Combining/Separating (Please Fix This Book!) Request Thread #88

THIS THREAD is for LibraryThing Members, and especially for “beginners,” to ask help and learn about combining and separating specific LibraryThing Works.
-- If a book is combined with other, very different books.
-- If a book won’t combine with others just like it.
-- If problems with any Work are overwhelming, or maybe you just don’t have time.

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WHEN YOU POST:
-- Please give Titles, Authors, hyperlinks, and other information that will help.
-- If you post multiple requests at once, please number each group. Examples:

“Please combine:
#1: The Story of the Life of You
http://www.librarything.com/work/AAAAAAAA
http://www.librarything.com/work/BBBBBBBB
#2: The Story of the Life of Everyone Else
http://www.librarything.com/work/XXXXXXXX
http://www.librarything.com/work/YYYYYYYY
http://www.librarything.com/work/ZZZZZZZZ ”

-- Ask about sets of Works or Series pages, ask for opinions, or ask for help with specific languages, subjects, etc.; but please be brief.
-- Please do not give Search pages, Author pages, or groups of “possibles,” unless you have a specific question.
-- “Someone will be with you shortly.” Most requests are handled by our fellow LibraryThing Members, not by staff.
-- If you add to a post, please use “ETA:” or “EDIT:” to show what’s new.
-- Please note when a request is “DONE.”

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NOTES:
-- If two works have more than 200 records each, LibraryThing staff may need to do the combining. Please post these requests to: https://www.librarything.com/topic/361495.
-- For information and discussion, but not problems, please see the Combiner’s Group Information, FAQ & Discussion Thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/57164.
-- For the related wiki page, please see: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Book_combining.
-- Please note Tim’s Guidelines for Proper Etiquette for Contacting Members about Book Records at http://www.librarything.com/topic/30795#469616; if you contact another Member, please use Private Message.
-- When this thread reaches 200 posts, please do not post here but start a new Thread. Threads under 200 posts load faster and are easier to navigate. Please copy these notes as post #1 of the new thread. Thank you.

THIS THREAD is for LibraryThing Members, and especially for “beginners,” to ask help and learn about combining and separating specific LibraryThing Works.
-- If a book is combined with other, very different books.
-- If a book won’t combine with others just like it.
-- If problems with any Work are overwhelming, or maybe you just don’t have time.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHEN YOU POST:
-- Please give Titles, Authors, hyperlinks, and other information that will help.
-- If you post multiple requests at once, please number each group. Examples:

“Please combine:
#1: The Story of the Life of You
http://www.librarything.com/work/AAAAAAAA
http://www.librarything.com/work/BBBBBBBB
#2: The Story of the Life of Everyone Else
http://www.librarything.com/work/XXXXXXXX
http://www.librarything.com/work/YYYYYYYY
http://www.librarything.com/work/ZZZZZZZZ ”

-- Ask about sets of Works or Series pages, ask for opinions, or ask for help with specific languages, subjects, etc.; but please be brief.
-- Please do not give Search pages, Author pages, or groups of “possibles,” unless you have a specific question.
-- “Someone will be with you shortly.” Most requests are handled by our fellow LibraryThing Members, not by staff.
-- If you add to a post, please use “ETA:” or “EDIT:” to show what’s new.
-- Please note when a request is “DONE.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES:
-- If two works have more than 200 records each, LibraryThing staff may need to do the combining. Please post these requests to: https://www.librarything.com/topic/361495.
-- For information and discussion, but not problems, please see the Combiner’s Group Information, FAQ & Discussion Thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/57164 .
-- For the related wiki page, please see: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Book_combining .
-- Please note Tim’s Guidelines for Proper Etiquette for Contacting Members about Book Records at http://www.librarything.com/topic/30795#469616 ; if you contact another Member, please use Private Message.
-- When this thread reaches 200 posts, please do not post here but start a new Thread. Threads under 200 posts load faster and are easier to navigate. Please copy these notes as post #1 of the new thread. Thank you.

Thanks for posting the new thread!

PS: Fixed the number in the title so it is clear that this is the new thread. :)

Not sure what to do with this
https://www.librarything.com/work/22430195/editions

>4 Darkstar51: Done (I separated the erroneous entry out, and combined the rest with the main work.)

I believe this is the Legge translation of the I Ching.
https://www.librarything.com/work/5691354/editions/267971512
It has the Baynes/Wilhelm data in the title but lists the Legge editions along with 4 Baynes/Wilhelm editions and several Baynes/Wilhelm covers

Baynes/Wilhelm work: https://www.librarything.com/work/66336/editions

My contribution, a Baynes/Wilhelm edition, was incorrectly placed into the Legge works

>6 Darkstar51: I've generally separated records attributed to Wilhelm / Baynes / Jung / Bollingen from the Legge work and recombined them with the related Baynes/Wilhelm work; disassociated the Legge work from the Bollingen Series; and isolated Baynes/Wilhelm records that specify Volume I or II, relating them as contained in the complete Baynes/Wilhelm work. A next step, which I haven't taken, would focus on ISBNs to see whether some records are combined with one work that we separate and recombine with the other (giving preference always to titles and author attributions).

Please take a look at your record now through a new search of your library (not through the link above); I expect you'll find that it's migrated in the process. If you still have any question or concern, please let us know.

>7 jasbro: Looks like a lot of work. Thank you. My book is now links to the proper work.

https://www.librarything.com/work/49506/editions# Worlds of the Imperium by Keith Laumer includes The Descent of Anansi/Niven, Larry;Barnes, Steven/ISBN 0523485425 (4 copies separate) and The Descent of Anansi/Niven, Steven Larry;Barnes/ISBN 0523485425 (1 copy separate).
I think they belong here: https://www.librarything.com/work/195937/editions The Descent of Anansi by Larry Niven, Steven Barnes

>9 Darkstar51: Done. Separating is done by clicking on separate and then confirming. Combining was easy because the editions page of one showed both the main work and the other separated work as potentials.

Thank you. I tried separating but I don't know how to combine the separated editions into the proper work.

Does anyone know enough about Primo Levi to know if https://www.librarything.com/work/2909030 should be combined with https://www.librarything.com/work/32215465 ? Nothing in the disambiguation notice leads me to think they should be separated but I don't know enough, and it's a pretty big pair of works for me to feel comfortable guessing.

>12 Stevil2001: I don't have the definitive answer, but they either need to be combined, or if separate works, ISBN 0684826801 should be separated from the larger group and combined with the other one. Given the number of books with that ISBN already in the larger group and the fact that DN mentions the alternative title is Survival in Auschwitz, I'm with you it seems something that should be combined.

Thr CK gives the other title as alternate title. Looks like they should be combined.

See also the disambiguation notice on https://www.librarything.com/work/2907174/editions which is a separate work, but has better information..

Please combine:
https://www.librarything.com/work/32652272/
https://www.librarything.com/work/30184022/

They're the same manga volume.

>15 kaitiek: Done.

Please note that if you would like to, you can also combine them - via the author page or via the workbench. We are always here to help but just making sure you are aware :)

>12 Stevil2001: https://search.worldcat.org/title/216251375 reports that Survival in Auschwitz (Collier Books, New York, 1961) is a “Translation of Se questo e un uomo; Originally appeared in English under the title If this man is a man." Absent other, specific information about material differences in editions, I’d say they should be combined.

>13 SandraArdnas:, >14 MarthaJeanne:, >17 jasbro:

Thanks for the help. I was going to go for it, but it's a "too much love" situation so I can't as I have never learned that mysterious secret.

>12 Stevil2001: Done.

