Edition statement field

This is my first post to this group, so please excuse any errors in composition.
I very much wish that there was an "Edition" statement field. I mean Field 250 in a MARC record.
It seems a glaring omission not to have this, and it drives me crazy to be without it. I am a cataloging librarian and this is a standard MARC field. Could LT add this, please?

This information is often imported into the "Publication" field, together with the publisher's name. So I guess that's a design choice, not an omission... note that I'm not saying I agree 100% ;-)

I am a cataloging librarian, so I enter my own, I don't import. But thank you for the information

And here I am again, with the same complaint! Every time I run into this, I just want to scream. How hard would it be to add a 250 field to the basic input screen? Those who don't want to use it, don't have to.
I've just entered a "Third Edition" statement to the title field. It does not belong there and, I think, prevents me from seeing others who have the same thing? Maybe not.
In any case, it's maddening not to be able to enter this foundational information, especially when there is a perfectly good MARC field into which it should go.
Honestly, if I didn't already have 7,000+ books entered into LibaryThing, I'd find another program.

If you are wanting a change to the editions structure of the site, you may want to comment on the following thread, as the site owner is considering how to make changes:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/369705

>4 Kathleen828: Thanks for initiating this thread and re-animating it after I joined LT. I wanted to be a librarian until an 8th grade science class set me on a different path ... but I spent a lot of my scientific career enmeshed in "cataloging" observational data. Now I'm here on LT trying to get the metadata right.

>5 gilroy: Thanks for the pointer to that interesting (and, to an LT newbie who's a physical book person, confusing) thread.

With that background, at this point I'd be happy if I could just find a clear expression of (1) whether or not "Edition" information can be put into the "Publication" field, which I have seen examples of and now have created examples of, and (2) how to format that "Publication" field properly, since the ones that get pulled in when I add books are all over the place format-wise.

>6 LeslieWx: It is a free text field - so if you want to have that information there, you can add it in whatever format makes sense to you. When I care about the edition, that’s where I add the statement in my library.

>4 Kathleen828: Forgive if ignorant but unless you need to sort by the field, why is Publication field not suitable for the purpose? Adding new fields is not very likely and even if it happens it will not be tomorrow. Meanwhile, Publication field is intended for all bits of info about the edition and seems a better solution than the title, unless you actually want that information in the title.

Another freeform field you could use, if it is important to have a single field for this data alone is Summary. If left empty, it auto-populates with 'title by author (year)', but you can use it for whatever you want.

When a work has gone through many editions, it can be useful to have the edition in the title. This makes it easier to divide it into several works.

"Edition" does not mean the same thing to all publishers or collectors.

Normally, an "edition" is a given sent of plates that could have many "printings."

However, I have a U.S. printing (Dutton) of Winnie-the-Pooh that says it is the "39th Edition" from one month after the first edition. I don't think we are expected to think that this book had 38 changes. The publisher used "edition" when they should have used "printing" or "impression."

To say this all gets complicated is just the beginning.

Even with such a MARC field, if you looked at library catalogs in WorldCat, it seems to be seldomly used unless it is very obviously part of the title page or book cover.

James

>10 Keeline: Thanks for the examples. I've just starred this topic for that reason. (And it made me wonder if there are any collectors who only collect "39th edition" of books :-)

I gather that collectors of "first editions" are often focused on "first edition, first printing," and that the eleventh printing of a first edition offers no particular lure in most cases.

>12 paradoxosalpha: I have a book https://www.librarything.com/work/14524356/ where the first story tells about a mr Appleby, who collects books that are number 7 in a print. One day he is given a book that is number 1. He changes 1 to 7 but is haunted by this ill deed, so he burns the book. A week later he finds number 7 in a second hand bookstore and is delighted, but two days later he gets a catalogue from another second hand bookstore that also has number 7. Poor mr Appleby.
The title of the story is Three Times Seven.

