Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hi,
as you can see on her website, Kelley Armstrong writes lots of short stories and novellas.
Before doing any damage, I'd like to know what exactly are the rules about decimal numbering.

Some questions:

- if there are more than 9 short stories between main works, is it correct to assume a numbering of two decimal digits? And should those be with or without a leading zero?

- does decimal numbering follow a mathematical or textual order?
(In the first case, for axample, 1.05 < 1.15 < 1.2)

- if in a series there already are items numbered as X.5, should previous items be numbered X.4, X.3 etc. and subsequent works X.6, X.7 etc or are there other rules?

Thanks for bearing with me!


(If these topics have already been discussed elsewhere I beg pardon, I did search the discussions but didn't find the answers.)

Kelley Armstrong's short stories are currently being kept in a separate series list. Are you suggesting "fixing" that list or adding the shorts to the main series listing?

My personal opinion would be to keep the (Otherworld Short #1) notation and make all the shorts into primary works in the Otherworld Stories series.

mlady_rebecca wrote: "Kelley Armstrong's short stories are currently being kept in a separate series list. Are you suggesting "fixing" that list or adding the shorts to the main series listing?"

"Fixing" that would be sufficient, I think. For example, Demonology is numbered "Otherworld Shorts #3" and "book 0.45". That's a bit confusing.
A possible solution could be removing the numbering of the "shorts" and keeping just a numbering compatible with the list of main works. So, in the shorts' list there would be no interger numbers. For example:
Territorial (Otherworld #0.95)
Ghosts (Otherworld #1.1)
and be assumed that you can find #1 on the list of primary works.
(EDIT: I'm talking about the visualization of the list on the series page)

As for my questions about the order of the decimals, maybe it would be simpler asked like this: if the author comes up with a new work taht should be put between #0.9 and #0.95, what should I do?

Tullia wrote: ""Fixing" that would be sufficient, I think. For example, Demonology is numbered "Otherworld Shorts #3" and "book 0.45". That's a bit confusing.
A possible solution could be removing the numbering of the "shorts" and keeping just a numbering compatible with the list of main works. So, in the shorts' list there would be no interger numbers. For example:
Territorial (Otherworld #0.95)
Ghosts (Otherworld #1.1)
and be assumed that you can find #1 on the list of primary works."

I agree with this. "Otherworld short #X" doesn't really mean anything. I think most people are going to want to know where it falls in the overall series.

Though in all honesty, I don't why these would have their own list. If I had come across it on my own, I probably would have added them to the main listing for Otherworld. However, that being said, I don't see any real harm in keeping them separate either. I just think it would be tidier to have them all in one spot. Not a big deal either way really.

Tullia wrote: "As for my questions about the order of the decimals, maybe it would be simpler asked like this: if the author comes up with a new work taht should be put between #0.9 and #0.95, what should I do?"

In this case, I would make the new story #0.92. Then I would change #0.95 to #0.93. however, others may disagree on changing the numbering. There is an argument, that it may needed to get changed agin later if more stories are added. However, that may be true whether you change #0.95 to #0.93 or not...

vicki_girl wrote: "Not a big deal either way really"

Agreed. To have one or two lists is not an issue, as long as the reading order is clear and the lists are linked to each other.

vicki_girl wrote: "There is an argument, that it may needed to get changed agin later if more stories are added."

For starters, it would be useful to have the series info between parenthesis in this list. But I'm not going to touch anything until the matter of the decimals is clear. I don't want to risk damaging anything.