Two separate books, same ISBN evidently?????

Hi all,
I recently made a new manual entry, adding to my sizeable collection, and encountered a problem I hadn't seen before. That is, my book seems to carry the same ISBN as a different book, different title, different subject, from the same publisher. What to do about that? It seems LibraryThing may be conflating them, when they really are two very different books.

Mine is _More Than Equals: Spiritual Friendships_, by Trish Roberts.
The other one is _In Beauty: a Quaker Approach to End of Life Care_ by Kirsten Backstrom, with same ISBN, from the same publisher.

I see now that my manual entry says this "Requires valid ISBN," a comment that I did not enter. I *did* enter the correct ISBN: 0-87574-345-5, which is also assigned to that other title, evidently.

The tags mine now carries are not the ones I entered but seem to be the ones for the other book with the same ISBN, entered by the other owner.

I hate it that the two are getting conflated when they should stay, plainly, separate. What to do?

This is not an uncommon problem, and it isn't entirely LT's fault; publishers re-use ISBNs from time to time. (There are other cases of "different books sharing an ISBN", but this seems to be the one that applies here.)

I've fixed it in this case -- it's easy to do from the Editions page.

Your "invalid ISBN" problem is because LT does not recognize hyphens in the ISBN, and is unrelated to the ISBN re-use issue. Remove them (just enter 0875743455) and you should be fine.

Publishers shouldn't reuse ISBNs, but sometimes they do. It can also happen that the ISBN is misprinted: I have a book with a different ISBN on the cover than the one given inside the book, I suppose one is a misprint.

"The tags mine now carries are not the ones I entered"
That really, really shouldn't happen. Check again whether it is so, and if it is, post in the Bug Collectors group.

3>

"The tags mine now carries are not the ones I entered"

I suspect she was looking at the work page, rather than the book page, when she saw this.

If you give us link to the work, it will help; there might be other issues there as well...

That was fast Lorax, the books were separating as I was looking.

I wonder if the entry had been entered from the Library of Congress instead of entered manually if it would have made a difference in keeping the works separate? At one time LT gave more value to data from library sources, over Amazon, though that does not seem to be the case now, but manually entered data is still at the bottom of the value list I believe.

http://lccn.loc.gov/00268742

ETA: and with the LOC data you get subjects and LC Classification numbers as well.

#4: lorax "I suspect she was looking at the work page, rather than the book page, when she saw this."

I was in a big hurry to get away when I posted (unfortunately there are things that have to take precedence to LT), or I would have checked the catalog myself.

I have recently had the same problem... and I can't seem to figure out how to separate them.

https://www.librarything.com/work/457012

I have the "Grasses of New South Wales" but it claims that it is part of the book "The Food of Italy"

>9 rholland: I was able to separate the Grass from the Food. Could you verify the correct author?

That is so much better. All looks good now. Thank you.

I recently made a new manual entry, adding to my collection, and encountered a problem I hadn't seen before. That is, my book seems to carry the same ISBN as a different book, different title, different subject, from the same publisher. What to do about that? It seems LibraryThing may be conflating them, when they really are two very different books.

Mine is _CHRIST IN CHINA-AN ANTHOLOGY by TONY LAMBET , ISBN: 9789628402328
The other one is _BEFORE THE MOON DIES當月亮死去的晚上by CHRISTA WEBER, with same ISBN, from the same publisher.

I see now that my manual entry says this "Duplicate ISBN in your catalog,"

I hate it that the two are getting conflated when they should stay, plainly, separate. What to do?

>12 omfhk: Separate them and recombine if/as appropriate. It seems someone already did it.

New copies added later may still get appended to the wrong book but not much can be done about that beside checking once in a while.

Christ in China

They are not combined. The publisher has reused the ISBN. This happens. They aren't supposed to do this but they do. The notice that you have two books with the same ISBN is useful for catching mistakes, but is not a sign that LT conflates the two.

>12 omfhk: What do you mean by LT may be conflating them? Is it just the Duplicate ISBN warning or is there more?

>15 jjwilson61: Sometime when there's enough overlapping data newly added copies can end up with the wrong book.

Most often seen in cases that run like this :
Yada yada Big Encyclopedia Name: Individual volume title by Editorname (Shared ISBN for all books the set)

>15 jjwilson61: Yeah, but in this case it's just the ISBN's the same, so since the title and the author are different it shouldn't combine them.

>17 jjwilson61: The ways of autocombining are strange and impenetrable, especially when ISBNs are shared. Even after separating, the system will suggest both books to be combined with each other. No way to fix except at the publisher level, so that's not going to happen.

If you have the only book with the reused ISBN, you can delete it from your record (maybe put it in the publication field or something) so when separated it won't suggest. But if someone else adds the book with the reused ISBN, autocombine may muck it up again anyway.

>18 PhaedraB: You're conflating auto-combine and combination suggestions.

>19 jjwilson61: Not conflating, treating them as related issues.

>16 Jarandel: >17 jjwilson61:

Anything after the first":" is ignored (unless if there is a full text match I believe) - this is what causes these one to get together on adding. And why we have so many multiple volumes of the same sets into the same LT work.

How do you separate books? I have a similar problem when the correct ISBN produces Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton as the book, but the work is Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens. http://www.librarything.com/work/15539/summary/144186789

I've separated and recombined. http://www.librarything.com/work/102419

Basically, you go to the editions page and find the specific edition. After each edition there is a separate link. In this case, there were so many editions that yours was hard to find.

I've got a book with this same problem but can't work out how to fix it from the editions page. The book should be Introductory Botany for Plant Identification by Elizabeth L. King (ISBN 1864422726) but is coming up as Gunfight at Laramie by Lee Hoffman (also ISBN 1864422726). When I go to the editions page Introductory Botany is not listed at all: https://www.librarything.com/work/1811996/editions/160584768.

I see the State Library of Western Australia has gotten around this problem by adding "AUST" to the end of one of the ISBNs: http://catalogue.slwa.wa.gov.au/search/?searchscope=2&searchtype=i&searc.... Can anyone help me sort this out?

>24 GreeningAustralia: You need to delete Gunfight and enter the correct book.

>2 lorax: I have just encountered this problem, too.
"Raid on Celtic Wood: What Really Happened to Australia's 'Lost Company' in 1917?" ( kearney) and "Maggie's Friends at Kindy" (Lodge and Sachse) have the same ISBN. I am trying to add the first resource to our library. Any help would be appreciated.

>26 JoSeverino: If you cannot find it in a source, you can enter it manually. The link for that is on the bottom left of the Add books page.

Raid on Celtic Wood
Maggie's Friends at Kind


Ah, these are new books into the system. No touchstones exist.