Blocks to combining that affect large numbers of copies (Sorry, too much love!) #5

The Problem

You cannot easily combine two works if BOTH works contain a large number of copies (currently the limit is 200 copies). For example, if you try to combine The Dark Tower (having over 6,000 copies) with The Dark Tower Boxed Set (Books 1-4) (having over 500 copies) you will receive this error:

Sorry, too much love! Because of a number of massive over-combinations (eg., every book by C. S. Lewis combined into one) combinations that change more than 200 books have been disabled, except for LibraryThing staff, until we work out some rules.

See the WikiThing page, https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Combination_Blocking, for more information.

You were attempting to combine the works: 5974, 49836

In this case, this error prevents you from combining two works that really should not be combined. However, sometimes it does prevent legitimate combinations. Though the message says only LibraryThing staff may combine these books, that’s not entirely true. There are ways to finagle it to combine them, but because of the possibility of harm they aren’t really broadcast (but if you know enough to ask ...)

As such, the previous thread on this topic ended with LibraryThing members volunteering to combine these “too much love” works for other users.

To Get Works Combined Anyway

Post a request to this thread. Please be sure to include links to each work you want combined.

For example:

Please combine these two works:
http://www.librarything.com/work/5061284
http://www.librarything.com/work/11847113

(In fact, those have already been combined.)

If it’s not obvious that the two works are the same (different title/authors/etc.), it may be helpful if you jot down a few sentences to explain that. But please be sure they really do need to be combined. Keep in mind that different editions with significant textual changes (an original publication versus a later “uncut” version) are treated as different books. Minor changes (like a later version containing a new forward, a new edition with/without illustrations, etc.) do generally belong together in the same work, as do different versions of the same work in different languages.

For help combining works that would affect fewer than 200 copies, please post to the current “Combining/Separating (Please Fix This Book!) Request Thread”. This thread can be found in the Combiners! group. A new thread is created every 200 posts or so to prevent it from becoming cumbersome.

Please combine these works:
https://www.librarything.com/work/5445887
https://www.librarything.com/work/32107786
https://www.librarything.com/work/32427774

Crossway publishes many versions of this work with different bindings and such, but the contents are the same. There are probably more separate works pages for this, but these three are the only with more than 200 copies.

>2 RyanClark: Done; thanks!

Bringing this over from the Please fix this book thread.

I tried to fix this, but there were two 200+ editions in there.

https://www.librarything.com/work/32559468
https://www.librarything.com/work/32559450

>4 IrrationalDM: Done. Any idea what "Other Writings" this edition contains?

The Iliad:
https://www.librarything.com/work/5057
https://www.librarything.com/work/32437926
I believe all the modern translations are supposed to be combined, no?

>6 norabelle414: Done.

Robinson Crusoe:
https://www.librarything.com/work/32181400
https://www.librarything.com/work/29374

>8 norabelle414: Done.

The Crying of Lot 49:

https://www.librarything.com/work/4918
https://www.librarything.com/work/32773260
https://www.librarything.com/work/32773261

>10 yarb: Done, together with some other, ancillary combining clean-up (zero-copies, etc.). Incidentally, on checking WorldCat links, I'm surprised to see so many ISBNs for editions of Homer's Odyssey represented, particularly absent that title showing up either among the combined editions or as a possible combination. (Don't do it! LOL) Anybody have a suggestion why that might be, and whether it warrants attention to correct the respective works' combinations?

Weirdly my edition of The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan got uncombined from all the other editions (I know this because it recommended to me and did some investigating). I was reading the series when I joined LibraryThing back in 2012 so I know my edition was combined with all the others.

My edition: https://www.librarything.com/work/32783540
The recommendation: https://www.librarything.com/work/3691

These two main pages, and one stray for The Time Traveler’s Wife
https://www.librarything.com/work/27315691
https://www.librarything.com/work/3067
https://www.librarything.com/work/23818269

I’d like feedback if I’ve missed some reason not to combine. I don’t usually encounter this issue.

>13 2wonderY: https://www.librarything.com/work/27315691/editions has no author listed, and could be the book or the movie... See the disambiguation notice.

I have combined the stray into the book work (Author's name was misspelled.)

Ah. Why is it that the edition page doesn’t break the 224 copies out?
I guess I was relying on the cover image.

>15 2wonderY: Because they all have the same title, spelled the same, and no author or ISBN. They look identical to the computer. This is why the notice says to "add additional information". That breaks that copy out of the bulk so that it can be dealt with separately. There is no reason to think that these copies all belong in the same work.

I see no reason not to combine >12 mattries37315:.

>16 MarthaJeanne: Got it. Thanks!

>12 mattries37315: >17 MarthaJeanne: Done.

I think this edition of Pride and Prejudice https://www.librarything.com/work/32536048 shoud be combined with the main work https://www.librarything.com/work/2773690/editions. It seems as if people catalogued it under the editors name.

>20 SimoneA: Wow! People went to the trouble to upload covers, but not to get a correct author name.

>20 SimoneA: Done.

>6 norabelle414:
Someone's separated The Iliad again:
https://www.librarything.com/work/32512564/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/5057/editions

Thanks

>23 norabelle414: https://www.librarything.com/profile/poppycocteau has made a project of it, perhaps a message is in order

>23 norabelle414: >24 SandraArdnas: I'd gladly do the combining but d'ruther not ruffle feathers, antagonize anyone, or pick a fight. Are we all set to go?

>25 jasbro: Well, translations are to be kept together and as far as I could tell from the message on the profile, the person is open for reconsidering, but should be informed about the LT policy about this to avoid separations in the future. Maybe a disambiguation notice too.

I've messaged @poppycocteau, but I'm not sure what disambiguation would help. See, for example, Beowulf, where it looks like multiple disambiguation notices are now all mashed together on the same record for the work. Your thoughts?

>27 jasbro: OMG, Beowulf is crazy and I have no thoughts how to make sense of that, other than somehow distilling it into single one. When combining, only one will pop up anyway I think. OPD is not much better either, it lists dates of numerous translations and has altogether 11 entries.

For Iliad, I meant just a general notice that different translations are not to be separated might help.

I'm glad I have none of these classics. This gives me headache, haha

>27 jasbro: I've messaged poppycocteau
Thanks!

It seems a little lopsided to prohibit combining of works with more than 200 books but allow separations where both resulting works have more than 200 books.

>29 norabelle414: I get it, but there's history behind the difference. Specifically, as I recall, the example given in the "Too much love!" message actually happened: one of us (accidentally? inadvertently? unwittingly? maliciously?) combined ALL of C.S. Lewis' as a single "work." The 200-copy combining limit was imposed as a consequence to minimize recurrences, or at least to make them more difficult in the first place and easier to catch and correct after the fact. As for separations, in my experience, they most frequently happen in multiple, far smaller rounds that then get re-combined into 200+ copy works; regardless, it takes much more diligent effort and intent to separate out that many copies in a single go.

>23 norabelle414: Done.

The Odyssey again:
https://www.librarything.com/work/1526
https://www.librarything.com/work/32437862
https://www.librarything.com/work/32450707

Actually, could someone just take a look at https://www.librarything.com/author/homer ? There are like a dozen each of The Odyssey and The Iliad.

(I'm going to assume these were done before >27 jasbro:)

>30 jasbro: The there was the Shakespeare case. At one point someone combined ALL Shakespeare plays in one work. That was... not fun.

I'd agree though that we should also have limit on separating these (people will often split their Penguin versions for example because of the Pub Series - not understanding how works work).

>33 AnnieMod: I'd agree though that we should also have limit on separating these (people will often split their Penguin versions for example because of the Pub Series - not understanding how works work).

I mostly agree -- it would be nice if all these odds and ends were combined -- but I'm not sure that the cure is better than the disease. Is it worse to have several isolated copies of, e.g., The Iliad -- or have many copies of the Norton Critical Edition of The Iliad lumped in and have no way to split them off? If anything, I incline to feel the latter is a bigger problem.

Maybe someone else has a better idea how to handle this. You can't limit it based on the number of copies of the work as a whole, or it will be impossible to split off all the people who lump Norton Critical Editions or abridged editions with the genuine work. Do you then do it based on how many copies there are of a particular edition? But there may not be many copies of (say) the Penguin edition of Troilus and Criseyde, so people can split that from the real work.

And what if the Penguin edition has a bunch of ISBNs, so that all are individually below 200 but collectively there are (say), over a thousand.

I repeat, I'm not saying not to implement this; I'm saying to be sure we have it figured out before we make it a Site Improvement. :-)

>34 waltzmn: I see a LOT more people pulling large part of the most popular works out than Nortons with 200+ copies still in their original works....

>35 AnnieMod: I see a LOT more people pulling large part of the most popular works out than Nortons with 200+ copies still in their original works....

I'm sure you're right in general. But my personal experience (being the sort of person who has a lot of obscure critical editions of popular works), is that I see a lot more Variorum Chaucers lumped with un-annotated versions of the various Canterbury Tales -- which, to me, is a lot more irritating. Now, I can fix it. If done wrong, I would lose that ability.

