"In that instance the fact that the particular edition of the book to which he referred is actually part of a publishers series of "Classic British Literature" -- a perfectly legitimate series, and a perfectly legitimate inclusion of that book in that series."

Actually, if you read how Tim describes a series, "Classic British Literature" is not a "perfectly legitimate series". He specifically excludes publishers series from the definition. He says, "Also avoid publisher series, unless the publisher has a true monopoly over the "works" in question. So, the Dummies guides are a series of works. But the Loeb Classical Library is a series of editions, not of works."

lilithcat által bejegyzett 7:32 pm (EST) -kor a Aug 8, 2008

It looks like we're having a bit of a disagreement about Islandia being part of a series. Islandia had several sequels/prequels written by Mark Saxton using Austin Tappan Wright's unpublished notes regarding Islandia. (Mark Saxton was also involved in editing Islandia before publication.) The Series field in Common Knowledge is often used to indicate such relationships. You might disagree with this attribution, but I feel it is important to keep these books together in such a fashion.

PhoenixTerran által bejegyzett 10:52 pm (EST) -kor a Jun 6, 2008

There is already an extensive page set up for the Nutshell Series of law books. If you perhaps feel that West's Nutshell Series is more appropriate as a title, you should change the entire list, not simply the ones you own. Also, you seem to have set up other series such as Oxford Mark Twain, including individual Twain books that he had no intention of being in a series, and Penguin English Poets, including Beowulf, which was obviously not intended by the author to be a part of any series. These are publisher series for which the original authors did not intend for their books to be a part of, and as such do not fit the definition of series as LibraryThing has constructed it.

uru által bejegyzett 4:40 pm (EST) -kor a Jun 2, 2008

greetings
things are looking good there. I've had a productive trip to Iowa last week - included a lovely copy of DOUBLE IMAGE by Levertov and the nicest copy of Sara Coleridge's PHANTASMION I've ever seen. Wandering about the country promises to be a lot of fun as soon as I can stand to retire.

bookstopshere által bejegyzett 10:00 am (EST) -kor a May 13, 2008

I found your conversation with conceptDawg in the CK group, so I came to your profile and read some of the comments here. Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT trying to start a fight with you, that honestly is not my intent.

You are right, there is NO requirement that LT members participate in Common Knowledge, Series, etc etc. You do not have to do that. It is your choice.

However, it IS asked that people do not screw up other people's data by erasing series info that is actually correct.

You seem to be saying that your edition of Baskervilles, Tom Sawyer, etc etc, is not part of a series and shouldn't be shown as so. However, as others have tried to tell you, LibraryThing does not work on an "edition" basis. The series info belongs to the WORK, not the specific edition that you have. Just because the specific edition that you have does not have a clear-cut series title/connection, that does not mean that the work itself is not a series. The AUTHOR is the one who usually decides if it is a series, not the publisher. The fact that the publisher of your edition didn't publish the whole series does not mean that the work is not a part of a series.

I do understand your frustration, because I, too, hate CK being so in-my-face, since I don't care to use that feature. But it IS a LibraryThing feature, and you can have your own opinions about what a "series" is, but the fact remains that your opinions don't necessarily agree with the owner/workers on this site, and they are the ones who ultimately get to define what goes in the "series" CK info, not you or me or any other single user.

Heather

Heather19 által bejegyzett 11:00 pm (EST) -kor a Apr 17, 2008

Again: there is no requirement that librarything "members" do anything more than catalog their library online. And no secondary purpose -- which are all other purposes -- for being here should be allowed to trump -- and trample -- that primary purpose.

"Yes, there is: that people don't go about trying to impose their own personal views on how something should work on everything, in face of what the developers has intended."

The standards -- and objective facts -- I cite and reference are the opposite of "personal views". Your ignoring of crucial differnces between editions -- points I've made irrefutable clear -- is the standrdless personal view being imposed.

And again: there is no requirement that librarything "members" do anything more than catalog their library online. They are not required to "particpate" in fora, or any other secondary "feature" of librarything. And they certainly aren't required to remain silent when the secondary tramples the primary underfoot.

"You have your way of organizing your library, fine. However, other people have other ideas."

The standards I apply are, again, not "my way"; they are STANDARDS. By contrast, the notion that two very different editions of the non-"same" book are nonetheless "the same" is poppycock based upon ignoring of both standards, and actual, objective differences. Those are facts, of course, which you avoid in effort to impose your subject anti-standard view, and thereby silence views you do not accept because they might tend to interfere with your view that the foremost purpose of librarything is not cataloging one's library oneline, but everything but that.

"All the information about different editions and such are there, in your library, untouchable by everyone else, and you can use them for cataloging any way you'd like."

So long as I'm willing to tolerate anti-intellectual generalizations into indistinguishability garbage polluting it.

"The series field, however, is common for everyone, and while you might think that it's a stupid thing to do so, the information there is supposed to be about what the author has created, not publishers."

"The Oxford Mark Twain" is a "series," not a publisher. Perhaps you'll begin to recoginze not only that fact of difference, but that it is a relevant difference. It is not, however, "The Writings of Mark Twain" "series". Any more than Asimov's "Robot" stories -- which have never been and are not now and never shall be a "series" -- are properly associated with his Foundation trilogy -- and yet that characterization of the "Robot" non-series is being made, and that incorrect association is being made, in the "series" field.

"There might come a feature by which one could keep different editions of books connected but still distinguish between them, which would let you do what you want. However the series feature has been designed in a specific way with a specific intention, and instead of trying to bend it to do what you want, why not leave it be, let those of us who want to use it for what its purpose is use it, and ask for something more fitting for your needs?"

