implementation related to series synatx changed

Hi! This happened about an hour ago.

Please see:
Series: Teach Yourself Languages
Series: Jewish lives

Series CK for some hundered of records are "broken".

But the main question relates to the syntax and to "flexibility" (what we want to acive, how we do this etc.).

For myself I used "(books ) (year)" because the series_number might not be available on the first edit. If the series_number is identified later the edit is simple. One will not be confuse where the book_number should be inserted and that the last number relates to the year of the first edition.

Best regards Reinhardt

more details at: http://www.librarything.com/topic/99305 Topic: series guidlines

This is not a bug, this is a recommended site improvement.

I'm not entirely sure what you're describing in the paragraph beginning "For myself", but with CK, anything in parentheses is always metadata, and sometimes in square brackets, too. So don't use parentheses or square brackets in the series name.

I'm not sure I can see anything going wrong with the Teach Yourself Languages series, but for the Jewish Lives, why are you trying to indicate "(book)"? If you're trying to include multiple bits of information in the metadata section, you can do something like (1972|Book, 1972) to force it to sort by year, but display both the "book" and the year. Alternately, you can use an arbitrary number there. Anything before the pipe character will be used for sorting, anything after the pipe character will be what is displayed.

To clarify, since gangleri messaged me:

The syntax for the CK Series field is:
Series name without parentheses (order in series)
or
Series name without parentheses (order in series|label)

You are proposing a new syntax. That's the very definition of a feature request, not a bug report.

I would not consider this a bug, because the software is behaving as designed. The problem is in the user behavior area.

The topic name is "implementation related to series synatx changed"

It changed in a way not providing much improuvements:

Please look at the order at Series: Teach Yourself Languages. I can not see any useful sortorder there.

I admit that I used a syntax which was "inherent" to the old implementation because the "(books )" did not harm. They where displayed at some 1,800 works / books. I always substituted "(year)" with a numerical value.

Not every series has a useful sort order other than alphabetical. Titles in academic series often only have in common that they were published in that series. Sorting them by year usually makes no sense either.

I offer "The Pelican History of Art" http://www.librarything.com/series/The+Pelican+History+of+Art as an example.

6> I don't know what to tell you. Is it not acting exactly as designed and intended? I mean, intended by Tim. If not, that's a bug. If so and you want it to act different, that's a feature.

Yeah, there are some edge cases where the "intended" behavior is weird and nothing that a normal user expects. In my opinion, this is not one of them.

ETA: As far as I can tell, you simply used a side-effect that was coincidental to how the code worked before. Am I missing something?

If a 'series' has no sort order, and the only thing that the titles have in common is that they were published in that series, surely the question has to be asked, "Is this a publisher series?"

If so, it shouldn't be an LT series.

ps. Woof!

Arf.

Yes, in a way "The Pelican History of Art" is a publishers series. But every book in the series was commissioned by the publisher (originally Penguin Books, now Yale UP) who has exclusive right for these titles (at very least for the English language). Also they were written according to a preset "format" in order that, together, they should provide a comprehensive survey of world art. And, at least originally, there was one supervising editor for the entire project.

It's a very respectable academic series. But, like many of these, it was written by numerous authors and without a clear sort order.

But on any series if someone wants to put a sort order in. The Jewish Lives is sorted by the year, and where the year is the same by title. This is intended. However I don't understand what the (book) text is really doing in there.

the Teach Yourself Languages has the 'general's first because someone has put (0|general) none of the rest of the titles have a number in that i.e. (Italian) so all the rest of the titles are sorted alphabetically. If you wanted all the Italian books to sort together you can give them all an arbitrary number such as (4|Italian) and so forth. then all the Italian books would clump and be alpha in the subsort.

The discussion is quite hot.

One aspect: What importance has information to us?
Probably most of the users are interested in Series: Harry Potter
Please respect that "year" might be interesting for a minoryty of the users.

Another aspect: Stable behaviour and flexibility.
Myself I worked on some books of Series: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade is (books 161, 183, 548, 549 http://www.librarything.com/topic/99918 )

"Stable behaviour" It happened that the rendering changed from one day to another without notice.

re: Series: The Church's Teaching Series What would be the syntax to place http://www.librarything.com/work/829726 (Reader) at the end?

