On 6/17/2012 8:00 AM, Karen Coyle wrote:
> Series are admittedly a mess. Part of the mess has to do with how one
> defines a series,
> In library data, a series is generally only recorded when it is a formal
> numbered series,
> Only recently have some libraries started to create series entries for
> things like Harry Potter and other groups of books that have common
> themes. These are given the same formatting as formal series.
As a non-librarian bookworm hobbyist, I get the impression that perhaps
librarians and publishers have been at odds on this definition. It seem
that publishers produce many groups of books with the name "something
series" without numbering them.
> Amazon unfortunately puts the series in the title field, in parentheses,
> so these don't get into OL as series at all:
> - Understanding Literature (Scribner literature series)
> AND they mess up the titles and keep the books from merging. (AAArgh!)
This my current OL project effort: moving those out of the titles using
AMillarBot.
Right now, my basic criteria is: if it has a number at the end, it goes
in the series field. If not, it goes in the edition notes field.
This handles the other addenda that Amazon puts in the title, such as
publisher or imprint names (Puffin, Penguin, Usborne, Golden Book, etc),
format (hardcover; book & audio cd; prepack of 24, etc.) or other misc.
collections (Teach Yourself Music, etc).
This certainly leaves a few questions in my head about the intersection
of series and collections:
- If there is a label that appears to be a formal series name but
without a number, should it go in the series field? Example: 20 books
with numbers like "(Sweet Valley High #12)" and "(Sweet Valley High no.
17)" but a few more without like "(Sweet Valley High)". Hard to tell if
the book had a number that wasn't recorded, or if is part of a separated
unnumbered collection.
- If it has the word "series" in the collection name but none of them
are numbered, should it go in the series field or edition notes? This
gets to how strict is the definition for series.
- Volume numbers? My criteria is that if there are only two or three
volumes, I put it in the edition notes, but if there is a large number
of volumes, I will put it in the series field ("The Complete Works of
John Ruskin - Volume 29").
Which leads to my ultimate question: how strict does OL want to follow
the classic librarian definition of series, versus looser collections?
> If there are multiple series, it seems that they should be in different
> series fields.
That would be nice. Right now I just append them with semicolons.
> Since that isn't how it is, I would probably opt for
> - series title, number
> with "number" including the designation, such as "v." for "volume" or
> "part" if that's what is on the item.
For my amillarbot work, I don't reformat the designator as provided in
the title. Given "Killmaster no. 25", "Killmaster no 13", "Killmaster
#11", "Killmaster, 19", I just put them in as-is into the series field.
I figure they can be reformatted later.
Oh and if anyone is wondering, I do watch for numbers that are not
series item numbers like "(Best sellers of 1985)" or "(Longman Classics
Stage 3)" and put them in edition notes.
- 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]
