On 17 June 2012 21:40, Alan Millar <[email protected]> wrote: > 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? > That's a great question. From the general OpenLibrary rule "there are no cataloging rules" it follows that "there is no rule on cataloging series", so I wouldn't know. (I guess "do what you think fits the hints in the edit form best" is closer to a general rule, but that doesn't help here.)
I'd like to suggest to use the looser collections definition. If you can justify why it should be a series, that probably works. It seems the comment field can take quite a long comment, so the explanation should fit. > >> 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. In the edit form publisher names, publish places and possibly other fields (including series) are split on semicolons, so for humans that should work. For bots using the API, they can simply be added as list values. > >> 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 Thanks for explaining what your bot does. I could probably add some more info on VacuumBot's activities and decisions, although most of it is in source code comments. Ben > _______________________________________________ > 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]