Main aspect: Help and examples: If Series: Teach Yourself Languages can be cleaned then maybe one kan take this task clean it and provide some usefull guidlines examples at the right place (where)?

Open questions handling of LATIN NUMBERS (item 09 at http://www.librarything.com/topic/99305 ) and probably many others.

>11 readafew: I admit the usage of "(book ) was a kind of exploit. It worked in the past but it is history now. There might have been reasons to use it but achiving a well documented syntax and a correct implementation has a higher priority.

Though not really on topic here, I think Jewish Lives may be a publisher's reprint series. A few of the titles I checked had previous publications outside of the series.

Also a note on language. It's probably too ingrained in LT culture to change, but I would prefer to use the phrase reprint series in place of publisher's series to denote series that do not meet LT standards. Hence my use of both words above.

12> Again, LT is not responsible for you relying on side-effects of a particular implementation if you are not using the system as defined. If you want it to actually behave this way, please do post to Recommended Site Improvements!

It appears someone took the time to do a little sorting in the Teach Yourself languages page, looks much nicer.

#16
Yes, I've had a look at putting a sort order (by language) on the Teach Yourself Languages series. I wasn't sure at first if it was going to work, so I'm only reporting in now.

I agree that it looks much better now!

>17 EveleenM: Thanks!

>12 gangleri::

Re : Latin numbers

I think they should be avoided / corrected - even if the publisher should use them. We can't expect the system to draw a numerical value from what is in fact a string of letters. We might as well expect it to understand what we mean if we wrote "Four" for 4.

Re: Bibliotheque de la Pleiade

That is one series I'm uncomfortable with. Though many are specific, since they are split up, single volume "complete works" and such tend to be available from other publishers as well.

Re: Tech Yourself

I think alphabetical order - on language - is really the most clear sorting here. Maybe with the exception of the general linguistics boo(s).

Re: Reader

I'm unfamiliar with that series, but I suspect it's some sort of companion and we should have to give it a format like (100|Reader).

Re: Year

Yes, I understand how that can be interesting for some users. But in CK series you would be forcing that sorting order on all users. I think sorting by year is great for series of yearly lectures, yearbooks and such. But not for Teach Yourself Languages for instance. Sure it's relevant info, but that's why there's also a field for "Original Publication Date".

(edited to correct html)

>19 Nicole_VanK:: Thanks for the answers and the time!

----

FYI: http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=100060 Topic: re: People/Characters: implementation changes, goals, bits of common LT SW code, exploits etc.

> 3 "If you're trying to include multiple bits of information in the metadata section, you can do something like (1972|Book, 1972) to force it to sort by year, but display both the "book" and the year. Alternately, you can use an arbitrary number there. Anything before the pipe character will be used for sorting, anything after the pipe character will be what is displayed."

I experienced another problem. Assuming it would make sense to display both BOOK-NUMBER and YEAR the syntax for Nebel im August would be
cbt (30475|30475, 2008)
see also CK for this work.
Series: cbt would show that is intended: "30475, 2008

However at http://www.librarything.com/work/details/60232151 I see "Series: cbt (30475, 2008). This is not the actual / the latest CK value.

I see, everything before the pipe is ignored / not displayed.

Yes. But since this isn't a bug, shall we take it to the "LibraryThing Series" group? http://www.librarything.com/groups/inallseriesness You'll have a much better chance for a general duiscussion, tips, etc. there.

Is this why I;m seeing series pages where, if there's isn;t an order number assigned to a work, the title of the series is assigned?

http://www.librarything.com/series/Knights+of+the+Dinner+Table+Illustrated

Please look at the overkill title.

> 24 looking at http://www.librarything.com/work/2414806/commonknowledge and CK history I would say it is a bug; i mean it is not expected behaviour for simple users.

I admit I heve never seen this at series. I have seen this at characters and places and have written a lot at http://www.librarything.com/topic/100060 .

24> No, I think that's just a sort thing. LT appears to ignore the #. So it's sorting according to the sort order:

5.1
#10
#13
etc.

The # is redundant and, IMO, should be left out anyway.

