Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hello,

In this french edition, Les Misérables is split in two parts: Les Misérables : Tome I and Les Misérables : Tome II.
The two books share the same page numbering. Thus, the second book first page is numbered 986.

The Page Numbering section of the Librarian Manual says:

Page numbers should match the page numbers as listed in the book. If a book begins on page 6, for example, do not subtract from the final page count to determine the “actual” number of pages - simply list the number on the last page with countable content.

I understand this policy when the first pages are illustrations or other few not-numbered pages. But in this case, it is an entire book (986 pages!) that is missing. And it also means that the first book 986 pages are counted twice in reading stats (well, yeah, I like those statistics...).

Could you give me your opinion on that? "Page numbering" is not very search-able around here (too many results) so I could not find a response. I will add a link to this topic in the librarian note of the book in order to prevent future page numbering recurrent swapping.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Book volumes with consecutive page numbering are generally only published as a set, and not individually. According to GR policy, if that is the case there should only be one record for both volumes, not two records, as there are now.

I do see that they both have individual ISBNs. Do they also have a shared ISBN?

If so, I think both records should be merged into one and the shared ISBN noted in the ISBN field. The ISBNs for vol. 1 and 2 could be noted in the description.

I'm not sure if this is correct though, so hopefully other librarians/rivka will comment as well.

lethe wrote: "Book volumes with consecutive page numbering are generally only published as a set, and not individually."

Not always. I have seen some that are also published as individual volumes. Not common, but they do exist.

In such cases, we still follow the Manual. While it is a bit odd to actually be on page 2 and have the stats think you are 50% done with the book, we think that is preferable to having to do a calculation every time you want to enter a status update with your current page.

So you mean both volumes keep their own record, but vol. 1 has a page count of 985 and vol. 2 has a page count of 1970 (or whatever the last page is)? (Just making sure I understand correctly.)

Yes, if they were published separately.

Right, thank you :)

All right!
Thank you both for your time and your answers.
Indeed, these two books are sold separately and I could not find (on-line) any set with a shared ISBN.
So we will keep distinct entries as it is. However, I canceled my previous modification and we'll follow the Manual as Rivka mentioned it.

Thank you.