This actually seems to be clear. Volume could also be added in the description.

Sherry wrote: "Just when I think I have this down pat ..."

I'd tend to call the book you're referencing:

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Birth of Britain (55 B.C. to 1485)

Not sure where the volume would go. After "A History of..."?

Is this kind of thing common enough that we need a standard?

And Wikipedia says there are more Winston Churchill's out there! Let's hope they're not writers, too.

Lindig wrote: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_(novelist)

I did have them backwards. And here's the Wikipedia page on the novelist."

Lindig wrote:
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_(novelist)

I did have them backwards. And here's the Wikipedia page on the novelist."

Absolutely. that's what took a while to get them sorted out. Plus someone had originally merged "CHURCHILL" into the prime minister. I've got it straight for now.

In addition, there is a great existing librarian's note for both authors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Chu...(novelist)

I did have them backwards. And here's the Wikipedia page on the novelist.

Wait wait. I may have them just backwards. Sorry. But there is an American author named Winston Churchill, that I do know -- we used to have shelving problems in my bookstore if we didn't look closely at which W.C. we had in hand.

Winston Spencer Churchill is the British prime minister; I checked. Frequently, the middle initial is not used, but sometimes it is.

Sorry for any confusion.

Watch out for Winston S. Churchill, an American novelist of the 19th century, not the same as Winston [no middle initial:] Churchill, British prime minister who wrote The History of the English-Speaking People

I would suggest using either
"Main series title: volume title: sub-volume, part #: sub-sub (Main Series, #, part #-#)"
or
"Main series title, volume #, part #: volume title: sub-title"
But really, for academic works I'd say the fact that something belongs to a "series" counts for a little less than in fiction works, so the parenthesized series/volume bit might be overdoing it.

Just when I think I have this down pat ...

for Winston S. Churchill
He wrote a 4 volume set that I think I have correctly separated into the individual volumes and then the complete set. However, I think that there are every single one of the permutations of title, subtitle, sub-subtitle and volumes for each book. No wonder that they were a mess.
as an example: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10082...

The Entire set is the "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples"
Each Volume has a different subtitle: The Birth of Britian - in this case

And a unique sub-subtitle: 55 B.C. to 1485

as well as a Volume number: #1.

Don't think that this is a series - it's a book in 4 volumes.

Do we have a convention on the correct format for this?

Subtitle: Sub-subtitle (Set Title, #Vol) ??

Pfft. Basic math textbooks have new editions every 2-3 years. I'm sure precalculus has changed TONS in two years, no? ;)

rivka wrote: "Foppe wrote: "Though if one is confronted with publications in the social sciences often, this might skew one's perspective, and ruin that person for life :P"

I'm sure I don't know what you're tal..."

Well, most of my science textbooks (e.g., "Linear Algebra" might have a new edition every decade), whereas certain other fields (or publishers, I'm never really sure who is chiefly to blame, though I suspect the latter of the two) can't quite manage that.

Foppe wrote: "Though if one is confronted with publications in the social sciences often, this might skew one's perspective, and ruin that person for life :P"

I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about.

Also, business textbooks are every bit as bad in this regard as sociology or psych. :P

rivka wrote: "If it has been 2 or more years, expect a new edition with a new number. If it has been 6-12 months, and/or the new edition is for a different market than the other one, expect as many as 4 differen..."
Ah, yes. Still, they're generally more similar, and it's a better indicator than the publishing date is. (Though if one is confronted with publications in the social sciences often, this might skew one's perspective, and ruin that person for life :P).
So unless someone on the GR staff is willing to make a neat little box for edition information, [preferably:] with drop-down entries (like Amazon currently has on the 'submit updates' pages for every entry), I would humbly suggest that the information is relevant enough to be put in the title field.

If it has been 2 or more years, expect a new edition with a new number. If it has been 6-12 months, and/or the new edition is for a different market than the other one, expect as many as 4 different ISBNs all called "6th edition" -- with different numbers of pages, and sometimes significant other differences.

rivka wrote: "Doesn't year do a better job of distinguishing them? Especially with the lovely practice some publishers have of releasing multiple "6th edition"s (for example).

(As the person who has to get book..."
Well.. Yes, and no. That's where you run into problems when publishers decide to reprint something, and use that date for the reprint. (Usually with a different ISBN, too; though I see less of this practice in academic publishing.)).
Basically, publishers are a PITA.
OTOH, I've never yet run into the problem that publishers print different books with the same edition information attached. They're usually far too happy to point out that they've found yet another few typos they've corrected, requiring them to call this a spiffy new edition.
Also, putting the edition in the title has the advantage that you can see which titles might belong together without having to hover over the details button.

