Icons to Indicate Unowned Works Contained in Owned Works

Requesting icons (checkmarks, ticks, or otherwise) to indicate unowned works that are contained in owned works, e.g. Max Eastman’s Enjoyment of Poetry (1913), contained in Eastman’s Enjoyment of Poetry with Other Essays in Aesthetics (1939), in turn contained in Eastman’s Enjoyment of Poetry, with Anthology for Enjoyment of Poetry (1951). See also: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341559#7829057, https://www.librarything.com/topic/341559#7829267, and https://www.librarything.com/topic/341559#7829436

But if the work is contained in a work you own, then you own that work, too, don't you?

@Maddz, @melannen, @SandraArdnas. Others?

>2 lilithcat: Exactly. The request is for an indication that, if I have Max Eastman’s Enjoyment of Poetry, with Anthology for Enjoyment of Poetry (1951), I also have Enjoyment of Poetry with Other Essays in Aesthetics (1939) and Enjoyment of Poetry (1913) contained in it.

>4 jasbro:

Okay, I get it. It was the use of the term "unowned" that confused me!

>3 jasbro: Yes, this has been requested as feature for a long time. My own personal addendum would be to let us rate and review constituent parts too in such cases, but even just checkmarks would already be very helpful

I’d love this!

(Pony: A half checkmark to indicate a work where I’ve catalogued something contained within it.)

Definitely! It’s a way to avoid duplication when you have an omnibus - or an aide-memoire to replace a multi-author anthology which contains 1 short with a single-author anthology which contains several shorts forming part of a series.

That would be a very nice addition to avoid getting duplicates.

+1

+1

Yes please! to ticks to indicate individual works within omnibus that I own.

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>20 jasbro:
After eight consecutive "bumps" with no other entries in the thread, there's no reason to suspect that this behavior attracts the useful attention of developers, but I can tell you that it irritates me as an LT user who is subscribed to this group.

>21 paradoxosalpha:

Ditto. Not to mention all the other threads being "bumped" in this group.

When I see a new message has been posted to a thread, I assume something new has been said. It's tremendously annoying to open the thread and find nothing but "bump".

>21 paradoxosalpha:
It's been a while since we've had any reason to suspect that RSIs attract the useful attention of developers in general. I for one have bumped a few threads, my apologies if it has disturbed other users - it certainly hasn't had much impact otherwise.

>21 paradoxosalpha: >22 lilithcat: >23 Felagund: Understood, and apologies FWIW.

Best I can tell, we've been suggesting this since Feb 10, 2011, 10:17 pm (see Green checkBOXes, which went dormant after Mar 18, 2014); lots of interest, a multiplicity of suggestions & requests, but no progress. I'm still hoping and not inclined to give up hope, because it really could make a huge difference both for our library and for the increasing number of work relationships that I and other members continue to log.

I'm aware of multiple, repetitive & current threads on point. I've suggested this evening that we close Green check marks for books contained in omnibus editions and Extend the list of 'works I own' using the 'contains' relationship in favor of this, the most recent thread on point, and I'll pledge/attempt to limit my bumps here to 90 days after the last post.

Hopefully this proposal will go at least a little ways to keep the notion from going out-of-sight, out-of-mind altogether, yet mitigate some general/mutual irkedness all around. I appreciate and welcome any feedback that may be warranted ...

ETA: @timspalding, maybe you'll let us know if there's a more constructive way to advance this suggestion, or if it just ain't gonna happen?

My apologies if the 24th June bump was a bit soon but I was doing some cataloguing (in preparation for an overseas trip aka bookshop visits) and that feature would really have been a big help.

I think this would be a very helpful feature.

I know its not ideal, but in cases such as >25 humouress: it might behoove one to create a new collection, called "owned through containment" or such, and go through those books which are anthologies or otherwise would contain other works, and quick add the contained works of each into the new collection. It would take a lot of time, I don't pretend that it wouldn't, but in my opinion, it would be better than accidentally buying books you already have.

>26 GraceCollection: It's what I (reluctantly) do... I called mine "Included".

