Series vs. individual titles

Sally Melville is writing a series of knitting books with cumbersome titles. They are The Knitting Experience: Inspiration & Instruction (Book 1: The Knit Stitch), The Knitting Experience: Inspiration & Instruction (Book 2: The Purl Stitch), and The Knitting Experience: Inspiration & Instruction (Book 3: Color). Go to combine her works, and you see there are main entries for each individual volume, plus the series itself (The Knitting Experience: Inspiration & Instruction). Some people have combined Book 1 with the series.

What's the general practice here? Book 1 is indeed part of the KE series, so it doesn't exactly feel wrong to combine the two - but then Books 2 and 3 should also be combined into the series. Yet the way I understand combining, Books 1, 2, and 3 shouldn't be combined together, since they're not the same work, not in the sense that various translations of the Odyssey can be thought of as being the same work. Yet the main series title is what the Library of Congress thinks of this as, as though each book is just a chapter in a larger work.

I suppose this happens with many series, but this is the first time I've tried to tackle the problem. How do y'all handle it?

I get the best information for my books, and go from there. Did you know that the three books in this series can be entered using the add books box from ILCSO (Illinois Libraries). This validates the separation of the volumes in the series as separate works imo.

It is unfortunate that the Library of Congress puts v. 1 and v. 2 together, but as that is the way these books were entered into LT, they have to stay together, and cannot be combined with the separate volumes. Perhaps there a separate ISBN number for the series?

Good luck!

If it is possible to own only one volume then someone will. And since would be foolish to claim that you own The complete works of Shakespeare just because you have As you Like it. you should keep individual volumes seperate from collections.

>msg 3

I own vol 2 of the as yet incomplete series Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767, (ISBN 3980600351). It was difficult finding a source to use to enter the book in LT, because the books have been catalogued by libraries as a series. Which is why I responded to the message.

Some users have entered the knitting books with the LC series title, some from amazon with the individual book titles, and you are right, currently on LT, the two title systems can't mix.

Series shouldn't be combined.

There are plans to have a method of handling series in the future but not right now.

Only different editions of book 1, book 2 and book 3 should be combined not the series.

Series shouldn't be combined on LT, I agree, but they are combined in library records, which makes it difficult if these library records are entered into LT.

Another difficulty is if the LT system combines series volumes, which it often does if the separate volume subtitle follows after the colon in a long title name.

And not all series are alike. Combining the books in this knitting series I was talking about is pushing it. I don't know why the Library of Congress is convinced that all those books should be considered part of one big "book."

On the other hand, it sort of makes sense to put manga series together. A 7-volume manga series really is just one long story broken into 7 books for convenience's sake and the physical realities of publishing, not because volume 2 is on a different topic than volume 1.

Then of course, there are series like The Lord of the Rings: sometimes bound together as one book, more often bound separately into its three component volumes. Gah.

My guess (from being a library cataloguer) is because a) all the books in the series are in the same narrow topic — one so narrow that the classification policy at LC is to classify the series as a multivolume work AND b) there aren’t an infinite number of books you can write about beginning knitting, and so the series is going to be exhausted one day.

there aren’t an infinite number of books you can write about beginning knitting, and so the series is going to be exhausted one day.

Ah! the triumph of hope over experience:^)

This thread seems to be talking about 'books' rather than 'works', or at least interchanging the two. The combine feature deals with works, so, as a general rule, I would consider whether or not the two or three volumes (books) are a single work or two or three separate works that happen to be published/marketed as a series.

FWIW - I know some disagree with the following statement, but I believe it to be consistent with the definition on LT of a 'work' : Just because a publisher decides to publish "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" within a single binding doesn't mean that this "Tom Sawyer" is a different work from the "Tom Sawyer" that is published in a volume alone. Nor is a 2-volume edition of "Tom Sawyer" a different work from a 1-volume edition.

O.

>10 Ealhmund: Yes, but the Huckleberry Finn in that combined volume isn't the same work as the Tom Sawyer you want to combine the rest of the volume with.

We're not combining volumes, we're combining works. The problem is that LT asks you to enter 'books', but then asks you to combine 'works'. This is internally inconsistent. You either enter and combine 'works' or you enter and combine 'books'. I enter works, so that the hypothetical two work volume (mentioned in my earlier post) will be entered as "Huckleberry Finn" AND as "Tom Sawyer". Yes, I know that makes it look like two books, but I don't put much stock in the number of books in a library as reported by LT and, again, I have to choose books or works, and I've chosen works. I want the works I have and read to match up with others with the same works/interests. As long as I enter enough info to be able to tell that this is a volume with both works in it, it can easily be edited to accomodate the new system being developed to solve the 'work' vs 'book' problem. So, the hypothetical volume would have a title like "Tom Sawyer (w/Huckleberry Finn)" for one entry, and "Huckleberry Finn (w/Tom Sawyer)" for the other. It's clumsy, but it works for the social connections, and can easily be identified for what it is when needed.

O.

