Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I've been working on Peter O'Donnell's books, making the titles conform to the "series/graphic novel" style we worked out a week or so ago.

Now, however, a little confusion has arisen in the graphic novels section.

Some background: There are about 100 stories to be collected in the GN format. Back in the 1980s Titan Publishing began to collect them in large softcover; this lasted six issues, with 2-3 stories per issue.

Then Ken Pierce began to publish softcovers collecting other stories, starting from where Titan left off; this lasted eight issues, with 2-3 stories per issue.

Then Titan started up again from the beginning, with 2-3 stories per issue, and this has lasted about 14 issues and is ongoing.

So you can see there's going to be some overlap in titles and which stories are in whose publication when. For collectors, it's important to know what stories are in each issue. The current Titan series only puts one story name on the cover, but Ken Pierce's series put all the story names on the cover.

1. If we put all the story names in the title field, it gets long and unwieldy.

2. If we only put the first story name in the title, we'll have dupe titles with not necessarily the same other stories in the publication.

3. The other story names could be put first in the Description field. That way it would be visible whenever somebody calls up the book.

Opinions? Thoughts? Ideas? Tsk-tsks?

Lindig, could you link to some examples of the Titan and Ken Pierce publications?

Generally we try to mirror the cover title in the title field. If there are books with the same name but collecting different stories, a librarian's note is a very good idea to keep them from getting combined by accident.

Okay. How do I do that?

Yes, the problem is that some have the same first story but different 2nd or 3rd stories.

When you're editing an edition of a book, you'll see a link that says "add a librarian note" immediately above the Title field. Click the link to open up a field where you can add your note. This note will appear on the author's combine page.

So for example, you could say, "Contains different stories than . Do not combine these two editions."

Thanks, Ben. I'll be doing that as soon as I figure out which has what. I have all this info on my computer; just have to go back and forth a lot.

What I really need to know is how to put links into a reply to Cait's message so she can take a look at what I'm talking about.

Lindig wrote: "What I really need to know is how to put links into a reply to Cait's message..."

Ah! Well just above the comment field, there's a link that says "add book/author". That brings up a tool that you can use to search for books and link to a specific edition.

If you have trouble finding the specific edition though (the tool can be cumbersome at times), you can just paste the URL to the edition's page into the comment field and it'll be turned into a link, like so:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42...

The easiest way to get a specific edition through the "add book/author" tool is by entering the isbn instead of the book's title.

JG wrote: "The easiest way to get a specific edition through the "add book/author" tool is by entering the isbn instead of the book's title."

Wow, it has honestly never occurred to me to do that before. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious. Thanks for the tip.

I don't think it's very obvious, but I'm glad I was able to help out!

What I'm doing is setting up my personal O'Donnell lists to be useful for sorting out all these different graphic novels. It may be a while. I'll be back.

Actually, I try not to use the "add book/author" tool from the librarian's group because it puts a link back from the book page to the group thread as "discuss this book". Most people aren't going to be interested in a cataloging discussion once it's been resolved!

Lindig wrote: "What I'm doing is setting up my personal O'Donnell lists to be useful for sorting out all these different graphic novels. It may be a while. I'll be back."

That would be great!

Cait wrote: "Actually, I try not to use the "add book/author" tool from the librarian's group because it puts a link back from the book page to the group thread as "discuss this book". Most people aren't going to be interested in a cataloging discussion once it's been resolved!"

Agreed. Plus, I rarely use the gizmo anyway.

Okay, here's what I've found out. First, the Ken Pierce books (8 vols.) were first (1981-86), then Titan (8 vols.)(1985-90), and then Titan again 2004--ongoing.

Only one Titan old and Titan new have the same story set, but the new Titan come with new interview material by O'Donnell and new other material. Therefore, I don't think we should really consider them the same edition.

Lots of the stories cross into all three but the same story set only appears once. Therefore, it seems like all these should be considered separate editions.

BUT the stories must be named, either in the title or in the first line of the description.

Titan uses only one story-name on the cover, even though it may be out of sequence. E.g., the books contains stories 1, 2, and 3, but the title is from story 2.

Ken Pierce's books have all three on the cover but is measurably larger than the others so the edition usually gets called by that name.

To keep the titles from getting unwieldy, I think only one story name should be listed (cause don't forget we have to add the parens info). We can say in the first bit of the description that the volume collects these stories and give their story number (there are 94 total but lots have not yet been published).

Opinions?

Oh yes, I have to edit the bio info as I got the publishing dates wrong for Ken Pierce and Titan (old).

Oh yeah, some of the Ken Pierce books have all the story names in equal size type, but they're usually known by one of the stories. His publications are called "American Edition Series" though some of them say "First American Edition Series."

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, right?

I found a lovely site on the web of all the covers of everything by PO'D, and all the new Titans show which stories are in each issue.

I'm ready to start making everything consistent, so we need to make some decisions. Let me know.

Hmm. I went to take a look, and for the Ken Pierce books, I would put the title as all three stories named on the cover and I would give the series order as well.

So, for example, this one would be:
The Return of the Mammoth / Plato's Republic / The Sword of the Bruce (Modesty Blaise First American Edition Graphic Novel, #8)

Not exactly pithy, although we can hope that in a year or two we'll have that series handling we've been talking about and it'll be shorter by half!