>12 paradoxosalpha: , in my 37+ years in the antiquarian book field as a seller and advanced collector, I have developed a number of strong opinions.

One of them concerns the use of "first edition." There are two main possible definitions that are somewhat contradictory.

In the old days you might say "he collects 'first editions'" by which it is generally meant that one collects "first edition, first printings."

But too many use the dictionary definition where the text has not changed. Consider The Secret of the Old Clock in the Nancy Drew series. It was first published in 1930 and a revised text which is considerably shorter was published in 1959. There are people who have called ANY COPY WITH A 1930 COPYRIGHT a "first edition." Technically it is correct but it is misleading.

Terms like "first printing" or "first impression" are not ambiguous. They should be used by people who are seriious about books.

The author of the Nancy Drew Bibliography, FARAH'S GUIDE, calls his 12 different copies, with different content, "printings." They are "editions."

Further, each variation of ads and format he calls "printings" as well. These are "issues" in book terms such as those defined in ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter.

Look at the problems we have with the year field for a book. Is it the copyright year or the printing year? It is left to the LT member to decide what is important for them to record. Even Original Publishing Deate in Common Knowledge is a bit fuzzy, especially when translations are involved.

It would be possible to include tags, as I do, for "1st" to make it possible to filter listings by printing.

It would also be interesting to see the greatest printing number for various popular books. On something like the first Harry Potter it is many dozens. I think I saw an 80th printing on a number line recently. That would be fun for Common Knowledge — the latest printing seen. That can vary by edition though so it may be rejected on that basis alone.

James

It is curious to me that there has been such lexical drift for the terms edition and printing, which seem so transparent to the activity of editors and printers, respectively. But I suppose book production is a mysterious black box to most people.

OK, I thought I knew what these terms meant but now I realize I might be confused. Whether that matters or not to anyone is unclear.

Previous thoughts:

1. Edition: Same text, same authors, same illustrations (if any); can have multiple printings
If you have a new edition, there have to be some changes in the items listed above or it could be as minor as a different introduction to the work by someone other than the author.

2. Printing: If identical in every way, it is the same edition. The only reason to have additional printings is because more people want to read the book and there are not enough books to satisfy the demand.

3. Question: Are paperbacks vs. hardcovers vs. ebooks considered different printings but not different editions as long as the content is identical?

If all of this is correct, I can see wanting to distinguish editions, but not necessarily printings. Printings could be identified by a printing date, which could be different from the edition date. Not sure about that.

Yours in eternal confusion,
k4k

By the definition presented here, I have a first edition of Animal Farm. Same cover, same page blocks, same everything. Only, mine doesn't say 'first edition' on the publisher's page, like the first printing (or impression, I've also heard) of that edition does. This is the only difference, and as far as I can tell (haven't bothered about appraisal as we have neither the money nor the desire) that makes it functionally worthless as far as antiquarian collectors are concerned. That's fine by me. I came across this particular book by chance anyway and had no idea at the time what exactly I had picked up.

>16 krazy4katz:

3. Question: Are paperbacks vs. hardcovers vs. ebooks considered different printings but not different editions as long as the content is identical?

In most cases, new printing plates, possibly with edits, are made for paperbacks because the typical paperback is smaller than the hardcover.

There are "trade paperbacks" for some books which are very likely made from the printing plates most recently used for the hardcovers.

It depends on the publisher.

In the series book world I have some paperbacks from Books, Inc. for the Mel Martin and Kay Tracey series where they are from the same printing plates, just in paperback. I have seen similar cases.

But once the format changes, this is a new edition even if the plates are the same.

On series like the Hardy Boys, many of the volumes had typographical errors that were noticed and corrected by the next printing. These errors or unbroken/broken type become "points of issue" to help distinguish the earliest printings from the others. Some errors were never corrected but when someone spots them they may attach more importance to the errors than they deserve. This is true for Hardy Boys as well as Harry Potter. In the latter there are people who found some website calling attention to the error. On some of these the error appears in every one of the printings in hardcover for millions of copies.

