see if the collection contains , say number 15. This problem is worse the higher the numbers of the series - I was looking at a harlequin series yesterday and there are work labeled in the thousands, and collections containing "1345, 1346, 1347, 1348, 1348, 1349, 1350, 1351" - that makes you number blind.

If someone has used 4.5 to mean a short story that takes place between 4 and 5, it's easy to add the extra "4.5" after the sequence. But, as I mentioned, sometimes 4.5 is used to mean book 4 has been published in five parts and 4.5 is the edition that contains just part five. In that case, a collection of parts 1-5 should contain 4.5 automatically (otherwise it's not 1-5) so it's unnecessary.

>226 timspalding: Okay, so let me put into print the expected rules I've been waiting for us to come up with. Then we can digest them accordingly. I'll stick with Fiction for now, because that's what I know best.

(Suggested) Fiction Rules:
1) The series would be established as set by the AUTHOR for internal chronology or based on date of publication of books. This is to follow the PRIME STORY ARC for the series. Universe Series can include each Secondary Arc as subgroups/subseries.

2) Numbering will be 1, 2, 3, etc with no additional tags necessary unless including Short Story, Novella, or Novellette. This will also follow the AUTHOR'S numbering. (If an author says the novella is 2.75, we don't make it 2.9.)

3) Excerpts/short stories/novellas are NOT core, unless they are vital to understanding the flow of the timeline. (I know there are a few that this exception holds which is why it is phrased as such.) If you can read just the books without being lost because you didn't read an extra short story, that short story is NOT core.

4) Make sure when organizing series that your establishment allows for all groups to fall into the appropriate location in the timeline when someone clicks "Ungroup" (No, this is not obvious,)

5) Anthologies that cross 3 or more unrelated series/authors are NOT part of a series.

Basic necessary guidelines.
Hell, not having these has already lead to misunderstandings JUST IN THIS THREAD.
So to say we don't need rules is foolish.

>41 Kuiperdolin: Kuiperdolin: Haven't gotten to the bottom of this thread yet, but when there is an English name for a series whose original language setting is not English, the English name doesn't seem to show up anywhere on the Englsh site. I mean the listings in "your books", "Series in your libray", and the series pages themselves all have the forgien language name. So what does having a English name for the series change?

Do the other language sites show the series names for that language? Just wondering what the use for the series names in other languages is.

>241 al.vick: It means you can check what the English name for a series originally in another language is. It's right there on the series page (just below the list of titles). Unless it hasn't been added yet - and if so it's easy to add.

Question: Aren't all the Harlequin series actually series, not publisher series? We're not talking about the Divine Comedy here, we're talking a giant publishing conglomerate that has a very specific line of books which it controls exclusively.

>243 timspalding: I don't know. I've never read Harlequin so don't know how it all works. I just looked at that page because someone mentioned it on one of these threads, and the masses of numbers stood out to me.

>232 Maddz: I was thinking more of an option to dismiss an unrelated series, like with author combination suggestions.

>238 Avron: And it wouldn't have occurred to me that the TV series *wouldn't* be the center of the series. :) This is why subseries are so great: we can have a series for shows and all their tie-in media, and subseries for just novels or RPGs or whatever.

I am going to open a can of worms here:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/12844/Ab-urbe-condita

(The history of Rome by Livy)

Seems like the core should be works that include only 1 book (since there are a lot of those).

It also seems like there should be a section (or subseries, but why add that kind of clutter) for the texts that are in latin, vs. those that are only a translation. Of course it is sometimes hard to decide what category a particular work falls into since some works may include both the original text in latin and the translation. Works can't be in two sections, but they can be in two subseries...so that might argue for the subseries decison.

Does anyone have thoughts on this kind of thing?

>240 gilroy: This seems a pretty reasonable set of suggested guidelines for many recent and contemporary fiction series, albeit perhaps not generally applicable to older fiction series, particularly those from the heyday of magazine fiction.

For example, many of the series I read do not have a "prime story arc" but rather are made up of pretty-much independent stories (examples include, say, the Shell Scott mysteries by Richard S. Prather or various Carter Brown mystery series), much as was true for most older TV series, perhaps after an initial installment that introduces the series.

Moreover, in a number of instances (the Madame Storey series by Hulbert Footner, or the Zorro series by Johnston McCulley), the length of entries in the series varies substantially, with novels (including serials), novellas, and short stories represented. In such cases (and there are many), I would not exclude the shorter works from the core.

Also, in many cases I read series where the "author" is a house name, as with Maxwell Grant for The Shadow, or Nick Carter for the Nick Carter: Killmaster series (or the older dime novels), so the privileging of the author in your suggested rules 1 and 2 isn't necessarily directly applicable.

Thus, I think it necessary to decide series by series, case by case, perhaps within a range of suggested guidelines, and make explicit in the description what principles are used to organize the particular series.

>247 harrygbutler: make explicit in the description what principles are used to organize the particular series.

That's why the description field needs to be somewhere more prominent.

>240 gilroy: I agree with all the suggestions you've made for guidelines.

And I want some form of consensus for numbering and labelling standards.

>247 harrygbutler: do not have a "prime story arc" but rather are made up of pretty-much independent stories
They all follow the same characters? Or the same basic plot structure? Then they are the main story arc.
Xanth from Piers Anthony doesn't have a set story arc. But he has the (more or less) same plot structure throughout the series. Thus each of those books are core.

, the length of entries in the series varies substantially, with novels (including serials), novellas, and short stories represented
Reread rule 3. That's already addressed.

where the "author" is a house name
This actually has an established printing order or numbered series. See also Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys. The Publishing House, since they created the AUTHOR, would then dictate the order, either by the order the books were published or how they chose to number them.

make explicit in the description what principles are used to organize the particular series.
I'm good with this, provided Tim moves the description to the TOP of the series, not down near the tags where it gets lost below all the sections/subseries/whathaveyou.

I tied to combine some of the Avalon serieses, and now there seems to be a seires with a blank title. At least I think I am responsible for that error. I don't know how to fix it, but if anyone knows how...Please fix. So sorry about that. Not sure what I did.

Includes Lady of Avalon for instance. See that work page.

I guess there is no way to see the covers of all the core books? I used to like the "see all" feature that was on the old series pages.

Is there a way to sort the sections on a series page?

>252 al.vick: Right above the covers on the left side there's a "show all" button.

There's a sort groups option under Edit.

>252 al.vick: All the core books, there should be a toggle at the top near the covers that says "All {number} covers".

