[Done] Author/edition/cover/description fixups: Grammatical Theory

[John]

This request concerns the textbook Grammatical Theory: From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches, currently in its fourth edition:

Grammatical theory

Unfortunately the historical edition/volume situation for this book is a little complex, and as a result there are several uncombined editions floating around. I believe I've done enough legwork already that the remaining fixups won't be difficult; however, this does involve tinkering with numerous facets (author, cover image, title, description) of over a dozen editions.

In post #2, I'll describe the edition/volume situation for the book. After that, I'll split my request over a few posts, with the intent of organizing the fixups into simpler subrequests.

[John]

The publisher has a webpage for each edition of Grammatical Theory: From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches:

1st ed: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/boo...
2nd ed: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/boo...
3rd ed: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/boo...
4th ed: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/boo...

Looking over the editions (and especially reading each edition's Preface), one can get a sense for the breakdown of editions and volumes:

• For all editions, the book is organized in two halves (labeled I and II)
• For all editions, the ebook (PDF) version presents both halves together as a single volume (under a single ISBN)
• For editions 1-3, each print version was published in two separate volumes, one volume for each of the two halves of the book's content
• For the 4th ed., each print version, like the PDF, presents both halves as a single volume (under a single ISBN)

ISBNs on the copyright page of the 1st edition PDF:

• Digital, complete work: 978-3-944675-21-3 ;
• Hardcover: vol1: 978-3-946234-29-6; vol. 2 978-3-946234-40-1
• Softcover: vol1: 978-3-946234-30-2; vol. 2 978-3-946234-41-8
• Softcover US: vol1: 978-1-530465-62-0 ; vol. 2 978-1-523743-82-7

ISBNs on the copyright page of the 2nd edition PDF:

• Digital, complete work: 978-3-96110-074-3;
• Hardcover: vol. 1: 978-3-96110-075-0; vol. 2 978-3-96110-076-7
• Softcover: vol. 1: 978-3-96110-077-4; vol. 2 978-3-96110-078-1

ISBNs on the copyright page of the 3rd edition PDF:

• Digital, complete work: 978-3-96110-202-0;
• Softcover: vol. 1: 978-3-96110-203-7; vol. 2 978-3-96110-204-4

ISBNs on the copyright page of the 4th edition PDF:

• 978-3-96110-273-0 (Digital)
• 978-3-96110-277-8 (Hardcover)
• 978-3-96110-274-7 (Softcover)

This suggests an approach for combining editions:

• All print editions with "Vol. 1" ISBNs get combined into a single work. These editions all contain unit I of the book.
• All print editions with "Vol. 2" ISBNs get combined into a single work. These editions all contain unit II of the book.
• All ebook editions and the 4th ed. print editions get combined into a single work. These editions all contain both unit I and unit II of the book. (This might also apply to republished/'reproduction' editions, though it's more difficult to make a definitive determination in those cases.)

I'll follow this approach in the requests below.

[John]

My first request concerns the author, Stefan Müller, a German linguist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_...
https://hpsg.hu-berlin.de/~stefan/

With some rummaging around, I wasn't able to find an author page specific to this Stefan Müller, so I request that a new author page be created. (Once this has been done, there are several other works by this Stefan Müller that I can request to be transferred to this author page; but I'll leave that out of this thread.)

Every edition of Grammatical Theory I've seen on Goodreads (which I'll be listing out in the posts below) has the author misspelled.

[John]

Please combine the following editions:

(#1) 9783946234296 (1st edition vol. 1, Hardcover)
(#2) 9783946234302 (1st edition vol. 1, Paperback, 570 pages)
(#3) 9783961100750 (2nd edition vol. 1, Hardcover, 602 pages)
(#4) 9783961100774 (2nd edition vol. 1, Paperback, 602 pages)
(#5) 9783961102037 (3rd edition vol. 1, Paperback, 612 pages)

Some tweaking of the titles might help to clarify which edition/volume is which. In addition, I recommend making the following changes:

• Some, but not all, of the cover images explicitly call out 'Volume 1' or 'Vol. I'. If a cover image does not do so, then I recommend such a cover image be removed.
• The description field of 9783946234302 correctly notes that the second part of the book is "(sold separately)"; however, other editions comment on the second part of the book without making it clear that such content is not in the present volume. It would be desirable to clarify this consistently.
• The description fields tend to include book reviews at the bottom; this is inadvisable for Goodreads description fields.

[John]

Please combine the following editions:

(#1) 9783946234401 (1st edition vol. 2, Hardcover)
(#2) 9783946234418 (1st edition vol. 2, Paperback, 398 pages)
(#3) 9783961100767 (2nd edition vol. 2, Hardcover, 406 pages)
(#4) 9783961100781 (2nd edition vol. 2, Paperback, 406 pages)

(NOTE: If you're comparing this request to the previous post, there's no #5 here because Goodreads doesn't have a record for 3rd edition vol. 2, ISBN 9783961102044.)

Some tweaking of the titles might help to clarify which edition/volume is which. In addition, I recommend making the following changes:

• Some, but not all, of the cover images explicitly call out 'Volume 2' or 'Vol. II'. If a cover image does not do so, then I recommend it be removed/replaced. As a specific example, I recommend replacing #3's cover image with Amazon's image: https://www.amazon.com/dp/3961100780/
• The description field of 9783946234418 correctly notes that "This is the second part of the book"; the description field of 9783946234401 doesn't clarify this, so the description field seems to imply that content from Vol. 1 is present. It would be desirable to clarify this consistently.
• The description fields tend to include book reviews at the bottom; this is inadvisable for Goodreads description fields.

[John]

Please look into whether combining is reasonable/warranted for the following editions:

(#1) 9783961102747 (4th edition, Paperback, 880 pages)
(#2) 9783961102730 (4th edition, ebook, 853 pages)
(#3) 9781013286346 (reproduction, Paperback, 830 pages)
(#4) 9781013286353 (reproduction, Hardcover, 830 pages)
(#5) 9781013291296 (reproduction, Hardcover, 858 pages)
(#6) 9781013291289 (reproduction, Paperback, 858 pages)
(#7) 9781013294594 (reproduction, Hardcover, 874 pages)
(#8) 9781013294587 (reproduction, Paperback, 874 pages)

ISBNs #3 through #8 are reproduction editions from Saint Philip Street Press. (I presume that since langsci-press books are published open-access with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, this opens the door to republishing.)

Since all of the reproductions are over 800 pages in length, I think it's pretty likely that these reproductions contain both halves together. For comparison, here are some other examples in which Saint Philip Street Press reproductions of langsci-press books have closely-matching page counts:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

This being said, I haven't found a way to get further info on these reproduction editions, so I must stop short of guaranteeing that #3-#8 can correctly be merged with #1/#2. I'll leave it to the librarian's discretion to decide how to handle these republished editions.

This is my final request post for this thread. Thanks in advance for any help on this!

[Jennifer]

I've started working on this and have created a new author profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Stefan Müller (Stefan^^^Müller)

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

[Jennifer]

I think I've been able to gather this author's works under this new author profile and combined the appropriate editions. I made some of the other fixes you recommended. Thank you for doing this research and writing such clear directions.
Please let me know if I've missed something.

[John]

I've given the new author profile, edition combines, and description revisions a cursory look - all match what I had in mind when making the request. (Also noted that the 3rd ed. vol. 2 pbk is now present - nice to see, since now each vol. 1 has a corresponding vol. 2 and vice versa.) Thanks very much for the help on this!