Why Both?

Not a clue. Unless it's something like US vs UK titles applied to series - but I'm not saying that's the case.

Wikipedia has "Dave Dawson War Adventure Series".

From the tags one user has tagged it "Series: Dave Dawson", three different users use "War Adventure Series".

From what I can see both US and UK editions were known as "The War Adventure Series"

There were two publishers for the books popularly called the Dave Dawson series. The original US publisher was Crown. These books were fairly nice volumes, often with good paper, and high retail prices. They sold few copies.

Saalfield was the cheap reprint outfit and they issued books on the cheapest pulp paper available at low prices in large numbers. They stopped before doing all of the volumes so people who look for the last two titles, can only find them as Crown editions and usually with great difficulty and at significant expense.

The publisher's name for the series was the War Adventure series. It is the official name for the series. However, because every title begins with "Dave Dawson," it is popularly known as the Dave Dawson series. Both names apply to it and either could be a search term.

I don't think there is a means of having an alternate name for a series in the same way there is one for an alternate name for a book title or person.
_____

Multiple names for series are actually fairly common. The "Pollyanna" series is the popular name for the "Glad Book" series. The Beverly Gray series began as the College Mystery series but the name was changed after the first four volumes concluded her higher education. The books by "Harrison Adams" with titles that begin with "The Pioneer Boys" is actually known as the "Boy Pioneer" series by the publisher.

Some might call L.M. Montgomery's first series the "Anne of Green Gables" series, the "Green Gables" series, the "Anne Shirley" series, or even the "Anne Blythe" series. No one of them is a comprehensive description since the character's name and locale changed in the books. Often the character's surname is forgotten when people do searches.
_____

It may be inconvenient to have more than one series name for a given book or series, however, the book world has many such examples. I don't see how combining them makes the LT data more useful or more accurate or better for searches.

Please make a case for combination. In some cases it may be the right thing to do. I'm not so sure about this one.

James

Dave Dawson is also duplicated in the character CK. Arguably, the Dave Dawson series could simply be eliminated and people searching on that name could find the works through the character CK. That page then links to the series under its official name. But this requires knowing a lot about how LT functions.

Wikipedia notwithstanding, none of the reference books on juvenile series books (e.g. the Harry K. Hudson bibliography or the Mattson-Davis bibliography use a combined name like "Dave Dawson War Adventure" series. It might work in this case. However the other examples I gave would become confusing and useless if combined in the series name:

Pollyanna Glad Book series
Boy Pioneer Pioneer Boys series or Pioneer Boys Boy Pioneer series
Anne Shirley Blythe of Green Gables series
Beverly Gray College Mystery series

The Mattson-Davis guide does do one thing that I find a little frustrating in a printed book. An entire series listing is entered twice with separate MAD numbers as if they are two series. There should be a cross reference between them. Use either the popular or publisher name if they differ. In an electronic list like this, it is expected that a certain amount of duplication is needed to "catch" the various queries both using LT's search and a Google search.

I could more readily see combining the two series called Tripods and The Tripods. The latter list has more volumes, including omnibus editions/sets.

Although I am well aware of the Dave Dawson series (I prefer the popular name), I don't collect them. However, if a small group decides to "clean up" the work of others, I begin to have a problem with something that takes data away just to appeal to a certain interpretation of superfluous data.

I don't like to see the book number of the series field used for other purposes such as listing the ghostwriter of the volume. That really does not belong there per the labeling of the column and any help text I have seen. There are other places to put this authorship information. However, that is not our discussion here.

Are there other voices on this situation or should this example be left alone?

James

Depends I guess: who's W.H. Allen and why is (s)he included in the name of one of those series???? But I admit I don't see it.

#11

I think the W.H Allen Tarzan series should be removed.

>12 andyl:
Seconded.

I've moved the info to the publishers series field. I'll contact the user to explain. We've contacted each other several times over other things and I know he isn't messing things up on purpose.

Maybe he's just lulled you into a false sense of security and now he is starting to mess things up on purpose. Just speculating....

I don't think so. Most of his questions before were exactly on how to do things properly. Series wasn't covered yet. So I'm assuming honest mistake.