>253 al.vick: Under the edit series menu you should see sort sections. Within the sections I think is based on how they are shown when ungrouped.

ETA what >254 amanda4242: said.

>251 al.vick: I'm also seeing blank titles for series I've edited. Maybe the site needs a sort of refresh to catch up to all of our activity?

>254 amanda4242: anabda4242 thanks! Missed that.

Okay, I have fixed the problem affecting series with more than 500 or so books. Basically, the server couldn't accept that much data. I have reset all the "0" series to core.

>209 Crypto-Willobie: Crypto-Willobie: I think you'll find that if you ask people if The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy or one novel split into three parts, the vast majority will say trilogy. Including myself.

Exactly. And this is a good example of where a single, inflexible, non-contextual rule might go amiss.

And we should have some sort of consensus when it comes to group names too. I've seen movies grouped under "film", "movie", "additional material" and (unless it was a bad dream, and I've had a lot of those lately) "dramatization".

We should move toward some acceptable labels. Movie and Film are obviously not different. But let's not try for one-size-fits-all.

>246 al.vick: (The history of Rome by Livy)

I don't know. I suppose I think that "series" doesn't quite apply. Livy is a multi-volume work, much as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Is it a series? Meh.

>248 amanda4242: That's why the description field needs to be somewhere more prominent.

Okay, but where? I hestite to put it at the top of the page. The series descriptions are not, as a rule, that great. And that's valuable real estate, with a lot of interesting things claiming your attention.

>251 al.vick:

I tied to combine some of the Avalon serieses, and now there seems to be a seires with a blank title. At least I think I am responsible for that error. I don't know how to fix it, but if anyone knows how...Please fix. So sorry about that. Not sure what I did.

Includes Lady of Avalon for instance. See that work page.

Will look.

I'm thinking people are clicking "Delete" instead of save.

I will look at prohibiting deletion if there's only one series name.

>258 timspalding: How about putting the description on the right, between edit and related series?

What about something like IDW's Artist's Editions books? These are collections of the full sized original art for well known comics from different publishers (in some cases only selections since the complete original isn't available.)

This is a unique presentation of varied works, so at first, it seems to fall into the definition of a publisher series except for the fact that other editions aren't of the original art. How should this be classified? Or is it even a series? I do like the idea of seeing all books that were done this way easily and using the series classification seemed the easiest way. (DC's Absolute Editions is another set of books that could fall into this situation.)

With the revision to the series category, and before thinking about that unique presentation aspect, I made the change to the existing Artist's Edition "series" to "publisher series" and now discovered that that series has disappeared: my book list format includes "series" as a column, and this series no longer appears in all of these books and I can't find the original series in a search of the site. Did I read that more work was being done on the "publisher series" classification?

>258 timspalding: this is a good example of where a single, inflexible, non-contextual rule might go amiss
But if you don't even bother to build a framework, then your contextual differences mean nothing.

But this also leads to a question. Are we setting these series as the author/publisher intended or as the reader is most aware of?

>260 amanda4242:

I second this, alternatively between Related Series and Links.

The advantage of >260 amanda4242: is for Series with many Related Series, the description could again drop below the fold if it came afterward. But between Edit Series and Related Series, typically it should be above the fold, even with Edit Series expanded / open.

>262 gilroy: Are we setting these series as the author/publisher intended or as the reader is most aware of?

That is an excellent question! And I echo your desire to have some basic framework (NOT one size fits all), or the end result will be perpetual squabbling and edit wars, or people who choose not to engage in edit wars simply abandoning the feature altogether. That would be unfortunate. A "core concepts for thinking about series" would be helpful.

Book trilogies today are often written as a large work in the major parts. That's not how they're published.

243 timspalding

I expect (with no real knowledge) that the book rights revert to the authors at some point after the three months or so the books are in circulation so they could be republished later. There's also no interconnectedness between most of the books, besides the various, maybe as many as 10 book, mini-series that you find throughout. It definitely doesn't feel like what I'd expect from a fiction "series"

>1 timspalding:

Is this where we also post ideas/suggestions for the new series system? Or is that in another thread?

>268 PawsforThought: We should move toward some acceptable labels. Movie and Film are obviously not different. But let's not try for one-size-fits-all.

No, they're not different in meaning, but why have two different, competing labels? I'm not suggesting we hound someone who uses the "wrong" label, just that we decide to primarily use one of them. I don't give a hoot if it's "film" or "movie" but using the same phrasing leads to better understanding, fewer misconceptions and generally better usage of the feature. The fewer variations we use, the easier it will be to understand. More variations lead to more misunderstandings.
And the movies/film is just one example - there's tons of other labels in the non-core groupings that could use some structure.

>268 PawsforThought:

Usually the best way to do that is to wait for the feature to be used for a few months, then for the LT staff to parse the data from what user defined categories have been created in order to add a few more standard categories.

>268 PawsforThought: The problem with that is that there'll be a lot of work to re-do then, instead of having some guidelines from the start so it's "right" from the get go.

>266 Avron: If I remember what a Harlequin writer once told me, the novels they write do not revert. They are assigned a specific storyline and they are contracted to write that outline by the publisher. Even if they did revert, it takes 7 years, not 3 months.

271 gilroy "Even if they did revert, it takes 7 years, not 3 months"

Hence the "at some point after" in what I wrote. The 3 months was due to having just heard an old "No Such Thing as a Fish" episode where it was mentioned that the books are only available for 3 months, then they get pulped (I don't remember the specifics).

>271 gilroy:

A bit of searching indicates the reversion clause for Harlequin is 5-7 years after the book was last in print in any format, and if an author requests a rights reversion, Harlequin has another 18 months within which it can release the book in order to retain the rights (http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/05/harlequin-fail.html).

>240 gilroy:
"5) Anthologies that cross 3 or more unrelated series/authors are NOT part of a series."

Why 3? As long as the individual story that is part of the series is cataloged and included in the series, there's no need for a work that contains that and anything else not related to the series to be included. There was a time when the Dresden Files series had every short story appearing three times or more, once on its own and then multiple times for every anthology it was in. Madness. Once is enough, and if you want to find out where to read a story you go to the story's page and look at what it's contained in.

Imagine holding the anthology in your hand, and ask yourself "is this part of the series?". If the answer is "no, but one story is", then the anthology is not part of the series, but the story is.

On the other hand, if the anthologised story isn't cataloged by itself, then (and only then) it makes sense to include the anthology in the series. Though even then you can end up with multiple entries for the same story when it appears in multiple anthologies.

