Selections: What to do with them?

I am not sure that there is a consensus on what to do with "selections"--as in, Selections from Don Quixote, or Don Quijote de la Mancha (selección de pasajes), or Don Quixote abridged. Being a selection of the episodes and incidents, with a summary sketch. (Can you tell what I was working on when I came across this problem?)

In one sense, these are just abridgements: shortened versions of the original work.

In another sense, though, we run into the part vs. whole problem--the "selected passages" of one version are a part of the entire work, and the "selected passages" of another version may contain entirely different parts than the first. In that case, the two versions should remain separate and distinct.

What do you all think?

Personally, I keep these separate, as I do for things like "Short Stories by Some Author" or "Selected Poems of An Author". Admittedly this is a minority view; some people feel that in this case, the probability of some overlap is sufficient grounds for combination.

I wonder if it makes sense to base ths on the number of copies out there. If there are only ten copies of a book on LT, it's probably good to combine anything that's remotely similar. As the number of copies increases - with changes at, say, 100, 1000, and 10000 copies, it makes more sense to start separating. Using translations as an example, people who share an interest in the 100 copies of book A are liable to do so regardless of language, while with 10000 copies of Book B it's likely that those interested in the Latvian translation don't want to wade through all the others.

Besides, if you did it this way combiners would always be on the edge of their seats waiting for the copies to go over one of the magic numbers.

>3 setnahkt: I feel the exact opposite. If there are only ten copies of a book they can completely disappear from view if combined with a separate (though similar) grouping. It's bad enough that translations disappear now, and English titles of books with more than one title, all under the 'majority' title on workpages.

>2 lorax: I feel like there's a distinction between selected short stories / selected poems and selected chapters from a novel. In the first case, there may not be any overlap at all between the stories or poems in two different editions. But in the case of a well-known novel, particular chapters are going to be seen as integral to the work, and will appear in every trimmed version. That's why selected passages from a novel could be viewed as an abridgement, but you could not say the same thing with short stories and poems.

>3 setnahkt: I feel like that's what I/we do in practice, but it is not the best system. Theoretically works should either be significantly different enough to be separated or not. So while we'll probably all continue to work that way, I don't like setting it up as a rule of thumb.

If there are only ten copies of a book on LT, it's probably good to combine anything that's remotely similar.

This is a dangerous line - and probably one of the reasons I've been exploding graphic novels of late. I've been coming across a few where the individual volumes are being combined into one "super volume." I think some folks think that combining the smaller numbers of volumes 1, 2, 3 & 4 along with the omnibus volume provides "better connections" and makes everyone feel like they "share more."

Except that they don't share more - they share different books that someone wanted to "tidy up" and mis-combine for whatever greater good.

And then if you do eventually explode the works when it reaches the magical nubmer - what then? What about the false recommendations and connections that were there? What about the folks that will continue to re-combine the works? Do we say that there's a set number (100? 50? 30?) works that must exist when exploding begins? And is that per unique work - or just when one work reaches that level?

Example, the line is 30:

If I have 33 copies of William Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets and 4 copies of Selected Sonnets from William Shakespeare - do I explode them now? Realizing that a few days earlier when they were all combined, those that own the 4 copies will now go down to limited recommendations, not being able to know if they'll like a book or not and similar losses of data, do we still cast them adrift? Or will there be a call to include them?

At which point - do we let it roll? And for how long? And do we really pretend it isn't crap data?

I agree with stephmo. There should be some consensus reached on what makes various editions either the same work or a different work and then we should combine based on that - not based on how many works there are. A work is a work whether there is one copy or a thousand. My two cents anyway.

But what we still haven't addressed is whether selected chapters of a novel is the same thing as an abridgement or not.

And, again, selected chapters is not at all the same as selected sonnets, or poems, or short stories. If two different editors are going to select the ten chapters that they think best convey the essence of a thousand-page, 74 chapter tome, I'd bet that they are going to select all or mostly all the same ones.

8: And I would bet the opposite.

> 6

Your graphic novel example is a clear violation of the part/whole rule, though. In this case, we have some, if not most, of the same parts being the same. It'd be more akin to a collection of issues 1, 2, 4, and 12 being combined with 2, 3, 4, and 7. Close, but not the same. But they do serve the same purpose. Maybe.

>6 stephmo:

Could you point to any examples? I haven't seen what you cite happening with any comic books I own (though that may because I don't own the right ones, or because they've not been mass-combined when I've looked).

What I have seen is some people cataloguing their individual issues, say, as 'Comicbook isses 1 - 6' and then combining that entry with 'Comicbook tpb that collects 1-6'. That I can't see a problem with.

>11 HoldenCarver: The last ones I fixed were Jason Lutes graphic novels - both Berlin's individual parts and Jar of Clay's individual parts had been combined into their single omnibus works. I also did the same for David B's Epileptic series (that one was more of a mess since different countries had broken the individual volumes into different numbers of volumes).

I noticed the problem first with Berlin: City of Stone because it was listing all of the series order in Common Knowledge - at first, I though someone was trying to say, "it contains all of these parts," and then I realized that this was the result of combining all of the instances of the Berlins together...

I've found the occassional, "hey, let's just throw random volumes together!" where people don't pay attention to ISBNs or titles, but these were just flat-out thrown into a single work.

Edit - clarity. I didn't want it to sound like Jar of Clay & Berlin had been combined together - just that those works suffered from the same problem of whole/part combinations.

Edit #2 - I think that the graphic novels where this is most likley to happen are the ones where there were trades and/or individual issues logged and then a complete edition was later published. I don't think anyone's going to take something where there were trades and just make up an omnibus. Basically, you'd be looking at folks who would decide that everyone that had the individual Bonevilles should go into The Complete Bone or that issues of Love and Rockets could go into Palomar or that the maxi runs of Watchmen could go into The Watchmen...