James

>1 Kathleen828: Having just come across this interesting discussion, I slightly wonder why nobody has suggested using tags for this purpose. The joy of tags is that they are entirely user controllable, and you can use multiple tags with one bit of information per tag, or single tags with multiple bits of information therein. They are also searchable. Or have I missed something?

>19 sarahemmm: I _think_ the point was to have it automatically populated rather than having the information hidden in the Publication field. But since it is often missing and you have to input it yourself, tags are certainly one way of doing it. I also think the point was to have a standard place (like 250 in a Marc record) to put it, but a new LT field for it is not likely to happen.

>16 krazy4katz: These are great (implicit and explicit) questions in your post.

As to "whether the questions/confusion matters or not to anyone" I'd say (1) the only dumb questions are the ones you don't ask, (2) your questions/confusion matter to you, which means they matter, and (3) the odds of nobody in the entire LT community not having similar questions about what book terms is mean is very small :)

>10 Keeline: >14 Keeline: >18 Keeline: Thanks for sharing all these explanations with us, with your perspective as an antiquarian book dealer & collector. I find these things useful to know even though I'm not a collector of antique books per se, because that community overlaps communities I do consider myself part of.

Personally, I've probably got a perspective similar to what's articulated by >17 GraceCollection:. I have some old books (maybe even first editions) because they're the copy of the book I first found when I was looking for a physical copy of that work. And when I do care about having a specific edition, it's because of the value of the content to me rather than the value in terms of collectibility. Sometimes I want a newer edition that has more errors corrected or more updated information; sometimes I want an old one, for the early perspective on explaining a new field of study.

Everybody's mileage may vary! But knowing the meaning of the terms helps.

>19 sarahemmm: in #14 I mentioned tags as one thing I do to use as text that can be filtered:

It would be possible to include tags, as I do, for "1st" to make it possible to filter listings by printing.

It is easy to overlook things like this so it is no big deal. It is one option to be sure.

James

Of course today, the paperback is not always set again. I have come across cases where the hardcover is identical to the paperback on every page except for the size of the page.

Wow! Thank you to everyone for these fascinating, informative and engaged replies. I learned so much from all of you!
I think that part of my frustration comes from the fact that I bring my job "eyes" to LibraryThing. As I said in my initial post, there is a MARC field in a bibliographic record specifically for "Edition." It's field 250. You would never, when doing professional cataloging, put an edition statement in either the title field (MARC field 245) or the Publication Field (MARC 260). Your record would be considered "wrong."
And, since I am cataloging individual books, not "works," some items have statements on the cover, the title page, the title page verso," etc., which say "1st edition, Revised edition, paperback edition," or some such thing. These serve as identifiers for the item you have in hand, and differentiate it from other "editions." This makes picking the particular item that you want much easier, especially with titles that have been published or printed hundreds of times. Or, with scientific works when the data have been revised, changed, updated or removed, etc.
I do thank those of you who kindly pointed out that adding a field to the "home screen" would be quite a task for LibraryThing. I hope that I can remember that the next time that I have a book in hand to enter here and find, yet again, that there is no good place to enter its edition data.

PS - to those who suggested using tags. This is a solution which I had not considered, though I tend to think of them as subject headings, not part of the publication data....I'll have to think about it.

>24 Kathleen828: Do you use the comments field for something else, then? It seems that's a great place for noting specifics of the edition that are important to you.

>25 keristars: I wonder why I never thought of this! Yes, that would work, and somehow "feels" more natural than a tag. I use the Private Comments to note the physical location, i.e. "Bookcase 18, Shelf 4." I can put the edition statement in the Public Comments.
I think I must have been unconsciously trying to replicate the full bibliographic records with proper MARC fields that I use all day at work, so not having the "250" really stood out to me.

>26 Kathleen828: , I mentioned briefly some of the ways that I include extra information with the fields that LT provides.