The other set of graphic novels don't seem to have a separate series name; you seem to be our local expect, so do you think calling them "Modesty Blaise Titan Graphic Novel" will make sense to readers?

Lots of the stories cross into all three but the same story set only appears once. Therefore, it seems like all these should be considered separate editions.

Yes: anything collecting smaller stories gets combined only with other collections of the exact same stories.

Only one Titan old and Titan new have the same story set, but the new Titan come with new interview material by O'Donnell and new other material. Therefore, I don't think we should really consider them the same edition.

This one's more of a judgment call, but generally new editions are only separated from older ones if they are "substantially" different, for whatever value of "substantially" seems to best apply -- if there's a short story combined with a novel, for example, or if a history book adds a decade's worth of material. For a fiction collection, I wouldn't think that author extras like interviews or introductions would add substantially to the fiction, but you could make the case for it.

Also, I assume the additional authors listed on the covers are the graphic novel illustrators? They should be named in an author slot with Illustrator in the author role; that will also help distinguish the books.

In this particular case, since there is only one 'Titan old' that corresponds to a 'Titan new', I would leave them separate. Otherwise, people might try to combine others that don't go together.

BTW, I know nothing about this series, so keep that in mind as you weigh my comment...

;)

Cait wrote: "Also, I assume the additional authors listed on the covers are the graphic novel illustrators? They should be named in an author slot with Illustrator in the author role; that will also help distinguish the books."

Yes, they're the illustrators who worked on the strips, and frequently there will be more than one for each volume, as story 1 might have been drawn by person 1, story 2 by person 2, and story 3 by person 3. Not so common to have 3 diff. drawers but having two is fairly common.

Cait also said: "For a fiction collection, I wouldn't think that author extras like interviews or introductions would add substantially to the fiction, but you could make the case for it."

I would like to make the case for it. All MB sites are distinguishing between the two efforts; there were only 8 issues in the first set; they are of a different size; the new set is now up to #15; is a larger size and adds considerable new other material. A collector might want to have both sets (I do) and they need to be able to tell them apart. Just going by the pub dates won't help much. It's true there was a 14-yr gap but that can happen.

Titan basically started over with the same cover art and stories for the first eight repeats (in the larger size). We all held our breath until they kept going, and then we all rejoiced.

Cait wrote: "do you think calling them "Modesty Blaise Titan Graphic Novel" will make sense to readers?.."

I don't think I'd like to set the precedent of putting the publisher in the title. After all, both the publisher and date show up in the book info.

If we're going to number the Ken Pierce ones, we should number all the others, too. How about:

KP1 KP2 KP3 ...
TO1 TO2 TO3...[old:]
TN1 TN2 TN3...[new:]

Lindig wrote: "A collector might want to have both sets (I do) and they need to be able to tell them apart."

That's reason enough to have two entries in the database, but not (IMO) to keep from combining them into two editions of a single "work". I could have three different editions of Alice in Wonderland, each with a different illustrator. But we list them (and their 500 siblings ;) ) as a single combined work. I could still post individual reviews on each.

But but . . . only one issue of Titan Old and Titan New has the same story set (issue #1 for each). All the others have different combinations of stories. I could (barely) see combining those two, but all the rest would be separate. The thing about Alice is that it's the same story in each edition, no matter the illustrator; in the MB books, it's different stories in different combinations.

Maybe I'll give up. There's lots of info on MB on the web and readers could always look it up like I did.

Okay, not really. Just spell out what you want me to do (and not do).

No, Lindig, we're not talking about combining any except the ones with the same stories in them.

The things to do, I think, are (a) to clarify the series titles so that they don't look like they're the same when they're not, (b) to put on titles which match what's on the cover of the book, and (c) list the illustrators.

Right. So issue #1 of both Titan Old and Titan New should be combined.

I can match the cover titles.

I can add all the artist names to each issue.

How would you like me to clarify the series titles? I can't just put Titan #whatever because #2-8 would overlap between Titan Old and Titan New (and each would have different stories).

I'm feeling like a terrible nag, you know, and maybe even dense.

Also thought I should mention that the artist goes with the story, not with the published collection, unlike illustrators for a single story in book form (e.g. Alice in Wonderland).

How would you like me to clarify the series titles?

Hmm. Maybe "Titans" and "Titans Reissue"? Whatever you pick, you should mention that they're different series in the librarian's note.

Also thought I should mention that the artist goes with the story, not with the published collection

List all of the artists of all of the stories in the collection, then, and if you have the individual stories' information that'd be great to add to the description. (For example, in this collection Wes Craig only did the pencils for one of the stories, although I haven't gotten around to updating the book description with this information.)

Cait wrote: "Hmm. Maybe "Titans" and "Titans Reissue"? Whatever you pick, you should mention that they're different series in the librarian's note.

Also t..."

All MB sites I've found are using Titan Old (for the older series) and just Titan (for the current series). That would work.

Oh, except for #1, where Old is being combined under New, though the info can be put in the description.

I'm going to have to have my list up on the screen at the same time as I'm working on this stuff, or I'll get totally lost.