The Seventh Swan: A Play https://www.librarything.com/work/19632984

has some copies included in The Seventh Swan https://www.librarything.com/work/134145,
both by Nicholas Stuart Gray.

Could someone please retrieve the missplaced Plays?

>20 SaintSunniva: Done. I've also added a relationship between the two of them so they do not get combined.

Judging by the reviews, this work combines 2-3 different books, but I don't have the time to look at it in any depth, so mentioning it here in case someone else feels like doing it.

>22 AndreasJ: I believe Geoffrey Parker's Phillip II (1978) and his two related, expanded works, Felipe II. La biografia definitiva (2010) and Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (2014), are each now duly sorted, disambiguated, and related. The fourth edition of Phillip II (2002) adds "a new bibliographical essay," but I haven't separated it from the 1978 work on that basis alone. Also, I see the reference in a review to a 31-page summary, but I don't (yet) find that among these works. If someone else does, I expect you know what to do ...

>19 jasbro: Thanks!

>23 jasbro:

Thanks!

https://www.librarything.com/work/15093493/summary

I'm not really sure what happened with this book? I was looking for a different book by this author and saw two copies of 'Carve the Mark,' and one of them is... this. Apparently 18 people have a copy. The only thing I can figure is that it's two wildly different books with the same ISBN? I have no idea what to do with this.

> 26 Could be a reused ISBN(Shouldn't happen, but does.) Could be an Amazon issue. I have flagged the Amazon covers.

Does the disambiguation notice ("2014 revised and updated edition") apply to Carve the Mark, or is it left over from something else? If it doesn't apply, it should be removed and combined with the other Carve the Mark work.

Please fix this separated combination.
https://www.librarything.com/work/4112781/summary
I want to add the Volume 3 which contains 4 of L'amour's novels. I used the ADD button & found it added "Treasure Mountain". So I looked at editions & separated out volumes which were just single novels. It looked like all remaining editions were for the omnibus-type volume, yet when I tried again to add the book, it again brought me to a single novel.
My copy of the book is a book club edition and does not have an ISBN The title page states "The Sackett Novels Of Louis L'Amour Volume III" and contains The Sackett Brand, The Lonely Men, Treasure Mountain, Mustang Man. The covers associated with that work include covers which match mine.

Can you fix the add button to add the correct work?

eta: I just put a disambiguation notice on that work; you may edit it as needed.

Combining and separating will not solve your problem. You need to use the Add book page.

In general, people don't deliberately 'use' a work. They may not notice that their copy is in the wrong work. That's sometimes just where it ended up. Using the button does not force an entry into the work you start from.

BTW This series needs a lot of work if somebody wants a project.

Sorting this one looks like a migraine-level headache: https://www.librarything.com/work/1746079/editions/270964578. There are at least 2 different English collections, one edited by Bogan & the other by Barnes, that might be both (LT message says I own two copies of the same book at any rate)here and god knows how many in other languages that need separating. Additionally there's another, riverrun, Engl. edition listed on Renard's page though it might be Barnes'.

If it's any earthly help the complete journal runs over 1000 closely-printed pages & so it's unlikely to be in any language other than French. But who knows.

Many thanks.

>30 MarthaJeanne: Thank you for looking into this.

Acquired yesterday Jerry Brotton “The Renaissance bazaar” (OUP, first published 2002, 243 pp.). Interesting.

On cataloguing this copy in LT I discover to my surprise
https://www.librarything.com/work/1262073/editions/271596902

This work entry seems to me a conflation of two separate works by the same author, viz
Jerry Brotton “The Renaissance bazaar” (OUP, first published 2002, 243 pp.)
(e.g. https://www.librarything.com/work/1262073/details/271596902 )
and
Jerry Brotton “The Renaissance : a very short introduction” (OUP; first published June 2006, 160 pp.; the front matter states: “First published as The Renaissance Bazaar 2002”).

So the publisher states explicitly that these are two editions of the same work.
And who am I to argue with OUP ?
But the two works are significantly different, e.g. the second "edition" is 34% shorter than the former !
When is a new edition not really a new edition but a different work ?
Confused bibliophile

>33 DouglasAtEik: When is a new edition not really a new edition but a different work ?

I contend that substantial revisions and updates effectively result in different works, and we benefit from recognizing those differences. Consider, for example, James Moffett & Kenneth R. McElheny's Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories {original} (1966), which the same editors revisited and dramatically overhauled in Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories, Revised & Updated Edition (1995). If a revised edition adds to, refines, or significantly changes an author's prior work (Moffett & McElheny sought to change some underlying premises, resulting a widely different selection of anthologized stories), we should absolutely separate, disambiguate, and set relationships among adapted, abridged, expanded, inspired, or supplementary works.

Clearly very different content warrants distinction, but less substantive differences among editions aren't so easy to judge. What if the next edition of an introductory astronomy text book is revised only to update the status of Pluto - does that make it a different work? To complicate matters, some authors are "good" about revisiting and revising or augmenting their own earlier work. John Barth did so with The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, and The Sot-Weed Factor, each of which revisions I consider (because he did) to be different enough to warrant further publication in their revised form, akin to Stephen King's uncut edition of The Stand, and (several hundred) other examples. Unlike Barth's revisions, John Fowles' The Magus: A Revised Version, has (so far) escaped lumping in with his original work by the same title; we'll see whether that distinction lasts. Where other LT members clearly disagree with distinctions, we have erased (and thereby lost) many prior efforts to distinguish among similar, related revised editions.

Consider also our recent conversations on various, often very different translations of classic works (e.g., Beowulf, and Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey; I would readily add Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, Dante's The Divine Comedy, and Cervantes' Don Quixote) by stellar and renowned authors, poets, scholars, and translators in their own right; that conversation begins at https://www.librarything.com/topic/361495#8614271. I personally would distinguish, but LT's "translations" rule governs those combinations. Otherwise, I'm not aware of any bright-line threshold or definitive LT guidance on point, only the "cocktail party" standard. Maybe we need to hold more, and more robust, LT cocktail parties to hash it out?

I for one encourage and welcome your making and documenting distinctions as you can. Where I find a work in more than one edition, I regularly want to understand their differences that may have meaning for our own purposes. Do we want the latest scholarship? The additional insights that a biographer brings, maybe based on newly disclosed journals or letters? Both early and later treatments of the same material by an author whom I find compelling? Or the least expensive, readable copy of a work I can find, just to get the gist of it? That said, be prepared to have other members override your distinctions sometimes, if not often or always. Gray (or grey) areas offer small comfort ...

Here I am asking the same question again. My apologies, but I just don't do it often enough to remember...

The system helpfully combined two books I've added into a work that is probably supposed to be a one-volume work combining both works. I even copied the title of the single volume work I wanted, exactly - but the first unique character was too late in the title.

I've clicked on everything I can think of, and once again can't find which page I need to go to be given the opportunity to disconnect my book(s) from the inappropriate work.

Could we *please* have a how-to-do-this FAQ, pinned in this group, so I won't have to re-ask this question every 6 months or so. Better yet, include both combining and separating.

Even better than that, also include complete soup-to-nuts instruction for this specific problem. Books A and B have been inappropriately combined with Work C, when they are actually individual parts of Work C. IIRC, there are little tricks that make life easier, like getting your book onto your workbench _before_ separating it from the unintended work.

FWIW, this is the second time today that I've had books mis-combined. I decided not to bother fixing the case where my single volume edition of volumes 1 and 2 of the series got mis-combined with a work representing the whole (4 or 5 volume) series. I.e. this happens to me a lot, when I resume adding older books to my library.