I'm sure you're correct, I was just funnin' with ya.

Right, sorry. It's still morning here and I'm only on my second cup of coffee :-)

No problem. It's evening here and I'm just having my second beer with dinner.

And again: http://www.librarything.com/series/Peter+Grant or http://www.librarything.com/series/Rivers+of+London
Personally, I think it's a no brainer: keep Rivers of London as a) it's the title of the first book and b) it's more immediately recognizable (more "unique").
What I'm really wondering about is whether I ought to communicate with the people who dealt with both. Although I notice that the user who created the Peter Grant series has now been suspended!

Oh, I've just realised the difference: Peter Grant is a German series name. Now I'm confused as to what to do!

Then it should be Peter Grant on the German (.de) but not on the English (.com) site.

Ah, I've found the source of my confusion: there's an entry right down at the bottom of the Common Knowledge change log ( http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?item=10697148&type... ), with the Peter Grant series name in English. I hadn't gone that far, having found the German entries! That'll be the one that needs to be dealt with then. I've less objection to clearing it up in English :)

#20 - #21

It is most likely a USian thing. They didn't use Rivers Of London as the title of the first book. Tantor Audio calls it the Peter Grant series.

20>The author and publishers use Peter Grant as the series name.

http://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/a-clarification.html

" The Peter Grant books should be thought of as an ongoing series of detective novels in the manner of Ian Rankin, P.D. James or Ed McBain's 87th Precinct. There are some elements and story lines that carry over and develop from book to book but it is not a trilogy in the fat fantasy series sense."

The Rivers of London has no significance to US readers where the series starts with Midnight Riot.

The rivers play an increasinglly small part as the series advances

To me the it seems a no brainer to use the name used by the Publishers and authors and that remains significant.

re: Why both?, feel free to fix them so there's just one for each.

> 34/35: Clueless, about "Images of America", but "JSOTS" and "Journal of the Old Testament Supplement (Series)" are indeed fully identical. I have a couple, and I've tried to streamline things in the past. I don't care which one wins out, but two is superfluous.

http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Norton+Critical+Editions
http://www.librarything.com/series/Norton+Critical+Editions

http://www.librarything.com/series/The+Brain+%2526+Brawn+Ships
http://www.librarything.com/series/Brainships

This isn't really why both, but a question on how to fix this:
http://www.librarything.com/series/Foundation%252BTrilogy%252B%255BAsimov%255D

http://www.librarything.com/series/Foundation

Obviously the two books at the top of the second one belong with the books in the first one. But they are not part of the original trilogy, but later additions (still by Asimov)

Possibilities

Move the two later books ino the trilogy series.
Create a Foundation novels series for all of them, leaving the trilogy series
Create a Foundation novels series for all of them, deleting the trilogy series
Something else?

My own opinion would be put them all on one, no separate trilogy page. I think it'd be redundant.

foundation series, leave trilogy. imo.

There are distinct series amongst those, they shouldn't all just be lumped into one big "Sainsbury" one, but yeah, they really ought to get sorted properly.

The Willard J. Graham Series in Accounting
Irwin - The Willard J. Graham Series in Accounting
The second version has five books -- compared to two in the first, one of them my doing -- but surely the first is the more "correct" version?

>49 AnnaClaire: Barnes & Noble has 26 titles listed under the first series name.

Is it a mission here to eliminate redundant series?
I do so informally when I run across them, keeping the more standard descriptive name of the series.

Ehm, now the 2nd has none and the first 2. Is whoever is working on this still going?

>52 Collectorator: The series in question was published with some books only in Asia (Heinemann) but most of the rest in the US by Dominie (and then all the companies that subsequently merged and purchased one another). They're all by the same author.

I suppose it would be most correct to have all of them under http://www.librarything.com/series/Joy+Readers with the other ones as publisher series.

Problem is, sometimes it's hard to tell what's really going on until quite a large number are already entered. I will confess sometimes continuing what's already begun rather than going back and changing a zillion entries.