I am not saying that we shouldn't create a block; I really do think it makes sense. But it should be carefully planned to make it as useful as possible.

>31 norabelle414: Seeing no justification for their separation other than the translators, these are done.

"In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar." ~ Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar (1968)

ETA: Interesting that one of those was Robert Fitzgerald's translation, but my edition of the same translation got overlooked in the separation. Such are the hazards of separating/combining ...

The Odyssey:
https://www.librarything.com/work/1526/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32506136/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32447957/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32437434/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32447819/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32437754/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32450141/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32447856/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32517217/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32504698/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32450302/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32447969/editions
All the rest are under 200 copies

The Iliad:
https://www.librarything.com/work/5057/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32512964/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32515616/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32515694/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32452331/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32520491/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32486400/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32512628/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/32521563/editions
All the rest are under 200 copies

>38 norabelle414: >39 norabelle414: I can’t get to ‘em this evening, but I’ll try to take care of ‘em tomorrow if’n sumbuddy else doesn’t get to ‘em first …

>38 norabelle414: >39 norabelle414: Thanks again! Your advance legwork made these combinations much easier than they might otherwise have been. OTOH, and unfortunately, I removed the various disambiguation notices that identified specific translators before I realized they're not necessarily included in the resulting combined work (e.g., I don't see Samuel Butler identified as a translator of The Iliad). If someone else has a minute (or 480 minutes?), I expect they'd show up on "Recalculate from members' books," but that particular example already has 189 possible "additional authors" as it stands.

>41 jasbro: Thank you! I can update the other authors.

I found a stray edition of The Beet Queen https://www.librarything.com/work/69645/editions that I can't combine myself: https://www.librarything.com/work/32760637/editions.
Thanks in advance for fixing it!

And another stray, this time of Prayers for Rain:
https://www.librarything.com/work/31127443/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/38009/editions
Thanks!

>43 SimoneA: >44 SimoneA: Done

Can someone combine this edition https://www.librarything.com/work/32815429/editions with the big work https://www.librarything.com/work/1133624.
Thanks in advance!

>46 SimoneA: Done; thanks!

Can someone please combine https://www.librarything.com/work/5335216 and https://www.librarything.com/work/2509725 -- I've ben tidying up Descartes' Discourse on Method, separating editions with only that work from those with the Meditations and those containing other works.

>48 nicbarnard: Done. Thanks for your efforts!

Please combine
https://www.librarything.com/work/2908575 and
https://www.librarything.com/work/21075597

>49 jasbro: Thanks jasbro!

>50 hipdeep: Just checking: These are in fact the same work?

>52 jasbro: I believe so. See the disambiguation notice on https://www.librarything.com/work/2908575 and the alternative/original titles on both. :-)

Please combine:

https://www.librarything.com/work/2568271 and
https://www.librarything.com/work/33081083

>50 hipdeep: >54 Charon07: Done.

>55 jasbro: Thanks!

(reposting from other threads)
Please combine these two, Sarah Plain and Tall:
https://www.librarything.com/work/32827204
https://www.librarything.com/work/4907

and these two, The Biggest Bear:
https://www.librarything.com/work/210242
https://www.librarything.com/work/32788087

>57 norabelle414: Done

Please combine Lessons https://www.librarything.com/work/27812310/editions/232939340

With Lessons https://www.librarything.com/work/31724396 .

I cant see why this happened originally

>59 bergs47: Well, for one thing your copy has the author wrong.

>59 bergs47: Done

I was collecting editions of the D&D 5th Edition (2014) Monster Manual, and found two large clumps.

https://www.librarything.com/work/15450429
https://www.librarything.com/work/32707408

The cover for the first of those says "2024 edition"; thanks Amazon! It should not; the 2024 edition of the Monster Manual doesn't release until Feb. 2025. All of those should be the 2014 D&D 5 Monster Manual, which should be kept separate from the 2024/25 D&D 5 Monster Manual.

>62 prosfilaes: Are you asking help to combine these or to flag an inapplicable cover?

>63 jasbro: I'm asking help to combine these.

>64 prosfilaes: Good, thanks, & done ...

I don't see any reason why https://www.librarything.com/work/30215813/editions is not combined with the main work https://www.librarything.com/work/2770499. Can someone combine them? Thank you!

>66 SimoneA: Done

20th Century Ghosts (https://www.librarything.com/work/47345)
The Black Phone Stories New title, same short stories, all editions should show 'originally published as 20th Century Ghosts' (https://www.librarything.com/work/27269848)

>68 ShatteredChevy: Done

I can't see why these two works of Animal Farm shouldn't be combined. Am I missing something?
https://www.librarything.com/work/32917990/editions
https://www.librarything.com/work/1477/editions

>70 norabelle414: I saw no reason except maybe to separate out Ralph Steadman illustrated edition(s). Combined ...

I separated this edition of The Stupidest Angel: https://www.librarything.com/work/33242848/editions so that I could combine it with the correct work: https://www.librarything.com/work/11726106/editions but didn't realize it has just barely too many copies so I can't do it myself.

Thanks!

>72 norabelle414: Done; thanks!

Hi I'm trying to combine a Seuss book, can someone help? I got the following message:

"Sorry, too much love! Because of a number of massive over-combinations (eg., every book by C. S. Lewis combined into one) combinations that change more than 200 books have been disabled, except for LibraryThing staff, until we work out some rules.

See the WikiThing page for more information.
You were attempting to combine the works:Array, 28799673, 33204565, 29829211, 22982, 28666766, 28795680, 29273512, 28720557, 31688174"

I was able to combine some of the smaller ones so just the two big ones remain.

Works to combine:
https://www.librarything.com/work/28799673
https://www.librarything.com/work/22982

>74 carolusmagnus: Looks like they're done!

>75 jasbro: Cool Thanks!

Please combine:
https://www.librarything.com/work/32083116
https://www.librarything.com/work/50889

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

Thank you

please combine:

https://www.librarything.com/work/33185415
https://www.librarything.com/work/2417834

Julia thanks you!

>77 stortemelk: >78 carolusmagnus: Done; and to Julia, avec plaisir !

please combine (Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible):
https://www.librarything.com/work/32113003
https://www.librarything.com/work/5503098

These are both collections of editions of the regular NASB without substantial study notes.

Done.

I see there are many, many more NASB records that seem to warrant combining, but it also appears someone is intentionally separating and assigning distinctive, cannonical titles to them. Is that how we're dealing with the multiplicity of Bible editions going forward?

>81 jasbro:
Thanks! And...I hope not? I have not begun to delve into that, I am sure it is a disaster. I only tried to combine the two that jumped out at me. All of the editions they contain are obviously just standard NASB Bibles.

I'm in favor of different study Bibles being listed as separate works. But Bibles without significant study notes really ought to be one work per translation. In practice this can be tricky to parse because the titles don't always make sense and the nuances are many, but the basic policy is really not that ambiguous.

Alas, in addition to people who mean well but don't read the rules, there is a contingent that is ideologically motivated to break the rules. Therefore I expect it is a hot mess.

Bear in mind that Bibles do have different contents. By 'standard Bibles', I assume you mean protestant without apocrypha. As opposed to with, as opposed to Roman Catholic bibles, as opposed to Orthodox Bibles. These last three have similar contents, but differently ordered and from differing base texts.

There’s also different Orthodox versions - Ethiopian ones have more books than Greek ones, for a start.

>83 MarthaJeanne: >84 AndreasJ:

In addition to having different canon of books to include, Bibles have different texts. I'm not even going to try to do links to all the editions I'm citing, because it's just too hard to pull them out, but let's look at the Greek texts underlying the New Testaments of the King James Version, Moffatt's version, and the New Revised Standard Version, as well as Westcott and Hort's Greek text of 1881.

The King James Bible is translated from the (almost-identical) Greek texts of Estienne (Stephanus) and Beza, themselves minimally different from Erasmus's Greek testament of the 1520s -- the first Greek New Testament to go into print, edited in almost no time from fewer than half a dozen manuscripts and containing one of the highest rate of printers' errors ever observed; Erasmus himself said it was "precipitated rather than edited."

Westcott and Hort's Greek text is roughly 2.5% shorter than the Greek underlying the King James (and, oh, a thousand times better, maybe), because it's based mostly on two manuscripts more than a thousand years older than the half dozen crummy copies Erasmus was able to use.

The Moffatt translation is made from von Soden's text of the early twentieth century, which is roughly halfway between Stephanos and Westcott and Hort in length.

The New Revised Standard Version is made from the United Bible Societies Greek third edition, which is from around 1970; it is about halfway between Westcott and Hort and von Soden in length (i.e. about .5% longer than Westcott and Hort but about 2% shorter than Stephanus).

That 2.5% difference in length is not the maximum difference between Greek texts. In the Book of Acts, the Greek edition of Clark was about eight percent longer than that of Westcott and Hort, or six percent longer than the King James Version.

An example of how much this matters is chapter 16 of Mark. In the first edition of the Revised Standard Version, it is eight verses long. In the King James Version, it is twenty verses long. The Revised Standard Version was correct; Mark 16:9-20 is a spurious addition not found in the two oldest copies of the Gospel of Mark, the codices Siniaticus and Vaticanus. The verses were also omitted from some of the oldest Latin copies, and there are also some manuscripts which indicate an alternate ending to "16:9-20."

