Combining problems

People seem to be having various combining problems. I have had none until the last 3 or 4 weeks when suddenly I have to do a manual combine for almost all (but not quite all) of any new books I add. 2 questions: (1) how do I combine 2 books with different titles but which noone else seems to have realised are otherwise the identical book (and therefore I can't see how to do it in the format provided)? The case being Thomas L. Thompson's 'The Bible in history' (London 2000) and his ''The mythic past' (NY 1999). (2) When will the part/whole and part/part issue be addressed? Currently in my statistics I have under the heading 'work multiples' several examples of different volumes of the same work (part/whole & part/part) treated in the same way as different editions or different translations of the same work - which doesn't seem sensible.

(1) Combining two books with different titles, but the same author, can be done from the author page. Click on the author's name when viewing your catalogue or the work page. You're taken to a page about the author, which includes a section titled "books by {author}". Next to that is a link saying "combine/separate works."

Or ask in the Combiners' group, in the thread specifically for requesting help with combining.

Thank you for that. It worked well. Another trick I've learned!

See this thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/51187

Lots of problems with works losing their combination when edited after adding.

If you have books in your work multiples that should not be combined, it is easy to separate them on the editions page. If you add disambiguation notices afterwards they are much more likely not to be combined back together again.

I've done two of them.

Thanks. I'm still mulling over the part/part & part/whole relationships which, it seems to me, the system does not generally handle well. I note in this regard that there is a note somewhere (in 'work multiples', I think) that this is an area requiring further work.

Everyone knows this is an area that needs further work, and they are thinking about it. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it, though. I am very impressed at how many new features are getting added in in spite of the problems involved in keeping up with the amazing growth this site has been experiencing.

Editing entries on the Edit page STILL uncombines them from the rest of the work.