>56 Collectorator: It might matter to a teacher or a collector to know some were only distributed on the other side of the world, or that the firm that owns the current publishing rights does not have all the titles. Schoolbooks are usually sold as a package.

>58 Collectorator: Yet the publisher's name is listed as the Series name on WorldCat, Google Books, and other sources. I was pretty far in to some of these series before it became clear that it was more complicated than it seemed.

I wouldn't object to the publisher+series being moved to Publisher Series. I just don't have the time to do it right now.

>61 Collectorator:
That series mess extends beyond LT. I can't find my information source now, but years ago I thought about doing something with that series and found that it has a very tangled publication history. The original publisher split up and two successor publishers were suing each other for the rights for a time and putting out competing editions of the same titles. Then one or the other or both were bought by larger publishers that reprinted older titles under a new series name in addition to putting out new titles. They all share a similar format, so they are seriesish. But it was so complicated I just threw up my hands.

Oh, and the Marx book (the very first one and inspiration for the series) shouldn't be in the LT series because it was originally published in Spanish by an entirely different publisher.

>66 Collectorator: I finished combining the series.

>72 Collectorator: I'll work on putting the whole thing into Publisher Series. It's obvious that's where it should be.

Sure you would - they smell different.

I actually own one of the titles in the Cistercian Studies Series. They've all been moved to the publisher series page, but there are lots of stray titles not listed in the series yet. I may gather them up and do a more complete set, just not today. There are at least 248 titles in the series! Yikes!

Why are there two series:
http://www.librarything.com/series/Alexander%252BCold%252Badventure
http://www.librarything.com/series/Journeys+of+Jaguar+and+Eagle

Seems redundant.

>82 Collectorator:

Comics and graphic novels - always a bane.

I would think it requires 3 series at least.
Strontium Dog: Search/destroy Agency Files seems to be a series by John Wagner
Strontium Dogs seems to be a series by Garth Ennis
and then another series to tie them together with other Strontium Dog stuff - Rebellion have released previous collections for example, and people seem to have listed 2000AD issues and annuals.

There might also be a Strontium Dog RPG series and a Strontium Dog audio series.
There is also a series of 5 Strontium Dog novels (just text, not graphic novels) published by Black Flame (only one of which is listed on your series and incorrectly numbered as part of the same series as Search/destroy).

So in fact I would have 6 Strontium Dog series - but organised somewhat differently.

>85 Collectorator:

Yep, but it is the middle of the day and I am supposed to be working ... so can't work on it until later

http://www.librarything.com/series/Thomas+Cromwell+trilogy
http://www.librarything.com/series/Wolf+Hall+Trilogy

One guess where Wolf Hall isn't.

>105 AnnaClaire: I think the first is becoming the standard. from a quick google.

> 103
Done.

>110 Collectorator: The publisher, WorldCat, or both lists them as separate series. Publisher series can change titles and morph a lot more than Series series.

>112 Collectorator: That's just a disorganized group of librarians around the world, putting series names on things willy nilly.

And that differs from LT how?

>112 Collectorator: Ask Dover. At different times (the book was first in print around 1900), it released the title as part of each of those publisher series. A good deal of Dover information can be gotten from the books themselves which are easy enough to access via Amazon Look Inside or Google Books Preview. Their cover notes and interior publisher notes can be quite extensive.

Dover has the unfortunate habit of changing names of their series occasionally.

I'd rather have an extra Pub series name in there rather than having to (or having someone) decide which one is the "right" one, especially since they may change it next year anyway.

It's not accessible if you can't find it using the series name from the book you have in hand.

Agree with you on that. Dover Publications is, and probably always will be, creating something of a mess. But plenty of things that can be fixed.

It's "backwards" to look up a series from a book you enjoyed and therefore want to look at other books you might also enjoy due to their being in the same series?? Just because you want everything in one little spot doesn't make other people "bass-ackwards," so how about not insulting them.

Huh, guess I'm bass-ackwards, 'cause I still don't get how more information (more than one series listed under a book) can be a bad thing. If I'm looking for a series and I don't have the book in my hands, and I look for the series that someone has deemed 'wrong', then what do I do? I can't find it. I think in the case of LT, that is worse data, then maybe having a series listed that isn't perfectly right.