Then there are the early Catholic translations into English, such as the Douai edition. This was translated from the Latin, not the Greek -- and not from the original Latin edition of Jerome but from the official Clementine Vulgate, which had the same characteristic as the Greek of Stephanus: a lot of little additions and alterations had crept in over the years. It was longer than the original Latin.

The Orthodox Church also has a different Old Testament from either the Catholics or Protestants, or from the Hebrew Bible. Not only does it have a few extra books even the Catholics don't use, but they canonize the Greek Old Testament, not the Hebrew (Jews, Protestants) or the Latin (Catholics, until the twentieth century). And the Greek Old Testament is very different from the Hebrew.

I could go on at (even) great(er) length, but the point is, there is no extant "original" of the New Testament, or of the Hebrew Bible. Yes, there were autographs of the books once upon a time, but they were long gone by the time our oldest manuscripts were copied. Both Testaments were damaged by transmission (the Hebrew Bible more than the Greek, I would say, although the nature of the damage is different), just as the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeniad and Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales were. I differ somewhat on the LT policy toward combinations on ancient works, but to do proper relationships between Bibles would require at least two different levels of relationship, one involving the translation and one involving the underlying text.

>85 waltzmn: All of which is why I have nor entered my Bibles in LT, except for a very few that are certainly not likely to get combined.
Da Jesus & seine Hawara
The Gospels : a new translation

I would like to catalogue them for my own benefit, but can't figure out how to fit them into some scheme.

I’ve entered mine, and figure it doesn’t impact me much how they’re combined.

(Well, I have a couple New Testaments I never entered because they have no publication info. Maybe I’ll add those too at some point if I feel particularly completistic.)

>87 AndreasJ: I would like to catalogue them for my own benefit, but can't figure out how to fit them into some scheme.

I catalog mine, for insurance purposes if nothing else. Most English translations are cheap (the Variorum Edition of the New Testament being a significant exception!), but the Greek texts assuredly are not (list prices on the volumes of the Göttingen Septuagint are in the $200 range, and there are dozens of volumes), and the Oxford Vulgate is basically a name-your-price item (and I don't have one, before anyone comes trying to nab mine :-). Even if they never get stolen, I don't want to end up buying another copy. :-)

But I agree that working by titles is pretty hopeless. What I do is use the tags as my identifiers. Unfortunately, I didn't do that perfectly, because I cataloged a lot of this stuff before I really understood LibraryThing (insofar as I understand it even now), but a search for "Bible NRSV Commentary" will get me ONLY the Oxford Study Bible, and "Bible Greek UBS" will get me three United Bible Societies editions and a couple of books based on it, and so on. It requires a lot of knowledge on my part, but it will get me what I need.

What I'd do without tags I don't know.

>83 MarthaJeanne: "Bear in mind that Bibles do have different contents. By 'standard Bibles', I assume you mean protestant without apocrypha. "

No, in this case I just meant a Bible with that translation without substantial study notes or additional material. A "standard" Bible as opposed to a study Bible. I'm familiar with the different canons.

Each translation ought to be a separate work. I don't see any getting away from that, because as mentioned, they are almost all based on different source texts. (For many complicated reasons which I have not bothered to go into, because I was assuming that everyone already agreed that different translations should be separate works.)

However, each translation uses one set of source texts, so you don't need to separate, for example, NIV Bibles, based on which source texts they use. All NIV Bibles use the same source texts. They don't all contain the same study materials, so those editions could be separate works.

As for which books they include, in theory the variation is infinite but in practice each translation is available in a limited number of combinations. For example, NRSV is available in only three variations: (1) the "Protestant Canon" form, (2) the NRSV with Apocrypha, and (3) the NRSV Catholic Edition. But the Catholic and Apocrypha forms contain the same books in a slightly different order, so I would consider those at least potentially the same work.

So, in summary, here's what I think makes sense:
1-Each translation is a separate work, possibly with rare exceptions.

2-Each study Bible is a separate work, provided it's significantly different from other study Bibles of that same translation. (There are some with different branding, for example, but the same study notes.)

3-Versions with or without Apocrypha may be separate works provided that the books they contain are different, not just in a different order. (??? This one I am the least certain of.)

4-Other stuff to be decided on a case-by-case-basis.

>89 AranelST: For example, NRSV is available in only three variations: (1) the "Protestant Canon" form, (2) the NRSV with Apocrypha, and (3) the NRSV Catholic Edition. But the Catholic and Apocrypha forms contain the same books in a slightly different order, so I would consider those at least potentially the same work.

Nitpick: While I believe you are correct that there are only three versions of the NRSV New Testament, it is not correct to say that the Catholic and Apocrypha forms are identical except for order. My NRSV with Apocrypha contains II Esdras (or III Esdras, or IV Esdras, depending on who you are), III Maccabees, and IV Maccabees. But III and IV Maccabees are not canonical to Catholics, and II/III/IV Esdras is not canonical to the Orthodox (parts of it were originally in Latin!) even to the limited extent that they are canonical to Catholics (they're sort of sub-canonical).

And even that oversimplifies....

But, also, being translated from the same or different texts does not make something a separate work for anything else on LibraryThing. Root's Middle English edition of Geoffery Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is lumped with modern English translations based on F. N. Robinson's text and also W. W. Skeat's.

Note: I accept that the Bible is sui generis. But because it's unique, there will always be messes and mistakes. There are messes and mistakes the other way, too (which I personally find far more irritating than the mistakes regarding the Bible), but they are different mistakes.

>82 AranelST: My pleasure. And eight responses later, some at considerable length, what's that about "a hot mess"?
>87 AndreasJ: I tend to agree, "it doesn’t impact me much how they’re combined."

This comes up all the time with textbooks and new editions where there is some limited amount of changed text. Usually they get combined so just because the source material of the bibles is different doesn't mean they should be separated. It depends on how different they are.

>92 jjwilson61:

The issue of textbooks seems to come up regularly, and it's more complicated than you say. Yes, consecutive editions of a textbook are usually combined -- but at some point there comes a change. For example, I learned physics from the fifth edition of Sears and Zemansky's University Physics (which was not actually by Sears and Zemansky; it was mostly the work of Hugh D. Young). Later, out of historical interest, I acquired a copy of the second edition, which really was by Sears and Zemansky. :-) Later still, I acquired a copy of a much later edition (tenth or so?), which was not listed as by Sears and Zemansky; it was by Young and Freedman. Since the book is still around, I suspect that one of these days we'll see an edition which mentions neither Young nor Friedman.

If I recall correctly, at the time I started entering the books, those three copies showed up as two different books. (Although it looks as if they may have been combined now. I'm too lazy to verify it, but both have 523 copies. :-)

Similarly, the CRC handbook has been divided into early and later editions; those before some arbitrary edition are "early" and those after are not.

Now let's take a very specific Greek New Testament: the so-called "Nestle" edition. It is a Greek text which eventually came to include a list of variants in the manuscripts. It was initially edited by Eberhardt Nestle. He edited the text according to an algorithm. In the third edition, he changed the algorithm. In the thirteenth edition, his son Erwin Nestle, without changing the text, completely overhauled the system of variants (expanding it massively). He kept doing this for half a dozen editions, then brought in Kurt Aland to help. By the time the 25th edition rolled around, Erwin Nestle was dead and doing the whole job. Then, in the 26th edition, Aland threw out the text and used a different one (not determined by algorithm but by committee vote), and completely redid the apparatus. In the 27th edition, the apparatus was expanded. In the 28th edition, still listed as Nestle-Aland even though all the Nestles are long dead and so is Kurt Aland, the apparatus was changed again and part of the text was as well.

All the same book? LT treats it as such. But there is no string of more than about a hundred words which is the same between the first and 28th editions, and no authors the same, either. Yet even the 27th edition is listed by LT (by default, at least) as by Eberhardt Nestle, who wouldn't even recognize the thing! (Literally; most of the copies are bound in a synthetic "cloth" that didn't exist when he died. :-)

Those "Nestle" editions are more different than, say, the English and American editions of the Revised Version of 1881/1901, which was itself deliberately kept as close as possible to the King James Version, even when the King James had a mistranslation (as in, e.g., John 3:3 and following, where the mistranslation inspired a whole bunch of new sects!). Yet the Revised Version is "different" books and "Nestle" is one book. There is no rule to cover it.

I'm not really arguing for anything here; I'm just saying that there is no simple rule, and the way LT treats the Bible is both inconsistent with its rules for everything else and inconsistently applied even to Bibles. It's probably ultimately easier this way than trying to do it "right," but it's important (to me, at least) to realize that it doesn't work without a whole bunch of fiddling with it on the users' parts.

FWIW, if it were up to me, I'd adopt the "Bible Model" more widely, so that LT wouldn't insist on lumping my patently different editions of The Canterbury Tales, or Sir Orfeo, or... well, I'll stop. :-)

The best example of a multiedition series is probably Joy of Cooking. In such cases there are often several editions with small changes and occasional big rewrites. It takes a lot of research to know where those jumps come. But order can be created.

