Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

An anthology or collection is a well defined set of stories from several (anthology) or one (collection) author(s). Of course, various editions of these works are possible.

I have observed a trend that, as of lately, such a work (anthology or collection) will also be used as a "container" to collect individual stories.

So, anthology "XXX" (the work), consisting of stories "a", "b", and "c", will not only comprise of editions with this SAME content (i.e. "a", "b", and"c"), but will suddenly also contain an "edition" of "a" (standalone), and/or "b", and so on...

Has there been a change of rules? Is this [now] accepted policy?

I am just asking. Thank you for clarification!

Michael wrote: "Has there been a change of rules? Is this [now] accepted policy?"

Not as far as I know, no. They should be separated.

Since lately there was a long queue for deletions by superlibrarian, an explanation could be that the stories you saw were created against the rules and so they were combined with and queued to be merged into the anthology in which they are featured. Maybe?

Moloch wrote: " an explanation could be that the stories you saw were created against the rules and so they were combined with and queued to be merged into the anthology in which they are featured. Maybe?"

This does not sound like "queueing for a merger" - I found that as a librarians note:

Use this record to merge non-separately published short stories. This includes records where the story was originally published within a magazine

This leads to all kinds of problems, IMHO.

Michael wrote: "This does not sound like "queueing for a merger" - I found that as a librarians note"

To put it a different way, that note means that "this book will be used as a merge target for any short stories from this anthology that are not separately published." So stories a, b, and c that are combined with it are either waiting to be merged, or need to be identified in the merge thread.

Emily wrote: "Michael wrote: "This does not sound like "queueing for a merger" - I found that as a librarians note"

To put it a different way, that note means that "this book will be used as a merge target for ..."

Thank you for the clarification - for me, the intention to merge those stories subsequently was not clear at all. My bad.

On a side note, as a consequence of the various combine operations, the (correct) orig pub date of the anthologies/collections was changed repeatedly...

When I find these short stories, with an entry, but no publication information, I combine them with the original collection/anthology, and always put a librarian note on the story why they are so combined and that it is to be deleted. I make a librarian note on the correct entry to recombine it. I usually find that whoever deletes the story recombines, but if they don't, I can find the note easily, recombine and delete the note.

Does all that make sense? Is there a better way?

Michael wrote: "On a side note, as a consequence of the various combine operations, the (correct) orig pub date of the anthologies/collections was changed repeatedly..."

I will be sure to check for that in future merges. That is not something most people would realize, thanks for pointing it out.

Suzi wrote: "When I find these short stories, with an entry, but no publication information, I combine them with the original collection/anthology, and always put a librarian note on the story why they are so c..."

That is correct procedure for when you are reporting a story to be merged, yes.