Oh nvm - to separate my mis-combined books, I have to go to the editions page of the unwanted work, and find the corresponding book (by title and ISBN, not book number, so there's quite likely no unique match to *my* book), and click "separate".

This probably looks straightforward to the regulars here, and you probably have some trick for finding the right book among the multiple-screens of editions.

Let me assure you it could have been designed to be too difficult for most people to be willing to bother. At the very least, the book number should be made available from the Editions page, so you can tell which instance of the matching title is *your* particular wrong book.

--

Here's a better way, if all you care about is your own library:

1) Delete both books you just added. This will probably leave zero-copy books combined with the unwanted target, but it's much easier.

For each problem book:

a) Clear your workbench

b) Add the book you just deleted again, but with a unique title. I suggest a random string of characters. This will create unique works as well as unique books.

c) Put the book into your workbench

d) Find the correct target work for your first book, and put it in your workbench,

e) Fix the title on the book you added, to reduce the screams from the system, and because you want it correct in your library.

f) Combine the two works.

--

I haven't tried this, and it feels somewhat anti-social, because of the spore it leaves. (There might even be more spore that I don't know about.)

By some miracle, there was only one match to my particular title on the editions page for the wrong work, and it really was my book, as I was able to determine only *after* doing the separation - the first time I had access to thr book number.

So I won't be leaving spore today.

But this needs a better interface.

Or maybe I will be leaving spore.

I uncombined one of my books, got it onto my workbench, and combined it with the right work - but it's STILL showing as the number of owners associated with the wrong work.

I don't recall this sort of change not taking effect immediately. Has something changed.

In any case, time for plan B - delete the books and re-add them, with bogus title guaranteed not to match anything.

Edited to add: both links on my "add" page go to the wrong work - "edit your book" and the book's title. If I search my library for the book (from the "Your books" tab) I get the right one. For the record, the pages that appear have different book numbers as well as different work numbers.

I guess this is why I had a foggy memory that it was critical to get the book onto my workbench early.

I'd recommend patience over deleting/re-entering: some information needs a bit of time to be updated by the system, while deleting books leaves records with zero owners in the database - sometimes attached to the wrong work.

Yes, deleting books is unnecessary and will cause problems.

To separate an edition/book:
1) Click on "editions" on the left side of the work page
2) Find the edition you want to separate (by title, author, and ISBN)
3) Click "separate"

If you can't find the edition/book you want to separate, and it's your book:
1) Click "edit your book" on the left side of the work page
2) Edit the title to be something unique, and save
Then follow the directions above.

To separate multiple editions/books that are the same work:
1) Add the work to the workbench at the bottom of the right side of the page, then go to the workbench
2) Find all of the editions you want to separate, clicking "separate" next to each one
3) Scroll to the top of the page where the editions you clicked are now listed, click "separate"

>39 norabelle414: I never thought of changing my title *after* it had been mis-combined, as a way to find it to detach it. Thank you; that's much easier and doesn't leave a mess behind.

>40 ArlieS: Well, it can leave mess behind. The first title maybe as a 0 copy, and it you later change the title back, that second title as a 0 copy.

The book Walk with a Warden is associated with the wrong author.

https://www.librarything.com/author/hallhsandfhstevens

Can someone remove this book from this author? Steven S. Hall only has the one book.

I just manually added this film set
https://www.librarything.com/work/32946333
And noted that it did appear on the author/director page. After adding a cover, the work no longer shows on his page. I’ve fiddled with it, and can’t get it back there.
If it’s a caching issue, why did it appear and then disappear?

>42 raidergirl3: Fixed. Steven S. Hall ended up on the same page as a bunch of books by "Hall & Stevens" due to URL shenanigans so I added the individual "Hall" and "Stevens" authors to those books and now they're no longer on the Steven S. Hall page.

>43 2wonderY: It's because of this bug: https://www.librarything.com/topic/312780
You need to find the two works and combine them together. The work numbers are always sequential so in this case it's
https://www.librarything.com/work/32946333 and
https://www.librarything.com/work/32946332

>45 norabelle414: I did combine them. Still doesn’t appear on the author page. Will fiddle with it some more.

I changed his role to director, and presto!

Just got batches for working on Series, but feel uneasy, since I fear causing muddle.

-- Can't fix incorporating New York Review of Books : May 14, 1998 : Vol 45 No 8 and New York Review of Books : May 14, 1998 : Vol 45 No 9 as seperate issues.

-- Both, and also New York Review of Books 71/9 (May 23, 2024) I own, but it doesn't show. Still don't get the mechanics. Yesterday everything went fine, though.

-- What about the covers? They don't show.

Sorry for the trouble.

>47 Buchmerkur: I just went in and added to the series the Vol. 45 No. 8 issue that you link. And I removed a series entry by that name which had no contents. I don't know exactly how it got that way but I'm guessing some sort of combining-and-separating gone wrong. Also I see the other one, Vol. 45 No. 9, is dated as May 14, which is wrong, is coming from a mis-titled zero-copy edition there; so I changed the canonical title to show it as May 28 like the other edition.

As for the Vol. 71 No. 9 you link, looking in the series page now I do see it there. There was also another empty entry for that issue in the series page, like for Vol. 45 No. 8, so I removed that one as well. Probably a similar situation led to that.

Lastly, I saw that a bunch of the issues in the series page were out of order, so I moved them around into place. I don't know if that's because you or somebody else had just added them and not got to ordering yet, or what.

>48 scott_beeler: why thank you so much. That's much better. I hope I won't mess up again. That I hadn't adjusted the date after copy and paste seemed the problem. Then I just didn't know how to get out of the breduille. Thanks also for putting everything in order. Nice :-).

https://www.librarything.com/work/19442303/editions/272430107

So, two books published by Encyclopaedia Britannica got combined here.

One for ages 12+ in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica Interactive Science Book' series, and one for ages 3-6 in the 'Britannica Discovery Library Series.'

They are, unfortunately, both titled only 'Animals' and neither lists an author or primary editor, so both are bring contributed to 'Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 'unknown,' etc.

I don't know how descriptions work, if they are attached to specific books somehow, or are assigned to works based on ISBNs, or if they are ever recalculated, but the descriptions contain descriptors for both works, although the top description is from the 'Discovery' early reader set.

The work is assigned into the 'Interactive Science' series.

I don't know how to fix this without somehow messing all that up.

Thanks.

I believe descriptions are based on isbn. So if you separate all editions of the "wrong" isbn out into a new work then its description should follow it to the new work, although there may be a lag

>50 GraceCollection: >51 jjwilson61: I'm not touching this one (for now) because (i) I suspect someone else may already be working on it, (ii) I don't have time to do it justice, and (iii) there's a POTLOAD of other works titled "Animals"!

I feel like this book is a combination of two books by the same author, but I'm not versed in the author well enough to know.
https://www.librarything.com/work/2777274/editions

>53 gilroy: I think you are right. The Garden was published in 1991, The History of the garden in 2005. However I have not seen anything on how they might be related.

>53 gilroy:, >55 jasbro: Looking in WorldCat, Amazon, Google Books and Bookfinder, it appears Barrons Educational Series and Thames & Hudson first published Loxton's The Garden in 1991 (336 pages); Key Porter Books published a "first thus" edition in 1994; and Barnes & Noble published The History of the Garden (303 pages; also a "first thus" edition) in 1996, reissued in 2005. The respective WorldCat descriptions of content are sufficiently dissimilar but vague that I can't tell how the 1991 and 1996 editions might compare. On the other hand, as I recall, B&N did a broad range of coffee-table/gift book reprints in the mid/late '90s, many from the late '80s and early '90s, which they considered might still hold enough special interest to market as discount editions and bargain table books. Without copies of each edition on hand to compare, I can't whether they're more likely the same or different. That being the case, I would for now trust the wisdom of whoever combined them on LT before - "Trust, but verify."