Collections — A book may be a member of multiple collections that fit categories like series or topic. LT lets me view just items from a single collection at a time as a form of a filter.

Tags — I use these for topics (mysteries, aviation, etc.) and some of these are similar to the Collections usage. But I also have others for features of a book (1st, PB, DJ, earlyDJ, association copy, have PDF, have art, have MS). I can perform a search in LT and specify tags with the

tags:{tagname}

syntax in the search field.

Comments — On my vintage juvenile series I often have an encoding that helps me to sort the copies I have by copyright year, volume number, and printing year. This way I can use the sort features to organize listings or cover images.

LT is inspired by MARC but it is NOT an implementation of MARC. Because of the interests of a few, there is a MARC export where existing LT fields are mapped to a MARC structure. I don't know that this is continuously maintained, however.

MARC has some significant, even fatal, oversights for my work with books. In the field of juvenile series books there is extensive use of pseudonyms. A small portion of these are personal pseudonyms used by a single author (e.g. "Mark Twain" = Samuel L. Clemens). But the larger percentage are names owned by publishers or book packagers like the Stratemeyer Syndicate (e.g. "Carolyn Keene"). In these latter examples there can be many people who wrote under a name.

Look at many library sources and you will find Susan Wittig Albert attached to "Carolyn Keene" even though she only worked on a few books in the 1990s and had nothing to do with the most interesting books of the series. It is misleading and causes annoyance for the copyright owners when a single writer is given disproportionate credit for their work.

There are some volumes in a series where multiple people worked on them and there's no real place to put this in a MARC record.

In my field of interest I run into some ridiculous errors that never get fixed because of the inertia of Name Authority records that were made wrong and left that way.

So I'm not eager to see LT be more like MARC because it doesn't fit my needs or the reality of publishing books.

James

>24 Kathleen828: I may use Collections and Tags differently than most LT folks: Collections predominantly to indicate on which shelf/shelves one should find the book (e.g. "Pets and Pet Care", "Religion", "Irish History", "Civil War"); Tags for subject matter (e.g. "Meditations", "Poetry", "Prayer", all on the same book shelved as "Religion").

But for both Collections and Tags I have some names that I start with "_", to make them easier to pick up visually (even if I'm looking a list to filter from). So I have Collections "_ABC's", _"DEF's", "_D&A's" to indicate whose book it is, and Tags "_signedByAuthor", "_c1931, 1935, 1958", "_c1931, 1935", "_c1931" (the last 3 on hymnals whose relationship I'm trying to sort out to see if I can make a convincing case for splitting them :) ).

On my computer, I've even got a handful of files that start with "__x", to even more easily distinguish them from the "_y" ones. For my brain, I find these leading underscores as well as "camel case" (signedByAuthor, revisedEdition, 2ndPrinting, etc.) are my friends. Your brain might not agree, but I thought I'd throw it out!

>27 Keeline: That's all really interesting, thanks for so much detail.

IMO, bad metadata is way worse than missing metadata!

Nice discussion. I use Comments for some of the meta information like "did I scan this cover" and for alternative forms of a title, like spelling "Aarets tegninger" and "Årets tegninger" and hyphens "20-tons lorry" and "20tons lorry" so I don't miss some of the books when searching on LT. If I cared more about editions, they would go there too.

>27 Keeline: Hi James,
Thank you for this very detailed and interesting post. I am in haste this evening, so this will be just a brief comment and I hope to write again with a bit more time and detail.
You say, "There are some volumes in a series where multiple people worked on them and there's no real place to put this in a MARC record." Actually there is.
A MARC 8xx series added entry can be either an 800 in which one author has written an entire series, like 800 1 0 Leon, Donna. #t Commissario Brunetti Mysteries ; #v 21. So it could be (informally) called an "author series" field, or - an 830 in which multiple authors have written volumes of a series. This often happens with juvenile non-fiction series, i. e. 830 0 Animals of North America ; #v 18, or some such thing. The 800/830 distinction tells you if it's a single author or multiple authors. The 830 is a (series) title added entry, and the 800 is an author series added entry.
If your local library will let you see the original MARC record, you can check this out, and perhaps it may help you in your recording of titles.
Best,
Kathleen