ETA: Along with the "fun" tag, "future generic editions", since most or all edition-specific data for those books is either wrong (if added automatically) or forever missing.

Bump?

But it seems you can add these works under "Series and Work Relationships" on your page. Is that the case. It seems to be there for the work mentioned by jasbro in post #1.

>29 krazy4katz: Yes, you can. We are asking that, when there is a work in 'Series and Relationships' for something we already own, that there is an icon indicating that we have that book.

For example, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy contains, among other books, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. This is information that is already in 'Series and Relationships.' I own TUHGttG, but when I go to the page for Thanks for All the Fish, there is no indication that I already have a copy of this work through TUHGttG.

So, if I didn't already know, I might buy a copy of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, and then I would end up having two copies, because the full text of that book is already contained in a book I have.

>30 GraceCollection: I see. Thank you for the explanation. If I understand correctly, “Series and Work Relationships” is useful if you already own the omnibus but not if you are thinking of buying it because you may already own some of the included works. However you would not know that unless you search your library for each of the works included in the omnibus. Is that correct? I guess this is what Jasbro is saying in #4.

Hm. Even adding the existing stars to the titles listed under "Contains" on the work page would be an advance, and wouldn't require a new type of "indirectly cataloged" star for other listings.

>31 krazy4katz: If you look at some omnibuses of collections, there's an indirect relationship which adds in the relationship to the component 2 levels down.

So you have omnibus B, which is composed of Omnibus A (novels 1-2 + additional material) plus novel 3 and yet more additional material.

There's a direct relationship with novel 3, and indirect relationships with novels 1 & 2.

But to see that you have to click through to the work page; we're asking for this to be visible on the series page indicating an indirectly owned work as well as the directly owned work.

If you have both directly and indirectly owned, then the directly owned icon should take precedence (unless both can be accommodated). It's sometimes the case you have some parts of a series plus an omnibus which includes them and other parts.

1: Would be nice to have a private rating column e.g. 5 stars

2: Would be nice to have a private symbol column e.g. for emojis ❇️,
maybe one symbols max

3: Would be nice to have private keyword (say 6 characters) column

The changes would be easy to implement and solve many of the problems above

>34 JonathonL88:

I don't see how these suggestions address the request? The idea behind the ticks is to automatically use an information that is already in the system (work relationships), the suggestions feel like more manual entry (but I could be wrong, of course).

(edited to fix a silly typo)

>35 Felagund: If you mean my post, it is referring to existing work-to-work relationships where you do see the direct and indirect relationships.

Manual entry only comes in if you're not seeing the relationship - which could mean an uncombined book or a missing relationship.

Oops, I was trying to respond to post 34, sorry about the confusion. Somehow I typed 88, that certainly made my point harder to understand :-D

>34 JonathonL88: Are you talking about having columns in your catalogue ie in the 'Your Books' tab? If you rate a book, the stars appear in the 'rating' column (which you can select from the settings at the top of the page) although, of course, it wouldn't be private as such. You can also use the 'private comments' column.

But, as >35 Felagund: says, this wouldn't solve the problem I have which is that when I go to a bookshop and want to quickly check what works I already own in a series it's not easy to see those that are contained in other books (omnibus, anthologies etc) so I have to remember to go into my catalogue and hunt within the omnibus editions. Bear in mind that internet connectivity in shops can be slow to non-existent so searching can be an exercise in frustration. If I could look at a series page and see that there's an 'indirectly owned' tick then I'd know I already have it.

>38 humouress: Amen & Hear! Hear!

We're fortunate to have SO MANY books we wouldn't have acquired (by purchase, gifting, free-range, etc.) ... if'n I'd've only known we a'ready had 'em. Hence, my pie-in-the-sky, unicorn-with-wings-and-sprinkles-and-a-cherry-on-top wish for SOMETHING using existing LT date to tell me, "No, you really don't need that one too." I mean, something more than the little voice in my head and the little, good-conscience angel, apparently sitting on my right shoulder (my deaf side, meaning the little devil on my left shoulder more often gets my attention instead) ...