Hi All,

How can I combine the two books below, as one of them has no author and I can't see how to add one:

https://www.librarything.com/work/15250051
https://www.librarything.com/work/25351879

Thanks
Florence

>56 FlorenceArt:

Done.

For future reference, you can combine works by using the Workbench (link is on the bottom right of the Work page).

More about combining works here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Book_combining

You can add authors by using the “other authors” link on the Work page.

>57 lilithcat: Thanks! I didn’t know about the workbench, I’ll keep it in mind.

This may be an issue with a split author with alias:

https://www.librarything.com/author/dohertypaul-1 (6 series, 88 books) is aliased into https://www.librarything.com/author/dohertypc (11 series, 146 books)

He is coming up with gender not set in charts and graphs despite there being gender = male on both pages. The other Paul Doherty's also have genders set.

>59 Maddz: the problem is Tenebrae which did not have a work author set. If it does not fix now in a few hours, you may need to change your author to match the one on the work.

>60 MarthaJeanne: Which is really weird, because I entered the author as Paul Doherty not P C Doherty. Actually, I think I may see what is happening - for some reason, Tenebrae is not showing on either Doherty page.

Bizarre.

I've taken a couple of canonicals out that might be confusing the matter. Best let it sit for a day or two for the computer to settle down.

Depending on busy the servers are, sometimes things take time to get into all corners of LT, and making changes on top of changes just complicates matters.

Found it on the Paul page in unknown. I'll set that.

>62 MarthaJeanne: Okay, thanks.

By the way, what would the preferred gender option be for a multi-author book? Not applicable I would use for corporate authorship where only the publisher is available, but for a co-authored book where there are multiple names in the main author field instead of 1 main author and several secondary authors?

>62 MarthaJeanne: Ta da!

>63 Maddz: I'd use "n/a" -- even when all the authors are the same genre. Just like I will use it for an organization as an author or publisher as an author or anything like that.

There should not be more than one name in the primary author field. One person gets in as primary author, the other(s) as main authors. The book will show on all the author pages of main authors (as set on the work page).

Any entity that is not a single person (multiple persons using a single pseudonym) gets n/a even if both/all in the group have the same gender.

>64 MarthaJeanne:, >66 MarthaJeanne: Thanks. I think I'm thinking of some rubbish imported titles I've run across. I do try and clean them up in my catalogue so each author is entered separately. I'm also thinking of music CDs where a dozen people can be listed or a whole orchestra.

Urgh. Found another https://www.librarything.com/work/922506/editions/260216354

The author is National Trust https://www.librarything.com/author/trustnational but the only Sutton Hoo book to be found on that page is the single-copy Sutton Hoo not the work linked above... I have a feeling that the 2 editions may have been combined at one point and I seem to recall you can't edit the division on a newly uncombined work on a split author.

>68 Maddz: It is on the actual author page: https://www.librarything.com/author/plunkettstevenj

Your copy has "National Trust" as the author. But this author is not confirmed in the work page so this is not the author of the work in any way or form -- so it won't show up on this author's list.

Don't forget that when you look at a specific book record, you see a mix of work and book data.

If you insist on keeping it like that and want to assign it in the split, you need to confirm the author, then assign the split assignment then uncofirm (unless you want to keep it there I guess)?

>69 AnnieMod: I would have to dig out the book to check which version I have - looking at the editions there are 2 potential authors - Steven J Plunkett or Annie Bullen.

>70 Maddz: Your copy is now part of Steven J Plunkett's work - thus showing there. If it is a different book and/or the editions have different authors so need to be kept split, some separation will need to be done to keep them apart. :) Let us know what you find out.

>71 AnnieMod: If I remember. It's going to involve poking around behind some bulky furniture, so I won't get to it until the weekend at the earliest.

Need help combining Spectacular by Stephanie Garber with Spectacular by Stephanie Garber this ISBN 9781250368690 / 1250368693

Our copy is a special edition sold by Barnes and Noble, thus has its own ISBN, but I can't seem to get it to combine. FTR, there are also several other special editions, those seem to have combined correctly.

>73 leennnadine: Done.

This might not be the right group for this, but The House of Cross (Alex Cross 33) https://www.librarything.com/work/32099861/book/269579390 is combined with titles that have the wrong numeration. Is there any way to fix these? I think the little work I did just made it worse. And for that I am sorry. But it is throwing off the numeration.

The House of Cross (Alex Cross Book 32)/Patterson, James (1 copy separate)
The House of Cross (Alex Cross 33)/Patterson, James (1 copy separate)
The House of Cross (Alex Cross, 33)/Patterson, James/ISBN 0316402680 (1 copy separate)
The House of Cross/Patterson, James/ISBN 152913661X (1 copy separate)
The House of Cross: (Alex Cross 32)/Patterson, James (no current copies separate)
The House of Cross (Alex Cross 31)/Patterson, James (no current copies separate)
The House of Cross (Alex Cross 32)/Patterson, James (no current copies separate)
The House of Cross: Alex Cross, Book 33/Patterson, James (no current copies separate)

>75 kristincedar: There is nothing we can do if someone entered the book like that in the past - we cannot change user's data on the book level.

All of these are entries for "The House of Cross" so they are where they belong. A user can add whatever they want to their title -- just ignore it. Someone may even put "Alex Cross 16" or "Annie's copy" or anything really if so they chose - their entry, their choice :)

The basic rule is:
- Identify the book and make sure it is in its work record
- Ignore anything else someone may have added to the title of an individual book.

PS: And if the work title is impacted badly as it was here, add a canonical title (at least temporarily) :)

>74 AnnieMod: Thanks!

Murmured Conversations is not listed on the author's page but does show up on the translator's. I can't figure out why. All the info seems to be in the right places, I've tried recalculating authors... can anyone see what the snag is?

The work is credited only to Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen. If you want to change that or add another author to the work, you can do that at 'Other Authors' on the main work page. Only doing it in your entry will not help.

Aha, a whole system I was unaware of. Thanks!

(Now that the Hallowe'en Hunt is over...) Can I go ahead and merge the series Samhain and Samhain Magazine? The second series looks like it's part of the first one.

>81 humouress: I would; thanks.

Can someone put this book under the right author.

https://www.librarything.com/author/stafforddavid

Skelton's Guide to Blazing Corpses should be under the same version of David Stafford as Skelton's Guide to Domestic Poisons and Skelton's Guide to Suitcase Murders
The other 2 appear under https://www.librarything.com/author/stafforddavid-3 while the first appears as David Stafford (unknown)

>83 Helenliz: Done. It looks like most of the remaining unknowns are probably stafforddavid-1, but I’ll leave that for someone familiar with that author.

>84 Charon07: thanks.

Any gamers here? I'm trying to work out if Rogue Squadron II Official Player's Guide is the same as Rogue Squadron II Official Strategy Guide. They don't look different to me but I can't find much to confirm or deny either way.

If you don't know for certain that two books with different titles, different authors, different ISBNs and very different covers are the same, you should NOT combine them.

please separate
1
https://www.librarything.com/work/33039186

thanks

>88 supersidvicious: Oh dear - I wonder if this was an entry mishap (add the same book manually, then edit to create the separate ones) or a combination misunderstanding and they get put together for some reason later.

I am slowly working on these - pulling the books one by one, combining them where they belong (and combining their authors more often than not). Anyone that wants to chime in, please do so but please do not just separate so we do not lose track of these.