The series and work relationships can hold several works together.

>93 waltzmn: Yet a French edition of The Hobbit will have almost no words in common with an English version but they're considered the same work. It's more about if it's the same story and I'd venture that all the Books of Matthew are basically the same story.

>95 jjwilson61: An abridged copy is 'basically the same story', but it does not belong in the same work.

>95 jjwilson61: It's more about if it's the same story and I'd venture that all the Books of Matthew are basically the same story.

FWIW: Matthew, yes, basically the same. Mark, no. I Samuel, no. Jeremiah, no.

In the King James Bible, the Gospel of Mark ends with the resurrection of Jesus. In the first edition of the Revised Standard Version, the Gospel of Mark ends with an empty tomb and the promise of a resurrected Jesus, but no description of the resurrection or of anything that followed the opening of the tomb. This is the difference between the text of our only two manuscripts from the fourth century (which have the short, no-resurrection ending) and the bulk of later manuscripts (including every one from the eleventh century and after) which have the longer ending with the resurrection.

In 1 Samuel, the Greek text of the tale of David and Goliath tells a simple story: David, Saul's court musician, offers to fight Goliath, and successfully does so; Saul congratulates him then gets jealous. In the Hebrew version of the story, Saul suffers an amazing case of dissociative amnesia; among other things, he claims never to have met David before, even though David had been at his court for a long time. The Hebrew combines a court account of David becoming Saul's servant with a folktale about the Victorious Younger Son coming out of the blue and defeating a giant. The Hebrew version of 1 Samuel clearly added the second account of David some time after the book was composed, and the Greek was translated from a Hebrew text that did not include the interpolation.

In Jeremiah, the Greek text is more than 10% shorter than the Hebrew, and a set of Oracles on Foreign Nations are in a different place and have a different order within their section. Same oracles, mostly, but moving them definitely makes the book read differently!

I could cite other examples, but those are probably the most easily observed.

In any case, while you can argue that different translations go back to the same original text, that would argue that all Bible translations should be lumped -- but that is not what happens; the different translations are treated as different works.

I wasn't talking about abridged versions. If there are versions of Matthew that leave out some events then I agree they aren't the same.

>97 waltzmn: You're putting the cart before the horse. The reason that different translations are different works currently is because some members did that, not that it's correct by the rules set forth by Tim.

According to Tim's cocktail party test if I was talking to some parable in the Bible I probably wouldn't be worried about which version each of us had read.

My observation is, is that there more of an expert in a genre someone is, the more they see the differences and want to split works. But I think most of the features of LT work better when works are more general and therefore connect more libraries together.

>98 jjwilson61:

I'm not talking about abridged versions either. The gospel of Mark originally ended at verse 16:8. This is attested in the two oldest Greek manuscripts, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Alexandrinus (plus some translations into other languages). In this short version, the gospel ends with the empty tomb and the statement that those who saw it told no one "for they were afraid."

It's a cliffhanger ending that makes very little sense. But it's where the gospel ended. (It has been speculated that the author died at that point. I doubt it, but it's possible.)

Some time later, some pious person who realized the ending was... difficult... took information from the other three gospels and wrote twelve additional verses describing the resurrection. (Actually, this happened twice. There are two additional endings to Mark, one a couple of sentences long, the other twelve verses long. But the twelve-verse one was vastly more popular and was adopted by effectively all of the later manuscripts.)

The book was not abridged. A new ending was added, not by the original author. Many churches consider the addition to be canonical, but what is certain is that the text was altered.

Some editions -- the New Revised Standard Version is one -- include the text with the extra twelve verses, because people often expect to see them. But the NRSV puts the verses in double square brackets, which is their signal that the verses are a interpolation into the original text.

Others translations which somehow indicate that the verses are an interpolation or extraordinarily doubtful are Moffatt, the RSV first edition, the New American Bible, the New Living Translation, and Today's New International Version.

Editions which have the longer version include the Revised Version of 1881, the 1941 CCD edition, the Jerusalem Bible, the New English Bible, the RSV second edition, the New International, the New King James, and the New Jerusalem. As well as every English edition prior to the King James.

Maybe there should be a new thread for discussions of bible combination/separation?

Acc’d the cocktail party test we should, I agree, combine more-or-less all Bible translations. But we should also, I believe, combine an awful lot of annotated editions and the like - which I doubt there is much appetite for.

So I guess what I’m saying is that the cocktail party test is in practice used more as one guideline among several than a hard rule.

>103 AndreasJ: But we should also, I believe, combine an awful lot of annotated editions and the like - which I doubt there is much appetite for.

Hm. I don't think this follows.

I'm going to offer a variant on the Cocktail Party test: the "Would you trade it?" test: If two people would trade two different editions and neither would feel cheated, it's "the same" work.

So, e.g., "Would you trade a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for one with illustrations by another illustrator?" Yes, I would. (Well, at least as long as I'm trading one illustrated by Tenniel for one illustrated by Arthur Rackham or vice versa; none of the other illustrators are worth the bother. :-) Would I trade The Annotated Alice for a standard un-annotated Alice? No way. I don't need most of the annotations, but it's still a value-added edition.

Similarly, would I trade a copy of, say, the Pelican Hamlet for the Signet Hamlet? Sure; they're different, but neither is better than the other. But I'm not trading the Variorum Hamlet to get either the Pelican or the Signet.

Obviously there would be exceptions in peculiar circumstances (e.g. I wouldn't trade the Riverside Complete Works of Shakespeare for the Yale, because the former is just a better edition). But the idea works. I would define difference between an annotated and un-annotated editions in terms of value added.

Or, in the case of some annotated Bibles, it might be value subtracted: you have to survive dealing with those stupid tendential benighted notes to get to the real text. :-p

On which point: I think

>102 norabelle414: Maybe there should be a new thread for discussions of bible combination/separation?

is a good idea. It won't settle anything, really, but at least it would give us a sense.

> If two people would trade two different editions and neither would feel cheated, it's "the same" work.

Interesting idea, but wouldn't it break the well-established guideline that (modern) translations of (modern) books are the same work? I don't think the owners of a Greek and Chinese translation of The Lord of the Rings would be satisfied by a trade.

>104 waltzmn:

I don’t think that’s a ”variant” of the cocktail party test; it’s a completely different test that would result in a lot more splitting.

>105 Felagund:

Well, this is why it's a variant. The cocktail party test doesn't get footnotes about "I can read this edition but I can't read that one." :-) But would an English monoglot collector of J. R. R. Tolkien be willing to trade Greek and Chinese of The Lord of the Rings? Probably, because they're equally good additions to one's collection.

My example from Alice shows why it is a more problematic rule than the cocktail rule: because different illustrators have different skills, two versions of a book with exactly the same text may still have different values to people.

But I am addressing a different problem, which is in fact what >106 AndreasJ: gets at: LT is much too likely to lump things that do not meet the cocktail party test -- if the cocktail party consists of experts in the relevant academic field. :-) No knowedgeable person would lump the photographic facsimile of the Hengwrt manuscript of The Canterbury Tales with, say, the Neville Coghill English translation -- the tales involved are different, the underlying text is different, and the former is a facsimile with transcription and an apparatus of variants anyway. But they got lumped.

My test is basically intended to allow game theory (or, at least, utility theory) to be applied in these cases. As well as to prevent patently-wrong lumping.

>107 waltzmn: what >106 AndreasJ: AndreasJ: gets at: LT is much too likely to lump things that do not meet the cocktail party test

That's basically the opposite of what I was saying.

>108 AndreasJ:

Sorry. I agree, what I wrote is the reverse of what you said. I mis-explained what I meant. (This is what happens when I try to explain too fast!) What I meant is that you were talking about whether to lump or split.

The true Cocktail Party test is almost certainly better for deciding about editions of modern fiction. I honestly have no idea if aberrant lumps or splits are more common in that case.

In dealing with scholarly works, there are far too many inaccurate lumps that should be split. For that, the would-you-trade-it test has a major advantage, because it would tend to prevent combinations of annotated editions, critical editions, etc. with popular editions.

>107 waltzmn: " ... the tales involved are different, the underlying text is different, and the former is a facsimile with transcription and an apparatus of variants anyway"? Sounds to me like they should be separated with disambiguation notices and (if possible) relationships set.

>110 jasbro:

That was my point. :-)

When I started dealing with this problem, I didn't know about the power of the relations, so I didn't do that -- and people kept recombining things. It probably didn't help that "The Canterbury Tales" and "The Canterbury Tales: A New Variorum Edition Volume 1" are the same name to the autocombiner. But this is the core of my argument is that a lot of academic books are being combined and shouldn't be.

>111 waltzmn: But the rules about not combining editions that are abridgements or which have a great deal of added material already deals with that case without introducing a cocktail party variant. The problem you're describing points to a problem that it is difficult to know what is actually in a book that is in someone else's library

>104 waltzmn: I'm going to offer a variant on the Cocktail Party test: the "Would you trade it?" test: If two people would trade two different editions and neither would feel cheated, it's "the same" work.