Like it or not, this isn't a library, it's a website. I believe that means that we should balance the 'right' series, or 'right' title with the 'most well known' or in the series the 'most looked up under' titles/serieses.

Just MHO.

> 135 My point was that Not everyone is looking up stuff by 'the book you have in hand', and therefore why should everything be slanted towards 'having the book in your hand'. Some people use this site to look up books that they don't have yet, but wish to have in their hands.

That's what my comment was about, a point for why to have two different serieses for the same book is not totally a bad thing (it happens all, all, all the time with all the comics, both TPBs and issues, on LT).

>137 Collectorator:, 136 There are lots of examples of those, because LT regards differences in case (or plurality) to indicate different series. No, there's no reason, it just needs the capitalization to be changed. Since there is exactly one book in question, feel free to just change it. Done. Fixed.

>139 Collectorator: Well, my point was, is, and will forever be

Well, your original point was:

>118 Collectorator: What ever happened to making information accessible and useful?

You asked a question and DanieXJ gave the valid response that people don't only come to information from one direction.

I was answering your original question Collectorator. (And I apologize for riffing on the whole 'bass ackwards thing, but, really? We can't say ass backwards on this site now??)

As for your question: Why both??

Because people don't always know a series by the same name. Sometimes it's because of a UK/US thing, or some other English speaking country/US thing, or maybe it's just that some people have started calling a series by some sort hand that the official establishment doesn't use.

And, more data does not equal 'superfluous' data. As Keeline very astutely pointed out in the 5th message of the thread. If someone has only every known the series as the Dave.... series, and we take that away, and they have no clue that it was called 'War Adventure' series as well, they don't have the books in their collections, but want to know what books they have to read to start the series again. Well, if we take away the Dave series, they're screwed. How is that good data then?

LT isn't here to be an academic library's catalog, perfect in every way. LT is here to be used by people. And we people, we are messy with what we call things, and we are messy with what our brains remember (hence why librarians get the oft mentioned 'it has a blue cover' so often). We are people, not computers.

That's why we should keep both (in this case and in others that are even remotely similar in my humble opinion).

>144 DanieXJ: Hear, hear!

>146 Collectorator: That's what I'm saying. Any of them.

Now, I'm not for just leaving every series that someone comes up with no matter what. There can be exceptions. Like if somehow something happened like A Song of Ice and Fire got put in there as 'A Song of Ice and Fire' and 'Song of Ice and Fire'. Of course I believe that they should be consolidated into one Series entry. But I think of that along the same lines as combining a title that is slightly wrong into the correct title.

But, if there's a series that is known as two totally different things, yes, I believe that they should both be kept.

>148 Collectorator: I don't even understand what you're asking now.

The first post is the example of keeping both. I was under the impression that that was what we (or at least I was) were talking about this whole time.

>150 Collectorator: A recognition that not every duplicate series name is superfluous? DanieXJ just responded to your challenge to name duplicate series names that we should keep both of. Why does it matter that the names are from 2012?

Feel free do whatever you want to do with the serieses Collectorator, and if you change one of my serieses and I believe that it's a change that's wrong, then I'll change it back.

I simply came into this group to see if there was anything regarding the mess that is comic book TPB serieses that had been discussed in the group, in my travels through the group I saw this thread, and I gave my opinion. I wasn't trying to do anything more than weigh in. It's the internet, I encourage everyone to take my opinion with whatever amount of salt you feel is needed.

Please carry on.

>158 Collectorator: I eliminated the Tiny Folio Series a few days ago, but the link is still showing all 20 books. That's never happened before. Any ideas why? Is it a cache issue?

https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/SUNY+Series+in+Contemporary+Contine...
and
https://www.librarything.com/series/SUNY+Series+in+Contemporary+Continental+Phil...

For that matter,
https://www.librarything.com/series/SUNY+Series+in+Hegelian+Studies
and
https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/SUNY+Series+in+Hegelian+Studies

>167 Collectorator:
Now, that is a tiny difference. Since the first has only one book at the moment, I'm unilaterally moving that to join the rest.