>89 AnnieMod: I did two, but it's bed time for me. It is an enormous help to at least know the Russian alphabet.
(Two work combinations and one authoe combination)

>90 MarthaJeanne: Yep - or any other Cyrillic alphabet (these are all Ukrainian editions). That will take a few days even with a lot of help - 80-90% of these are translations into Ukrainian, the rest usually have other versions as well. I will be slowly working on them as time permits - everyone is welcome to jump in at any time.

I'm chipping in with that mess. I pick an author and separate all by him/her, then separate individual works, combine where they belong and recalculate titles ad covers.

For some reason, all of them carry over all the numerous combinations proposals. Even the one that's a single copy with unambiguous title and author. Why is the system still thinking it belongs with Harry Potter and company? Caching issue for those too and it ill clear over time?

>92 SandraArdnas: I wonder if the problem is not the language - if it only picks up the few Latin letters out of the Ukrainian, ignoring the Cyrillic ones because it has Latin letters to use, the algorithm will backfire a lot (and probably may explain how this started). Or caching...

PS: Not sure if you are doing that but the Ukrainian forms of the author names also need combining into the official names - so when someone uses them again, the books show up where they belong.

>93 AnnieMod: Yep, I've been combining authors too, but unless it's different Cyrillic than Russian, it's strange authors like Umberto Eco are not combined already

>94 SandraArdnas: It is a slightly different Cyrillic - all of the Cyrillic-based languages use slightly different alphabets and vastly different transliteration rules for foreign names so names often do not match across the languages. Ukrainian names rarely match Russian ones due to different transliteration rules and they have one major letter differently: i instead of и. (It is technically NOT the Latin one (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotted_I_(Cyrillic) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I ) but most sites and keyboards do not make a difference so... they use the normal Latin i. Which is why I wonder if this "i" is not causing the mess... )

I have half a mind to actually open a Bug report so someone in LT can look at that and see if that may not be an issue.

I think the issue comes from the combiner seeing the titles as:
Cyrillic title = letters ignored (Original title: Letters after colon = ignored)
by an author named: Cyrillic author name = letters ignored

So it sees them all as a book named (Original title), by blank author, and combines.

>96 Nevov: And the ones without original letters but with "i" in there, gets even more messed up... Or who knows.

And then of course if
Some Book A, by Author Name, now has an edition that the combiner sees as "Original title" by (blank)

and:
Other Book B, by Other Author, also has an edition that the combiner sees as "Original title" by (blank)

then the combiner suggestion pipes up to suggest they might be the same work, and so they all end up as combination suggestions for each other.

>95 AnnieMod: I just noticed every single one of those books is by the same member, which makes me think they personally combined them for some strange reason. No way the auto-combiner would lump all of these together on its own

>99 SandraArdnas: Yep - one of my first thought in >89 AnnieMod: -- misunderstanding of what is supposed to be combined (or just bad editing).

PS: And the same user has a few smaller clusters I caught while working on that one and possibly have more.

>99 SandraArdnas:
I really think it's possible the combiner did it all itself.

I've found some others where the clump was all books that were number 3 in different series (edit: such as Dune book 3 with Game of Thrones book 3), so the combiner saw them as just a book named "3" (on these they didn't have the "original title" text), etc. I'd expect we would find similar for other numbers.

>101 Nevov:
I re-found the one I sorted out earlier today, and was thinking of in that post:
https://www.librarything.com/work/1171839/editions

The suggester offers other combinations that are also book 3 of their respective series, because the edition line is:
Мерсі Вотсон ловить злодія. Книга 3 (Original Title: Мерсі Вотсон ловить злодія. Книга 3)/Кейт ДіКамілло/ISBN 966917144X

Which the combiner would have "seen" as just: 3 (Original Title, by (blank author)
And the suggestions being offered, all also have an edition that looks like this pattern, with the 3 being the first text the system hits. These weren't clumped in with the other larger batch, I found them out on their own, which is what made me fairly confident it's the autocombiner that did it rather than a user combining manually.

I'm also pitching in one at a time. I really think it's the auto combiner, which is very bad with other alphabets. Maybe it's worth to post about this as an RSI. Recently, the team managed to cancel all the potential combinations of the hyperlink editions, zee here https://www.librarything.com/topic/358599. Maybe they can do something to help here for the future too? At least in the potential combinations list and maybe also in the settings for the auto combiner?

Once again, separating has me stymied. I just entered a new radio drama adapted from The Mysterious Affair at Styles starring Peter Dinklage. It's an audible original and it shouldn't be combined with the book. I can't even find it in the vast list of editions and putting it on the workbench doesn't give me a separate option, only combine. I can't even find the link to the audiobook since I'm the only one who's cataloged it and it's combined. One thing that could help is that it's been adapted by Anna Lea. What can be done? How can I help?

>88 supersidvicious: ff I was trying to combine Author
937115691 with James Joyce, bit it now seems to ne in https://www.librarything.com/author/jjoyce and I can't seem to undo that.

>104 Bookmarque: If its name matches the novel, you will have a hard time finding it and it may have ended up into one of the unbreakable splits. I add radio drama (And similar) with titles which contain "radio drama" in them so I can find them and pull them out when they miscombine. The best thing you can do is to change the name of yours and thus find it and pull it out. Once it it out, you can always rename it back.

Another trick is to add it with a narrator as an author (temporarily) to stop the autocombiner and then fix it...

>105 MarthaJeanne: It went into the subname. Separate out the one you can, then separate out from under it and then recombine the old ones

Here is the record now: https://www.librarything.com/author/937115691

Hey thanks AnnieMod! I'll give that a try and see how it works. Never occurred to me to try that, but it makes a lot of sense.

>108 Bookmarque: It will leave behind a record from the original if you rename it post-adding but as this record is indistinguishable from the novel, we cannot do anything anyway so... at least yours and all tags and reviews and other authors and so on will come with your copy when it gets pulled out.

So should I delete and re-enter with the name and author change?

>110 Bookmarque: No - deleting will also leave a copy behind :) So as it already miscombined, change the title or author of yours so you can find it in the list of editions and separate it and do not worry for the 0-copy one that will remain.

Just keep that in mind for the next one you add something like that :)

I just noticed this, and I don't feel up to it, but https://www.librarything.com/work/83011 has the canonical titles Red Harvest / The Dain Curse / The Maltese Falcon / The Glass Key / The Thin Man and Dashiell Hammett: The Four Great Novels. As at one point I added the suggestion, "The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (prosfilaes): The other novel of Hammett", obviously the four book collection is missing The Thin Man. The CK history shows where the disambiguation notice was deleted, too.

>112 prosfilaes: I've had a look and separated out The Four Great Novels (Picador Books)/Hammett, Dashiell which all have the ISBN 0330268503. I've added a disambiguation notice and relationships to the contained book so it hopefully won't be recombined. There may be more work needed though; see if that works.

ETA: and I've removed 'the four great novels ...' as a canonical title from the 5 book page since I've put it in the 4 book CK.

How do you fix a book that has somehow moved to the "wrong" Anthony Powell?

The book is A Dance to the Music of Time: Third Movement.
It used to appear under Anthony Powell (1) on the disambiguation page, and now it's with Anthony Powell (unknown).

Anthony Powell (disambiguation):
https://www.librarything.com/author/powellanthony

>114 lauralkeet: Down the author page is a link to the author division page where you can assign books to the correct person.

>115 MarthaJeanne: By "author page" do you mean the disambiguation page I linked to above? Or are you referring to a page for Anthony Powell (unknown)? I can't find the latter (it's not clickable on the disambiguation page).