>39 jasbro: If you could just get them to switch seats...

Are my eyes deceiving me or has there been a Hogswatch miracle?!

>41 amanda4242: Perhaps a partial rollout? I'm not seeing this on my end — I also have a copy of the Ultimate Hitchhiker's.

I see them too: checks in the contains/contained in relationship lists. Still no "indirect" mark for things like series listings or tag pages, but a welcome way to see on the work page if a book is included in or includes one I already have in my catalog.

>41 amanda4242: We did add checkmarks there; good eye! This was the simplest solution we could implement without too much work. Hope it helps!

>44 knerd.knitter: It is very helpful! Thank you!

>41 amanda4242: Ooh! Let me have a look in my books ...

>44 knerd.knitter: It helps, thank you. Though I still have to search a bit to confirm whether I have a work. But much better, thanks.

(Now if you could find a way to put it on the series lists?... 😬🙏)

I think this is on the right track. In my digging around my own catalog, I've come across a "series" that really isn't one, but might have been created to contain the four novellas into one set to make it easier to track. Not sure if this is widespread or just a fluke, but could this feature be trumpeted a bit louder so that folks know they don't necessarily have to force books into a series that doesn't really exist.

>44 knerd.knitter: Would it be too much to ask this is expanded just a little bit? About half of my collection is in storage, and because it's currently inaccessible I've not put it in my 'Your library.' I've noticed for the works that I specifically have, this translates to a grey symbol instead of a checkmark — would it be possible to implement that grey symbol on the related works where the checkmark is?

>49 GraceCollection: I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that the grey circle is not showing in the series and work relationship section?

>50 knerd.knitter: Yes. Where >41 amanda4242: is seeing a green checkmark, I am not seeing anything. I own the same work, Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, but it is in a different collection and not in my 'Your Library,' so I expect a grey symbol (it is a checkmark in grey under 'recommended for you based on your books...' but in other places, like lists, I usually see a different grey symbol which is nine white circles in the formation of a triangle) but I don't see anything at all.

I assumed the green checkmark/Your library was that only thing this feature was drawing from, which is why I asked to expand it, but if it is supposed to be there already, it's not showing up for me. I can make a bug report if needed. If the information is relevant, this also happens to me with the touchstone list on the right side of a talk post: I get a green checkmark for something in 'Your library,' but no symbol, grey or otherwise, for the stuff that's among my collections but not 'Your library.'

>51 GraceCollection: Thank you for explaining! I think I've fixed this in the series/work relationships section and in the touchstones and abouts, but please let me know if any of those are still missing.

>52 knerd.knitter: Yep! Looks perfect on my end. Thanks so much!

>52 knerd.knitter: I also have the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide not in My Library, and if I understand this right there should now be a grey mark next to Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, since it's included in the anthology? But I don't see it.

(Thank you for adding this feature!! Top ten most wanted, and tbh I'm fine if it only works for green checks.)

>54 melannen: The way the feature works (for now) means you need to go to the page for Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, and then scroll down to work relationships, where it will list Ultimate and (should) have a grey mark next to that.

>54 melannen: The other way around - you see the icons for books you have in your library in the relationship section of the books you do not own (or own - the relationship section in any book now shows your the icons if any of the books in there are in your collections) . So not exactly the feature we all had always wanted but a good first step anyway.

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Okay, you want this wherever the current icons appear? Or would it be enough to put something on the work page?

I think it would need to be some variation in design. If I own a single-volume version of the Lord of the Rings, I both do and don't own The Fellowship of the Ring. Ideas for how to distinguish them?

>58 timspalding:

Wherever the current ones appear.

A new icon seems like best way to distinguish. Preferably something suggestive of ”indirectness”.

>58 timspalding: Wherever the current icons appear, but definitely series pages!

I was thinking something like the inverse of the current icons: so instead of white on colour, you have colour on white.

One thing that bugs me about the current icons is that if a title isn't in 'Your library' but is in a specific collection, it's that grey icon not a coloured tick. Is there any way to change that so that collections - apart from 'Read but unowned' - are by default in 'Your library'? Perhaps add a tickbox in 'Edit collections'? With getting on for 18,000 titles, 'Your library' is rather unwieldy.

