Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Policies & Practices
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New Librarian needs a bit of help - regarding Manga series
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The items you've brought up haven't really been discussed much in detail. However, here is what I recall:1) Vol. X vs Volume X
Either is conidered acceptable. Personally, I just make sure they are all consistent for a given series. If Series A uses mostly "Volume", I change the rest to match. If Series B uses mostly "Vol." I will use that for that series.
I don't know if you were planning on doing anything with non-English versions, but if so please follow that languages convention. For French, it's usually Tome, and for German it's Band or just the number. For the Japanese, it's just the number.
2) Volume numbers in large series
There's is no policy on this that I know of, but the vast majority do not use a leading 0. Some German editions do, but I have left them as is when I worked on them. A change to this would be a significant change to the current convention. It would also be somewhat difficult to implement, as the imports do not use it, and all items in the database would have to be corrected manually.
3) Series (Parentheses) in Titles
The correct form is (Series #X). However, the previous convention was (Series, #X), so many titles still use that. Either is considered acceptable. Again, I just make sure they are consistent within a given series.
ETA: Hah, I see vicki_girl already answered a bunch of these while I left the tab open. I'll leave my answers anyway, since we seem to be agreeing! :)1) This sounds good, if you want to do it! Bear in mind that in addition to the number of books in a series there are also often multiple editions of each book. You'll want to be sure to use the correct nomenclature for the language of the edition, if you're editing multiple editions (for example t. or Tome for French language editions, Bd. or Band for German language editions). You can just work on a particular language and leave the others as they are now, of course -- you don't have to tackle everything at once!
2) I would be hesitant about this one, actually, since that's not the proper title. Also, I'm not sure that 2 and 02 turn up the same way in searches. I know it can be frustrating when things are almost alphabetical, but we generally frown on fudging titles.
3) Some of the variation you're seeing is because the old convention was "Title (Series, #X)" and the new convention is "Title (Series #X)". Also, you'll see some manga volumes done as "Series, Vol. X: Title" (eg: Death Note, Vol. 13: How to Read) which is another acceptable convention. Further, we still have hope that they will eventually push the series object onto all book displays, at which point we will want most of the series removed from title fields entirely. (You know how on a book page you'll see (Series #X) as a link? That's actually generated by the name of the series and not anything in the title field. The only place you'll currently see the title field's text when it's in the Title (Series #X) format is in search results, bookshelves, and, amusingly, the series listing page.) The situation for manga is somewhat different, of course, since the series name is the title, or at least the main portion of the title, for most manga books.
Here is a recent overview of title conventions which may be helpful if you haven't seen it already!
You can also make sure the "sort by title" field is very consistent on how volume, vol., #1, no. 1, etc. is phrased to help titles sort correctly. That is, if you can see titles on book covers, title field needs to match that title (except if ALLCaps, see the title convention thread previous poster linked to); if different editions/formats are inconsistent about terms like "vol." "vol" "volume" - you can make sure are formatted consistently on "sort by title" field.
You can't rely on the sort by title to stay distinct from the regular title; if the regular title is ever edited, it will pop the sort by title back into the default version of the regular title for the assigned language.
Using this link for examples is essential, due to possibility of different naming schemes between volumes.
On to the questions! I should warn that a lot of this is mere nitpickery, but if I can help increase consistency across the site, I would like to. On the other hand, let me know if I shouldn't be worrying this much over titles.
1) Vol. X vs Volume X
I noticed that a lot of series list their books as 'Vol. X' as opposed to 'Volume X', but both forms exist. The more popular convention appears to be 'Vol. X'. Would it be appropriate to rename books stating 'Volume X' to 'Vol. X' instead, to ensure consistency across all manga series? What about in situations where the naming is inconsistent (Ex. Haruhi Suzumiya: Volume 1-3, Vol. 4-)?
2) Volume numbers in large series
Some manga series are quite long (Ex. Fullmetal Alchemist, 27 volumes). This results in the books displaying out-of-order on shelves sorted by name (Vol. 27 lists before Vol. 3). Is it appropriate to suggest that large series have volumes listed as two digits (or three digits if sufficiently large) so that they display properly when alphabetical? ex. Vol. 01, 02... 09, 10, 11... or Vol. 001, 002... 010, 011... 099, 100 etc. I don't mean in the actual series listing, as this is fine. I merely mean in the title of the specific volume.
3) Series (Parentheses) in Titles
I noticed that many series on the site are typically named as Book (Series #X). I've seen variations of Book (Series, #X) and Book (Series X) as well. I would suppose that the correct form is (Series #X) as this is the most common on popular book titles. Would it be appropriate to edit all books that don't fit this format, in order to clean them up?
This is all I can think of, for now... Any advice regarding these questions that you can offer to an aspiring (but picky) Librarian will be helpful!
Edit: When I say "all books", I really mean only those manga series that I've chosen to work on (namely, those listed on my shelf). NOT all the books on the site...!