To Combine or NOT to Combine

[Peter]

Michael has attached a Librarian's Note to each of 4 differently abridged editions of The Other Side of the Moon stating "Do not merge with other editions as the contents are different."

The Other Side of the Moon is the complete edition. The following are all differently abridged editions:

The Other Side of the Moon
The Other Side of the Moon
The Other Side of the Moon
The Other Side of the Moon

Should this Librarian's Note be honored or should each of the abridged editions have edition information added and the whole set combined?

Any and all comments will be appreciated.

[Experiment BL626]

do combine:
Different publications of the same book.
Different formats of the book (hardcover, paperback, audio).
Editions/translations of the book in other languages. Even though many translations differ significantly, we've made the decision to combine them all, and have people note the differences in their reviews.
Abridgments, i.e. a work that contains the author's original text, with some parts removed to shorten it.

Library Manual Additions > Adaptations and Abridgements

Yes, do combine them. I suggest you PM the person who wrote the Librarian Notes to educate them of this rule. Moreover, do input in the "edition" field what edition the book is in, i.e. complete or abridged.

[Kim]

No these are not abridged versions. It appears that these are collections of short stories by various authors and the different versions have different stories selected. This one may have to be treated differently, I'm not sure.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Kim wrote: "It appears that these are collections of short stories by various authors and the different versions have different stories selected."

Then they should not be combined.

[Peter]

Kim wrote: "No these are not abridged versions. It appears that these are collections of short stories by various authors and the different versions have different stories selected. This one may have to be tre..."

Yes, they are all anthologies. However, they all have the same title and editor, and are all selected from a larger edition. The subset editions each have about 10 stories from the 20 stories in the original edition.
No 2 subsets have the same group of stories. In fact and have no story in common, creating a 2 volume version of the master set, but by different publishers.

[vicki_girl]

Then should not be combined. The rule about combining abridgments applies to single works, not collections or anthologies. Collections & Anthologies should only be combined if they contain the exact same set of stories.

[Joel]

If the list of what to combine/not that's in the Librarian Manual still doesn't mention abridged versions at all (as far as I can tell), nor does the (somewhat different!) list that appears on the author's combine page, and it seems that the only place this rule is documented is in the aforementioned suggested revision to the Manual, how are newer folks supposed to learn about that rule before they break it?

(Also, given that the change suggestion in question was posted and apparently went into effect more than a year ago, how long does it normally take for the manual itself to get updated?)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Anyone can suggest additions or changes to the manual in the appropriate folder.