dual ISBNs

I put this "Baen paperback First printing February 1997 $5.99 has ISBN 0671877674 on copyright page, 87764-4 on front cover but 0671877666 on back cover." in the Disambiguation notice field on the ck page of https://www.librarything.com/work/48942/commonknowledge
Is that acceptable? I noticed that one of the editions has the wrong (0671877666) ISBN listed.

>1 Darkstar51: To me, it seems like too much info that makes it unclear what is the point of disambiguation. It looks like a personal note that belongs to comments or private comments section in your own catalogue. If the aim is to point out one of the editions has the wrong ISBN and why, I'd focus on that and state it clearly. Strictly speaking, it's not needed, but if you think it will be useful to disambiguate in the future, I'd personally rephrase to avoid someone deleting it in the future due to misunderstanding.

A 6 digit number is not an ISBN.

>1 Darkstar51:

Why? What's the point of that disambiguation notice?

>2 SandraArdnas: the 0671877666 on the back cover is the incorrect ISBN for this book. A search on LT for 0617877666 results in this page: https://www.librarything.com/search.php?search=0671877666&searchtype=newwork... with the note "This is a secondary, minority match and may be the result of ratty data." I think the "ratty data" is the resault of an incorrect ISBN printed on the back page. There is a wrong ISBN on the edition page https://www.librarything.com/work/48942/editions/267441977 fifth one from the bottom.
I was trying to correct the "ratty data". Unfortunately, I did not do that very well. Any suggestions, including deleting it, are welcome.

>3 MarthaJeanne: I know. I was listing all numbers found, The six digit number apperas to be 6 digits of the ISBN, which Bantam once used as their catalog #.

>4 lilithcat: To show that the incorrect ISBN on the back cover belongs to a different book.

>7 Darkstar51: So say that and leave the rest out if you really want to add something - if you want the rest of the details (what specific place says what), add that in the comments of your own copy.

The work level fields will contain information about all editions in all languages. There may be just a few today but that can change. If every wrong/misused ISBN from the listing above is listed in the disambiguated notes, they will become meaningless. People add one book, change the title and leave the old isbn. There are a lot of these in the DB. That’s just how the site works.

>7 Darkstar51:

But your disambiguation notice doesn't say that. All it says it that your edition has multiple ISBNs located in different places on the book. There could be all sorts of reasons for that.

>1 Darkstar51:

Er, "mass market" paperbacks of that vintage printed the ISBN is on the inside of the front cover. The bar code on the back cover is unrelated to the ISBN. So I wouldn't worry about the discrepancy: it's standard.

I don't see the point of that as a disambiguation notice.

To show that the incorrect ISBN on the back cover belongs to a different book.
If you want to say that, you should say which work that ISBN belongs to. Just saying it's wrong isn't helpful.

But as others have said, that's not an ISBN.

Assuming that the number in question was actually an ISBN...

Even then, saying "ISBN 0671877666 belongs to Mystery Work by Joe Bloggs" isn't useful. If someone cataloged Paths to Otherwhere by James P. Hogan with ISBN 0671877666 it should still be combined with other copies of Paths to Otherwhere, regardless of the incorrect ISBN.

The only case it would be useful would be if that ISBN was for a different work named Paths to Otherwhere and someone had cataloged that without an author, so it was ambiguous which Paths to Otherwhere it was. Then saying "ISBN 0671877666 belongs to Paths to Otherwhere by Somebody Else" would be useful.

If I stumbled across that as a disambiguation notice, I'd probably delete it.

That iSBN is for The Ship Avenged, and I have just separated an edition of three copies from that book and combined them in here. The disambiguation notice is not a help, but just confusing. ISBN right or wrong, that edition needed to be combined in.

>5 Darkstar51: I was trying to correct the "ratty data"

You can't. Someone has catalogued Paths to Otherwhere by James P. Hogan with the ISBN 0617877666. You can't change what they have in their catalogue. Even if you contacted that user and convinced them to fix their book, there would still be a zero-copy edition in the system with that title and ISBN, and you'd still get that "ratty data" in the search results.

>8 AnnieMod: AnnieMod: Very helpful in explaining howthw system works and what to expect and not expect.

