On 19 August 2012 17:33, Karen Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > I can explain a couple of these: > > On 8/18/12 12:15 AM, Ben Companjen wrote: > >> >> in Edition: <snip> > > >> - work_title / work_titles; why would we use these when there is the >> title in Work? > > > Because they come in on library records, and it is probably a good idea to > keep them as a way to re-cluster editions into works. These are needed for > editions where the edition title \= work title, as in translations. Also, > unless OL always exports the work title with an edition, that information > will be lost for anyone downloading an edition record if it is removed from > the edition record. In general, I see an advantage to keeping such fields in > place as long as editions can be downloaded separately from works.
As long as there is a link to the work record, not having it in the edition record 'only' means the work title is an extra request away. I have no idea if either field is being updated when the title of a work record is updated. And which of these fields would be the one to use? (There are some 750k out of 15m records with these fields, if they don't both appear on one record, so it seems they are not actively used.) > >> - title_prefix; is this being used? If so, why is there no >> corresponding title_prefix in Work? > > > In the original MARC records there is a way to indicate a "non-sort" part of > the title, using numbers. So: > > non-sort=4 > title=The catcher in the rye. > > This means that you begin a title sort on "catcher" not "The ". Because the > first records being processed came in as MARC records, there was an attempt > to deal with this. By the time that the work records were being developed > (which was a couple of years into the project), OL had given up on trying to > manage this sorting issue. So my guess is that there are many records that > still have this in them. For future applications it may not be such a bad > idea to have captured the non-sort information that came in on the original > records. But it isn't being used in OL today because OL does not present > sorted displays. > > Ben, do you know if these fields are exported by the API? I looked for > examples but couldn't find them, however I was just looking at edit > displays, and these fields may not be shown in those. If you have examples, > then we could confirm if my memory is correct. I found these fields in the datadumps, and these records are the same as the JSON "view", which can be retrieved by appending ".json" to the bare OL URI (kind of random example): http://openlibrary.org/works/OL3335292W.json http://openlibrary.org/books/OL16164303M.json Some IDs of Editions with prefix "The": <http://openlibrary.org/query.json?type=/type/edition&title_prefix=The> But when I looked up the first result <http://openlibrary.org/books/OL1007715M.json> I couldn't find a title_prefix field and the title field starts with "The", so it may be merged invisibly before the (apparently not so 'raw') JSON record view is served. This makes me wonder if a title is always split into title and title_prefix when a record is saved? I haven't used the Books API (http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/books) but I think the results will be the same. > > kc > > p.s. the translated title in Works, I believe, is due to a desire on the > part of one of the developers to allow folks to translate titles into > different languages, even if the book itself has not been translated. It > obviously hasn't been advertised, so it hasn't been used. If used well, I can see the merit in having lists of works with English titles in parentheses after the title in the original language. > >> >> Ben >> >> On 18 August 2012 06:25, Karen Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On 8/17/12 12:31 PM, Ben Companjen wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Works have these fields with corresponding number of appearances at >>>> the end of July 2012: >>>> title, 15560144 >>>> other_titles, 1 >>>> translated_titles, 4 >>>> subtitle, 578433 >>>> >>>> Editions: >>>> title, 24841618 >>>> subtitle, 9809990 >>>> other_titles, 2225897 >>>> full_title, 521383 >>>> name, 9 >>>> work_titles, 493101 >>>> work_title, 261511 >>>> translation_of, 2739 >>>> title_prefix, 2945495 >>>> >>>> title and subtitle speak for themselves, other_titles and >>>> translation_of are available in the edit form in librarian mode, but >>>> the others seem relics from previous system designs. Can anyone >>>> explain those? Are they used anywhere? Or can they safely be deleted? >>> >>> >>> Ben, which are you thinking are left-overs? The only one that seems odd >>> to me is "name." >>> >>> kc >>> >>>> >>>> Thanks! >>>> >>>> Ben >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Ol-tech mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech >>>> 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-tech mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech >>> 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-tech mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
