FWIW, the matter has been discussed for years on LibraryThing's "Combiners!" and Series groups, in excruciating depth. The options are more complex than seems at first sight, because—like so much library-related metadata—getting it right requires taking account of:
1. Degrees of truth 2. Differences of opinion 3. Awareness of different levels of hierarchy 4. Understanding who says something as an element of the something 5. Understanding that metadata for an item continues to change AFTER the item is cataloged. Examples of the concepts in practice: * In what sense are Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in the same series? When did they become so? * Are all those Bond books, including the recent ones, in the same series? How about sequels to Jane Eyre? Does it change when a publisher packages the book and its faux-sequals together as a sequel? * What is the order of the Narnia books? * Does the Harvard Classics include the Odyssey? Yes. Is the Odyssey part of the series "Harvard Classics." Not so much. LibraryThing's concept is work-level based. We solve differences of opinion by allowing people to make new series (ie., Narnia is in two series, differently ordered) and add notes. Series often overlap considerably, leading to de facto hierarchies, but not de jure ones (eg., the 124 sub-series under Star Wars http://bit.ly/bHcPNA). We ask members to remove some concepts to other clusters, like awards, characters and shared worlds. What we are lacking is what members call "publisher series." The only exception is where the book has only one publisher, so the work and the publisher-plus-edition is an overlapping set. So, the Dummies Guides are a series and Bohn's World Authors are not. We allow series to have different names in the 12+ languages LibraryThing has, and for those differences to reflect the local situation, but languages in our Common Knowledge feature are not implemented. Tim On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Alex Stinson <[email protected]> wrote: > Karen > > I think you have identified the heart of the matter with this but I am > unsure whether "reader series" is an appropriate term. I think "series" and > "publication series" (see the google search) may be more accurate in their > description of variables. Places like Wikipedia, commonly use "series" alone > to denote fictional series > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Novel_series) whereas series of > academic works are called "Monographs in series" > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_series). That is a small nitpicky thing > though, > > Alex > > On 15 October 2010 11:08, Karen Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> 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 >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Ol-discuss mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss >> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to >> > [email protected] >> > >> >> >> >> -- >> Karen Coyle >> [email protected] http://kcoyle.net >> ph: 1-510-540-7596 >> m: 1-510-435-8234 >> skype: kcoylenet >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Ol-discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to >> [email protected] > > > _______________________________________________ > Ol-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to > [email protected] > > -- Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding _______________________________________________ Ol-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