I'd say "5) Anthologies or bundles should not be included in a series, unless all the works in the anthology are part of the series. The only exception is if a work in the anthology that is part of the series is not cataloged on its own."

>274 r.orrison:

I would also say that if it does include an anthology because one of the component short stories is not catalogued then the series should not be flagged 'Looks Good'.

>274 r.orrison: Mostly because I was trying to sooth Tim's ego with the 3 or more line. I wanted to phrase it as you did.

The only problem I see with putting the anthologies in the Collections and Selections area is that it connects unrelated series. If there were an "anti-relationship" button, I would be happy with that. I also think that the short stories should be listed seperatly, especially if they are going to be put in a core timeline.

That's my 2 cents. Do with that what you will.

>277 al.vick:

Not just that it will also draw in People/Characters, Important places and Important Events. Maybe even awards (some awards have a best original anthology).

>278 andyl: Good point!

We should probably talk about what to do when combining a publication order and chronological order series. There were publication and chronological pages for the Mary Russell series; in the combined page, all of the chronological information was deleted and there is nothing to show that there are two different orders other than the undeleted description I wrote explaining how the chronological series was organized.

I am overwhelmingly in favor of publication order, but deleting all information relating to an alternate order can't be the best way to do things.

>280 amanda4242: I thought we weren't supposed to be combining Chronological and Publication order yet.

amanda4242:

We should probably talk about what to do when combining a publication order and chronological order series.

I would say don't combine at this time. Tim is a very strong fan of internal chronology, so combining them makes it very difficult to view publication order (you need to separately choose it every time you visit a series page.)

>281 gilroy: I don't know if that's official, but I haven't been combining them because the publication sort order is buggy.

>282 lorax: I haven't been combining them. In the case I mentioned, someone else combined the two series and deleted all of the notes relating to chronological order so you can only view the series in publication order no matter which view you choose. I find this particularly annoying since I'm the one who originally created the separate series and it was a royal pain in the ass getting all of the dates filled in for the chronological series.

Chronological order would be an odd way to read the Mary Russell series because it would require stopping in the middle of the first published book, reading the fifth, and then finishing the first, but I don't think it's right to erase all information relating to an alternate order.

What is the "best practice" regarding a single work that some publishers have released in multiple volumes, but that is not part of a larger series?

Two examples:

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/134513/%E3%83%AA%E3%83%88%E3%83%AB%E3%80%81....

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/9769/The-Well-at-the-Worlds-End

My inclination would be to link each volume to the single work in a "contains"/"contained in" relationship instead of using a series. Thoughts?

>284 JacobHolt: Mentioned earlier in the thread. Not a series, but a work to work relationship situation.

>284 JacobHolt: I would say they aren't a series and you should just set the work-to-work relationship.

ETA: In cases where there is an *actual* series with some editions split, I'd include the split editions in the series. See Kingdom of Outremer.

>285 gilroy: >286 amanda4242: Makes sense, thanks!

It seems to me that "short stories should be included in series as separate works unless they haven't be catalogued, in which case anthologies are okay" encourages people to create works just for the purpose of including them in series, which is explicitly discouraged. (Or at least, the equivalent for work-to-work relationships is, and I would assume the same logic also applies to series.)

>288 cjbanning: I wouldn't say that. I, and I'm sure many people, enter short stories because I want to know if I have a specific story without having to dig through a bunch of different anthologies.

We should start a new thread about, shouldn't we?

Because we're almost at 300 posts, and this thread isn't loading as quickly as it once did.

>288 cjbanning: Let's ask Tim. He should rescind that ban. Unless the editions layer is coming in (literally) two weeks..

>258 timspalding: On the "Edit Series>Add to/Organize Series" web page, '0' is showing up again, and I have been unable to successfully change to 'Core' or 'Collections and Selections'. In fact, on the Jade Calhoun series ( https://www.librarything.com/nseries/13932/Jade-Calhoun-Series ), as I was trying to fix some '0's leftover from the weekend, some changed for the positive, and some reverted from being correct to '0'. This series is not large.

P.S. I had to search a bit for this topic (Core to '0'). The problem was first documented here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/321038#7182171.

P.S.S. Thank you Tim and LT Team for this newest feature change. Having the ability to view Core titles separate from anthologies, etc. is fantastic.

To all of you LT'ers whom complain incessantly, think of how much information this website provides to users, and how much entertainment it provides those of us who like to catalogue, organize, and learn... and for FREE (or $25 if you're a oldster, like me). Damn, don't complain so much!!

>292 Conkie: To all of you LT'ers whom complain incessantly, think of how much information this website provides to users, and how much entertainment it provides those of us who like to catalogue, organize, and learn... and for FREE (or $25 if you're a oldster, like me). Damn, don't complain so much!!

Yes, all of that wonderful *user entered* information! We complain because we love. :)

>291 Crypto-Willobie:: I'm not sure how an editions layer helps, because the whole point is that a short story which has never been published on its own doesn't constitute a discrete edition on its own. We need some way to catalogue works (sub-works?) which *aren't* editions in their own right and may never be.

Edition-less works, so to speak, since they only exist as components of the editions of some other work(s).

>292 Conkie: how much entertainment it provides those of us who like to catalogue, organize, and learn...

😂 You got me pegged.

>294 cjbanning: Some kind of sub-layer, maybe? I can see how it'd be good to be able to "click to expand" a title in series and have any component parts (like short stories or novels split into parts) that haven't been published separately show up. That would allow for the small sections to be part of the series but not take up space in the core unless you want them to.

>283 amanda4242: I'm sorry, it was I who combined the Mary Russell series on the assumption, clearly wrong, that it was what the new system intended. However I didn't remove the chronology data that you had added under the old system and I assumed, again clearly wrongly, that it would be combined with the other labelling systems. Maybe it is still there, albeit hidden because of the sort orders set. If not can my meddling be reversed by LT staff?

>292 Conkie:

I do not think it is "complaining" to inform staff of bugs in the new system, to request clarification on how it functions, or to point out difficulties or suggest improvements, which is what most of these posts are. This is new, and like anything new, there will be unexpected issues. It's not "complaining" to note those.

>297 CDVicarage:

When combining series, the labeling doesn't get copied over, for better or for worse. I de-archived the chronological version of the series and set a "reordered" relationship between the two, so that both are properly maintained.

>280 amanda4242:, >283 amanda4242:

Could you check to see that the series is restored properly?

