New English 900 Book 1 Mp3 \/\/TOP\\\\

When a book has 6 unpaginated pages of "Author Notes" and "Acknowledgements" prior to page 1, ad then has 317 paginated pages, should the page count be entered as "317" or "6+317". I know what would be done with lc roman page numbers, but what if there are none at all? -DES Talk 15:38, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

To address the other part of Bill's question, I haven't thought of the class of cases where a text would be "later ... republished under an English title that needs to be a variant of the original [English language] one". And it's a good question too since there is nothing preventing US/UK/Oz editors from changing the title to something completely different if and when they decide to publish the books in English. Besides, the English language titles that we would use under the proposed rules may be literal translations of the known foreign language titles and not what the author originally had in mind. I can't think of any SF examples off the top of my head although some Harry Stephen Keeler mysteries that appeared only in Spanish and Portuguese in the 1950s and were finally published in English in the 2000s may qualify. I guess in a case like that we would have to create VTs for the newly minted English titles.

(unindent)Help:How to enter foreign editions as per the discussion above. Corrections and additions are more than welcome. Help:How to parse data in library catalogs created, although Bill's comments about 17.5 cm UK books made me wonder if the UK part needs to be beefed up. Ahasuerus 00:05, 22 Feb 2008 (CST)

(unindent) I don't really see that the higher levels of the corporate hierarchy are of much interest, at least not to most of our users. I think if we document the imprint name (where there is one) and the publisher in the DB records, and leave the history of which imprints belonged with which publishers, and which publishers belonged to which parts of which corporate entities in the wiki, we will be providing for most needs. (Del Rey is an easy case, it has never been a separate firm, and it has never belonged to any publisher but Ballantine, and most of the minor variations in how the name is displayed on book covers are not significant of anything -- "Del Rey Fantasy" and "Del Rey Science Fiction" were separate lines with different editors (Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey) for a time, as I understand things. Other cases are more complex.) For a given publisher or imprint, we should probably regularize, at least where differences are of no significance: for example "TOR", "A TOR Book", "Tor", and "Tor Books" do not indicate any meaningful distinction. Likewise "Putnam", "G.P.Putnam", "G. P. Putnam", and "Putnam Books" probably are not significantly different, but in this case there is enough history that it is possible one of these forms might be a clue to dating. -DES Talk 18:05, 20 Feb 2008 (CST)

As an aside, Ace Doubles tend to be more complicated than regular omnibuses since in many cases Wollheim had to cut the original text, sometimes substantially, to make two novels fit into one book, yet he still advertised the cut versions as "complete and unabridged". That's a whole different can of worms, though, and we probably don't want to go there at this point. As long as we stay away from these complications, we can discuss the way we record all Omnibus reviews; Ace Doubles will be just a subclass. Does this make sense? Ahasuerus 20:53, 23 Feb 2008 (CST)

In this discussion on the community portal, BLongley pointed out that listing audio books simpl;y as "audio" in the binding field is to lose possibly significant format information. I therefore propose that our standared ought to be "audio (format)" in the binding field for auudio books, with available choices being "Audio (cas)", "Audio (CD)", "Audio (DVD)", and "Audio (ebook)". Other choices can be added as they arise. "Audio" without a format listed should be coirrected whenever possible, and should not be entered for new records unless there is a note explaining that the format is not known. What do you think? -DES Talk 06:56, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

Secondly, I'd like some way of people taking a bit of responsibility for current publishers and suggesting which ones SHOULD be canonicised, even if temporarily. That would need software changes to allow people to mark a "preferred" publisher and also suggest such from the "unpreferred" ones. And vice versa: suggest imprints when somebody wants to use a publisher like "Random House" or "Hachette Livre". We've thousands of "Scholastic" books here that could be better categorized. (Point Horror/SF/Fantasy come to mind.) I'm happy to take a bit of responsibility for a couple of dozen imprints I'm pretty sure I can deal with, and advise on a few score more (yes, they're mostly British ones!) but so far I can't think of a workaround unless every Mod agrees to check publishers against Wiki pages in the meantime? BLongley 00:26, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The number of the series is Bantam numbering. The Doc Savage Magazine number is different. Should I switch to that or leave it? The Bantam series did add new books at the end so it has more than the pulp series did. Dana Carson 09:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