How about desaturated—black and white?

>61 timspalding: Only if it's less obvious than the grey icon when you don't use 'Your library'. See my post >60 Maddz:

>60 Maddz: the inverse of the current icons: so instead of white on colour, you have colour on white

I like that; it's visually distinctive while keeping the underlying color-coding intact (for those LT users who do not have one of the various types of color-blindness).

Mind you, if there's a chance for new icons, I'd love to see a set of fairly distinctive genre-related icons... These could be applied to collections as well (when genre-related...)

>58 timspalding: Wherever current icons appear; definitely on series pages please.

Specific example from my books - the Vorkosigan Saga; I have several omnibus editions of quite a few (other) omnibus in that series but they don't contain books in consecutive chronological order. So if I'm in a bookshop and trying to fill in gaps (although I think I have now, for this series) I have to go back and forth trying to work out what I've already got, all the while relying on whatever internet services I can access from the depths of the bookshop. It would be easier if there were some kind of icon next to those books I already own that are within the omnibus but I don't have separate, individual copies of.

That is, most of all, what I would like this feature for.

>65 humouress: A dedicated Table of Contents field might also address some these concerns. For example, The Lord of the Rings includes The Fellowship of the Ring; The Fellowship of the Ring includes The Ring Sets Out: Being the First Book of The Lord of the Rings. Personally, I’d use both a “Contained In” icon AND Table of Contents, prob’ly in slightly different ways. More to the point, consider The Yellow Wallpaper, which is contained in Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories, but nothing tells me I’ll find it there; at present,only nine of the forty-four stories are cataloged separately and set up in the anthology’s Work Relationships. Or Shirley Jackson’s contribution to The Granta Book of the American Short Story; I *think* it’s “The Lottery,” but at the moment, it’s not among the fourteen “contained in” Work Relationships, so I can only guess unless/until I remember for sure - or taking a wild & lucky guess - pull the anthology to check the complete contents for myself every time.

>66 jasbro: Absolutely, I would love a Table of Contents (especially for cookbooks). There is a separate RSI for that here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/332959

>67 humouress: There is indeed, and I'm in that thread too. But I made (misfired?) a connection and couldn't help myself also being obsessive about it here ...

>60 Maddz: One thing that bugs me about the current icons is that if a title isn't in 'Your library' but is in a specific collection, it's that grey icon not a coloured tick. Is there any way to change that so that collections - apart from 'Read but unowned' - are by default in 'Your library'?

I would very highly not prefer this. I have other collections that are not in 'Your library' on purpose, like ebooks, for instance. It would make my experience of LT worse if these were no longer distinct from each other, and I ended up, for example, passing up on owning a physical copy of a book I really wanted, because I became under the impression that I did own a book and had it in my library when in fact I just had an ebook copy.

Is there a particular reason why you want to change this flow instead of just adding the books to 'Your library' which you want to show up as though they are in 'Your library'?

As for >58 timspalding:, I do want this where current icons appear — so that if someone touchstones a short story, for instance, I can see instantly that I've got it somewhere in my collection of collections and anthologies, without having to check the work page. I'm in favour of the idea of inverting the colours, green/blue/purple/grey on white instead of white on green/blue/purple/grey. I think desaturated/black & white would be too easy to confuse with the 'in a collection but not "Your library"/Read/Wishlist', which is currently grey.

>69 GraceCollection: Have you seen the size of my library? I have 17,850 books catalogued. I prefer to have separate collections. It would be possible to do this via a setting when the collection is created (a tick to indicate 'include in my library') so you have both options.

>69 GraceCollection: I’m not inclined to disagree with you on preference, but the default cuts both ways. For example, if I already have one record for a work but - for whatever reason (e.g., a non-LT family member’s library) - also a second record of the same work, but in a different collection, the icon defaults to that other collection. I hafta go look at the work (horrors! 😆) to see what collection(s) it’s in before I know whether to pick up that third copy. On the up-side, at least the non-standard collection icons are relatively less common occurrences in our library, so it’s not all that much of an imposition.