>298 lilithcat: I do not think it is "complaining" to inform staff of bugs in the new system, to request clarification on how it functions, or to point out difficulties or suggest improvements, which is what most of these posts are. This is new, and like anything new, there will be unexpected issues. It's not "complaining" to note those

*** I agree with you 100%! ***

However, as someone who read the bulk of this thread and the thread titled New Series 1.0 Main Topic at one sitting, it was very clear to me, that there were several comments posted that attacked the person, and NOT the problem. Additionally, the thank you's were VERY few.

Perhaps my comment was inelegant, and a tad too general, but it was how I felt after reading over 200+ posts, back-to-back. :) or should that be :( ??

>299 shadrach_anki: Thank you. I'll have to leave it to Amanda to check the details, but I hope so.

>297 CDVicarage: Ah, it was an unintended consequence. I'm sorry for assuming it was done purposely.

>299 shadrach_anki: Thank you for restoring the series! I couldn't find it archived and kind of freaked out. Everything's there and I've sorted it into groups.

Since the publication sort is still buggy, I think it's best not to combine chronological and publication series yet. When we do start combining them we need to find a way to make sure we preserve any necessary labeling.

About the Original language of series.

I have a number of series (as well as publisher series) which are in a original language, Frisian, which is not in the the language drop down menu. As far as I now most of these books have not been translated in other languages. How do a select the 'original language'? There is currently no option for 'other' or 'unknown'.
I am sure there must be other people with more or less the same problem.

>303 Rommert:
Isn't it?

It is there when you edit a book.

Is there not a "show all languages" option for series? If there isn't, there should be.

>304 lilithcat:

Yep that works for books. But I don't see how you do that on the Basic Settings for a series.

>304 lilithcat: I'm not seeing a show all languages option for series.

ETA: I just posted a recommendation on the main topic thread to add show all languages.

>304 lilithcat: I thought I saw talk of it earlier in the Main Release thread and Tim said something about it not being needed. But I'm drawing a blank as to where.

Correction: He said he wanted to think about it. https://www.librarything.com/topic/321038#7179296

https://www.librarything.com/author/asarocatherine

Anyone wanna take a stab at the Skolian Empire series? There's a Novels only listing, a publication order, and a chronological order. Plus two other foreign languages that I have no idea which to merge into...

>309 gilroy:

The foreign language listings (French and German) seem easiest; I'd merge them with the English publication order listing. The novels-only chronological listing is a reordering of the publication order series. The other chronological order includes a bunch of short stories and/or novellas that are not found on any of the other listings.

When a Japanese light novel series is popular it usually gets a manga adaptation. Under the old system, light novel series and manga series were listed as separate series, but I was wondering if under the new system it might not be better to combine them and put the light novels (which came first) as the core and the manga adaptation in a Manga group. Does anyone else have any opinions on whether or not this would be a good idea?

Here's where we stand on groups, and how many series use them. >1 timspalding: so far.

Core (212734)
Collections and Selections (19087)
Short Stories (68)
Companions (43)
Graphic Novels (22)
Novellas (17)
Companion (16)
Novels (15)
Short stories (10)
Related (10)
Comics (9)
Graphic Novel (9)
Movies (8)
Supplement (8)
Films (8)
Related Work (7)
French editions (6)
Prequels (6)
Soundtracks (6)
Episodes (5)
Graphic novels (5)
Film (5)
Adaptations (5)
TV Series (5)
Omnibus (5)
Annuals (4)
RPG (4)
TV Show (4)
Companions and Guides (4)
Ephemera (4)
German editions (3)
Artbooks (3)
Historical (3)
Audiobook (3)
Activity Books (3)
Board Books (3)
Music (3)
German Editions (3)
Audio Dramas (3)
Abridged Audio (2)
Animation (2)
Scenarios (2)
Books (2)
Fortsättning av andra (2)
Abridged Versions (2)
Novelizations (2)
Cookbooks (2)
Uncategorized (2)
Cookbook (2)
Issues (2)
Soundtrack (2)
2-in-1 Collections (2)
RPGs (2)
Short Stories & Extras (2)
Module/Adventure (2)
Sequel by different author (2)
Additional material (2)
Genres (2)
Graphic Audio (2)
Early Readers (2)
TV series (2)
Miscellaneous (2)
Split Editions (2)
Print editions (2)
Scripts (2)
Comic (2)
Companion books (2)
Abenteuer-Spielbuch (2)
Graphic novel (2)
Rules (2)
Games (2)
Italian editions (2)
BBC Radio (2)
Unknown (2)

>311 yoyogod:

I'd keep them separate, and have a series relationship set with the manga as an adaptation of the light novels. Combining them doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as they are different mediums.

Edited to add: Since we specifically have a way to establish an adaptation relationship between series, and since plenty of people are going to interact with either the light novel series or the manga series, not both, it makes sense to use the adaptation relationship and keep both series.

>312 timspalding: Hmm. I can see several groups that could potentially be combined:

Short Stories (68)
Short stories (10)
Novellas (17)
Short Stories & Extras (2)

Related (10)
Related Work (7)

RPG (4)
RPGs (2)

Graphic Novels (22)
Graphic Novel (9)
Graphic novels (5)
Graphic novel (2)

Would it be sensible to auto-merge the different case variants into a Title Case variant?

>314 Maddz: I believe those are custom groups in different series. There's nothing to merge. It's merely a matter of consistency in naming them

Yes, I think we should encourage title case—"Short Stories" not "Short stories." This fits the existing "Collections and Selections" group.

>312 timspalding: Thanks for this - it's really helpful.

Besides the ones already mentions, there is another case of singular/plural (cookbook/s). I vote for going with plural versions of all groups rather than singular.

Then there's BBC Radio/Audio drama/Graphic audio which could possibly be the same things (radio drama) but I'm unsure about the last one.

I'd prefer to split up the vague ones like Miscellaneous/Genres/Additional material/Ephemera/Related/Related work into more precise categories - even if there's only one work for each group.

"Fortsättning av andra" (Fortsättning av andra) means "sequel by others" should be replaced by "Sequel by another author".

My rather bad german says "Abenteuer-Spielbuch" means "adventure game book" so should probably be replaced by something to that effect.
Even as a non-English native, I do think we should be using English terms for the group names - it's easier for everyone and to understand and there's coherence across LT.

Could some of the more popular group names be made available to choose from like the Collections and Selections is available to choose instead make? Then they would be the same.