It doesn't strike me as a variant at all. For some of my books, there's deluxe hardcover, normal hardcover (both A4 or letter), small-format softcover (A5 or US equivalent) and PDF copies, all of which are the exact same page images, besides the cover. But they have different prices, portability and durability. So people wouldn't exchange two copies and be happy.

> But would an English monoglot collector of J. R. R. Tolkien be willing to trade Greek and Chinese of The Lord of the Rings?

Would an English monoglot collector of Agatha Christie be willing to trade a Greek copy of Death on the Nile for a Chinese copy of A Murder is Announced? Quite possibly.

> if the cocktail party consists of experts in the relevant academic field. :-) No knowedgeable person would lump the photographic facsimile of the Hengwrt manuscript of The Canterbury Tales with, say, the Neville Coghill English translation -- the tales involved are different, the underlying text is different, and the former is a facsimile with transcription and an apparatus of variants anyway.

If the cocktail party consists of a certain group of people, they might lump Caxton's Canterbury Tales with Caxton's Aesop's Fables, and separate out facsimile editions.

It's just hard to separate out such works. There's 1300 copies of "The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer" or similar, with no ISBN or title variation.

However, under the current rules, I can see separating out photographic manuscript facsimiles from printed versions. They're clearly "Edition or language differences with a significant social difference. "

>113 prosfilaes: It doesn't strike me as a variant at all.

All right, I'll explain the utility theory. Content warning: this involves both history and mathematics. :-p

When John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern were working on The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, the founding text of game theory, they needed a measure of utility -- more or less, "value." But utility is based entirely on one's personal desires.

You can't use money for measuring utility. The price that is charged for something doesn't depend solely on whether people want it. For example, if someone made a sculpture out of pure osmium, the selling price would have to be high, because osmium is expensive. It would cost more than a sculpture whose externally dimensions were identical in every detail but made of brass, simply because of the cost of the osmium. There are other reasons why selling price does not reflect value.

Morgenstern finally came up with an answer: the "would you trade it for a..." metric. The thing about "would you trade it for..." is that it allows you to test everyone's utility for an object. Yes, that utility will vary -- just as one person might pay a lot to listen to a pop concert, while I would pay to be allowed to leave. :-p But because you can measure everyone's utility, independent of each other or of market price, it is a true measure of value. No other tool has been found that is so effective to measure utility. Pretty much all of modern economics -- especially behavioral economics, the kind that actually works :-p -- is based on Morgenstern's "would you trade it for..." metric.

Now the purpose of the Cocktail Party test is, of course, to see if people think two items are "the same." But there isn't a mathematical model of "sameness." Going back to our osmium statue, its dimensions are the same as the brass one, its color is different, its mass is different. Same or not? The question doesn't even really permit an answer. "Sameness" without a great deal of further specification is meaningless.

So how can we put the Cocktail Party test into a utility theory perspective? How but by using "would you trade it..."?

Yes, there are difficulties with the concept. For starters, every work has to be its own market -- you might happily trade, say, a copy of The Lord of the Rings for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, or vice versa, and that doesn't work at all from the standpoint of "sameness." And I would be unlikely to trade my Fiftieth Anniversary Lord of the Rings for yet another cheap edition. But I would be willing to trade one cheap reprint for another. So those cheap editions, at least, are the same.

Furthermore, if you're going to decide whether to trade, you actually have to think about whether the trade is worth making! Deciding whether to say something is the same has no such demand -- unless, to force people to do the job right, there were a requirement such as that you in fact must be trade any copy of "the same" book for any other in equally good condition. Which I think we would all agree is not what we want!

There is a good deal more math here -- there are cases where neither party thinks a deal is worth making, where both parties do, etc. But the point is, my test is a version of the Cocktail Party test that can, within limits, be mathematically operationalized. I do not think the Cocktail Party test, by itself, can be.

That is based on the fact that, from observation, it appears that people are much more willing to lump works that should not be lumped than split those that should be split. At least within my multiple strange areas of specialization.

>104 waltzmn: So, e.g., "Would you trade a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for one with illustrations by another illustrator?" Yes, I would.

This is an excellent example, in part because I literally just came to the talk section right now to see if I could find a place to ask for help with two bird guides that are lumped in together, but they have completely different illustrators. In field guides, the illustrations are often as essential as the text, so the trade would not make any sense.

So this very neatly demonstrates that you can't just have fixed rules (different illustrations = not enough difference to be a different work), it's really situational and differs from field to field.

>114 waltzmn: That is based on the fact that, from observation, it appears that people are much more willing to lump works that should not be lumped than split those that should be split. At least within my multiple strange areas of specialization.

Lumping is a lot easier than splitting, which is why I was coming to look for help! (All these books have the same author, how do I even tell which has which illustrator???)

I think I disagree with splitting your field guides. If the guides are the same other than the illustrations if they are owned by different libraries then I would rather those libraries be linked through that common work which allows the social features of the site to work.

>116 jjwilson61: I think I disagree with splitting your field guides.

This shows why the rules are tricky, but I think that AranelST is right to split them. I strongly suspect that that would pass the cocktail party test.

The field guides I know best are bird identification guides. What do you use in a bird guide? You use the illustrations, which usually take up half the print area or more. It's only once you've determined that that bird with the black back, rose-colored breast, and white underparts is a male rose-breasted grosbeak that you go to the text and find out, oops, it's not to be seen in North America in winter and you got it wrong. :-) Two bird books with different illustrations are different, no matter what is going on in the text.

In a way, though, this proves the rule about lumping. In a bird guide, the illustrations are "the thing" -- the thing that makes it the same; the text is secondary. This reverses the rule for, say, print books: in The Wind in the Willows, e.g., the text is the thing, and the illustrations can be substituted without making it any less itself.

>117 waltzmn: Hmm, books on artists could also fall into this category; especially where the artist has been re-evaluated and pictures have been re-attributed.

Same with composers; I've just been working on my old vinyl LP of Peter and the Wolf which includes a recording of the Toy Symphony. That's possibly composed by Michael Haydn not his more famous brother as is generally thought, but in all actuality the composer may never be known as it may have been written and added to on behalf of various German toy manufacturers.

>115 AranelST:
from observation, it appears that people are much more willing to lump works that should not be lumped than split those that should be split
...
All these books have the same author, how do I even tell which has which illustrator???

And that's why people tend to lump more often than spilt. It's usually clear when two works are pretty much the same, but often impossible to tell if they're different.

>114 waltzmn: it appears that people are much more willing to lump works that should not be lumped than split those that should be split

I think the issue is quite the reverse. Splitting usually requires someone with both knowledge and willingness to do it. Most lumped works were lumped by auto-combiner, not because someone decided to lump together something that should be separated. Eg Norton Critical Editions are separated because enough people who care have them and have done the work. I have Broadview Literary Texts edition of Heart of Darkness which still sits combined with normal edition of the novela, but it's a similar case of a series that accompanies primary literary text with a lot of additional material. It will get separated when I finally devote time to doing it for the entire series, rather than just the one I have. Or somebody else does it, but the point is, somebody needs to recognize what should be separated and do it more often than not.

>120 SandraArdnas: I think the issue is quite the reverse.

You're probably right about the cause. In fact, almost certainly so: it is the autocombiner. But the result is the same: A lot of false lumps and relatively few false splits.

>117 waltzmn: One could argue that a bird translated to a drawing is similar to a story translated to another language. Two people could each translate the same story or bird using different words or brush strokes but they are still considered the same work.

But I could also argue the other way. It's an edge case. That's when I like to think about it in terms of utility to the site. After cataloging your library I think the most fundamental feature of LT is recommendations and what makes recommendations work is the degree of similarity of libraries which is just the percentage of works they have in common. So whether two books are the same work is central for making recommendations.

So, if someone had the same field guide in their library but with a different Illustrator would you want them to be considered a more similar library.

>122 jjwilson61: So, if someone had the same field guide in their library but with a different Illustrator would you want them to be considered a more similar library.

An interesting point, which I hadn't considered because it's pretty much a universal rule that recommendation engines don't work for me. My library and my interests are just too weird. :-)

But it seems to me that your argument is based on the field guide's primary author being the author of the text. This by no means follows. The illustrator may well be listed first -- and the illustrator is doing more than just reproducing profile paintings of every single bird.

I'll take a specific example, The Sibley Guide to Birds, although it's a bit problematic because the same person, David Allen Sibley, both wrote the text and painted the illustrations. It contains multiple paintings of almost every bird. But it's not like a collection of, say, aircraft schematics, where they show you top, front, and side. The paintings were carefully prepared to help you spot key features of the bird. Page 122, for instance, shows the red-tailed hawk. More than half the illustrations view it from the bottom, because that's how you usually see it: it's circling overhead. Plus the red tail is diagnostic, and you see that primarily when it's flying.

33 pages later is the yellow rail. There are only four images, instead of a dozen-odd, and none of it show the bird from below. There are two of it walking on the ground (where you usually see it), one of it flying from the side, and one from the back.

