Combining editions of a textbook

[Andrew]

Hello,

I am a new librarian and would like to seek your advice before making a relatively big change.

I am considering to combine 5 different book entries:

https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...

I read both https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/4... and https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... on this topic, but they did't mention anything about updated editions of textbooks, that are intended to differ (more or less) from previous editions.

I made my preliminary decision to continue with combining those entries mostly on how The Art of Electronics editions are handled.

Also, I was generally confused about the edition field: manual states that it is fit for entries like "2nd edition" (https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/402), while the tooltip during the edit suggests to use it to mark "special" editions (http://imgur.com/2jfTJ0C).

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

/Andrew

[Krazykiwi]

I think the tooltip is pointing out *additional* valid uses for the edition field, because the fact you can use it to denote actual editions is pretty obvious. Don't overthink it :)

I would combine all those, and move the 2nd Edition etc to the edition field. I do this *all* the time.

I often do this in stages, because some of the psych books I've worked on have like 180 editions to figure out: I go through and sort them all out by cover, with a bit of arbitrary combining/separating, but do check the covers are legit for the ISBN - Abebooks is really good for this, because then you can run down each group and fix all the edition and author info for that edition. Then as you get each group completed, you can combine them back together.

(I'm not even kidding about the editions, here's one author I've been working on lately, when I have time:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/combin... )