>314 Maddz:

Short Stories and Novellas aren't necessarily the same thing - I have one series with both categories (following the current customary split by publishers/fans for that fictional universe).

I'd agree the rest could use combining.

>317 PawsforThought:

I would also vote for using the plural versions.

>317 PawsforThought:

Speaking specifically for Ephemera (since I'm pretty sure I'm the one who applied all instances of its use so far)... I created that category for a few manga series that also have pencil boards and calendars associated with them. I'm not opposed to changing it, but it's a good catch-all term for things of that nature.

I agree that plural versions and title case should be used for consistency.

>317 PawsforThought: BBC Radio *might* mean audio dramas by the BBC, but not all audio dramas are even produced for radio; see the bazillion Big Finish productions that have been catalogued.

>316 timspalding:
Title case *shudder*
So shouty, so unnecessarily shouty.

I'm in favour of having more subgroupings besides "Collections and selections"

>312 timspalding:
French editions
German edition(s)
Italian Editions ...

So they sort together for Series with more than one, I suggest a convention such as Translated Edition - German, and so forth.

>323 elenchus: Why not just a single group Translated Split Editions and number them as French 1, French 2, German 1, German 2 etc?

That way they're in their own group and can be kept in order. Otherwise a series which has been translated into multiple languages will potentially end up with a group for each language.

Translated works which are 1:1 with the original language works can be merged together and won't need it; it's only when they've been split into multiple works that it's needed.

323 elenchus - 324 Maddz
How do you determine which language you identify them as?

The Wheel of Time books have all been split multiple times, but when there's at least 10 languages according to the Series page there's obviously multiple languages that have been split the same way (although there's no guarantee the split was in the same place.
Lord of Chaos was split in two, three, and four across various languages. It may be that two of those were different printings of the same language.

>319 hf22: Agree that Short Stories and Novellas are not the same. They can be tricky to separate though, especially in children's fic and YA.

>320 shadrach_anki: What I'm saying is I don't think there should really *be* any catch-all groups because they tend to become a massive hodge-podge full of everything under the sun. Better to be precise. "Stationery" might be a better term? But then, I personally wouldn't add calenders and the like to a series - I don't think it counts as series if there's no plot involved.

>321 amanda4242: Sure, but then maybe it should just be called "audio drama"? Does it really matter which channel/medium it was produced for?

I agree that the translated editions that don't align with the original language split in volumes should have its own category (and only one, not one for each language) but what it should be called and what the details should entail I don't know. It is decidedly not an area of expertise for me.

>326 PawsforThought:

If one goal is to create a list of additional, default options (beyond "Collections and Selections") that will automatically show up as possible categories when organizing a series, then I think it is necessary to have some broader, catch-all groups. Precision can be useful, and can convey important shades of nuance in specific cases. In other cases, it just makes things more unwieldy and less user-friendly.

I'm not inclined to add things like calendars and the like to a series, but I am also not inclined to remove such items from a series listing if someone else has added them. Pull them from the Core into a dedicated sub-category, sure, but full-on removing them will have an impact on the catalogs of other users (and creates a higher potential for edit-wars).

>322 Petroglyph: How is Title Case shouty? It's a capital on each word. Shouty to me is every letter capital...

>323 elenchus: I was the one who created the different language editions, I'm going to change them to "Translated Editions"

>327 shadrach_anki: I'll be frank and say that if I did see something like a calendar added to a series I'm looking through, I most likely would remove it. Stationary is simply not part of a book series.

I see your point about default groups but I don't agree. I don't think having broad catch-all group is good and honestly can't think of an example where it would be better to have one than to have smaller, more precise groups. If the series is large and a possible catch-all group would contain a lot of titles, then splitting them up into smaller groups would make it much easier to locate the different kinds of books/media. If the series is smaller and the catch-all group would only contain a few items, then the smaller groups wouldn't take up much more extra space anyway. It's not unwieldy.

>330 PawsforThought: I can think of an example of a good large catch all situation.

Role Playing Games
You have the base Core books that are needed for playing the game. All the other flavor releases could just be lumped into a group called "Supplements." Or if you wanted to get a smaller scope "Adventures/Modules" and "Game Enhancements."

But this is true across 99% of RPGs that I know.

We could have a limited number of catch-all categories that would fulfill most folks needs (e.g. Guides and Companions) and still retain the option for created categories when needed.

One thing I have noticed is in the "Collections and Selections" group (and presumably also "Short stories" group where they exist) some short stories have the label 'short story, "{title}"' - where {title} is the title of the short story. This seems a bit redundant.

Interesting one. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/23726/Alternate-Histories

I don't think this is a real series. It is two separate series Northland and Time's Tapestry. It seems to exist just because there was an omnibus edition containing both series.

>331 gilroy: But aren't Adventures/Modules" and "Game Enhancements" fairly specific? Doesn't seem like a catch-all term to me. It's not "Various" or "Related".

>332 Crypto-Willobie: I don't think "Guides" or "Companions" are catch-alls. "Other" is catch-all.

>33 timspalding: I've seen that too, and removed it when I've come across it.

>335 PawsforThought: Well, that's why I said if you wanted groups with smaller scopes. Otherwise "Supplement" covers both.

>326 PawsforThought: Does it really matter which channel/medium it was produced for?

Maybe sometimes. And BBC Radio may not even refer to audio dramas; it could be podcasts, documentaries, etc.

While a wouldn't mind having two or three extra default options, I don't think we should go overboard since custom groups are added to the list of choices for a series.

>324 Maddz:

An elegant solution, especially as you point out it's needed only when the split is different than the original language. Your choice of group name helps clarify that, too .

>336 gilroy: I'd argue that "Supplement" is still more detailed than "Other" or "Related". In my world a "supplement" is a specific thing.

>337 amanda4242: Maybe, but I doubt that's what the term is used for in these series.
And I've never said I think these group names should be default options in the drop down menu (though i wouldn't mind it) - I only wish for some more consistency when it comes to naming groups. And I heartily dislike the massive catch-all groups so it'd be good if we could agree on some names to use when needed, whether they're in the drop-down menu or not.

>339 PawsforThought: Sorry, my second thought wasn't directed at you, it was just adding my two cents. :)

"Dramatized audio"? As distinct from straightforward readings which would be combined with the main work (exept Abridgements which would have their own group).

>339 PawsforThought: Well, better tell that to the RPG companies then. Because anything not part of their Core is considered a Supplement. Some of their titles even include that word.

I've created a new Thread in the Series group for asking for help when cleaning up these new series:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/321278

Hopefully, this will concentrate some of those requests away from these discussion threads.