>168 AnnaClaire:
I don't get it. Why leave the one with the singular series title?

>171 Collectorator:
Exactly. I saw the capitalization difference and missed the pluralization difference. I've finished the fix.

Last night I did a series search to check how many "SUNY Series in..." serieses there were. More than 90, as it turned out. Fortunately, most of them were not duplicates, but when I have a moment I'm working on un-duplicating the paired SUNY series.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, one or two were "Suny series in..." which is plain old garden-variety wrong. Yes, you can pronounce it ("sue-knee" -- and CUNY is likewise "cue-knee"), but that makes it an acronym, not a word. SUNY is the State University of New York, which, like so many universities and university systems, runs a university press.

>175 Collectorator: Easy fix. Done.

>177 Collectorator: Theoretically an easy fix, but the one with the comma is not listed on the work page!

>193 Collectorator:
There were only three in the last of those. I've merged it into the one in the middle (the one without a definite article), which I think is the correct location.

A quick glance suggest this is a series, not a publisher series?

>55 PhaedraB: Way back Phaedra wrote this: Problem is, sometimes it's hard to tell what's really going on until quite a large number are already entered. She was right. It strikes me that if people starting a series could always insert a brief 'Series description' note it would go a long way towards reducing the confusion of multiple duplicate series. If TPTB would give us a description field for Publishers series as well that would be even better ;-(

Just repeating for emphasis:

If TPTB would give us a description field for Publishers series as well that would be even better

</b>

Closing a suspected rogue HTML tag, nothing to see here.

>204 Collectorator: There does seem to be some justification for having two with lots of crossover. The Helm guides are birds only. The Princeton guides cover more topics.

>204 Collectorator: >205 2wonderY:

Actually, what's going on is that the Helm guides and the Princeton guides are published by a UK and a US publisher respectively; there's some overlap with volumes published by both, but they aren't the same.

For instance, Birds of the Gambia and Senegal is published by Helm and not Princeton (this is not just a gap in LT's data, see the catalog at http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/princeton-field-guides.html ). Conversely, Birds of Botswana (not cataloged on LT) is published by Princeton and not Helm, as well as the non-bird books.

>208 Collectorator: That's not really a series anyway.

Do these two series contain the same books?

http://www.librarything.com/series/The+Colophon

http://www.librarything.com/series/The+Colophon%2C+A+Book+Collectors%27+Quarterl...

I think they mostly do, though it's a little hard to tell due to variations in the way they are titled on LT and numbered here -- one series seems to use volume/number while the other uses "whole number"... or something.

Also the publication went through a few different phases...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colophon,_A_Book_Collectors%27_Quarterly
... so that this third series is apparently part of it too:
http://www.librarything.com/series/The+Colophon+New+Graphic+Series

Obviously The Colophon (and its successor, The New Colophon) is a periodical. It is unusual that they are intended to be permanently retained and they have hardcover bindings.

The first two links look to be the same thing, one with the subtitle and one without.

James

https://www.librarything.com/series/Step+Into+Reading%3A+Step+4
https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Step+Into+Reading

Seems like it should only by a publisher series? I could delete the regular series entries and move any that are missing if people think that is the correct thing to do.

>216 al.vick:

Why?
If none of them was published outside of the series, it is a regular series, even if a single publisher publishes them. Series beats Pub series - only series that cannot remain a series because not all editions of the books belong to it becomes a publisher series. And this one is special editions for this specific series.

'There are series on many sides, many sides'

Well, I guess I won't do anything, I just thought it was odd that there already was a publisher series and a regular series. I think the other "step" sizes are only in the
publisher one.

No, the various "Step" sizes are regular series:
https://www.librarything.com/series/Step+Into+Reading%3A+Step+1
https://www.librarything.com/series/Step+Into+Reading%3A+Step+2
https://www.librarything.com/series/Step+Into+Reading%3A+Step+3
https://www.librarything.com/series/Step+Into+Reading%3A+Step+4

There aren't any "Step Into Reading" series listed in "Related publisher series" on https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Step+Into+Reading.