The illustrator has had to make careful choices about what to include, as well as what to emphasize. A different illustrator makes different choices and produces a different guide, much more so than a different author, and illustrations tend to be retained much longer than text -- new editions usually revise the text and leave the illustrations alone. In at least one case, the "Golden Guide" (properly Birds of North America), they're still using fifty year old illustrations even though I'm pretty sure the original authors of the text are all dead and have been replaced by new authors. But everyone considers the third edition of the Golden Guide to be the "same book" as the first edition -- because the illustrations are the same.

The cocktail party test says that the illustrations are what make a book "the same." They're what meets the eye. :-)

Which perhaps argues that the cocktail party test and the recommendation algorithm have a certain amount of conflict. Would someone who already owns Alice's Adventures in Wonderland be more likely to be interested in The Annotated Alice (same text, with annotations) or Edward Lear's Complete Nonsense (another Victorian nonsense book)? Got me. On this point, I claim no answers.

>114 waltzmn: So how can we put the Cocktail Party test into a utility theory perspective? How but by using "would you trade it..."?

Or we could use chemistry and compare books by chemical composition. Either way, it seems like putting a square peg into a round hole.

For starters, every work has to be its own market

So you have to know what books are the same work to figure out what books are the same work?

But the point is, my test is a version of the Cocktail Party test that can, within limits, be mathematically operationalized. I do not think the Cocktail Party test, by itself, can be.

If the goal is mathematically operationalized, there's much better ways; two books are the same if they're the same size within a set tolerance. Or if they have the same spine color. Or if they have the same spine text. That one's not completely insane, and removing the publisher name might get us closer to the Cocktail Party test.

I do not see how the utility test can be measured, even with a lack of practical restraints. Without practical restraints, I suspect the difficult parts of the cocktail party test could be measured out; an appropriate team gets the different books out and compares them. Once an in-depth report showing that e.g. three recipes were added with minimal changes otherwise, or the text was untouched except for rearranging of the problems with minor changes, or that the title was kept and the story rewritten from scratch, then I think details could be argued out and remaining edge cases would be incredibly rare.

Would it be mathematically operationalized? No. But I don't see an urgent need for it to be so. If necessary, we could teach an AI the rules of the cocktail party test, and let it handle everything. It'd be as good as your average high-school graduate, and a lot quicker, with the imbued correctness of being decided by the computer. I suspect enough readers are howling in pain with that to stop there.

Could you please combine the following two works, each of which has more than 200 copies?

https://www.librarything.com/work/32353279
https://www.librarything.com/work/32353280

>125 northern_reader: Done, with pleasure.

I note that's the same edition as one of ours, ours being caught up in https://www.librarything.com/work/24392/editions/108301436. Given it's a(nother) translation, is there reason to keep Stephen Mitchell's translation separate?

For that matter, should Aleister Crowley' s translation, https://www.librarything.com/work/24392/editions/108301436, be separate?

>126 jasbro: Mitchell is classified as a translator, but even his Wikipedia page states multiple times that his works are “translations and adaptions.” I view his work as loose interpretations, and I wouldn’t equate them with other, more earnest translations.

>127 2wonderY: My impression is similar - that Mitchell's works are adaptations or "versions" rather than straight translations.

>127 2wonderY:, >128 northern_reader: The we should probably separate, disambiguate, and relate it from the primary work records. Who wants to go first?

I clicked the "separate" links for each Mitchell version of the general "Tao Te Ching" work, and then I clicked the button at the top of the screen to "separate" the indicated items. But there was no concrete result, unfortunately. I tried this process a couple of times.

Is a higher permission level needed to perform this action?

>130 northern_reader: Nope - anyone can separate. Maybe a browser issue (JS blocker or something)?

>126 jasbro: Crowley's version is "a radical adaptation" of existing translations according to Douglas Robinson, Professor of Translating and Interpreting at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Emeritus Professor of Translation, Interpreting, and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.

I would suggest "radical adaptation" qualifies it as a separate work, with a relationship.

Working on Stephen Mitchell . . .

Could you please combine the following two works, each of which has more than 200 copies?

https://www.librarything.com/work/32353279
https://www.librarything.com/work/33490243

>133 northern_reader: Done.

If it makes any of you feel any better, I did not split the field guides, because it made my head hurt, so I decided it wasn't my problem.

Now I am trying to figure out why Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices is supposedly "contained within" the same book subtitled "A Newberry Award Winner", which as far as I can tell is just the same book with a Newberry emblem on the front. Which editions are assigned to be which appears to be totally arbitrary. The ISBNs are not separate. The covers show no discernible difference.

My copy, which has the Newberry emblem on the front, shows no indication it contains any new material, and was assigned to the regular title when I added it by scan.

Since they left no disambiguation notes, should I just assume whoever listed it as "contained within" made a mistake??? If so, someone will need to combine them for me, because they both have over 200 copies.

Here is a fun one! That involves no complicated questions.

The Pigeon Needs a Bath!
https://www.librarything.com/work/13766903
https://www.librarything.com/work/32383937

>136 AranelST: The Pigeon Needs a Bath!, and you have no questions? I sure have some!

Done.

As far as I can tell, these are all the same book (although it is very confusing because there are three different titles and two illustrators):

https://www.librarything.com/work/733920
https://www.librarything.com/work/922617
https://www.librarything.com/work/33522629/

There appear to be two versions:
1-One with cover art and illustrations by Ezra Jack Keats, titled "How to be an Animal Detective" or "How to be a Nature Detective". This is the earlier version, although I'm unsure which title came first.
2-One with cover art and illustrations by Marlene Hill Donnelly, titled "How to be a Nature Detective" (note repeat) or "Big Tracks, Little Tracks".

What I believe happened is that the book was re-released with new illustrations, and then later they decided it was confusing, so they also gave it a totally different title, which has not made it less confusing as far as I am concerned.

I tried to sort some of the editions out, and then wished i hadn't, because I don't think it helped.

There are two possible ways to do this. One is to combine the lot of them, which I cannot do, because there are two many books involved. The other is to separate them by illustrator.

...which brings us back to the question of whether having different illustrators makes a book a different "work". These are picture books for children, so my instinct is that the illustrations are as important as the words. (Donnelly and Keats have very different styles. I mean, it's Ezra Jack Keats!)

...I think I'm going to take a break from combining and separating things for a while.

>138 AranelST: Some records for How to Be an Animal Detective show "Based on Nature Detective" as a subtitle. If only for that reason, not to mention I'm not familiar with any of these books or works, I'm inclined to leave them separated and re-combined by title, at least until someone having better knowledge sees fit to combine some or all of them.

>139 jasbro: jasbro Works for me!

I am afraid I have looked at another Bible.

The following are all "standard" NIV Bibles, which is to say that none of them mention containing the Apocrypha or being specifically Catholic (or any other specific tradition), nor do they contain only the New Testament, nor are they identified as study Bibles.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29954364
https://www.librarything.com/work/32905209
https://www.librarything.com/work/32905156
https://www.librarything.com/work/32905220

...there's more, I'm just stopping for now. There are dozens, possibly hundreds of "works" which consist of a single copy of one extremely specific NIV Bible. (Like, this one is burgundy, and 4" wide! This other one is green and has wide margins!) I swear I don't go looking for these on purpose.

>140 AranelST: The following are all "standard" NIV Bibles, which is to say that none of them mention containing the Apocrypha or being specifically Catholic (or any other specific tradition)

FWIW, if you ever see an NIV that claims to have the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books or to be Catholic, be dubious. The NIV is the Evangelical Bible par excellence; its readers in general would not consider those books to have any claim to canonicity.

If you read an NIV alongside, say, an NRSV, you can feel the difference (at least, I can), even when they agree on the underlying Hebrew or Greek text. An obvious example: When one of the later NIV editions took its first very tentative steps toward inclusive language, it received such a negative reception that the chopped off that branch of the NIV tree and went back to the previous edition for the next revision.

I wonder if some of those singletons might not be deliberate singletons: "This is the Bible Translation of the Get-Out-of-My-Face Church of Way-Out-in-the-Boondocksville, Outer Mongolia." :-p

>141 waltzmn: FWIW, if you ever see an NIV that claims to have the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books or to be Catholic, be dubious. The NIV is the Evangelical Bible par excellence; its readers in general would not consider those books to have any claim to canonicity.

It's ironic, because 1984 NIV is not particularly conservative as Bible translations go. I haven't found any mainstream Bible translation today that is as inclusive as the NRSV was in 1989. There are a few that get pretty close (the 2011 NIV is one of them!), but I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

In any case, I am sure there are some people who absolutely believe that their one edition is the only real Bible. But I think most of the one-offs are from people who aren't paying attention, and then there aren't a whole lot of people who feel qualified to wade into the mess, so it accumulates.

So do we combine >140 AranelST:, or no?

>143 jasbro:

I would say combine them. As long as they're NIV Bibles, they belong together. I merely suspect that some people didn't want them together. But they are one thing by LibraryThing standards, and the Cocktail Party test, and who holds the rights, and every other standard I can think of.

>140 AranelST:, >144 waltzmn: Done.

>145 jasbro:

Thank you! All of those were completely obvious examples of standard NIV Bibles without anything to distinguish them. There were no edge cases.