>343 gilroy: So? We don't have to use the companies' terms for things if we don't want to - if another term works and makes better sense (and maybe works for other series as well) we should go with that instead, whatever the companies think.

>344 PawsforThought: Honestly, for RPGS, I'm NOT seeing a better term. Your suggestions are too broad and don't really describe what the item is.

That's the problem with trying to go too broad. They will still lead to custom groups, because the broad terms don't fit what people want. I mean, look at Tim's list in >312 timspalding:. Look at how they tend to be descriptive of what goes in the group. That suggests this is what people seek.

Can we agree on a way of marking it when there are two series for publication and chronology?

I propose comma then in caps, like:

X, Chronological Order
X, Publication Order

Not, say, Dragonriders of Pern: Chronological Order.

Anyone object?

>346 timspalding: *shrug* Doesn't bother me.

We should also decide on situations like:

Echanted \Levine\

(Series link: https://www.librarything.com/nseries/3801/Enchanted-%5BLevine%5D)

Presumably there are other "Enchanted" series. Shall we put the author in brackets? Parentheses? Always give the full name of author? What?

>348 timspalding: I've been using braces when I need to add distinguishing info to a series title. Author's last name seems to work fine for books, and for comics and TV series I've been using years, e.g. Hellblazer {1988-2013} and Lucifer {2018-}.

ETA: I'm not seeing another series titled just Enchanted. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I've run across a few series where an author's name has been added even when it's not necessary to distinguish it from a similarly named series.

In my view, not a series:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Disagree if you like.

>350 timspalding: I don't think it is, but it's kind of an edge case since it was originally published in three parts. It's not like Imajica, which is one book that was split into two parts for its paperback release.

>348 timspalding: Usually, that was done when another series existed with the same name. There's a lot of Billionaire Pet style series over in romance. If the series didn't have a duplicate, the name in brackets wasn't necessary.

But changing to braces I'm okay with.

How does the new system handle when there's more than one series with the same name?

>350 timspalding: Guessing that, based on this official statement, we're to treat this one the same way?
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/859/The-Green-Mile

>350 timspalding: & >353 gilroy: I think a case could be made that something that was originally published in multiple parts might constitute a series. But where would we draw the line? Many 19th century novels were originally serialized and I don't think anyone wants to consider David Copperfield a series.

>352 gilroy:

I couldn't tell, but Trilogy appeared to be another candidate.

I'm familiar with the Sienkiewicz series, but when I reviewed there was a single book from another author and series looped into that. I wondered if it was only because the Series name was the same.

I don't recall the book, but I did remove it. And also wondered why the other books in the series weren't also lumped together, but since I wasn't familiar with that other author, and there was just the one book entangled, I didn't explore further.

>351 amanda4242:

It's usual in the grand scheme of things, but there's a difference between a series and a "serial novel" (see Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Mile_(novel) ). It's no more a series than Pnin—published in parts in the New Yorker—The Bonfire of the Vanities, or half of what Dickens wrote.

How does the new system handle when there's more than one series with the same name?

Actually, the new system doesn't care. This is in part because names are also transnational. So we need to police this, I think.

(In theory, I could make some sort of warning when there was a collision, or have a page listing them, but it's very low on my list of priorities!)

>353 gilroy:

Yeah, I think Green Mile should be deleted.

I'm confused about why The Green Mile was deleted. Didn't the series make it easier for members to confirm they have all the parts?

>328 gilroy:
I think it's shouty to emphasize all the words with a capital. Less so than all caps, of course, but still too insistent for a title -- a title is a piece of metadata, not a Product Name (TM) that an overenthusiastic voiceover wants to stand out from the rest of the ad.

And often, title case is inconsistent: sometimes determiners and prepositions get a capital, sometimes they don't. That is a different issue, but still one that bugs me.

Sentence case commits neither sin, and I much prefer that, even for titles.

348 timspalding

I don't know how long ago it started but I have been seeing square brackets used with the author surname in them to distinguish between different series for what I feel is years. Quite possible since very near the introduction of Series info. A lot of it happens with the author name appended even if not needed, presumably because the person that created it thought it was expected/required based on seeing other series following that methodology.
Surname only has been the convention I've followed after realising that's what was most common (in what I saw).
I can see this making Touchstones in chat difficult/unwieldy, but I don't tend to use that aspect of the site so it's not been an issue for me.

346 timspalding

As to Chronological/Publication I'd be inclined to put those in square brackets as well.

352 gilroy

Near as I can tell, the distinguishing is all by series number. But that doesn't show when you aim to add a book to an existing series from the work page. Which makes getting the right series less simple than it could be if there isn't a distinguishing factor in the series name.

The Bachman Books books aren't a series, right?

>360 amanda4242:
Notionally, no. But some publishers definitely issue these as "the four Bachman books", even going so far as to number them. So, a publisher series?

>361 Petroglyph: I've always been a little fuzzy on publishers series so I leave it to someone else to decide.

After looking at a lot of (in particular) publisher series the last few days, a few observations:

1) Many publisher series (and some regular series) have fairly generic names that could potentially apply to multiple series. Things like "Modern Classics", "African Writers Series", "Swiss Literature".
The best practice should be to provide unambiguous names, for example by including the publisher/imprint name: "Longman African Writers", "Dalkey Archive Swiss Literature Series" etc. It seems to me more elegant to integrate this into the series name where possible rather than appending a disambiguation to the end of the name in parentheses/brackets/braces.

2) Please can we show related publisher series on the series page and vice versa, even if this is just for combination purposes. There is currently a fair amount of duplication (e.g. publisher series that have been classified as regular series), much of which could be identified more quickly if overlaps across series types are displayed.

3) The series function is currently being widely used to track several types of information that are not actually series. I don't necessarily agree with all these usages, but they are widespread and not likely to stop anytime soon. To wit:

a) Multi-volume works/sets, like the case of Livy mentioned upthread. Yes, the work-work relationships function can be used for this, but if more than 2-3 volumes are involved, this quickly becomes unwieldy, particularly if a long work has been divided up in a variety of ways. At present, the "series" function is the only way to view all the volumes and their relationships to each other on a single page in an organized fashion. Additionally, the distinction between a multi-volume work and a series is not necessarily always entirely clear-cut (see: Lord of the Rings).

b) Collected works of an author in a specific edition. I don't really see this as a publisher series, it's more like a multi-volume work (a) at the publisher level.

c) Publisher imprints (or in some cases, all the works of a publisher), particularly when each title is assigned a number. The publisher series are currently flooded with such entries ("Penguin Classics" and its variants in every major European language). To be honest, I think the value of this information is fairly low in most cases. However, for small presses and imprints with a strong thematic focus, it can be a useful way to identify interesting titles, and some people collect specific editions (e.g. Library of America). Here, too, the distinction between an imprint and a publisher series can be somewhat fluid.

d) Another marginal case is the use of the series function to group and organize individually catalogued issues of a journal or other periodical.