There are several books that need fixing and I'll be happy to do that once I find my way to the right spot. Thanks.

Yes, the disambiguation page.

>116 lauralkeet: the disambiguating page. It is called “edit the division” and opens https://www.librarything.com/author_split.php?author=powellanthony&page=assi... in this case.

Aha. I wasn't seeing "edit the division" at all. I went to Helper Hub in the left nav and there was a button to enable/disable "show on right-side nav". Once I turned that on, the right-side nav included a link to "edit the division".

Fixed now, thank you!

>119 lauralkeet: Yep, there was a site-wide change a few years ago that hid these and moved on the newly created secondary page - with a switch to allow them to resurface (after people were really vocal about needing them). Glad you found it :)

When I look at Work Duplicates under Charts & Graphs, it tells me that my library contains various works of which I have more than one copy. Some of these are genuinely different editions of the same work. But the following pairs are completely different books, which need to be separated:

1. “Reaper Man” and “Witches Abroad” by Terry Pratchett

2. “Northern Lights” and “The Subtle Knife” by Philip Pullman

3. “We Joined the Navy” and “We Saw the Sea” by John Winton

4. “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Return of the King” by J. R. R. Tolkien (in this case “The Return of the King” is the last third of “The Lord of the Rings”)

I’ve found some help on how to do separations, but the help is rather brief, and the process looks complicated. Should I attempt it myself (as a beginner), or hope that someone more experienced will do it?

>121 jpalfrey: It's actually quite easy. Why not have a go at it?

If you decide you really do need help, please give us the URLs of the books so we don't have to search for them.

>121 jpalfrey: It would be very quick for someone else if you provide links. I'm going to look at them, but it might take some time.

>121 jpalfrey: Not sure why you copies got miscombined, but please don't mess with the CK of the work in such cases. It's not a work page for Witches Abroad when there's only 2 of those and thousands of Reaper Man. I can easily remove the Canonical and Original Title entered, but I can't easily reinstate deleted fields like first and last words and such

>121 jpalfrey:
I've taken care of the Winton books – for some reason all the editions of books 1 & 2 in that series were wrongly combined.

I did the first 2, but can't find the Return of the King to separate. Found only a few Fellowship of the Ring hiding in there. Did someone separate it already? If not, could you post you exact title and ISBN?

>126 SandraArdnas: It's still listed on the work duplicates – I'll have a little look.

>127 Nevov: I think I got it :-)

Many thanks to SandraArdnas and Nevov for the quick response—I see that all my wrong duplicates have now disappeared.

>124 SandraArdnas: At first I didn’t understand what was going on or what needed to be done about it. It seemed that someone had mistakenly entered the data for “Reaper Man” into the Common Knowledge for “Witches Abroad”, so I tried to fix that. Then I saw that my changes were appearing also in the Common Knowledge for “Reaper Man”, so I realized that the two books had been linked in some more fundamental way.

I’ve been registered with LibraryThing since 2009, but I haven’t actually been using it until very recently, so I’m a complete beginner. It’s rather dangerous to give complete beginners full access to a complex system. First, one beginner makes a mess. Then another beginner makes more of a mess while innocently trying to fix what the first beginner has done.

In this context I’m amused by contribution 122 from MarthaJeanne: “It’s actually quite easy. Why not have a go at it?” That’s what I was trying to do when I messed up the Common Knowledge for “Reaper Man”.

>130 jpalfrey: Haha, MarthaJeane meant separating one or two miscombined books is easy. Just go to editions in the left sidebar, find your copy and click the separate link to the right of it. Generally, if you see CK, covers and such for some other book, it's almost certainly miscombined. It can sometimes be tricky to find your copy when there's a lot of editions, as with LotR, but since it's your book, you can change the title to something easy to find, separate and then change back the title.

To combine it with the proper work, add both to workbench (bottom of the right side bar) and combine. You can also separate using the workbench, which is very useful if you're separating more than one edition. It does it in one go, whereas from editions page you can only do it one by one. So both processes are easy, but they can get complicated if it's difficult to determine what belongs where for some reason, and in cases like LotR, by sheer number of editions.

I'd say practice by yourself on simple cases, ask for help when not sure. Books in general are not miscombined often by autho-combiner, especially if they have ISBN, but magazines comics and such often need separating and combining.

Somehow, Daughter of Chaos by A.S. Webb has gotten combined in with the Long, Tall, Texans series by Diana Palmer. I suspect it's a recycled ISBN situation, but am not sure.

>133 leennnadine: Separated. But PLEASE give URLs when making requests. It makes it much easier.

Following works still need separating done, but I can't handle more tonight.

https://www.librarything.com/work/23792327
Sorry lost the other one.

The https://www.librarything.com/author/palmerdiana works seem to be rather messy.

>134 MarthaJeanne: I'm so sorry. I will remember in future.

I'm not sure if this is combination related.

There is some strange series data for my Danish copy of Breaking Dawn.
https://www.librarything.com/work/6117835/book/277945570
has the correct series: "Twilight Saga (4)".

But in my catalog, the "Series" field says "Twilight Saga (Book 3)".
https://www.librarything.com/catalog/hnau

The Series page has the correct value "4", and there is no "Book 3".
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/6/Twilight-Saga

>136 hnau: Not combination related as far as I can tell. Your copy is where it should be. And as you noted, it shouldn't say 'book 3' even if it was 3 since it's just numerals. I'm guessing it's some caching issue, but if it does not clear in a day or two, I'd file a bug report

>136 hnau: It looks like the Series page was just out of order. It was set to "custom" ordering; I've now re-set it to order by Series number, which appears to fix the sequencing. As it happens, your other points also now seem to be resolved.

>137 SandraArdnas: >138 jasbro:
Thanks, it shows the correct number now!

Hi not sure how to fix this:
https://www.librarything.com/author/figuerasmarcelo

is the main author

this is a sort of combined author:
https://www.librarything.com/author/figuerasfranoisgaudr

The translator of the work is Francois Gaudry, but the author is Marcelo Figueras.

How do you split this author, and remove the translator or separate him somehow?

source of truth: https://www.editionsphebus.fr/catalogue/la-griffe-du-passe/

note the translator is listed as Francois Gaudry

>140 carolusmagnus:

That page should not be split, so I've undone it. Splitting is done when a page has multiple authors with the same name. That is not the case here.

Sorry, can you explain what you did? I don't think I changed anything with these authors. My suggestion is that 'Francois Gaudry Marcelo Figueras' is not one person, but two. Is there a way to split that author record somehow, or just disassociated it entirely and link the correct author to the work (which is Marcelo Figueras)

>140 carolusmagnus: I fixed it.

Normally, the automatically calculated primary author wins even when there are some records with mishmash of 2 as a single one, but with only 3 copies here and 2 having the mishmash, I needed to manually set the primary author. I also confirmed the translator as secondary author - some editions. All of this you do in the 'other authors' section on the work page.

>142 carolusmagnus: The author page that is a mishamsh of the 2 cannot be split and shouldn't be combined with either of the single authors. Each one has their proper page and all that needed to be done is manually set Marcelo Figueras as primary and confirm Francois Gaudry as translator. It should now appear properly at both their pages (as well as at the work page itself). The mishmash author page is just ratty data

Ok. I didn't know about the manually setting as primary. That is good to know. I didn't combine them, but when you click on the mishmash, it redirects, so somehow the mishmash was combined with the main author.

I've separated the page for "François Gaudry Marcelo Figueras" (the mishmash) from "Marcelo Figueras". The two people are not the same as the one person, so the pages shouldn't be combined.

Is there a way to just get rid of that bad mish-mashed data, now that the work assignments are correct?

