How to deal with collections

[Zeta]

I've got a couple of questions about collections. (I'm talking about a collection created by the publisher to include its titles, like "Collection Read & Learn", not series created by authors).

I think when importing from Amazon the system automatically adds the collection and the number (if they apper on the cover) between parenthesis on the title, is this correct? If not, where should this information appear, if it should at all?

Then we have graphic novels, is there a guideline for these? I don't think they should be treated as a series since they aren't a separate entity. I would go with something like "Title of the Series #X: Title of the Volem (if there is any)"

[stan]

Well for a start you could split the collection into genre. Then if it is a serious collection split the various editions and then into the publishers in the country of release . My collection Of Ian Fleming runs to many different editions and releases from different Countrys

[Cait]

Zeta, often this sort of collection information is appropriate for the "edition" field. If it's numbered, though, it's usually treated like series and given in the title in parentheses as is standard for series information at the moment; if needed, an edition can be listed with more than one series -- you can see this with some of the Harlequin collections, for example, where a book will be numbered in a author's series and also a part of a differently numbered publishing collection.

For serialized graphic novels, you're correct about the formatting; you can see this with a lot of comic book trade paperbacks, for example, especially manga where there's often not a volume name.

stan, I'm not sure what you mean by splitting a collection...?

[stan]

Hi Cait
Try Separate

[Cait]

stan, I think we may be talking about different things here -- I interpreted Zeta's question as being about book like this, where "Harlequin Blaze" is a publisher's numbered collection, or like this, where "I Can Read" is a publisher's unnumbered collection. Are you talking about the situation where multiple "Collected Works Of" with different selected works have been incorrectly combined together?

[Zeta]

That's right, I meant collections from publishers, where the books have nothing to do with each other. It seems weird to treat numbered collections as a series and differently than not-numbered ones, but I guess it's just a convention.

About manga, a lot of times there is a title for the volume but it's not featured on the cover or even in the book on international releases. I suppose there's no sense in including them then.

Since you've mentioned the "Edition" field (which I didn't know what it was for) I have a question: What is the "Original title" field for? Is there any use for it in the database? Is it only for translations? What about the year field? if the content was published in a magazine before the book should that year be in it?

[Cait]

Zeta wrote: "Since you've mentioned the "Edition" field (which I didn't know what it was for) I have a question: What is the "Original title" field for? Is there any use for it in the database? Is it only for translations? What about the year field? if the content was published in a magazine before the book should that year be in it?"

The "original title" is for books in translation (or which have otherwise been published under more than one title); the "original title" should have the very first title under which the book was published in any language or country as this specific book -- so, for example, if a book was originally serialized in a magazine, the original title and date first published fields should reflect the first time the entire book was published as one entire book, not the first publication of the first chapter. Or, for example, a collection of short stories should give the title and year of the first collection of these exact stories, not the title or year of individual stories.