>71 Maddz: I still don't see the problem. If you want all the books in a collection to also be in the Your Library collection then you can use Power Edit to do that. A book can be in more than one collection. If that makes Your Library too unwieldy then you don't need to look at that collection.

>73 jjwilson61: I use 'Your Library' as a default before the book goes to the correct collection (usually when I am unsure of the genre collection to use). It also turns up when I clone a copy of a work. Basically, it's used to herd strays not the main flock.

>74 Maddz: Then why don't you create a collection for these stray books, instead? I still don't understand why you want to change the way LT works instead of using power edit to put those books which you want to appear to be in 'Your library', in 'Your library'.

>72 jasbro: I believe there was an RSI a while back to change the preference order of the icons, such as 'Your library' on top, then 'Wishlist', then 'Read', then 'Other'. I only use 'Your library' and collections which aren't in 'Your library' (grey) and so far haven't had issues, but I can see how it could get confusing. Maybe we could 'stack' icons, so something in 'Your library' and 'Wishlist', for example, shows both icons? I'm not sure what would be most helpful.

>75 GraceCollection: Because it's yet another collection to manage, so why bother when a default collection works just as well?

Please bear in mind I have over 10 times the number of titles logged than you do and I still have at least another owned 1000 titles to add in books and RPGs alone. (We won't talk about the large stash of board games yet to be catalogued here and BoardGameGeek...) Between my partner and myself, we usually end up purchasing around 50 ebooks a month, more when there's a deal one of us is interested in (looks at the comic bundles I've purchased in the past couple of months).

From my experience here this is the distinction Tim intended for tags. If you do, in fact, have 18,000 items in your house/possession, that's the Library and tags do the sorting from there. Then collections came so that people who wanted to track stuff they didn't own (yet) could do so. Tags would still be the filter by which to view what was in there and they all rolled up to the Catalog. There is some weirdness when it comes to multiple copies, however, and it's annoying to me that if I borrow an audio book of a title I own, the borrowed collection trumps the Library. If adding more collections is the solution here, I only see it creating more confusion since we can't dictate which collection icon appears next to an item. If the control feature you're looking for, Maddz, helps with this, I'm all for it. If not, well it's broken enough for me and I don't need more.

>78 Bookmarque: Agreed, but usually I assign a work to a single collection whereas I often assign multiple tags to that work: format, genre, type of work... I might have multiple versions of the work - print/ebook/audiobook editions, graphic novel, licensed RPG so it's useful to filter on a specific collection.

>76 GraceCollection: Thanks! I don't recall having seen that RSI. My priority in this regard is simply to understand how it works, and how to get at the information I'm after. As it stands, if any icon other than a green circle with white checkmark shows first, I typically dig further into my work record(s) to be sure I understand what the (purple, gray, whatever) icon signifies and how it relates to my library. Thus far, the process helps me minimize inadvertent duplications at the work level - it's the unindicated contents that frustrate.

Hm. I've said it before, but I wish there were two 'levels' to Collections. Maybe, Collections and Shelves, unless GR has that term copyrighted somehow?

To me, Collections are a monolith. There's 'My library', with the regularly circulating books, Storage/Reserve which are non-circulating books, the Juvenile Collection with all the kid's books, the eBook Collection that I am legally unable to circulate but use mostly for ER reviews, and the Special Collection that I haven't even catalogued yet. Although I don't use them, Wishlist and Read but Unowned serve a similar function in that the books in that Collection are 'stored' differently, sorted differently, have a different audience. A Collection is like walking into a different room, or maybe even a different building, than the books in a different Collection.

For me to create a new Collection for Fantasy, or Education, feels as though I am implying something about those books that isn't quite what I would be trying to say, which is why I haven't made them. As Maddz articulates, using a tag isn't really the same thing or similar functionality. But, if there a feature that worked similarly and wasn't caught up in the Collections but instead worked at its own separate level? I would love to have a Fantasy shelf, an Education shelf, a Classics shelf, a Science shelf.