>145 carolusmagnus: Strange, probably some oddity with caching since when I examine all the combined names for Figueras, the mishmash is not there. BTW, we use manually setting the primary author only when the calculated one is wrong such as here. 99.99% of the time, it's fine and most work in this section consists of confirming other authors.

>147 carolusmagnus: Nope - a user entered it, it is here to stay. Welcome to LT - nothing is ever really deleted :)

>147 carolusmagnus: Nope. Only members themselves can fix their ratty data, we can only fix it on work level. But even if they fix it, that mishmash author page would continue to exist once created, it just would not have any other data associated with it

Ugh that's a bummer. I only came across it as I was looking for another Francois Gaudry, so it's too bad that these come up in searches and will continue to clutter things. anyway I'm still learning the ropes around here...

>142 carolusmagnus:

You ticked the "divided author" box. I agree that the page shows two authors; that is not an uncommon situation when someone has catalogued their book that way.

Hi I'm trying to combine a Seuss book, can someone help?

** moved to large books combining thread **

>154 carolusmagnus: There is a separate topic for these.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/361495#n8686542

Ok thanks I moved the message there.

There's two editions of Jan Potocki's The Manuscript found in Saragossa
The main edition has 65 days of tales - Penguin Classics edition 631 pgs

The second, the 1990 Dedalus European Classic is shorter (159pgs) and only covers ten days of tales - full title - 'Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript: ten days in the Life of Alphonse Van Worden'
translator: Christine Donougher

So the works should be separated, I just tried but didn't work for me.
https://www.librarything.com/work/65047

>157 avatiakh: I think I pulled all of them: https://www.librarything.com/work/33451819

Relationship added to make sure they do not get recombined. Feel free to add more notes or anything else needed.

>158 AnnieMod: Many thanks. I'm reading the Dedalus edition right now.

Please help! I just added a dictionary and it seems to have linked to book about German history...? I uploaded my correct cover, but the work details are wrong... Sorry! I don't know how to edit that sort of thing...

Correct book: Collins English Dictionary, published by Collins Glasgow expressly for Woolworths Australia, ISBN: 0004583078
https://www.librarything.com/work/1282070/summary/278895099

>160 Eldarwen89: Here it is now: https://www.librarything.com/work/33456834

Please note that your link above WILL continue to show weirdly because of how the site works when you have work and book ID in the URL. But your copy is now rescued. :) If you can point out where it needs to be combined, we can help with that as well or you can try.

Thank you! I have no idea how to combine books, but I also don't know if there's anything to combine it with. There are a lot of Collins English Dictionary, but I'm not sure if these Woolworth ones are different, or if you would just count them as editions of the normal dictionary...

>162 Eldarwen89: That’s my point. :) Only you can tell us which one is yours - as you said, there had been a lot of them (from the 200 pages short ones to the few thousand pages ones and everything in between) - and if it matches one of the others the site has. :) It can stay alone as well. If you find where it needs to go, feel free to come back and we will assist - either combining or if you want to be taught how, we can also do that. :)

Thank you! It doesn't look the same as any of the others. I will be back if I find a match. Thanks again :)

Not sure what (if anything) to do with this … https://www.librarything.com/search.php?search=Os+Livros+da+Unicamp&searchty...

Okay, been a long time since I did this. What's best practice for combining when there is an author split with an alias that is another author split?

https://www.librarything.com/author/smithpatrick-3
https://www.librarything.com/author/lawrencepatrick-3

"Patrick Lawrence lives in Norfolk, Connecticut, and New York. He wrote as “Patrick L. Smith” until shortening his name some years ago."
(http://patricklawrence.us/about/)

>166 davidgn: You could alias both of them into /smithpatrickl especially if he did write under that name too. It may be that there are multiple Patrick L. Smith authors which is fine too, since that name can itself be split if necessary.

With the new changes to LT, I am not sure how to combine this book with the other two books by the author. Thanks to whoever is able to do it.

One book is Sweat by Emma Healy, her other two books,Elizabeth is Missing and Whistle in the Dark

https://www.librarything.com/work/33472950/t/Sweat

https://www.librarything.com/work/14458790/t/Elizabeth-is-Missing
https://www.librarything.com/work/20782281/t/Whistle-in-the-Dark

I'll try combining these works here and let you if I am successful

Sorry, no, I was unable to combine the above works. Thanks for who ever is able to it. The New LT changes make it challenging for me .

Why are you trying to combine 3 different books? Am I missing something in this request?

>171 AnnieMod: Sorry, I am trying to combine the author of the three books. Sorry for my error.

>172 vancouverdeb: OK. Sweat was mixed up inside of Elizabeth (someone combined?). I pulled it out. However, the site caches are in a bit of a flux and there is an issue with titles of books one does not have so I will look at it tomorrow - basically the author is a split author - all that is needed is to assign it to the correct sub author once we can see it again.

PS: Here is Sweat: https://www.librarything.com/work/33539048

>172 vancouverdeb: And done. :) all 3 now show under the same author page https://www.librarything.com/author/healeyemma-2

Let me know if something else is needed.

Back in the day, I remember a ‘secret’ link that allowed combinations not proposed by Librarything, but its been so long, I lost the link, and I don’t know if it would work.
All that said, would someone help combine these two editions (if you agree they belong together):
https://www.librarything.com/work/20723939/t/Linda-och-Valentin-ett-hyllningsalb...;

https://www.librarything.com/work/27835761/book/280023545
They are from the same publisher, Cobolt, in Swedish and Danish respectively, and probably does not belong with the original french version as they have a bunch of Swedish and Danish contibutions that are most likely not in the original. The Swedish edition may have a separate foreword, I am not sure. Depend on whether the Swedish author, Björn Wahlberg, is just the editor or has written an introduction as well.

>176 amberwitch: You do not need the secret method anymore - we have the workbench now. Do you want to try with it or do you want me to combine them? :)

If you want to try - click on Helpers Hub (even though it is greyed out, it is active: https://www.librarything.com/work/20723939/helperhub for the first) and add to Workbench. Then do the same with the second. Then you can combine from the workbench :)

>177 AnnieMod: thank you for the explanation! I just did it myself:)

>178 amberwitch: Awesome! :)

Please put these together for Martha Rebecca Barnhart Harper

Bittersweet https://www.librarything.com/work/11954329/t/Bittersweet
Winter Wedding https://www.librarything.com/work/16823113/52113325
Red Silk Pantalettes https://www.librarything.com/work/4176938/t/Red-Silk-Pantalettes

Thanks!

>180 SaintSunniva: I assumed you meant that these three separate works should all be under the same author. That’s done now.

>181 Charon07: Indeed that is what I meant! Thank you. As I had entered two of the three works years ago it mystified me that they weren't together.

Help! I am not sure what I have done wrong here.

Birding for a Better World was written by Molly Adams and Sydney Golden Anderson.

There is another Sydney Anderson, who I am like 99.9% sure is not the same one, who has been writing books about mammals for longer than Sydney Golden Anderson has been alive, I'm pretty sure.

Edit: I managed to get the work page to display the names correctly, but somehow I have got the disambiguation page convinced that Sydney Anderson (2) is Molly Adams. Sydney Anderson (2) ought to be Sydney Golden Anderson. I've no idea how Molly Adams got involved in that one, or how to fix it.
https://www.librarything.com/author/andersonsydney

Edit: Evidence: https://www.aba.org/birding-for-a-better-world-with-sydney-golden-anderson-megha... (Do any of the people in those photos look like they were writing books about mammals in the 1960s?)

Edit again: Argh. I got the disambiguation page to be correct, but it seems to be necessary to make Molly Adams the second author in order to do that. Also, the work page is off again.