I see so you beleive all the Works of Shakespeare should be combined into the one entry the complete works of shakespeare I presume you also think that since his work appears in collections of elizabethen playwrights say marlowe these should also be combined? Or if his sonnets are l bound in a compendium of poetry Palgraves for example these should also be combined, and in turn we must logically combine works that comprise Palgraves selection with more modern works and before we know it Under Milk wood becomes part of the Shakespeares cannon. nope I cant beleive you think that but you do presumably believe that every one who has had a complete works for example
Shakespeare ,Wilde,Austen,Coleridge, Doyle, Carroll

O hell about a quarter of this List
should have a single entry?

This strikes me as remarkably foolish. I hope you reconsider before you do too much damage.

You (SomonW11 - message 13) are reading much into what I said, and then taking it to a logical conclusion that is unrelated to what I actually did say. This is why I prefaced my initial post with "I know some disagree with the following statement...".

I never said that I would combine a single work with something called "The Complete Works of X". There's even some difficulty in knowing if one edition of "The Complete Works of X" contains the same works as another edition of "The Complete Works of X", so I tend to shy away from combining any such compilations. Nor would I combine a collection of Elizabethan playwrights with a work by (or the complete works of) some specific Elizabethan playwright.

I simply said that I have chosen (for my personal LT list) to enter a volume containing two works as two separate entries ('works') rather than one entry ('book'), because 1) It is two separate works that happen to share a binding, and 2) that's how I wish my personal LT list to function - to create social connections based on works, not on the particular edition of a work. To quote LT's home page: "LibraryThing also connects you with people who read the same things"

Thus, if I happen to own the work called "Tom Sawyer" and a work called "Huckleberry Finn" which happen to be bound together in one volume, I'd still like these two works to be in the database with other entries for "Tom Sawyer" and with other entries for "Huckleberry Finn". Mark Twain did not write a work called "Selected Works of Mark Twain". Thus, my entry for this hypothetical "Tom Sawyer" would show up as "Tom Sawyer" - not as "Selected Works of Mark Twain". The issue of combining 'selected' or 'complete' works with individual works does not even come up, except in your post.

I do agree, however, that the hypothetical approach you present, though unrelated to my post, would be "remarkably foolish" if adopted by a combiner, and would certainly cause much damage. Luckily, none of us are so foolish as to do something like that.

Simon,

Osbaldistone NEVER said any of those things that you attribute to him. What he pointed out is that LT allows you to enter either "books" or "works". The default method of data entry is "books". If you scan a book's barcode, enter its ISBN, or select a particular "book" edition from the displayed list on the right of the screen, you will have catalogued your particular "book" edition of that "work".

If you don't find the particular "book" edition of the "work" that you entered in the displayed list of different "books" in the LT DB, you can always take final recourse in manual data entry for your particular title. Depending on how you do manual entry you can enter / create either a "book" or a "work". Let's see how that works ...

Osbaldistone owns a copy of the Library of America (LoA) "book" edition of Mississippi Writings by Mark Twain. (I own a copy of this same "book" title myself). Like almost all LoA "book" titles it contains copies of multiple "works" by the author, in this particular case the following four:

- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Life on the Mississippi
- The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

So Osbaldistone has made five LT entries for this single "book" edition and its four related "works". The "book" edition entry (Mississippi Writings) might well have been entered into LT simply by scanning or typing the ISBN of this book. In addition, Osbaldistone has made four manual data entries, one for each "work" title contained in the specific LoA "book" edition, each in the following kind of format:

'Life on the Mississippi'; combined with 'Tom Sawyer', 'Huck Finn' and 'Pudd'nhead Wilson'.

These four entries are abstract "work" titles and they have been appropriately combined with the other specific "book" editions of each of these respective four "works". The specific "book" edition entry for the LoA title Mississippi Writings has been combined with nothing else.

The way Osbaldistone has set up his LT Mark Twain catalogue works just fine with the current limited functionality of the LT system and is, in fact, quite an elegant 'workaround' to the problems omnibus editions are causing other LTers.

What you are complaining about, Simon, which would be the combining of the LoA Mississippi Writings "book" title with each of its four constituent Mark Twain "work" titles - thereby causing ALL "book" editions of ANY of these four "works" to become a single "work" - has not happened in this case. If everybody did what Osbaldistone has done when entering omnibus editions of multiple authors' "works" the LT system would NOT need to be modified.

Unfortunately, most LTers are NOT going to do that. Just to show you how dumb LTers can get, if you look at the inventory of Mark Twain's work you will see that he is both the author of David Copperfield and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, the LT "Author" page for Mark Twain claims that Edward Gibbon is one of the alternate names of Mark Twain. I knew that Mark Twain was a pseudonym for Samuel L. Clemens but learning that Twain also wrote all of Gibbon's output was a complete eye-opener for me! LMAO

While such numbskulls are able to continue to pollute the LT database I despair for the future of LT!

>15 Rule42: Rule42 Why don't you write a million-word series about numbskulls and we intellectual inferiors can argue about whether to catalog your nth magnum opus as a work, a series or a whole library.

You got gas, fella!

>14 Ealhmund:

Looks like we cross-posted. I was intrigued by what you have done and I'm a little surprised that combining any of your 5 entries for that LoA title with anything else did not have the effect that Simon feared since they all contain the LoA title ISBN.