ETA: And FYI, if you put one thing in the parens, that's the sort order. There's only a "label" if you put TWO things in parens separated by pipes.

Agreed with points in 19 -

"Year"/publication date doesn't belong in the series field, and definitely not when there's already numerical metadata. There's a specific format for series, and year isn't part of it. I can grant some exceptions where the year is intrinsic to the numbering, as in a series of annual lectures. But otherwise, this isn't the place for that information.

Also agreed on the Pléiade series, which is a publisher's series. A number of the books on that page are not specific to that series, and shouldn't be there. Technically speaking, the series shouldn't be listed here at all, but if it is, it has to be omitted for any and all books that also exist outside that series.

27> There's a specific format for series, and year isn't part of it.

There is? Where? The closest I've come is the bit in the wiki for CK series:

Tip: If the series has an order, add a number or other descriptor in parenthesis after the series title (eg., "Chronicles of Prydain (book 1)"). By default, it sorts by the number, or alphabetically if there is no number. If you want to force a particular order, use the | character to divide the number and the descriptor. So, "(0|prequel)" sorts by 0 under the label "prequel."

This is FAR from a "specific format." Especially the "a number or other descriptor." The example is even "book 1" instead of "1".

Also, isn't the wiki descriptive rather than prescriptive?

I bring this up because I have used years once, for a "universe" series. This was for all books written in a specific scifi setting that didn't really have an overall order. I decided to stick with year published, since the author has a habit of including spoilers for previous books in later books, even if the later books are set BEFORE the previous ones. In other words, Things the author might have kept hidden from you reading the 2003 book might be spelled out casually in the 2008 book. Additionally, some of the books were published in the same year.

So I felt like putting in a number that was actually going to be a proxy for the year was a bit redundant. Also, when people would come along later, they might not know how I arrived at the number I picked. Year made it much more obvious. It also made it easier to insert new ones if I left out any books.

If you made the series Xyz Publication Order then it would be obvious how you arrived at the order. Look at the series Chronicles of Narnia: Publication Order; it numbers the works instead of putting in years.

Now for books set in the Star Wars universe I believe the chronological series use Star Wars years since there are so many and it gets rather complicated.

28 When you click on the field, these are the examples:
Lord of the Rings (book 2); The Chronicles of Prydain (0|prequel)

It's clear that these are book numbers. No publication dates.

30> Those are EXAMPLES. Not a canonical listing.

*boggles*

29> In this case, the date isn't actually GIVEN in these books. I found some material later where the author places them in chronological order, but reading the books you'd never know that.

Yes, those are examples, and yes, there is a pretty standard format for entries in various fields which has been worked out both via those examples and via several years of practice by numerous people on the site. Not sure why that's so mind boggling.

I can see some cases for using years, for some specific series, but generally, years don't need to be there IMO. Especially if there's already a clear numerical order, adding publication year on top of book number just makes things confusing. For publisher's series or some specific cases -- and brightcopy, maybe your example is one of those; I don't know this series -- it might make some sense to list years, but otherwise, for most series, this doesn't seem appropriate or standard practice here to me. With publishers' series, it's questionable whether they should be listed anyway in most cases, and where they are legitimate, I don't really see any need to add an order (via years, when the books aren't already numbered). Ultimately, I don't care that much about years being listed where there isn't some other ordering or data already there. But where there's already a format for a series, and it already has numbers, I don't like the idea of going through and adding year on top of that; it just gets messy.
(edited for clarification)

32> It's mind boggling because you give two examples, then seem to draw the conclusion from those examples that only book numbers are allowed an no dates are.

That's just not how examples work.

Now, you go on to say there is "a pretty standard format." But no, I don't think it's nearly as plain as you state. Yeah, people talk about how they do things, and some people participate in these groups more than others. And when they come to a conclusion, they typically write it up in the wiki. Especially if the typical practices are somehow backed up by LT staff, especially Tim, endorsing that particular way of doing things.

You just seem to be trying to say "well, it's that way because we all know it's supposed to be that way." That's just not good enough for me, I'm afraid. I need something a bit more concrete than that. It's like if there wasn't anything in the wiki about Publisher's Series, and Tim hadn't posted about them not being used, and you popped up and said "the standard is not to allow Publisher Series." You can see why I'd be a bit skeptical of that, no?

