Work-to-work Relationships Discussion

Continuing the Work-to-work Relationships Reboot Thread with a copy of jbd1's previous opening post.

Original Thread

HelpThing page

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General Principles:

1. Create no new works. Do not create new works in order to make work-to-work relationships. If a work contains something, but there is no work for it, leave it off—or add a note to the "Disambiguation notice" for future inclusion.

2. Link whole work to whole work. This isn't an all-purpose table-of-contents feature, but a way to show relationships that apply universally across all editions of a work.

3. This doesn't change any rules about what's a work. If it was a work before this feature, it's still a work. If it wasn't before, it's still not. Don't split or combine works for the purpose of creating relationships.

4. This isn't for series. We have a series feature! We can, however, finally link the various non-canonical "sequels" to Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre etc.

5. Make the closer link. If you link the Fellowship of the Rings directly to the Tolkien omnibus, you won't be able to also link it to the Lord of the Rings.

6. Relationships are reciprocal. If you say Ulysses was inspired by The Odyssey, the relationship will display on The Odyssey page as "Inspired Ulysses", and on the Ulysses page as "Was inspired by The Odyssey."

And finally:

7. When in doubt, leave it out—and talk about it with others.

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Current Relationships:

Contains

Is a retelling of
Is a (non-series) sequel to
Is a (non-series) prequel to
Is an adaptation of
Is an abridged version of
Is an expanded version of

Is a parody of
Is a reply to
Was inspired by

Is a study of
Is a reference guide/companion to
Is a supplement to
Is a commentary on the text of
Is a concordance to

Is a student's study guide to
Is a teacher's guide to

*Examples and preliminary definitions of these are on the HelpThing page.

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Feel free to add additional examples on the HelpThing page. If you don't think the definitions as set out there work, please propose an alternative
here for discussion.

If you think there's a relationship that's not covered by any of the current relationships, post in this thread with an example. We'll discuss it.

>1 aspirit: Thank you.

I was struggling to find the delete button for a wrong relationship. For anyone else attempting to edit work-to-work relationships while sleep deprived: the option is within the Relationships tab, then look within the Existing Relationships sub-tab.

Question: Do work-to-work relationships influence automatic recommendations?

>4 aspirit: Don't believe so. This has been requested before, e.g. http://www.librarything.com/topic/236868

>5 konallis: I knew it had to have been discussed but wasn't finding where. Thank you.

There was an additional discussion even earlier than that:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/110741

I'm sure the developers see work-to-work data as having a lot of unrealized potential in the system, and I'm curious how they'd most like to apply it in LT2.0

>7 gilroy: I've recently read the thread from 2011, but the broken discussion on recommendations was difficult to follow. That wasn't the main point of the topic. I couldn't discern what was implemented. I like the thread in Site Improvements better, as it's not only simpler but shows the question remained unanswered five years later.

We're now ten years out. This seemed like a good time to check.

Now that we're talking about this again. I would love to see a "dead language version" relationship.

I understand the reasoning of why not to combine them with modern language versions. But the ability to create a relationship would be awesome. And it would lessen the chances of them getting combined by well meaning people who are unaware of the rule.

>10 Nicole_VanK: Agree.

>10 Nicole_VanK: Very good idea.

>10 Nicole_VanK:

Fourthed

>10 Nicole_VanK:

Fifthed

Question: Have we discussed, either on this thread, a prior thread, or another thread altogether, the value of adding a “collection” check-mark to works contained in other works that we already have? Case in point: I’ve recently acquired a copy of Richard Wright’s Eight Men, which I’m very pleased to have, primarily (for now) for its earlier publication of “The Man Who Lived Underground,” a cut-down version of the novel recently published in more nearly its original form. Come to find out, the specific story I was looking for is already contained in Ray J. Sherer’s anthology, Twelve Short Novels, which we also have (I KNEW we had it somewhere!) but couldn’t recall the particular relationship. Clearly I need to research more carefully before popping off $6 for something that’s already in our library; and this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Having a quick indicator that a work I’m looking for is contained in another collection would be quite an improvement. Thanks for listening; rant over …

>15 jasbro: If there is a direct or an indirect relationship, the relationships section shows the relationship. However, that relies on somebody actually adding the relationship in the first place, and the work being there to add.

What I would like to see is a checkmark in the series section where you have an omnibus instead of the individual volumes - again, this would depend on the relationship being recorded.

Publishers describe books as being "companions." That is, in the case of science fiction or fantasy, they take place in the same world, but might not share any characters or have a sequel/prequel relationship.

I have the first volume of Sarvepalli Gopal's biography of Nehru (Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Volume 1 (1889-1947)). Given this, what kind of a work-relationship do I create to indicate that it is part of a three-volume biography, but that I only have volume 1?

> 18
The work as it is right now is a mix of different volumes. Let's clean this up first.

ETA: done. Now you can use the "Contains" relationship between the 3-volume set work and yours, in the appropriate direction. Are you comfortable with this part, or is this where your question started?

>19 Felagund:
Thanks, I think I got it.

To summarize my understanding:

1. Each individual volume is a separate work by itself.
2. The collected volumes is also a separate work (with only the ISBN for the full set, if sold together, associated with it).
3. The individual volumes and the collected volumes can be linked using work-to-work relationships.
4. When I am cataloguing a single volume, I add that specific volume as the "Work", and in the "Number of volumes" in "Physical description" for the book, I write "1", since the work I have added is not the collected volumes, but a single volume.

Is my understanding correct?

>20 Pranesh:
This is an excellent summary of the situation, yes. Congratulations!
I have added the relevant relationships for volumes 2 and 3 as well.

>20 Pranesh: The collected volumes is also a separate work (with only the ISBN for the full set, if sold together, associated with it).

That's how it should be, but there may well be people who catalog the three-volume collection as a single work, but with the ISBN of one of the volumes. If there's a discrepancy between an ISBN and the title, I'll give preference to the title.