Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Should the different editions of a book have a different title from the main edition to differentiate them? The book that prompted this question for me was Escape Velocity, which I was cleaning up. The edition with ISBN 1408815923 is the British paperback, so I added that in parentheses to the title. However, putting that after the series info breaks the detection mechanism that removes the "(H.I.V.E., #3)" from the book page so I moved it in front.

So, my questions are now:
- should all these editions simply be titled "Escape Velocity" and nothing else or is it okay to add edition information to the title?
- why should we add series information to the title when we already link them elsewhere?

You can put "U.K. Edition" or simlar note in the edition field; does not belong in title.

Series info still doesn't show everywhere if it's not in the title and can't be searched if it's not in the title field.

I agree with Deborah's response. Policy is that you don't have to add the series in title field enclosed in parentheses; but, you can. And, if you don't, there is no way to see book is in a series when searching or looking in lists of books (like a member's "my books" shelves) without clicking to go book's main data page.

Debbie wrote: "You can put "U.K. Edition" or simlar note in the edition field; does not belong in title."

Indeed. That definitely doesn't belong in the title field.

In this case, the information belonged in the edition field and recommend leaving series information in the title.

In some cases, - for example, language transliterations like in "福家堂本舗 10 [Fukuyadou Honpo] " - additional title information gets enclosed in square brackets and won't interfere with series display (as you discovered, parentheses can spoil series display).

Thanks for clarifying that and cleaning up the editions.

I don't really see why it needs to be clarified that it is the UK Edition anyways. Its likely that only people who own the book are in the UK and therefore know it is the UK edition.

The edition field is supposed to be used for the edition number or special/limited edition info.

The edition field is often used to specify UK/US/Aus/Can etc. edition, and that is perfectly fine.

Cool. I forget what it was that shouldn't be added to that field, but it makes sense that IF you are gonna put that info on a book it would be there.

Book covers and titles (or title formatting) can vary quite a bit between the different "English" language editions. Other translations, just select the language and do not have to note in edition field (allowed but not required).

"Already own the book" not the only reason goodreaders searching and shelving.

(Not necessarily a big database priority for librarians; but, the purchase links will work best when a shopping member is selecting the for-sale-in-their-country edition and all the isbn/asin/bnid numbers correct.)

I just came across a book that fits this topic, it has details about the edition in the title - specifically in the series (light gray coloured writing which you can't change for individual books). After reading the above posts I believed that I would be right going back and removing the information about the book's edition from the title, but I found I couldn't because it's across the whole series and I'm not sure how to do that yet. Also after further investigation I became unsure as to whether it would be correct to change it or not. The book is listed as being part of the North American/UK series which has 8 books (one of the original books was split into 2 books for Northern hemisphere publishing), while the Australia series has 7 books (the way the author originally wanted it published). Can someone tell me whether the edition information should be removed from the title and, if so, how to do it? Thanks for your help.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...

Oh, please don't mess with those, Sarah! The North American designation is part of the series name, not part of the title, and it's part of the series because there need to be two series listings:
http://www.goodreads.com/series/49286...
http://www.goodreads.com/series/45610...

Most of the editions should also have North American/UK/Australian edition in the edition field.

Don't worry Cait, I haven't changed anything. As I said above, once I realised that I didn't know how to change the information imbedded in the title information for the whole series and the reason for it being done that way I came here to ask for help. Thanks for your help.

Sorry, I've just spent an awful lot of time trying to sort out how the various publishers were breaking up the books (because they keep reusing titles and covers for editions with different content! argh!) and I have to periodically check up on it and add more librarian notes.... So I get nervous! :)

Anyway, to answer your question about the light gray part of the title which you can't change directly -- that's the series name. It displays next to the book title but it isn't part of the title field (it may hide parts of the title field, though). If you ever do need to change it, you can do so by going to the series page and editing it there. There are some different rules for series names as opposed to titles, though, so please do so carefully!

Ah, I don't know much about series yet, so if I do have another question/problem with them in the future, I'll come back to the group and check on what, if anything, needs to be done.