>28 LeslieWx: Thank you, Leslie. This is an intriguing thought and I will see how it might work for me :-)

>8 SandraArdnas: Hi Sandra,
I am very late in answering your question, and I hope you will forgive my delay.
In cataloging, there is a specific field for Edition statements and it is not the publication field. We do put a date in that field, but a date is not an edition statement, so it's out of place in actual cataloging. Since LT isn't a cataloging program, I could put it there, but it would look wildly out of place to me, since I spend all day putting it elsewhere in my work life :-)

>31 Kathleen828: , in the case of a nonfiction series, the author names generally appear on the title page or perhaps the copyright page of the book. In an anthology of articles, the authors of each piece are included inside.

But with juvenile series books in particular, pseudonyms are very common. One book in the Mel Martin baseball mystery series had a first draft of volume 2 where the first 10 chapters were by one writer, the remainder (11-25) were by a second writer. Then the whole thing was rewritten (not sure if edited the drafts or wrote fresh from the outline) by a third writer.

These authors, along with the outliner and editors, are not credited on the book so they don't make their way into library catalogs, even if the information would be meaningful to those who would use that catalog.

So, even if there is a place for these anonymous writers to be recorded, they are not. Cataloging is generally done with the book in hand or CIP information. Once an error is in the system, it stays.

For The Nowadays Girls in the Adirondacks (Dodd, Mead, 1915) by "Gertrude Calvert Hall" (a pseudonym owned by the same book packager, the Stratemeyer Syndicate), one writer wrote an initial draft that was not accepted. It was rewritten by another and that version was published. But the WorldCat entry shows this as if it was a real person's name — Gertrude Hall Brownell (1863-1961). She did not have anything to do with this. Someone made an incorrect assumption and any record simply propagates the error, for as much as it is worth.

This is somewhat more important for the non-Syndicate series about boys from West Point and Annapolis. The stories published under the "Lt. Frederick Garrison" name in book form were based on dime novels written by Upton Sinclair (yes him). But the "Ensign Clarke Fitch" titles in the companion series were not by Sinclair. Instead they were written by Henry Harrison Lewis, the editor of the dime novel where 3-4 stories were combined to form each volume. Sinclair DID write some of the stories under the "Fitch" name but not the ones published in book form. But because Sinclair wrote in his autobiography that he wrote stories under these names, scholars, librarians, and booksellers have assumed that he wrote ALL of the books under those names. The booksellers ask hundreds of dollars for books they claim to be early Sinclair but they are really Lewis and Sinclair wasn't in the room when they were written. Probably at least a few library catalogs attribute the Lewis stories to Sinclair.

This is the kind of thing I am talking about. It's simple when it is "Mark Twain" = Samuel L. Clemens. But these corporate pseudonyms are a complex issue and it is rarely handled well by the cataloging because they don't have the information.

They do their best. But once a record is there, it is seldom corrected, even if there is published documentation to show it is wrong.

James

>33 Kathleen828:

You seem to have a peculiar idea of what "cataloging" is.

As far as I am concerned, it's cataloging when I make a records in a catalog, and that's the main thing I do on LibraryThing.

>35 paradoxosalpha: A cataloging librarian is in fact quite likely to have pretty specific ideas of what cataloging is :). (c.f. >3 Kathleen828:)

LT is not MARC based. It is also more generally intended for the needs of personal libraries, and to be human readable.

>36 LeslieWx: A cataloging librarian is in fact quite likely to have pretty specific ideas of what cataloging is.

I didn't say "specific," I said "peculiar." The fact that she has a professional investment in one specific cataloging format doesn't invalidate all others, and it's peculiar (the euphemism I settled on) for her to dismiss and deprecate them.