I just don't like the asymmetry of having 'these books are not available to borrow at all because of the Collection they're in' at the same level as 'these books are all about the same nonfiction topic', so I don't use Collections in all the ways I could be using it.

>81 GraceCollection: Ah, I see now. You're coming at it from the perspective of a librarian, I'm coming at it from the perspective of a personal collection. Yes, we do own that many books between us - we have books shelved in every room of our house (including the attic) with the exception of the utility room, downstairs loo, upstairs family bathroom and the dressing room (aka third bedroom).

So we're using the functionality in different ways: I use Collections to break our library into specific genres, and tags to break Collections into subject areas. My tags aren't unique to specific collections (apart from the RPG - * and Artist - * tags).

>81 GraceCollection: Books can sit in more than one Collection so you could create, for example, a Fantasy Collection but use it as a sub-Collection in that those books would also be in, say, the Juvenile Collection or My Library (as relevant).

For example, I have a F&SF Collection for all my fantasy/ science fiction but also a paperback/ hardback F&SF Collection which lets me see which ones I have physical copies of on my shelves and is a subset of the first Collection.

>83 humouress: I understand that they can sit in more than one collection, but I don't like the asymmetry of having 'these books are not available to borrow at all because of the Collection they're in' at the same level as 'these books are all about the same nonfiction topic'. There's nothing I can do, with the way Collections currently exist, to change that asymmetry, so I haven't made those Collections.

Create collections called FantasyShelf etc. and move them to below the other collections on your collection list. Voila, sub-collections.

>85 jjwilson61: That doesn't change the symmetry or make them sub-collections. That just makes them Collections that are lower on the list of Collections.

>86 GraceCollection: ... and thereby sub-Collections 😂😂🤭

>87 humouress: Well, if that's how we're playing it, Read but Unowned, for example, is actually a sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub Collection.

>88 GraceCollection: I think your issue is conceptual, not practical, meaning nothing would change practically even if you could formally assign a subcollection. Case in point, all of my custom collections are a subcollection of Your Library. I know it because Your Library contains all the books I own, whereas custom collections divide them further. Practically, all of those books are in Your Library AND one, sometimes more, subcollections. Nothing would change with formalizing the status of subcollections, except possibly automating adding to Your Library when adding to one of those subcollections. But since I'd still need to pick a subcollection anyway, it wouldn't be much of help.

Custom collections of books not or no longer owned are likely to say so in their name and, more importantly, TinyCat enables you to pick collections displayed, so dividing circulating and non-circulating books is pretty straightforward. FWIW, I find collections most useful for easy searching within that subset so that's how I set them up.

>86 GraceCollection: There's no system support for sub-collections, but conceptually, if you treat them as sub-collections then they are sub-collections.

I appreciate everyone's advice. I am not using the Collections feature in that way for reasons I've already described, and I'm not going to start using them that way, for reasons I have already described. Insisting that I use them because I can conceptualise them as being something they are not is not going to change any of the reasons I have already described.

>61 timspalding: I think I'm part of the reason we got the symbols in the current ones so I will just reiterate: not just color, please! Some people are colorblind, some people use color changes for accessibility reasons, and some people just have really bad displays.

That said I think gray/black for "only in your library via related works" makes sense as long as it isn't the only difference.

For an icon, could you have a circle with a filled-in wedge and a checkmark? The idea is that this would mean you have the item as part of a bigger pie/work.

Bump

Bump.

Or vice-versa, namely owned works in unowned works. Just these past few weeks, I’ve been dealing with two Doris Lessing series, “Canopus in Argos” and “Children of Violence.” Each series has multiple combinations of individual volumes. And just today, I completed a two-title set of Inside the Not So Big House and Outside the Not So Big House only to discover Inside and Outside the Not So Big House contains both. Similarly, The Not So Big House and Creating the Not So Big House are both contained in The Not So Big House Collection (a/k/a The Not So Big House Book).

It’d be grand if we could tell whether our library already has either the constituent volumes of an omnibus compendium or an omnibus compendium that contains the constituent volumes.