Multiple volumes

[Judy]

Hi, I'm fairly new as a librarian and wanted to check... is it policy to list separate volumes of a multi-volume work separately, for instance Samuel Richardson's 'Clarissa'?

I separated out the four volumes of the Everyman edition, as well as two books *about* the novel which were wrongly listed as editions, but thought I'd better check before doing any more separating! A problem with this massive novel in particular is that there are loads of diffrerent abridgements and different multi-volume editions - should they all be separate? At the moment most of them are combined.

[Lisa]

Judy,

Yes, each volume should be separate from the others. Multiple editions of volumes 3 of 4 and such should be combined. Completes should also be combined, although I once ran into a problems with "completes" being different from one another, but that is so rare.

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

You will occasionally find multi-volume sets with a single ISBN for the set as well as ISBNs for each unique volume. The individual volumes should be separated from each other as well as the set. An example is the encyclopedia of evolution.

What would the strategy be for a multi-volume set which only has a single ISBN for the set and none for the individual volumes? I could see an argument either way: only list the set as a single work, or list each individual volume sans ISBN in addition to the set.

[Judy]

Thanks very much. I'll go ahead and do some separating. In this case there are a lot of different editions, many of them abridged, so I'll try to tread carefully. Thanks again.

[Larry-bob]

I think that multiple volumes should be mentioned in the general guidelines for merging that appears as help in the sidebar when merging.