I wonder if the current series function could be adapted to better handle these usages, e.g., by adding additional categories or something.

>345 gilroy: I hope you don't think I was suggesting that "Other" or "Related" were suggestions of mine because they were examples of what I *don't* like. I was saying that "Supplement" sound more specific than those but less specific than "Adventures/Modules" and "Game Enhancements" which you mentioned earlier.

>348 timspalding: I vote for parentheses. I dislike alll other forms of brackets/braces.

>358 Petroglyph: It's standard to capitalize titles in English and since we're talking about series titles, it makes sense to capitalize them. Titles in other languages (where capitalizing isn't standard) should be avoided, IMHO.

>363 spiphany: I wholeheartedly agree with 1) - publisher series should include the publisher's name most if not all of the time (I can think of a case where this shouldn't apply, but I'm sure there are some).
Regarding 3d) I think it might be better to have a completely new function for journals/magazines/etc. but that seems like it'd be another huge project.

>364 PawsforThought: Naming publisher series:
In most cases, yes, the publisher's name is important. But I could give examples of series by academic/university presses have fairly unique names, e.g. "Europe's Legacy in the Modern World", "Frontiers of Narrative", "Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics", or are so specific that another publisher choosing that exact title is unlikely ("Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought")
I suppose for some of these, other people might argue that they are true series rather than publisher series; I wouldn't, unless the books were written for the series, which is usually not the case (exceptions here would be series like "Routledge Handbooks" or "Very Short Introductions"). The fact that the majority of the titles in such series have not been published outside the series has more to do with the limited market of highly specialized titles than anything else.

>348 timspalding:
"Enchanted Levine"

Can we agree to use something other than square brackets, so they don't get confused with touchstones in talk posts?

>364 PawsforThought:
If you look back at the original posts (>314 Maddz:, >316 timspalding:, >320 shadrach_anki:), you'll see they were not talking about series titles, but about the sub-headers on the series page (Short stories, Related works, etc.).

>265 aspirit: I figured there would be exceptions, but couldn't think of any since publisher series isn't something I part much attention to. But since it wouldn't exactly *harm* those exception to have the publishers' name in the series name, I don't see a reason why you shouldn't add them - it'll just make for more consistency.

>267 Carmen.et.Error: I know - I wrote the wrong word. But the group names are titles too so the same rules should apply.

>357 aspirit:

But surely they could also do that by looking at the work to work relationships ?

>364 PawsforThought: PawsforThought:
> 363 spiphany:

Naming publisher series: Ok with Publisher So : Name, Series
Ex : http://www.librarything.fr/nseries/2288/Gallimard-D%C3%A9couvertes

But I need to understand well

1) The original editorial collection is French (Publisher : Gallimard, Collection : Découvertes). There are after some serie.
So 'Dévouvertes' isn't a serie in my opinion. True ? False ?

2)This publisher serie is translated into 30/40 languages. Each publisher brings their own title
Ex
Thames and Hudson, New horizons (UK)
http://www.librarything.fr/nseries/273736/Thames-and-Hudson-New-horizons

Abrams, Discoveries (US)
http://www.librarything.fr/nseries/18835/Abrams-Discoveries

Standaard ontdekkingen (NL)
http://www.librarything.fr/nseries/10155/Standaard-ontdekkingen

Abenteuer Geschichte (DE)
http://www.librarything.fr/nseries/267704/Abenteuer-Geschichte
....

QUESTION :

How to fill in and organize the information and make the links to see the collections in each language and the titles that are included only in that language ?
I'm a bit lost for the organization of the international series ... but I want to do the best cause the functionality is potentially fantastic for walking from one country to another

Tanks a lot

Including the author's name in series titles seems superfluous now that the system can handle multiple distinct series with the same name. I vote that they be removed entirely. Displaying the name of the series author next to the title of the series should be sufficient to disambiguate in cases where multiple series have the same name. (This might requiring adding the name of the series author in some places where it's not currently displaying, but I think that would be a good thing even if not technically needed to disambiguate.)

>371 cjbanning:
I'd agree with removing the author name from the series name, if there was a way in the search results to know which series was which (on the work page, in the Add/Edit series popup window). I don't have an example at the moment, but hypothetically if there were three series named "Enchanted" you'd currently just see "Enchanted" three times in the search results. The results should include the series author (if there is one) and a link to the actual series - as is done when searching for works to add a work-to-work relationship.

E.g.
Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (series, author)
Enchanted by Bob Jones (series, author)
Enchanted by Joe Roberts (series, author)

instead of just
Enchanted
Enchanted
Enchanted

where clicking on them actually adds the work to the series without any way to figure out which one is which.

>370 JMK2020: I don't know anything about that series so I can't really say anything for certain. But if the whole series has been published in multiple languages (it's the same exact series but in translation) then there should only be one series, and the different translations of the works should be combined with each other (The French, Dutch, German and American translations of the Rembrandt books for instance - they're all the same book but in different languages? Then they should be combined with each other.)

If the series has different names in different languages you add the differnt names under "Edit Series" -> "Series name", but from what I can tell that's already been done.

>358 Petroglyph: I guess if you aren't used to seeing that style, it does feel more shouty than to those who are seeing it regularly.

>356 timspalding: If the new system can handle multiple series, same name, then we can drop adding the author name to the series name entirely.

Yeah, what >371 cjbanning: said.

>372 r.orrison: Unless you are creating a new series, you can select same author to find the Enchanted of the author you're working with. That keeps it from giving you three unknowns.

Also, it doesn't automatically add. It gives a pop up first, which if you cancel out of, keeps from adding it.

>370 JMK2020:
The idea of a publisher series is that a publisher collects a number of books that have some thematic connection and publishes them as a "series". This is different than a normal series because the individual titles in the series aren't fundamentally connected. In a regular series, all books were written to be part of the series (shared characters, shared world, shared plot, etc.). By contrast, books in a publisher series may have already been published previously and independently and aren't recognizable as belonging to the series based on their content -- it is essentially a label used by publishers. Any individual title (say, The Odyssey) may be published in a second publisher series, but there is usually no relationship between the two publisher series. It doesn't make sense here to speak about one publisher series being "first" or being "translated".