Why not cease denying relevant distinctions -- such as, as example, that about which you avoid comment: between the original publication, and Fawcett publication, of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

And, no: the primary purpose of librarything, as it is presented, is the online cataloging of libraries -- not trampling that purpose under the hobnail boots of secondary purposes.

If you're going to simply repeat the same refuted anti-standard nonsense you have now done at least twice, don't repeat it in MY catalong's comment area.

JNagarya által bejegyzett 11:43 am (EST) -kor a Apr 8, 2008

Again: there is no requirement that librarything "members" do anything more than catalog their library online. And no secondary purpose -- which are all other purposes -- for being here should be allowed to trump -- and trample -- that primary purpose.

Yes, there is: that people don't go about trying to impose their own personal views on how something should work on everything, in face of what the developers has intended. You have your way of organizing your library, fine. However, other people have other ideas. All the information about different editions and such are there, in your library, untouchable by everyone else, and you can use them for cataloging any way you'd like. The series field, however, is common for everyone, and while you might think that it's a stupid thing to do so, the information there is supposed to be about what the author has created, not publishers. There might come a feature by which one could keep different editions of books connected but still distinguish between them, which would let you do what you want. However the series feature has been designed in a specific way with a specific intention, and instead of trying to bend it to do what you want, why not leave it be, let those of us who want to use it for what its purpose is use it, and ask for something more fitting for your needs?

andejons által bejegyzett 11:23 am (EST) -kor a Apr 8, 2008

andejons --

"I seem to not have gotten my point across."

You got it across. It is incorrect -- and exclusive.

"I do understand that there is a difference between different editions . . . ."

Often more than one relevant difference, as I continue to illustrate.

And those differences are seen and acknowledged and made part of the record in libraries -- not simply ignored.

"of a book, However, that difference is not seen as very important here, since LibraryThing is a community as much as, or even more than, a organizer for books, . . . ."

"a organizer" is incorrect; "an" before a vowel, and sometimes before "h".

Not only is that not the fact " even more than, a organizer for books," as the latter is precisely the representation made for librarything as being it's first purpose; there is no requirement that a librarything "member" do anything more than that. As well, as consistently made clear, my dealings with books, including on a website which has as its central focus books, and cataloging them online, is to treat them with the respect required of competent identification of them. Again: there is no requirement that librarything "members" do anything more than catalog their library online. And no secondary purpose -- which are all other purposes -- for being here should be allowed to trump -- and trample -- that primary purpose.

"which means that different editions are grouped together. . . ."

Which, as I said, is stupid, as it ignores the differences, which do matter. Worse, books which don't belong in this or that "series" are incorrectly dragooned into them anyway. Worse still, books which have no legitmate relation to each other are not only associated by giving them the exact same identity as one another, they are flatly declared, by fiat, to be "sequels" and parts of "series" even when they are not in fact those things.

"'The important question for when books are combined is not "Is all of the content exactly the same?", but rather "can two people who've read these versions say they've read the same book?'"

The important question is why dumbing-down is the goal of some librarything "members" so that that "rule" excludes other views -- and, more crucial, standards. Standards which are long-standing, ad which acknowledge and make record of relevant differences. Want to read absolutely everything written by (as example) Toni Morrison? Then see below for an important piece of writing by her which your approach wholly ignores because such differences are "irrelevant".

"If both a friend and I say that we've read "Huckleberry Finn", no one would say that we've read different books just because there were different forewords."

THIS "one" OBVIOUSLY DOES say EXACTLY that. The intelligent would say that, because if they were different editions, they would be different.

That the differences matter is OBVIOUSLY true of, on one hand, the version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as part of "The Oxford Mark Twain," which is (1) a facsimilie first edition (some subsequent editions are edited to remove "offensive" material)(2) with the original illustrations (many later editions have illustrations different than the originals, or no illustrations at all), (3)an introduction by well-known author Toni Morrison, (4) and an afterword by Twain-scholar Victor A. Doyno.

And on the other, the 1996 edition, published neither by Harpers nor Oxford nor UC's Mark Twain Library -- the latter being a significant fact -- but rather by Fawcett (which those knowledgeable would consider "unexpected"), which includes (1) the long-lost then recently rediscovered half of Twain's original final MS., parts of which had been excised from the first edition published -- and all subsequent editions -- (2) an introduction by Twain biographer Justin Kaplan, and (3) a foreword by Twain-scholar Doyno. That OBVIOSULY means the two editions are not "the same," and thus that a person who read the first, and a person who read the second, have not read "the same" book.

There are other differences among editions which matter: one edition of Huckleberry Finn had (gave it away to a friend years ago) included different scholarly perspectives on the book than those I've cited. Those different perspectives matter, and at the same time add to the richness of the reading of the book.

(Did you know, by the way, that Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 -- a book about book-burning/suppression of reading materials, based upon their being different from the official gov't view -- has been edited over the years by the publisher/s to remove the "controversial" material? That is, of course, by your view, irrelevant, as all editions are "the same," one edition being indistinguishable from another because all differences among editions are irrelevant. But, even though OBVIOSULY not "the same," we'll pretend otherwise, because it would be other than anti-intellectual, and might even verge on, being "scholarly," or even merely intelligent, to recognize that they are not "the same".)

"This is the sameness upon which books are grouped together into one "work"."

Even when that "sameness" is wishful-thinking, imposed by force.

"Since the "series" is common to every copy and edition of such a "work", . . . .

As pointed out before, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, aside from being part of "The Writings of Mark Twain" (published by Harpers) "series," and part of the Mark Twain Foundation's "Mark Twain Library" -- which has major differences from your "all the same" "copies" -- and part of the "The Oxford Mark Twain," is not a sequel, or itself part of any "series," any more than Tom Sawyer Abroad

JNagarya által bejegyzett 10:24 am (EST) -kor a Apr 8, 2008