>10 karenb: karenb: I am aware of that issue but the back cover states "ISBN 0-671-87766-6"

>11 r.orrison: r.orrison: helpful

>12 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne:notice deleted

thanks all for the helping me to understand how LT works. I'll just stick to adding books and adding the more obvious information, such as First/last word, to CK until I have a better understanding.

Just found another ISBN issue.
https://www.librarything.com/work/959788/editions "Memory, A Miles Vorkosigan Adventure/Bujold, Lois McMaster" lists "The immortality option/Hogan, James P./ISBN 0743471636" as one of its editions. 0743471636 is the ISBN of the book, The immortality option/Hogan, I have in hand.
Just to be clear, I should ignore the discrepancy? Or should I report further discrepancies?

>15 Darkstar51:

That sort of thing is generally the result of a bad combination. I separated The Immortality Option, so it should no longer show on Memory: a Miles Vorkosigan Adventure page.

Why are you so worried about the ISBN?
I have now separated that title out of the work. https://www.librarything.com/work/32535640/editions
So far I have not seen another work. I will not combine it into https://www.librarything.com/work/305193 because it doesn't belong there.

It doesn't matter whether the ISBN is right or not. What matters is which work an entry belongs in, if that can be reasonably determined. Title and author matter a lot more than ISBN.

You cannot correct other people's data. If they have bad data, that's just how it is.

>17 MarthaJeanne: I was not concerned about the ISBN. The book was listed as " "The immortality option/Hogan" on the "Memories" edition page, but lilithcat separated it out.

>18 Darkstar51:

I think there is a communication problem here. When you say things like, "Just found another ISBN issue", it sure sounds as though you are concerned about the ISBN.

What you are really talking about are improper work combinations. The differing ISBNs is how you are noticing them. Do be aware that the same work may have multiple ISBNs, so that alone does not necessarily indicate an improper combination.

The one I found was listed as
The Immortality Option
by Lois McMaster Bujold

We take things like this out of the works they don't belong in, but we can't do anything more.

And just to clarify - we take out the books whose titles make it clear they are wrongly combined; we do not take out the ones which have the wrong ISBN but the correct title.

Where disambiguation notes get useful is on books that have not only multiple ISBNs, but also multiple titles. Amazingly often the US and UK publishers insist on different titles, or a book will be made i to a movie and then reissued with the movie title.

ISBNs only get interesting when they differentiate between copies that belong in the main work and abridged versions.

>21 AnnieMod: thank you. That was the exact information I was looking for!

I'm having issues with some books I add put into the wrong work. I was trying to determine why that is. I thought it might be ISBN, but the last book had the title/author along with ISBN in the incorrect work. I'm still not sure why books get put into wrong work.

And there are a lot of bad ISBNs around in the world. Publishers make errors too - I have two different books by the same author, that share the same ISBN. (Also some publishers recycle their ISBNs - ugh, but it happens)

>24 Darkstar51: If some wrong edition gets in, it can attract more similar copies.

If a title is too long or includes a colon, much of the title will be ignored.

There are a few notorious black holes.

Sometimes it just happens.

>24 Darkstar51: There is some fuzziness in the algorithm that determines what goes where and sometimes the decision is really wrong. It needs to be there - otherwise nothing will get combined - between different ISBNs, differently spelled authors and weird addition to the titles (and mispelled titles), things can get complicated. So when you add a book, the site makes a best effort to find out if that needs to be autocomnibed somewhere. If it finds something promising and no contradictions, it just adds it there. For the most part that works well - we get more correctly combined works than badly combined ones (and a lot less work needed to get these out than it will take to get the combinations done if only complete and exact matches were combined).

When that happens, the book just needs to get separated and combined where it belongs -- and after that any new copy added the same way will follow it into its new home - exact matches always follow existing copies.

LT does not have an edition layer (despite the name of a certain page) :) So all copies of the book just get dumped into the same work. Thus the need for the algorithm and the need for it to be fuzzy. Plus every time you add a new book, it does not start as part of a work even if you use the Add button on the work page - you are literally adding a new book and LT needs to decide if it goes into an existing work or if it gets its own new work record as well (unlike something like Goodreads for example where you find your edition and your book gets automatically connected to it (or you mark it as part of your library - depends on how you look at it).