Doesn't year do a better job of distinguishing them? Especially with the lovely practice some publishers have of releasing multiple "6th edition"s (for example).

(As the person who has to get book data to our students, I have seen this a LOT.)

Cait wrote: "rivka wrote: "I see no reason that edition number should appear in the title at all."

Actually, for textbooks that's a pretty important signifier -- I'm all for combining different textbook editio..."

For most academic works, yes. (Which were the ones I had in mind.)

rivka wrote: "I see no reason that edition number should appear in the title at all."

Actually, for textbooks that's a pretty important signifier -- I'm all for combining different textbook editions, but I'd still like to be able to tell them apart at a glance in the list of editions.

I see no reason that edition number should appear in the title at all.

rivka wrote: "Actually, we use multiple parentheses in that case: http://www.goodreads.com/help/librarian#book_edit_page"
Ah, yes. I'm glad that the manual is now less ambiguous on how to name these things. (And I hadn't run across books that are part of multiple series yet, so I'd forgotten that the manual mentioned it already)
Anyway, now that all that is resolved, what to do with Second (or third, etc) editions? Parenthesized? (and if so, presumably in front of series parentheses?) Comma-separated from the title? (that is, there doesn't appear to be anything in the manual about them.)

Actually, we use multiple parentheses in that case: http://www.goodreads.com/help/librarian#...

To put in my 2c: "(Series, #1)" has the added advantage that it's pretty much language-neutral/independent (as it's understood to mean 'number' in most western languages), with the comma being useful for the above-mentioned, as well as aesthetic purposes (sort order is information of a different level from series sorting, and it makes parsing easier).
<never mind>

PS/rant: I wish the French and Germans would stop arbitrarily re-organizing series they translate (I'm sure not-michael knows what I'm talking about :P). I really don't understand what they hope to gain by making 4-volume works suddenly consist of 3 volumes, or vice versa.

I also endorse the idea of having "series" as a separate object, and would like to suggest the possibility of allowing a series to belong to a series in turn.

This would cover a situation like say the Velgarth books by Mercedes Lackey in which the books are clustered in sets of 2, 3 or 4 books, and each cluster belongs to the overarching sequence.

Of course this could also be covered by having each book belong to the "cluster" and the "overarching sequence" in which the latter are both series and are collated independently; we would simply have to be careful to keep the collation consistent between related series.

I would like to be able to mark a series so that if a new book is published it could be added to my "to-read" shelf automatically, and also the system could keep track of my progress through a series as well as through the individual books.

So many fun possibilities, so many ways to make the programmers' heads asplode ;-)

I can't wait to be able to sort books by series # :)! I hope that's part of the plans (I figure it is - but if not - just wanted to mention it). I've read through some (but not all) of this thread - so sorry if it's a duplicate suggestion.

Clearly series information is more complicated than just "Book X of Y". When we build series' we will definitely make sure we cover all bases.

I second the multiple series option as this happens in anthologies.

About nine months ago, there was a suggestion by the GR powers-that-be that they were thinking about implementing "series" as some sort of rateable/shelvable object (to allow people who wanted to rate, review or shelve entire series as a single entity). In response, I posted a personal wishlist for series as objects on GR.

I don't feel like tracking down the old post at this moment, but among my suggestions was the idea that books could belong to multiple series at the same time, to allow for both publisher and author series and the fact that sometimes even author series have subseries (or superseries). Items in a series should be orderable/numberable, but there should be options for non-numbered items at the same time. There might even be options for multiple numbering systems within a single series (for series where the numbering has changed through time, perhaps to reflect the order books were written vs. the chronological order of the series universe) Also, series should not belong to specific authors since there are many multi-authored series.

There were other ideas as well, but this is one way to think about implementation which would be more powerful (and way more difficult) than a simple series field.

Todd wrote: "Another thing: in creating series fields, you need separate fields for 'publisher series' (e.g. Fantasy Masterworks) and 'author series' (e.g. Harry Potter) because some books have both."

I second this! I wondered how the upcoming series feature would work for the Harlequin and Silhouette series romances because all are part of an imprint (Intrigue, Blaze, etc) and then many are also a part of a mini-series.

Also...I know Otis fixed the suggestions in the librarian manual for series labeling, but what about on the edit page?