>184 jasbro: For reference, I've been working on this without much success.

So far, I've undone the "Sydney Anderson" author division, and with it the alias of Birding for a Better World into "Sydney Golden Anderson" (no touchstone?), recalculating each author name at least once along the way. I've also reset the author information for Birding for a Better World to show "Molly Adams" as primary (recalculating that author name, Birding for a Better World shows as the only work, plus an introduction association with another work) and "Sydney Golden Anderson" as a second main author, per the cover image for that work, again recalculating title and author in the process.

Notwithstanding all that, the work still shows "Sydney Anderson" as the primary author, except in edit author information mode (where it's "Molly Adams"), and "Sydney Golden Anderson" as the second main author. And a phantom "Molly Adams (2)" crept into "Sydney Golden Anderson's" author page somewhere along the line, leading us right back to "Sydney Anderson."

I suspect (a) Amazon, as a common cataloging source, identifies a generic "Sydney Anderson" as the primary author and "Molly Adams" as a second author, and (b) that common cataloging is overriding even our correction. I don't know whether someone can contact Amazon to request adjustment of their record; regardless, our best bet for straightening out proper author attributions may be to edit the author information to "Sydney Golden Anderson" as primary and "Molly Adams" as the second main.

I'd welcome other Combiners' thoughts and suggestions.

>184 jasbro: our best bet for straightening out proper author attributions may be to edit the author information to "Sydney Golden Anderson" as primary and "Molly Adams" as the second main.

Thank you! It is very odd that the system does not recognize the authors actually assigned to the work. Why should Amazon, which is frequently wrong, even get a vote?

Amazon is so frequently wrong that if this is just how it is, I would think it would come up more often. Might it be worth submitting this as a bug?

Switching the order of the authors is probably the easiest solution, though. (That's about where I left it, before you made the attempt.)

'Amazon' doesn't get a vote. The author is decided by who the members list as the author.

>186 MarthaJeanne: 'Amazon' doesn't get a vote. The author is decided by who the members list as the author.

But many (most?) people are just scanning their books, and Amazon is the default source. So if Amazon is wrong, a lot of members are going to have the wrong author listed.

In this case, even if someone intends to correct the authors of the books they scan, they might not realize there's a disambiguation problem. Splitting and aliasing ought to solve that, but in this case, it's automatically assigning Sydney Anderson (2) to whatever name is first on that one book. There should be a way to override that.

(Oops, wrong thread. Moving.)

>187 AranelST: Well well well! Birding for a Better World seems to have sorted itself out, with Molly Adams (2) as the primary author and Sydney Golden Anderson as a second main author ...

>189 jasbro: I reported it as a bug, and someone over in the bug group figured it out! (Apparently Molly Adams was in the Common Knowledge for Syndey Anderson (2), or something like that? I have no idea how that happened, because Sydney Anderson (2) did not exist before the split. Maybe it was done automatically? In any case, once it was removed, it was fine.)

>190 AranelST: Old data remaining from the past - once upon a time the URL existed, then got removed when someone edited. But the old data persists :)

This book seems to have been combined with another, based on same ISBN.
https://www.librarything.com/work/988803/t/Heredity
I have a 1961 copy with LCN 61-12002, but no ISBN.
I went thru the editions & separated out all the ones about Business Communication by Courtland, but can't get the Amazon cover off nor the inaccurate description.
Can you help?
also, in the process I separated out the volume with the same ISBN, hoping that would clear up the description, but it didn't help. I suppose it should be combined back in, presuming different editions should be combined. I saw a few other individual copies, probably entered by people frustrated with the wrong book showing on this.
https://www.librarything.com/work/33605412/editions
Thank you.

>192 ClydeWILibrary: I was able to get the wrong cover to go away by clicking "Recalculate cover", which often helps with cover weirdness. But then I merged the separated edition and it came back, argh! I voted on your flag, and once it gets enough votes it will go away, so that's as good as sorted.

I'm not sure the description can be fixed, because there is no good description to vote up. I voted the two bad descriptions down, and I flagged both of them as not relevant to the work, but I have no idea if enough flags will ever make them go away. Possibly someone else will know, I'm pretty new at this, I only know the things I've worked on.

Different editions are normally combined, unless the new edition has so much additional material that it's really not the same work anymore, which is a judgment call. (It also might be kept separate if there's a social significance to the distinction, which is even more of a judgment call. Like, for example, are there rival factions promoting different editions?)

>193 AranelST: Thank you. I used that for the next book, and happily the cover is right. but that also has a description problem. If you don't mind flagging the description & I'll hope someone else sees this. https://www.librarything.com/work/1086700/t/American-Red-Cross-first-aid-textboo...

https://www.librarything.com/work/1086700/t/American-Red-Cross-first-aid-textboo...
Another book with inaccurate combing with a differnt book: First Aid/CPR/AED
I have a copy of both. As far as I can tell, the American-Red-Cross-first-aid-textbook doesn't have an ISBN, my copy has LCN 57-12315. This is 'old school', before AEDs

I managed to separate out the AED books, but can't get the description off.

Do we (or should we) have a Combiners! thread for “(Please Fix This Author!)” requests? I’ve recently been processing Carlos Fuentes in fits & starts, but now I find that Jorge Amado is also in need of attention. Lots of attention, it seems. And no doubt, there are plenty others. What say ye?

Amazon covers and descriptions are ISBN based, so they will stick around for a long time on books with reused ISBNs.

>196 jasbro: Not sure if a dedicated thread is more helpful, or individual ones asking for help on individual pages. The second I assume if it's relatively rare, the first only if it's practically daily. Either way, an individual thread draws attention to the specific author, so more likely to attract people familiar with the works, which is often needed and/or original language.

I'll take a look at Amado and see what I can do.
ETA: I combined around 15 strays, but there's possibly more to be spotted by those proficient in Portuguese

Not Quite Dead Enough is a mess, largely because that's the title of both the book and one of the two novellas it contains. There ought to be three potential forms:

1-The abridged novella "Not Quite Dead Enough" published in The American Magazine in 1942.

2-The book by the same title which contains the full-length novella and a second novella, "Booby Trap". This is by far the most common, and ought to be the work listed in the main sequence on the series page.

3-The full-length novella on its own, which I am deducing may exist because apparently "Booby Trap" does.

Someone has set up a work relationship so that this is the novella on its own (no way to tell if it's abridged or not):
https://www.librarything.com/work/3573607/ (887 members)

And this is the book, which ought to be much, much more common:
https://www.librarything.com/work/3222352/ (87 members)

However, I can't find any evidence that any of these editions are just the novella, so if nobody appears to object, I'm going to remove the work relationship and combine the lot of them. (...except for the standalone "Booby Trap", which apparently really exists).

https://www.librarything.com/work/11476261/book/281394964
"Vandrende sjæle", a Danish translation of The Host by Stephenie Meyer, ISBN 9788711383391.

Somehow it got combined with Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple (which might be fun to read, too)...

>200 hnau: Fixed.

Please note that because of how the URLs work, your link above may show the book still in the wrong work but if you grab a fresh link, it will work. You may want to recheck the Isbn - looking at the cover it is pulling, either Amazon is confused or there is a mix up in your record :)

>201 AnnieMod: Thanks. The ISBN is correct, so it's probably Amazon.

>202 hnau: Probably :) Make sure you fix your cover if it still shows Bernadette. :)

This thread is CLOSED. Please continue our discussions at Combining/Separating (Please Fix This Book!) Request Thread #89 -- http://www.librarything.com/topic/368783. Thank you!