I did, in my exploration last night, come across one (1) person warning that eternal salvation could be at stake if the wrong editions were combined. Predictably, it was attached to an edition with only one copy! However, I think that person was concerned about translation differences, not, like, whether the book has a green camo cover or a purple glitter cover. In any case, the people who think like that have already condemned me to hell over more serious matters, so it's a risk I am willing to take.

However, what I also think, after that additional exploration, is that 99% of this (at least with the single-copy editions) is just a matter of how Bibles are sold. Once you have chosen a specific translation, they all have basically the same title, so they are sold by features like print size, the color and material of the cover, and so on. This is how the are listed on Amazon, so this is how they come onto the site when people scan their books. They're not going out of their way to add single-copy editions, they're just scanning their books.

The people who do care should generally be happy to see all of the standard NIV Bibles listed together, because having them all separate seriously dilutes their significance. (NIV is indeed one of the most popular translations, but you cannot see this from the numbers if they are split so much that the green thinline NIV is separated from the blue thinline NIV.) Because it's the translation, and sometimes the study material, that people are concerned about. Nobody is seriously arguing that you can't combine they pink glitter edition and the purple glitter edition. (...these really exist, by the way.)

So if it's only a matter of translation(s), should we be combining ALL Bibles that have substantially the same content, regardless of whether it's Luther, KJV, NIV, NRSV, NEB, etc.? Catholic and others would remain separate, to the extent they include other material. Not sure I want to mess with that, and the resulting work would be unwieldy, but I'll help as I can and as it makes sense. It would sure make for some lively cocktail parties ...

>147 jasbro:

The consensus view is that Bibles are not like other works, and that different translations should not be combined. Apart from the fact that it's too much work.

Really long lecture, but worth knowing if you're going to deal with Bible translations....

I do think this separation makes sense, in an odd sort of way, even for translations that have the same books (being aware, as has been noted elsewhere, that Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox all have different Old Testaments, and if there were any Marcionites left, they'd have a different New Testament too :-).

Translations of Bibles are more different than translations of Beowulf usually are, since almost all modern Beowulfs are translated from Klaeber's Old English edition. Most Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translations are taken from the Tolkien/Gordon edition or Norman Davis's revision. Etc.

But New Testaments don't work that way. They absolutely do not translate the same Greek text, and they often have substantial difference in understanding. I'll give one example of each.

For a case of different texts, the most obvious example is "Mark 16:9-20." The King James Bible has these verses, as does the New King James (a very, very conservative translation). I don't have every NIV edition, but the 1978 edition (more or less the earliest) includes them with a note that two early manuscripts omit the verses. The first edition of the Revised Standard Version omitted them; the New Revised Standard Version includes them in double brackets to indicate that, while most manuscripts include them, they are not the work of the author of the rest of the book.

And those verses are important, because they are the only place in the New Testament that says baptism is a necessary condition for salvation. There are plenty of other references to baptism as part of becoming a Christian, but it's not listed as a precondition.

In fact the evidence against those verses is stronger than just two manuscripts; I don't think they should be there at all. In any case, the NRSV handles the situation in a very different way than KJV or NIV. Since this is a fundamental difference in text, I can see how someone would say that a translation that excludes them, or includes them, is fundamentally in error.

A translational difference is in John 3:3 and following. Jesus tells Nicodemus that salvation is based on being born ἄνωθεν, anothen. Nicodemus asks how can someone be born πάλιν, palin. Palin corresponds exactly to our word "again," so Nicodemus asks how someone can be born again.

But Jesus did not say born palin. He said born anothen. And anothen, while it can mean "again," means primarily "from above." So did Jesus tell Nicodemus that he should be born again or born from above?

The King James Version chose "again." Hence to be "born again."

However, there are other instances where the Gospel of John picks a word with multiple senses and deliberately alternates it with a word which shares one sense of that word but is a synonym only in one sense, and wanting us to use the other sense. It seems quite clear that the "John" is intent on showing Nicodemus as misunderstanding "born anothen" as if it were "born palin" but wanting us to understand the other meaning of anothen. So the correct reading should be "born from above."

The New King James and the New American Standard Version (another deeply conservative version) read "born again." The NIV reads "born again" but admits "born from above" in a footnote. The NRSV, as well as the Catholic New American Bible, read "from above." (NRSV admits "born again" in a footnote.)

Surely it will be self-evident that one who believes in being "born again" will not accept a translation which says that the person must be "born from above" and that "born again" is a mistranslation by translators who are too stupid to understand what the author is doing!

This is why the NIV is (from everything I have heard) the most popular of the modern translations, at least in the United States (I doubt it gets anywhere near as much use in the rest of the world): AranelST is right that it's not as conservative as the New King James or the New American Standard. But it's conservative enough to be acceptable to most evangelicals, as the (otherwise much better, but ecumenical) NRSV, or the (somewhat ecumenical, and periphrastic) Revised English Bible are not. (As I've said, I at least can feel the difference between NRSV and NIV. I have my gripes with the NRSV -- enough that I've been tempted to create my own translation -- but they're nothing like my response to the NIV.) And the NIV reads much better than the radically conservative, woodenly literal NASB, or the simply flaky NKJV. So it's the conservative choice.

Most serious scholars prefer the NRSV -- for many more reasons than just those I listed. But it doesn't sell nearly as well as the NIV. It's easy to see why those who can accept one cannot accept the other. So there is a reason why various people say that only this or that translation is the "real" Bible. (Many of them even reject the Greek, saying their translation is better. I'd call this absurd, except that the Catholic Church did the same, prioritizing the Vulgate Latin translation over the Greek and Hebrew it was translated from.)

And because someone who uses an NIV perhaps cannot use an NRSV, and vice versa, it's probably best that they be kept separate.

>147 jasbro: So if it's only a matter of translation(s), should we be combining ALL Bibles that have substantially the same content, regardless of whether it's Luther, KJV, NIV, NRSV, NEB, etc.?

No, and I don't think this is particularly ambiguous. The short version of the explanation is that different Bible translations are almost always socially significant.

The definition of "different" can be a bit debatable because sometimes different versions of the same translation might be significant. But in general, a translation that is different enough to have its very own abbrevation (like CEB or NASB or even NIrV), can be assumed to different enough to be socially significant.

Study Bibles are another can of worms. It can be hard to tell the difference between a study Bible for people who love horses (with substantial additional content that is totally different from the study Bible for people who love cats) and a regular edition of the same Bible with a horse on the cover (and maybe a few extra pictures of horses inside).

...yes, there is a study Bible for people who love horses.

>148 waltzmn: Really long lecture, but worth knowing if you're going to deal with Bible translations....

...are you Lutheran, by any chance?

OKey - can we please move the Bible discussion out of this thread? :) Someone needing help may get a bit confused (not that LT does not often work that way).... Plus the few people who actually help here keep opening the thread expecting to find things they can help with... :)

The following are both "Holy Bible: King James Version" without anything else to distinguish them. So, same translation, same books, little or no study content, but hundreds of variations on things like cover and print size. (We do not have to have another whole conversation about this. These two sets are not complicated.)

https://www.librarything.com/work/33097240/
https://www.librarything.com/work/32905088/

>151 AranelST: Done; thanks!

Can somebody merge a large stray-copies entry that I split off from where they were improperly merged with an omnibus? Thanks.

https://www.librarything.com/work/33554559
https://www.librarything.com/work/8174366

>153 scott_beeler: Done.

Please combine:
https://www.librarything.com/work/968545/t/Libra
https://www.librarything.com/work/32703769/t/Libra

>155 DromJohn: Done.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (NRSV) and the New Oxford Annotated Bible: NRSV (with Apocrypha).

I'm pretty sure the Apocrypha is the same regardless of where it is put in the title. Both of these works contain a mixture of editions, so dividing them by editions seems hopeless, even if we wanted to (and I don't think they're different enough for that).

https://www.librarything.com/work/12297
https://www.librarything.com/work/28137734

*sigh* The economy edition is not a different work from the thinline edition. It's just made with a different kind of paper. Also, "pew edition" is just an edition with a cover that sort of matches the hymnal, and "church Bible" is redundant in this context.

https://www.librarything.com/work/31243471
https://www.librarything.com/work/31243489
https://www.librarything.com/work/31243835
https://www.librarything.com/work/32427983

*EDIT: And the journaling Bible is just the same Bible with bigger margins:
https://www.librarything.com/work/32467261/

And the reader's edition just means they have taken the verse numbers out:
https://www.librarything.com/work/31243455/

Please combine so my NIV Bibles can be in the same work:

https://www.librarything.com/work/31705490/
https://www.librarything.com/work/32905209/
https://www.librarything.com/work/32905137/

>157 AranelST: Done. Would you distinguish or combine Michael Coogan (editor), https://www.librarything.com/work/28137734, and Bruce Metzger (editor), https://www.librarything.com/work/29990806?

>158 AranelST: Done.

>159 AranelST: Done.

>160 jasbro:

Thank you!!! This is really complicated. Coogan is the main editor for the third, fourth, and fifth editions.