Right now, it says:
If the book is in a series, put which book it is in parenthesis after the title. For example: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)

...so people see that "Book" part and think they have to say "Book" in the label. Shouldn't that last part be changed to:
For example: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1)

?

The only time I use "Book 1" instead of "#1" (assuming that there aren't a bunch of titles already doing it a particular way already) is if the series has been published with several different numberings -- for example, with Ashok Banker's Ramayana series, I labelled the six singleton books (Ramayana, Book 1) to (Ramayana, Book 6) and the three omnibus books (Ramayana Omnibus, Volume I: Title / Title) to (Ramayana Omnibus, Volume III: Title / Title) just to make it clear that this was the same series but not the same numbering. I'm not sure that that was the best way to do it -- does anyone have good recommendations for that sort of situation?

Isis FG wrote: "Mostly it's just about formatting...

A) Harry Potter (Harry Potter Series, Book 1)
B) Harry Potter (Harry Potter, #1)
C) Harry Potter (Harry Potter 1)
...etc

Most of those who responded in this t..."

Option B gets my vote, too.

I agree with Michael. Series fields can't come soon enough. Option B is definitely better than A; the fewer extraneous words the better. By adding 'series' or 'book' every time you add series info to a title, you're making it impossible for people to search for books that actually have these words in their title.

For this reason, when it comes to series that are a marketing tool of the publisher (e.g. penguin modern classics), I think this info should be put in brackets after the name of the publisher in the publisher field. Otherwise, books about penguins and modern classics become impossible to find.

The title field should be reserved for author-originated series, e.g. Wheel of Time, Harry Potter.

Otis, you should definitely remove the 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Paperback)' example from the librarian manual. Given that book format already has a dedicated field, do we really want zealous newbie librarians adding this information to all their book titles?

Another thing: in creating series fields, you need separate fields for 'publisher series' (e.g. Fantasy Masterworks) and 'author series' (e.g. Harry Potter) because some books have both.

Personally, I like using option D)

Harry Potter (Harry Potter, Book 3)

I understand a lot of stuff is pre-loaded in by Amazon, so have been cleaning up as I find errors while surfing the db. HOWEVER, I leave things that 'work' well-enough alone. "Work" being defined as the books being able to be identified as to series and number if a search is performed.

Perhaps that should be listed in the librarian guidelines - that book series/# info should only be changed to make it consistent to what the majority already looks like. That might help keep some overzealous folks from constantly 'reinventing the wheel' and changing series back and forth.

Also, I often use what is listed on the cover (if there is a cover pic), but sometimes a publisher changes that format mid-series. If they do, I stick with the format of the first book.

I definitely missed this information, but glad I found it now. Will start editing those book series I have on my shelf right away. Until now, I always wrote (series, book #) as I found this to be used most, but of course this has redundant information.

Lol. Series fields are coming soon I promise :) And by soon I could mean a month or 9.

The primary arguments against (A) were that "series" and "book" (and similar words such as volume) are implied and otherwise redundant. A number of people preferred (C) for its simplicity, but (B) has the advantage of being much easier to auto-parse if you wanted to build a script that separated the series name from the book/volume number.

Of course, none of this discussion would be necessary if some sort of special series field(s) were created for GR (wink, wink, nudge, nudge :-)

I agree back-and-forth changes are annoying and should be avoided by some better guidelines. I changed the librarian manual a bit to reflect that various formats are acceptable: http://www.goodreads.com/help/show/22-sy... In my opinion that's the easiest way to do it, but let me know if you think otherwise.

Mostly it's just about formatting...

A) Harry Potter (Harry Potter Series, Book 1)
B) Harry Potter (Harry Potter, #1)
C) Harry Potter (Harry Potter 1)
...etc

Most of those who responded in this thread previously seemed to agree that the first example is rather bulky with unneeded info and think that the other ways are perfectly fine.

So many of us have been following either example B or C. But lately I've seen a lot of back and forth changing. I'm guessing because people see the example on the book edit page and think you have to say "Book #_" and the word "Series" so they'll change an already correctly labeled series to the way example A is formatted.

It would just be helpful if there was a supported standard way to label a series. Or even just saying that various formats are accepted and that it's not necessary to change an already labeled series because these back-and-forth changes over the formatting are kind of annoying.

I didn't realize that there was disagreement on the best way to do it! Our general "rule of thumb" is to go by the book's cover. Does that not always work?

I'm open to suggestions on how the librarian manual can be improved!

http://www.goodreads.com/help/show/22-sy...

Amen!