#15
I uncombined Gibbon from Twain but also noticed that someone has David Copperfield by Mark Twain, scary that.

>16 Fogies:

Fogies, you and your multiple personalities are perfectly free (within the rules of your particular mental institution) to not read my posts if you don't like them. No doubt you are probably the person that thinks Twain wrote the works of Gibbon. :)

You got gas, fella!

Indeed, to quote Monty Python, I fart in your general direction ...

And yes, when you only post insults, it's easy to be brief, isn't it Fogies?

>19 Rule42: We rest our case.

Osbaldistone thanks for your clear and succinct explanation of what you you meant. I have no idea if it is what you said the first time and I am not going to check because that way I won't have to admit I was wrong.

For what its worth I have no problems at all with people representing a book several times in their library as its various parts, I do it myself.

Rule42, Thank you for your input but I must admit, I only read the first line.

>21 SimonW11:

I have no idea if it is what you said the first time and I am not going to check ...

Then why did you post a rant telling him he was wrong AND foolish?

... because that way I won't have to admit I was wrong.

OMG, don't ever start posting on the MB that you are wrong, Simon. You make enough posts as it is! :) Admitting you were wrong would probably triple your posting rate ...

Thank you for your input but I must admit, I only read the first line.

That's OK, Simon. Based on your response to Osbaldistone your comprehension isn't much better after reading than before - so you might as well skip the reading bit and save yourself some time. That way, you'll be able to post more rants calling other LTers fools.

Congratulations on restraining your verbosity Rule42. Please be aware that I did not call anyone a fool. I discribed an action as foolish. A fine distinction but a valid one.

To be a fool takes consistancy. Anything less merely makes one human.

>23 SimonW11:

Simon,

Your post #13 was one long sarcastic accusation berating what you believed to be the previous poster's philosophy of screwing up the LT database by combining multiple disparate works by authors into single works. It ended with the plea: I hope you reconsider before you do too much damage.

Attributing the action that you described as foolish to a specific person is, in most sensible people's minds, exactly the same as describing that person as being foolish. What you just described is NOT a fine distinction but simply a WEASEL distinction rather than admit you were wrong.

Indeed it does take consistency to be a fool. Thanks for being so consistent.

Your post #13 was one long sarcastic accusation berating what you believed to be the previous poster's philosophy of screwing up the LT database by combining multiple disparate works by authors into single works.

Yes, and I did not explicitly apologise for that. I had better do that now.

Osbaldistone, Sorry, I must say I admired your restrained response.

It ended with the plea: I hope you reconsider before you do too much damage. Yes?Shrug Was that a bad thing?

As to the rest you are mistaken.

#12 & 14

Osbaldistone, I think you came up with a good compromise for having your book in your catalog and socializing its parts. (I value the book being "right" in my catalog more than the social aspects.)

This discussion reminds me of the card catalog in my college library. The librarians would have the "work" information on the card. If the work contained more than one book, as in your example, two more "work" cards would be printed and "Tom Sawyer" would be typed at the top of one card, etc. These cards would be filed under their titles with all the other Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn catalog cards.

Well, back from the holidays, and I see my last post (14) got a bit of a dialogue (multilogue?) going (15 thru 26).

Rule42 - I am rarely succinct myself with internet posts, as I find I'm less often misunderstood if I take a few extra lines to be clear. It's the lack of facial expression and body language (which us old farts rely on) that trips me up. Assuming Fogies are old Fogies, I'm surprised she/he/they are so unsympathetic.

SimonW11 - I have to admire a person that knows when to quit reading to avoid having to admit to an error.

Obviously, there's more than one way to skin a cat on LT, and, until the system is modified to deal with works, books, editions, etc., finding one way that works without screwing up the database and then consistently applying it to one's library (though it may put one in danger of becoming a fool) should be acceptable to reasonable LTers.

O.

Why thank you Osbaldistone, but I only differ from the norm in admitting to it.

Simon

>16 Fogies: & 23

The "post #13" approach to MB debate:

>27 Ealhmund:

Rule42 - I am rarely succinct myself with internet posts, as I find I'm less often misunderstood if I take a few extra lines to be clear.

I heartily concur with that viewpoint, but you have to realize that we are in a minority - especially on a MB. A large proportion of people participate on message boards because they have short attention spans and don't like to read anything with much depth. One would hope that that would not be the case on a web site such as LT, but I'm yet to be convinced otherwise! :(

In the meantime, I think I'll just resort to posting my opinions here via Dilbert cartoon strips. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words ...

(though it may put one in danger of becoming a fool)

Almost every genius that made a significant intellectual contribution to human knowledge was considered a fool by his/her contemporaries. IMO, one should wear the mantle of "being a fool in the eyes of others" with pride. :)

>31 SimonW11: & 21

To paraphrase Blaise Pascal and SimonWII at the same time (-:

"I replied to your post with no knowledge of its contents simply because I had no leisure to do so."

Yes, I know that's an unfair and intentional misreading of post 21, but conflating the two into a Pascal-like quotation was just too tempting, especially on a 'literary' MB.

O.