Leading articles The, A, An and Canonical Titles

Hi! I found the "Canonical Title" "The Prague Orgy" at the "Common Knowledge" of "De Praagse orgie".

Not shure what to do. Is this correct? Regards Reinhardt

Unfortunately, there's currently a...let's call it an issue, where only one Canonical Title can be set for a work, across all language sites. So if someone on the .com site sets a Canonical Title in English, it will show up across all sites. In this case, a large majority of people do have the English title, so deleting the Canonical Title shouldn't affect them. I've gone ahead and deleted the Canonical Title; please do not set it to the Dutch (or any other) title, as that will only lead to edit wars.

>2 lorax: Thanks for the note. Fine for me. Is this internationalization behaviour / bug already reported to "Bug tracking". Else please reder to relevant topics please.

Assuming there would be no bugs involved. What would be the answer to the question?

It's not a bug per se, which is why I referred to it as an "issue". Please do not report it as a bug. See the thread here for further discussion.

What would be the answer to the question?

To what question? Yes, this is expected behavior -- the most recently-set Canonical Title will show on all language sites. As I said, please do not set it to something else. Most of the entries for this work are in English, so that's the most appropriate Canonical Title to be set.

I am using Tag: •Uniform Title to tag books where I have found an information about the "Uniform Title" at LoC, DNB, SUDOC, WorldCat etc. If the tag is present infos are available in the comments. Normaly articles in "Uniform Title" are skipped. This is what the topic question was related.

I use the information also in order to combine books (or as a reminder to combine them).

If I am understanding correctly: you are asking, if there were no bug relating to Canonical Title crossing over the language site no matter which site it was originally entered on, would The Prague Orgy be the correct canonical title for this work.

If that is what you are asking, then, yes, that would be the correct canonical title, as the space is for the canonical title in the language of the site you are on. So, it would be correct for The Prague Orgy to be listed on the .com site, Die Prager Orgie to be listed on the .de site, L'orgia di Praga to be listed on the .it site, etc.

Oh! I just read the topic of the thread. :)

I would say that "The" (or any other leading article) is part of the canonical title, yes. (But I may be wrong)

Please take a look at http://www.librarything.com/work/details/56710114 . In the comment s you will see:
http://lccn.loc.gov/77373797 ¶¶•
Uniform Title: Yenne velt. - eng

At LoC you may find transcriptions but the original language title is preserved.

Now the examples with an article:

The "Dos" article is skipped at
http://www.librarything.com/work/details/25956394
relates to http://lccn.loc.gov/00458033 ¶¶•
Uniform Title: Lid funem oysge'harg'eṭn Yidishn folḳ. - ger - AND - yid
Parallel Title: Grosser Gesang vom ausgerotteten jüdischen Volk

Loc is not consistent but 80% it skips the article.

The article "En" is preserved at
http://www.librarything.com/work/details/52230538
http://lccn.loc.gov/2009015420 shows (at LoC):
Uniform Title: En ö i havet. English

Neither DNB is consistent: http://d-nb.info/990651436
DNB is using html related metacharacters; This is why I changed the format and am using LT language codes.

added more explanations

Canonical title isn't necessarily what the Library of Congress uses in its cataloguing. Canonical title is what the work is most known as in ____ language. It's much less formal, and isn't meant to include language variations.

People have expressed interest in an "other titles" CK field, but I'm not sure what the response to that was.

The field at http://www.librarything.com/work/7255/commonknowledge is called "Canonical Title!" not "Uniform title" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13315090

I wounder what the difference should be. Still open questions to me:
a) should the title of the original language should be preserved?
b) should articles be skipped?

What are general accepted reccomendations stating on this? I assume that there are some international authorities working on these topics.

refference: The MARC 21 Formats: Background and Principles http://www.loc.gov/marc/96principl.html#five
search for "X30 = Uniform titles"

a) The original title will be preserved in the "editions" list. But that's one of the arguments for an "other titles" field, iirc.
b) Probably not.

But, also, the main purpose for Canonical Title is to remove junk that gets added to it, like "Foo: Title, A Foo Series ((Foo Book #X) Foo Series))", which is way too common with Amazon imports. (Maybe not all are that bad, but I have seen some come close.)

It's also useful in transliterating titles from hanzi or arabic or kana or cyrillic or hangul or greek or hungarian or whatever writing system isn't instantly legible for roman-script readers.

The rule about "it's for removing junk and/or transliterating" was affirmed a while ago when I first started watching the CK group, because of arguments about the first Harry Potter title, amongst others.

10a.

It will be preserved on individual copies, and on the "editions" page. It will not, and should not, be preserved in Canonical Title. We do not put ancient Greek in the Canonical Title field for the Iliad, after all.

10b.

No. People keep saying this. Canonical Title is not "uniform title", or authoritative. It's what most people call the book. It's there in large part to avoid having things like "Oprah's Book Club" or "A XYZ Series Book: The XYZ Series, Book 3" that Amazon tends to tack on appearing in the title because they're in the most common edition.

I found an interesting example:
http://www.librarything.com/work/748293/commonknowledge Land of Green Plums

Originaly Christina added (Oct 12th, 2008: 2:13:09 pm) the "disambiguation notice" "Original title: Herztier"> (work CK history). This seems a nice place for "Uniform titles" ...

I wounder why the "disambiguation notice" does not show up at the authors combine page. Should it?