Metzger was apparently the editor of the original Oxford Annotated Bible (which counts as the first edition of NOAB), so it's not unreasonable to still credit him. In theory if he is credited as the editor, that should mean you are looking at the first or second edition (which is RSV and therefore should not be combined), but in practice, people often seem to select the wrong editor. (...Amazon is probably to blame.) There is also a small army of associate editors, so the credits get weird.

In theory, I think there should be four works:
- Editions 1-2
- Editions 1-2 with Apocrypha
- Editions 3-5
- Editions 3-5 with Apocrypha (which is much more popular)

Whether 1-2 and 3-5 can be distinguished reliably enough to keep them separate is something I have not yet determined.

The two you linked both seem to be editions 3 or later, so they should be combined.

(As an aside, I found it amusing that the one Bible translation I have worked on so far that was already combined pretty well was NRSV, the translation most often favored by academics and scholars. Because, of course it would be, we're like that in here.)

I don't see any reason why https://www.librarything.com/work/30243822/editions should not be combined with https://www.librarything.com/work/6187725/editions. They both seem to be the graphic novel of The Hedge Knight. Can someone help with these? Thanks in advance!

>162 SimoneA: Done.

I think I've found the remaining large-number editions of the KJV Bible (no Apocrypha, not just the New Testament, no substantial study materials, etc.).

The main combined one: https://www.librarything.com/work/33097240

One edition with 496 copies: https://www.librarything.com/work/33611773
One edition with 244 copies: https://www.librarything.com/work/33623830

>164 AranelST: Done, although I find it hard to believe that LT members, of all people, have only cataloged 7,592 copies of the KJV.

>165 jasbro:

Thank you! This is a big part of why I am doing this! This is probably the most popular translation of one of the most popular books in the world, but when I started, the most I could find at once were a few hundred copies! The "do not overcombine" approach does not actually protect or show respect for these Bibles--instead, it dilutes their significance considerably.

I've now got the main KJV Bible up to 1,296 on the popularity chart, which I'm sure is not where it ought to be, but it's much better than the six-figure (!) numbers I was seeing when I started.

I'm sure there are tons more KJV Bibles, but the remaining ones are harder to track down because either they are just identified as "Bible" or else they are entered in some idiosyncratic way that results in single-copy works. The former cannot be combined and the latter are tedious to track down (but I can do it on my own, I don't have to ask for help here).

There also very likely is a substantial percent of Bibles that just don't get entered at all, because people find them difficult (or impossible) to scan.

This discussion is making me want to add two Gideonite New Testaments I've got lying about that I long ago gave up on because they have no ISBN's or similar identifications.

One of them is extra awkward if different translations are to be kept apart - it's bilingual in Swedish and English, and should then presumably be combined only with other versions with that particular combination of translations (Bibel 2000 and KJV - perhaps not two translations you'd expect to appeal to the same people, but Sweden doesn't have an equivalent of the KJV-only movement and most people go for the Bibel 2000 translation on grounds no more theological than that it's the most recent official one).

>167 AndreasJ:

Yes, it really ought to be combined only with other examples of that specific combination of translations. Bibles with two or more different translation are a whole thing! This is part of why I insist that Bibles with the same translation cannot reasonably be separated by minor differences. There is simply too much variation just between different translations, we cannot possibly also be keeping track of which minor references are provided.)

...the Gideons are so prolific, there probably are other Bibles with that specific combination around here somewhere, but they may be uploaded as "Gideon Bible" or something equally unhelpful for these purposes.

There also appears to be a German translation which includes the words "Bibel" and "2000", so good luck searching. Here is a particularly delightful example:
https://www.librarything.com/work/31210568/t/Die-Bibel-Schlachter-2000-brochiert...
(...is this the 2000 German translation, or is it in French???)

>168 AranelST: I’m gonna be upset if’n our The Holy Bible : containing all the books of the Old and New Testaments : King James version gets combined with other KJVs. Not that I’d be liable to argue ‘gainst it overmuch, but I’d still be upset.

Should we maybe start a Bible Combiners! thread?

>169 jasbro:

I noticed that one! I wish I could see some of the illustrations, to see what the fuss is about. I've been deliberately leaving it alone, because it looks like the illustrations may be substantial enough to qualify it as a separate work, and so far I have not been intentionally combining anything that looks like it might really be different.

There are some other editions with Barry Moser illustrations that probably are not substantial enough to count as separate works, though. But where do you draw the line?

...a separate thread might stop the digressions. We're going to keep having digressions, at least until the spring flowers start to grow and I wander off to look at them.

In case anyone feels the need for additional grey hairs:

I went ahead and added those two New Testaments, split one of them out of a work clearly not all the same combination of translations that it autocombined with, and wrote disambiguation notes specifying the translations used (you didn't think the monolingual one was going to stick to one translation, did you?). If anyone wants to try and identify further works they should be combined with, be my guest.

>171 AndreasJ: Oh I already looked, haha! Couldn't find any for the Swedish-KJV one, at least. (Do you know why the Gideons love the KJV so much? I asked them once. It's because it's public domain and therefore free. That's the entire reason.)

(FYI, I started a new thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/368753 )

ESV Study Bible (it's not just a study Bible that uses ESV, it's the name of a specific one):
https://www.librarything.com/work/32432290/t/ESV-Study-Bible
https://www.librarything.com/work/33797653/t/ESV-Study-Bible
https://www.librarything.com/work/32739076/t/ESV-Study-Bible
https://www.librarything.com/work/33797678/t/The-ESV-Study-Bible

I might be able to get this list down to three works, but there are large-number editions in each of them, so help will be needed to combine them.

If there is anything to discuss, here is the dedicated thread:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/368753#8789404

>174 AranelST: Done.

Not a Bible!

https://www.librarything.com/work/17185/t/The-Jesus-I-Never-Knew
https://www.librarything.com/work/26809315/t/The-Jesus-I-never-knew

(There are also separate works for a leader's guide, participant's guide, etc. This is just the original book.)

>176 AranelST: Done. (And who said it's a Bible?)

>177 jasbro: Oh, sorry, I was just commenting on the fact that, for once, I was asking to combine something that is not a Bible.

Please combine these works:
https://www.librarything.com/work/33803387
https://www.librarything.com/work/9719728

Thanks!

Basic Theology by Charles Ryrie.
https://www.librarything.com/work/62797/
https://www.librarything.com/work/29200561/

(No, I have not yet sorted out the Ryrie Study Bibles. That's another whole thing.)

Dispensationalism by Charles Ryrie
https://www.librarything.com/work/29736005
https://www.librarything.com/work/29735969

>179 Albertos: >180 AranelST: >181 AranelST: Done.

>182 jasbro: Thanks!

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar seems to have found itself in two works, as far as I can tell:

https://www.librarything.com/work/9497494/

https://www.librarything.com/work/33688775/

>184 EerierIdyllMeme: The second work you list, the Folger Library edition, has this disambiguation notice:

“Do not combine with play: This version includes the text of the play along with discussions of Shakespeare's life and world, dramatic criticism, and textual commentaries.”

Please combine U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos.

https://www.librarything.com/work/130852/t/U-S-A

https://www.librarything.com/work/25195557/t/U-S-A-The-42nd-Parallel-%25252F-191...

https://www.librarything.com/work/9036/book/73764822
https://www.librarything.com/work/33068185/t/St-Augustine-Confessions-Oxford-Wor...
https://www.librarything.com/work/33070385/t/Confessions-Oxford-Worlds-Classics

Please combine these works.

This one popped up on my recs:

https://www.librarything.com/work/33502276/t/A-Tale-of-Two-Cities-Bantam-Classic

which is presumably the same as this one:

https://www.librarything.com/work/17728/t/A-Tale-of-Two-Cities

>188 EerierIdyllMeme: Done

Both of these are generic entries for Bibles where no translation can be determined:
https://www.librarything.com/work/5968330/t/The-Holy-Bible
https://www.librarything.com/work/33844054/t/Holy-Bible

>190 AranelST: Done

>191 jasbro: Thanks!

https://www.librarything.com/work/32872834/t/The-Glory-of-Heaven-The-Truth-About...
https://www.librarything.com/work/127757/t/The-Glory-of-Heaven-The-Truth-about-H...

These need combining, Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen (1):

https://www.librarything.com/work/33690991
https://www.librarything.com/work/5277061

The latter is part of the series Watson Trilogy (sic).

>193 AranelST: >194 Charon07: Done

These two need combining. I pulled out the smaller quantity from an unrelated work (due to an overlapping ISBN, possibly a typo).

https://www.librarything.com/work/34074469/
https://www.librarything.com/work/15130416

Thanks.

>196 karenb: Done

>197 jasbro: Also removed several copies of The Body Keeps the Score from The Snowy Day -- also an ISBN issue like >196 karenb: said. although, you know, if someone wants to write a mashup of the two, more power to them.

>198 catscoffeecats: Thanks! I recall now seeing that suggested combination but, at the time, couldn't detect the cause.

Given we're at 200, this thread is CLOSED. Please continue our discussions at Blocks to combining that affects large numbers of copies (Sorry, too much love!) #6. Thank you!