Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I've just got the digital edition of the Ultimate Spider-Man collection Vol 1. I went to add it to my list of books, and found two existing versions of this series, one for paperbacks and one for the hardcovers

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...

As these are the same book in different formats, they really should be combined. However, someone with a far deeper knowledge of comics has created distinct series for the hardcover versions and the paperback versions.

I'm unsure what impact combining the books will have on the two series, and ultimately, I'm not sure of the appropriate action. If I leave them as is, then I'm going to have to create another independent book and series to cover the digital versions. If I combine them, will I undo the time and effort someone has put in to creating the series?

Actually the hardback there seems to contain V1 & V2 + bonus material, which is typically the case with hardback volumes, while the paperback appears to be just regular ol' V1.

ETA- It does appear these need some work. There are some of the combined editions, and some of Volume 1, all combined because someone has simply combined anything hardback together and paperback together. I think these series need to be altered and the correct editions separated & combined accordingly.

I'd like someone higher up to weigh in on this before I mess with it, just to be doubly sure. But since editions are not kept apart due to format but due to being different books, it doesn't seem like these 2 series are allowed, especially when they're causing wrong things to be combined and right ones not to be.

Yes, these are two different series because they are numbered differently, not because they're different formats; the format is just given to indicate the difference between them. The individual books probably need to be plastered with librarian notes to keep them from being wrongly combined, especially in cases where the title, series number, cover art, and authors are identical. (Why?! Why do comics publishers do this?! Argh!)

But in things like Sandman, they're all collected on the same series page, with the "regular" volumes first and then the "Absolute" volumes (with 2-3 "regular" ones each) come after, saying "book 1-3" etc. Shouldn't this be the same? One series, Ultimate Spider-Man, with the volumes containing 1 each combined hard & paper properly, in order, and then coming after, the volumes with multiples?

Okay after taking a look at the combine page (due to one nearly 1k page volume being combined with the other ~300pg "hardcover series" ones), I think there is waaaay too much going on there. But I think there's probably still more not-right stuff going on (aside of the fact that these two are separate series when various others I've read have all regular + omnibus versions on the same one, since they're the same series) if anyone wants to try taking a better look? Wikipedia has this list of issues, which is possibly a help? I dunno, it's over my head, I'm running with my tail between my legs! lol

Okay, I dug into it more, and it looks like each of the hardcovers is explicitly two of the paperbacks, which means their series can be combined. The thing is that the hardcovers are numbered separately and it wasn't immediately clear that the hardcover numbers and the paperback numbers were related in any way: take a look at Gotham Central, for example, where the same issues are collected in either four or five volumes, or Bone, where the same issues are collected in 9, 20, 17, 12, 11, or 6 volumes!

But since the numbering on the Ultimate Spider-Man hardcovers is tied to the paperbacks, they can be numbered as "hardcover 1; books 1-2", "hardcover 2; books 3-4", etc., within the same series where the paperbacks are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

I think I can tackle it.

Good luck! lol.

I've been looking at the marvel ultimates series.

I've got a big collection of comics and I can see that there is a lot missing from the series as I found it. Some of the stuff in my collection never made it onto goodreads at all - single issues not worth a bound collection, and a lot of what is on goodreads is oddly grouped - from my perspective.

I've started tidying the list a bit and creating new series where (I think) it is appropriate.

There is an overarching "Marvel Ultimate" series that is an umbrella over a number of sub-series ("ultimate comics : spider-man", "ultimate comics : avengers", etc)


What constitutes a series?

Example the First:
"Ultimate : Fallout" which was a miniseries bridging the gap between "Ultimate Spider-man" and "Ultimate Comics: Spider-man"

Fallout itself was a 3 issue mini and had a collected hardcover. Does it deserve its own series? Should it be a part of the "Ultimate Spider-Man" Series, the "Ultimate Comics: Spider-man" series, both or neither?

Example the Second:
What about "Ultimate Comics : Avengers" which was actually released as three mini-series.
"Ultimate Comics : Avengers - v1"
"Ultimate Comics : Avengers - v2"
"Ultimate Comics : Avengers - v3"

now each of the "volumes" is a reference to a specific comic mini-series in itself, with a specific arc and narrative.

Which means you have :

"Ultimate Comics : Avengers - v1"
issue 1
issue 2
...

"Ultimate Comics : Avengers - v2"
issue 1
issue 2
...

"Ultimate Comics : Avengers - v3"
issue 1
issue 2
...


So for "Ultimate Comics : Avengers - v1 - issue 1"
- It is part of the "Marvel Ultimates" Series.
- Is it part of the "Ultimate Comics : Avengers" Series?
- Should there be a series for each volume so that we don't run into "Ultimate Comics : Avengers - issue 1" being a duplicate if we don't specify a volume to which it belongs?

We don't catalog individual comics issues here (they slip in sometimes, but it's not what the system was built for) so there's no need to build a series for a mini which is collected in one book: there would be only one book in that series! In general, we only build series for multi-book runs.

If a series has multiple books (not issues) in it and those books run through a set of numbers and then begin renumbering from 1 again, we do mark the volume on the series. For example, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume I and Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume II are already doing this.

The issues of Ultimate Comics: Fallout were collected in a book under the Spider-Man name (Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Fallout) and are already included in the Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume I series. (It's actually the last in that series before Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume II -- this is the book you mean, right?)

thanks for clearing that up!

I think what I was seeing were a lot of uncatalogued single issues.

a couple examples :
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...

if single issues aren't important and the series is only to collect bound volumes of a series then I guess these are just fine and can be safely ignored.

As for Fallout, I was more wondering if there was a way that we were supposed to capture the fact that it was actually related to both Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume I and Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume II. Perhaps I should just add character tags to the various series and assume people will search for "miles morales" if they want Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume II and he'll come up on Fallout also.

(I considered death of spider-man to be the last event in Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume I and Fallout as a separate event/series, but having it only as part of the first series makes sense as well.)