How does one deal with the case where a book gets a subsequent multi-volume publication? Stephen King's It was republished by J'ai Lu in a three-volumes paperback set (coll#s 2892-4, boxed set #6904), as was Asimov's The Robots of Dawn published as two volumes (#1602-3). Denoël republished Asimov's Mysteries (or at least disordered parts of it) in two volumes (#113-4) etc. This is fairly common for these publishers because they stick to a fairly rigid bracket of page numbers. Circeus 22:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Harry (User:Dragoondelight) has attempted to enter records on some books that are not standard Mass-market paperbacks, nor standard "trade" pbs. He wants to call these "digest" format. But our current practice, as documented in Help:Screen:EditPub currently reserves that term for magazines. He says:

"I am defining digest as a Reader's Digest size, not book sized nor trade paperback. It contains two staples with the cover page glued to the pack. The binding is not similar to paperback. I say digest to keep people alert to what they would see. It is a definition that pertains mostly to the binding. Though the binding seem the staples make it look just like a slightly smaller Reader's digest. You can change it and it will make the buyer of one surprised to find the anomaly. I am trying to be correct it what I see. Digest is used because it fits. Is it a book or a magazine. It is a magazine more than a book in it's appearance."

What shall we call such a book format? Shall we just use "pb" or "tp" with a note in the notes section describing the unusual format? Shall we use the term "digest", at the risk of possible confusion with the rather different magazine digest and large-digest formats? Or shall we use some different term, and if so what? I am not an expert on the history of publishing, and I am not sure what term to use. I am sure that if we call both what User:Dragoondelight and a recent IASFM by the term "digest" there will be confusion unless we somehow annotate the possible meanings of the term. -DES Talk 21:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Looks like we have a consensus re: changing Help to allow "digest" books and an overwhelming majority in favor of calling the binding simply "digest". I plan to make the change on Tuesday morning unless there are other comments posted here. Ahasuerus 22:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) I'm a bit worried about the proposed DELETION of letters, when I've already seen quite a lot of effort to get them included in certain circumstances. I propose a more "live and let live" policy - if somebody wants to add letters, let them, so long as they keep to the usual regularization rules for title and do the pseudonym set-ups. If people want to encourage entry of such for certain types of publication, that's fine too, but every editor should be able to say when that's more than they want to deal with, and the people wanting such entries can go do it themselves. The magazine editors seem quite happy to go into more detail than I would on a magazine, and if me just doing the SF contents doesn't help then they can ask me to leave them alone so they don't get confused by my verifications, or just accept that a verification by me doesn't mean the same as a verification by one of them and more work is required to bring it up to their standards. Similarly, I'm not asking people to find coverart images for books they've verified, or for details of every other price noted on it. I may ASK if the cover I found is right, or ask if the price is the main one or just the additional one added for their country, but there's no requirement to go do this additional work or even answer. But the more we add to the "desired data" list, the more relaxed I think we have to be about whether it's actually required before it's an acceptable entry or not: and when we start talking about DELETING data just because not everybody wants it in the pubs they're interested in, we really ARE going to start putting editors off. BLongley 21:39, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

One of the major outstanding issues with the current database layout is that we have no real support for novels which first appeared in one (usually long) book, but were later reprinted in multiple volumes. The last time we discussed this issue, we didn't want to retroactively change the original novel to an omnibus since it really wasn't an omnibus. And we didn't want to add parenthetical descriptions to the titles of subsequent reprints because we were afraid that it would break the "lexical match" logic which was used by Reviews at the time. The ultimate solution appeared to be the long requested addition of support for a new field for "relationships" between Titles, but that's easier said than done. Thus, a stalemate.

Well, now that Reviews no longer use the infamous "lexical match" , I wonder if we can revisit the issue. (Granted, Serials still use the lexical match logic, but they are unlikely to be involved when dealing with novels split in multiple books and, besides, they are next on Al's list of things to liberate from "lexical match".) We already use parentheses to disambiguate letters, introductions, abridged versions, etc and I wonder if we can press them into service in this case as well. Here is what Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness looked like a week ago: 2b1af7f3a8