LibraryThing is based on "works", which bundle together all the versions (all translations, reprints, etc.) of a particular text. The different versions within each work are "editions". LibraryThing doesn't really distinguish between these editions, so there is often information connected with a work that only applies to some editions. Unfortunately, there is no way to indicate which information belongs to which edition. You can see this if you look at the list of "other authors" for a classic text (take The Odyssey again). There are dozens of translators (into English, French, German, Spanish, etc.) but the list doesn't tell us who did which translation.

A "series" exists at work level. A "publisher series", by contrast, exists at edition level, so there is the same issue as for "other authors" -- there is no way to indicate which edition of a book is part of the publisher series, only that an edition was part of the publisher series.

Sometimes publishers will commission a series of books, where every title in the series is written specifically for the series and follows a certain format (the ...for Dummies series is a good example of this). This is a true series, not a publisher series because every title is recognizable as part of the series. It can (and has) been translated into other languages. Here I don't think it is currently possible to determine which titles have been translated and which ones have not.

>377 spiphany: That's not the LibraryThing definition of a publisher's series. In LT the distinction between the two types of series is entirely about whether any books belonging to works in the series have been published outside the series.

>372 r.orrison: I agree that we need a way to distinguish same-named series when adding a work to a series from the work page using the search. If that can be clarified I think we can stop using the author or publisher indications that were needed in the old system.

>378 jjwilson61:
"Have been published outside the series" or "can be meaningfully published as not belonging to the series"?
I see "some titles have been published outside the series" as a useful rule of thumb, but any further than that and it's nonsensical. I don't recall (and can't quickly find) right off-hand exactly what definition LT has been using, if there is an "official" definition at all, but I think this is an oversimplistic interpretation.
The logical consequence of using this as an absolute and sole criterion is that every series is a regular series until the first time a single work of that series is published in some other context without the series label, at which point we have to change the series to a publisher series.
Who guarantees that NONE of the works in a series have ever been published elsewhere? What if a translation into an obscure language simply hasn't been catalogued on LibraryThing yet? What if the publisher suddenly decides to republish a long-out-of-print work as part of the series, even though previously all the works in the series had been original works?
What if a single work that was clearly written as part of a series (say, a story set in a specific fictional universe) is translated all by itself and published without any mention of it being part of a series and without any intent to publish the other works in the series? I hardly think many users would say that the series is therefore a publisher series, or that the work in it somehow loses its identity as part of the series just because it has been published without the label.

>377 spiphany: This is really helpful, thanks. So would Library of America be considered a series or a publisher series? With few exceptions, they don't publish anything that hasn't previously been published, which sounds like editions, not works. But the selections are often unique to the Library of America (particularly in the case of selected writings or letters, or thematic anthologies), so many of them would be works in their own right, not just editions (to my way of thinking).

>380 spiphany: Your acting like this feature was designed this way from the beginning, but it evolved into it's current form. In the beginning there were only series. But Tim got complaints from members that their copy of Huckleberry Finn wasn't in the American Classics series so they'd remove it. So to limit the edit wars Tim created a new kind of series where the books didn't have to be exclusively in the series and those series wouldn't show on the work page. For the lack of a better term he called them Publisher's series.

>381 JacobHolt:
I've been assuming Library of America is a publisher series,** though it wouldn't surprise me if others disagree. There's a tendency for series like this to go back and forth between "series" and "publisher series" as different people with different interpretations of what a publisher series is come along and edit them.
You're right that the selection of works included in each volume is generally unique, which pushes them closer to series territory. But this feels different to me than a series like, say, The Best American Short Stories where each volume brings together pieces by diverse authors that would otherwise never appear together, thus creating an anthology with a distinct identity and purpose of its own.

(**Actually, strictly speaking, I personally wouldn't call Library of America a series at all, publisher or otherwise, but rather one of those cases I was complaining about earlier -- a numbered list of all the books by a particular publisher.)

>382 jjwilson61:
I'm not new to LibraryThing (even if I don't often post in these forums) and I'm aware that the idea of the publisher series has evolved over time. I've also followed many of the discussions and I'm aware that there hasn't always been consensus about how exactly to define it. I was trying to offer an explanation of how I understand it to work in the hopes that my reasoning would be helpful to others. As far as I know my interpretation is broadly consistent with how others have been using it (the explanation on the Wiki page is similar). I wasn't trying to dictate the "right" way to define such series and I apologize if it came across that way.

You were the one who implied that there is an official, generally understood definition of what a publisher series is, and that my explanation was not complaint with it. I pushed back against that claim because, as far as I can tell there isn't any such definition; please point me to it if I am incorrect. Given that, I don't see much value in insisting on a definition (i.e., that the distinction is "entirely" based on whether any works have been published outside the series) that is less than ideal as a set of pragmatic criteria for deciding whether something is a publisher series.

>383 spiphany: I personally wouldn't call Library of America a series at all, publisher or otherwise, but rather one of those cases I was complaining about earlier -- a numbered list of all the books by a particular publisher

But it is not all books by the publisher - LOA have more than one series (the Poets one for example) and a lot of non-series books. These are a series. What type of series we want to record them as is a different question but they definitely are a series.

This thread is getting crazy long. Can we come up with a summary of practices to be posted on a continuation thread? Like:

1. First, do no harm.

2. Hold off on combining chronological and publication order for now.

3. Be consistent within a series. Use consistent labels, capitalization, etc.

Other points?

>385 amanda4242:

This thread is getting crazy long.

Indeed.

Continuing it.

>153 amanda4242: Hi Amanda,

It looks to me like the stories have been deleted and only the omnibus remains. Should we not have both so that I can read them in order and add them to my "read" list as I go not just the omnibus? It also messes with how the series numbering works out. Please advise.

>387 Nebulous40: I'm of the opinion that multi-author anthologies shouldn't even be included in a series unless the relevant short story hasn't been catalogued as they add unrelated common knowledge to the series pages and popular stories can be reprinted many times; work-to-work relationships on the work pages will show which anthologies & collections the stories appear in. There is a small group of people who believe that short stories *shouldn't* be added, apparently on the grounds that if it hasn't been published independently it somehow isn't a "real" work, and delete them. If you would like to add the stories back to the series, I certainly support it, but be aware that someone else will probably come along and undo your work.