If I remember right from reading this thread before, the general consensus was to use the simplest form to name a series (i.e. not having to say "Cynster Series" but instead "Cynsters" and saying #3 or just 3 instead of "book 3").

If that's the case, how do we go about getting the info on the edit pages and wherever else changed to reflect this? Because lately I'm seeing a lot of back-and-forth changes. One librarian changes it to the simple label, then someone else goes in and changes it to the longer form because of the examples given on the edit pages (and wherever else). Then back and forth again.

It just seems like this could be alleviated if it were stated officially somewhere.

Perhaps others already know about this, but I recently found a database called what's next which lists series order. Could be helpful in the initial labeling of titles: http://ww2.kdl.org/libcat/WhatsNextNEW.a...

The one thing I would like to mention is that a lot of librarians do not take the time to stop off on this site, so I do agree that maybe that should be a part of the requirement. I do try to pop in periodically to catch up on what's going on. However there are a lot of threads, so I'm always playing catch up.

Since I started as a librarian early 2008, I have been following the Librarian manual. I would imagine that most librarians who do not come on this site for what ever reason only have that to go by. I up until this point have used:
Title (series name, Book 1) as the manual suggests.
Now I'm seeing mention of getting rid of commas and using # signs. Which I have no problem with, but until the Librarian manual is updated your going to constantly run into problems.

From the Librarian manual:
syntax for listing book titles
Most titles on Goodreads follow the syntax of having the title list some extra data in parenthesis following the title. This data can be either format information (hardcover, paperback, audio cd, etc), publisher information, or series information (eg. if the book is in a series "book 1"). If no extra data is present but the book does have a format listed, it will be automatically added in some areas of the site. It is preferred to list the data in the title however, as it greatly helps in distinguishing books and it's easy to strip out where needed.

Some examples:
* Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (book 1)
* The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1)
* The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Paperback)
* The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Penguin Classics)

There was no consensus on whether we use the comma or number sign in the series info. When Otis stopped by, he just said he'd bookmark the thread for their work on series info. But it doesn't sound like it's the top of their to-do list.

The argument in favor of keeping the comma and number sign was that it might make the conversion to the new system easier. A programming thing. Therefore, I've been leaving those in place, as long as the whole series is consistent.

Nope, don't think a consensus was ever made except to say that the few of us that participated did not have the power to dictate a uniform policy and going through and trying to make everything a certain way would just be undone by others who want it another way.

Unless or until the "powers that be" rule here or update the manual to be more detailed and specific or rewire the edit screen page so that all we have to do is input the data, we are running loose.

I had my preference and others had theirs. Most agreed to this (or quit responding):

Book Title (Series Name, #1)

At this point, I'd be happy to see the title before the series info, ya know. ;-)

I'll work on a "guide" to each field on the book edit page. If GR doesn't want to officially use it, we can always just have it available as a resource here in the Librarians Group.

If anyone has anything they want to make sure is included, let me know.

And lastly...what was the final decision on series format? I thought we'd decided on:
(Series name, #_)
with the comma, but recent talk sounds like no comma. So I'm confused.

Isis, I would appreciate and use the guide if you created it!
Thanks
w

Kathrynn, Thanks for the examples above. I recently edited a few series titles and did not do them in the best way, but I always had the title 1st and the series information in ( )'s but with a comma. Also I included the word Series. Until a series field is created, I'm concerned that the fact that the information in the ( )'s is series information might not be immediately apparent to all.

I've got a question regarding decimal series numbering (1.1, 1.2, etc.).

What if that's how the publisher numbers the books (in this case: Big Finish Stargate audiobooks).

I did some preliminary cleaning of the series GR entries, so that they at least keep to one format, but I want to clean it up further and don't know if I should keep the series order this way, or change it to something else.

An additional problem is that the audiobooks alternate between two different TV shows, which leads to a lot of info that's needed in the title/series field. Would something like

Stargate SG-1: Shell Game (Stargate Big Finish audiobooks series 1.3)

be okay?

Yup, I thought they were backwards, but it looked like someone had spent a lot of time putting them in that way, and I didn't want to show up on a Wanted poster on here! I'll go change them, Kathrynn. But I wouldn't say no to some help! :-)

I have to say that it did look kind of nice to have all the series together and in order though... :-)

It's so hard not to have that comma in there. Ack!

I wanna comma. (Whaa!) ;-)

Wow! After looking at the recent librarian edits for W.E.B. Griffin's books, it appears more than one librarian did not know:

Book title (Series Info #) either.

(gulp)