Combining Withdrawal

Message "Work combination is down today (Wednesday, May 21). I've just upgraded the whole works system--one that will allow much better control over editions--and would like to see it run for a day before adding work-combinations back in. Thank you for your patience."

I know it is only for a short while and hopefully when combining comes back up we won't see the "Error work not found" problems anymore.

But what am I supposed to do during my lunch hour????

*sigh* I guess I'll get caught up on reading Talk messages.

Big fix coming soon. You can make it!

Do member recommendations! :D

Member recommendations sounds like work (literally since I occasionally have to do this at the bookstore :). And just like at the bookstore, my mind hits a blank wall and the wall wins. I'll have to keep track of the successful recommendations I do make to customers.

On the other hand, combining and separating is such a soothing and satisfying activity.

There's always common knowledge!

=)

(twittles fingers)

Can anyone remember two books that can't be distinguished from each other by title an author alone? I can't find the thread.

Yes, here's a curly one :-

The Fantasy Hall of Fame, edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg.

There's a 1983 book with this title

and with the same editors

a 1998 book, different publisher, different contents, not a new edition of the old book.

I can't find the thread either, but I believe the books mentioned were The mammoth book of best new horror by Stephen Jones. It's looking nice now with the separate editions listed.

Another problem I was working on just before you started work on this new project was Happenstance by Carol Shields (/work/5436986/debris/2069288). I separated out the clump with no subtitle to check in user catalogs to see if anyone has the single novel work Happenstance : a novel. Some do, I can see them easily now and can't wait to start separating. I believe LT has been automatically combining the two works as the Library of Congress cataloged at least one US edition without a subtitle.

With Jones, a while ago I had done some bits and pieces - I actually put an edition in some titles I actually have, so that is why some of those exist.

It is this one I was meaning, in particular :-

http://www.librarything.com/work/128279

Where many different years that a source just calls 'Mammoth Book of Best New Horror' gets combined, whether the 10th, 12th, 7th, or whatever. Amazon etc. haven't specified the Year in the title so they just get combined after the colon. (of course, even if split, someone who doesn't know what they are doing may recombined them). If you look at that you will see 13 different covers, all from different years, 10th, 13th, 17th, 18th, etc.

Same thing applies to say, The Year's Best Science Fiction, or Year's Best Fantasy type names, even more if colons are in the title.

There may actually be a Year's Best Fantasy, or Year's Best SF being the first year of one particular series, but others follow from different sources with the wrong title.

7-
The Eternal Champion Michael Moorcock exists as a short book and as the name of two separate omnibus editions.
Web of Darkness Marion Zimmer Bradley NEL edition 0450058557 / 9780450058554 also contains Web of Light and is thus identical to Fall of Atlantis while other copies do not.
The Walled Orchard by Tom Holt is used on an edition also incuding Goat Song 0751521388 / 9780751521382

Yep, there are multiple Moorcock's like that, three different Stealer of Souls etc., two very different Zelazny The Last Defender of Camelot.

Bound to be plenty of others.

When will we be able to combine editions? The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present has nine different editions, but the Editions (formerly Debris - which it still shows in the title bar) page shows 28 different 'editions'. It should possible to combine them down into the nine actual editions.

>13 LucasTrask:

I'm worried about this idea. In theory, it could work, but it would be a whole new layer between works and the current title-author-isbn layer. And some—often many—wouldn't fit into any edition. And "edition" is a wiggly concept.

What do you see coming from it?

Tim,

In the case of The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present there are nine distinct editions that all have the same work title. Should all nine editions be combined as one work? Or should each edition be considered a separate work? Based on your comment that “edition” is a wiggley concept I would say that they should be considered separate works.

As for being able to combine editions, I would like to be able to combine all the various entries that are the same version/printing/edition when the information is known. In the above example this is clearly known, but with most works it would not be as clear. However, a quick look at The Siege of Krishnapur edition page shows that there are a number of ‘editions’ with the same ISBNs. In my opinion it should be possible to combine these to more accurately reflect the true number of different editions owned by LT members.

What do you see coming from editions?

Another thing is to be able to have publisher's series which include only those editions by a particular publisher. I'm not sure that will be possible if every different spelling of the Title results in a different "edition" even when the ISBNs are the same.

>15 LucasTrask:

And that's yet *another* meaning of "edition"—first edition, second edition, etc.

The LT rule is that different editions like that should be part of the same work. In general, if two people have read editions 4 and 6, they've read the same work. Conversations on LibraryThing are about a hunk of shared content, not errata.

Tim, in the case of The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present is a reference work. A person who has read the fifth edition has not read the same work as the ninth edition (used since I have both). The ninth edition (1833 pages) and years of additional information not in the fifth edition (1207 pages). So, are they different works, despite the same title? If they are then should be separated, but if they are the same work it is important to be able to distinguish the different editions.

I agree that for most works the different editions are not as clearly defined, but there can be considerable differences. For example, works translated from another language can be very different depending on the translation. I may like one translation and dislike a different one, yet they are both clearly the same work. Works may also be modified, expanded, rewritten or even abridged by the author or publisher. That is why I think being able to combine editions of works is needed.

>18 LucasTrask:

Ah, I see. That's tough. Year-to-year, I don't think the changes matter but just as the first and most recent edition of Britannica are different, so must this be. Fortunately, almost all have ISBNs, so you can indeed separate them and recombine them into different works.

Can anyone remember two books that can't be distinguished from each other by title an author alone? I can't find the thread.

Hm; neither can I.
Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver and The System of the World are each two distinct works.