I think we have two meanings of series going:

1. A group of works that have something meaningful in common based on  
their content (Harry Potter as a series, Alan Banks mysteries as a  
series)

2. A designation of membership in a published set (The Great Books Series)

Library cataloging only recognizes #2. The series titles in  
parentheses in the Amazon records also appear to be #2. I don't know  
of a distinguishing term for #1, however. There are web sites that  
chronicle book series, like:
   http://www.nlc.state.ne.us/ref/booksinseries/
to help people read all of a series, and to read it in order.

Maybe we can call #2 a 'publisher's series' and #1 a 'reader's series'?

With this distinction, #1 is at the work level, #2 is at the edition level.

kc

Quoting Alan Millar <[email protected]>:

>> Currently the series field is attached in the database to editions, we
>> should move it to the work, because all editions of a work should be
>> part of the same series.
>
> That begs the question of what constitutes a series then.  I see books
> labelled something like "Classic Reprint Series" because that one
> publisher decided to reprint a bunch of old books, according to their
> own criteria of what they thnk is classic.   In this case, the series
> does only apply to the one edition, and not all of the editions of the
> work.  Does that mean this series label gets demoted and we deem it
> not really a series?  Sounds like a slippery-slope nightmare of
> judgement to me.  Or is there a standard definition of series that I
> just don't know about, and everyone else knows that such a series is
> not really a series?
>
> Just based on my casual observations, it seems like the series should
> be available at the edition level.  Perhaps like the title and
> subtitle, though, there could be a series entry for both the work and
> the edition.
>
> - Alan
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-- 
Karen Coyle
[email protected] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

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