Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I've noticed that some books don't seem to have a publication date identified as such. A particular example is The 13th Element by John Emsley. There is no date on the title page, no date near the publishers name, no date on the page with small print that contains the ISBN and statements warning against reproduction. On the latter page there is a copyright date and a note saying the book was first published in Great Britain with the title The Shocking History of Phosphorus in 2000. The book was originally added to Goodreads by amazon.com with a publication date of 2000, but one couldn't prove that by referring to the book itself. The fact that it was first published in 2000 in Great Britain under a different title suggests (doesn't prove) that the edition published in the United States under a different title may well have published in a year following 2000. Any suggestions on how to handle this would be appreciated.

Check with the LoC and WorldCat.

In this case, they agree that the earlier edition under the American title was published in 2000. (A later (paperback) edition was published in 2002 under the same title. And then there's the German edition, published in 2001. )

Looking up the British edition on Amazon UK, it says it was released Feb 2000 while the U.S. edition is listed on both Amazon US & UK as being published in August of 2000.

There's no guarantee how correct that info, but there's a good chance those dates are right.

. . . and I just realized that this topic was posted 2 months ago. Oops!

Oh, well. It inspired me to combine the author's various editions. ;)