Original Publication Date and Collections

The CK help for original publication date notes that if a work was first published in serial form and then in book form, you should add separate fields for the serial publication and the book publication.

I’m working through my comic trades and am finding many titles where OPD lists the date the original comics were published, either as the only OPD or as one of several OPDs that also include the pub date for the collection (often without any explanation of what the date values represent). I’d argue that if you’re entering the CK/OPD for something where each component in the serial edition is already it’s own LibraryThing Work with its own OPD, you should only enter the OPD for the collected edition—anyone who wants the OPDs for the collected material can get it by drilling down to those Works. Examples: comic-book collections, “omnibus” editions combining multiple previously-published books in a single physical volume, slipcased collections of previously-published works (does a three- or four-volume LotR box really need the OPDs for the original works?)

The other edge case for the above is newspaper comics, which appear serially on original publication. Should a Calvin & Hobbes or Dennis the Menace collection, if the original pub dates of the included strips are known, have those dates as one or more OPD entries? If so at what granularity?

Just some stuff that came up today…