33> Looks like you cross posted while I was posting 34.

In this case (and in many cases of inter-related books), there IS a reason to care about the order. Like I said, the tales build on each other and things are casually revealed in later stories that are big mysteries in earlier ones. This actually happened to me with this very series. I read a short story that completely spoiled a major plot point in a book that had been published earlier. But in the short story, it wasn't an exciting revelation, it was just "well, everybody knows this, duh."

And just in case there's some confusion, I'm not listing both a year AND a sort order. I'm only listing the year.

It's just that this is the only "natural" sort order this Series has. Anything else is artificial and subject to interpretation. I'd have no idea where that short story I talked about would even FIT in a regularly numbered series, other than by sticking it in based on year published.

Actually, I think very few people update the wiki. Most of us just look at how things have been done before, look at the examples, talk about it in the groups if necessary, and work out a standard format. It works itself out organically, in the absence of rules. I've seen very few series - and I've been in CK a lot - with years as part of the data. Those examples are the only LT-staff-provided statement of the format for CK entries, which gives them more weight in my view than mere possibilities.

I should have been clearer in saying that, in my view, year does not belong in the series field. I doubt I'm the only one who would think that. And as I said, I can see some exceptions. But generally, it's clear to me from past practice that it is not standard to put that there.

PS - I'm not responding to your specific case, because I don't know what it is. I am responding to the general thread, and the "(books ) (year)" format mentioned at the beginning.
Edited again for typo

36> Well, I think it's just sometimes everyone has their own belief in what the "unwritten rules" are. A great example of this is on my ghost copies thread where you and Collectorator, both fairly experienced and longer term users, arrived at two totally different claims of the "standard" way of handling some of these editions.

Personally, I actually have a problem with one of the main examples. For example:

"Chronicles of Prydain (book 1)"

Why is "book" in there? English (.com) series show up on all the other-language sites if they have no been overriden on those sites. As such, people in Spanish, French, Hungarian, etc. will be getting this unnecessary "book" on the series page for no good reason. The example should have just been:
"Chronicles of Prydain (1)"

Yet I see lots of series where "book" and "volume" and such are redundantly put in. So hopefully this can help you understand where I'm coming from in my view of these things.

37> Lately, I've really been wishing that there were another example that shows just the number, in addition to the "(book 1)" and "(0|Prequel)" examples. It took me a while to realize that series didn't need words in the sorter/label, and that just a number was sufficient, back when I started editing series CK. I try to use fancy labels now only for disambiguation - "(1|Book 1); (2|Short Story Collection 1)" or whatever.

>36 rsterling:

An example using years: http://www.librarything.com/series/David+Audley+%252F+Jack+Butler%3A+Chronologic...

On the way to the internet café I was thinking about what sort order is. In mySQL it might happen that the system itself decides what the type should be: integer, text. How does this affect this topic? If all works in a series are using integer numbers only then no problems should arrive. If some text is involved (as the omnibus examples I have seen) sort order might be strange. I suspect that "foo 11, 15, 17" will be sorted before "foo 2, 3, 4". I need to leave but I can make some tests later.

note: I can imagine many benefits from the way LT works now (displaying more then just one number at series).

FYI: somthing quite complicated http://www.librarything.com/topic/100271 series related to USSR periodical Sovetish heymland

40> But the thing is that if the omnibus is done properly, LT isn't sorting on the text. The 'Omnibus x,y,z' text is the label (put after the pipe); there's a number before the pipe which is what LT is sorting on.

i.e., the series linked in Msg 24 - if you go to the omnibus Overkill book and look at what's actually in the CK:Series field, what you see is

Knights of the Dinner Table (5.1|Omnibus 1-5)

LT sorts it as 5.1 and displays the Omnibus 1-5 label. No one's put in the individual numbers 1 through 5, or anything under 10 - but if they had, it would sort

1
2
3
4
5
5.1
6
etc.

>40 gangleri: http://www.librarything.com/series/ZZZZ+-+test+-+author+picture+available+from+w...
shows first (2, 3, 4|foo 2, 3, 4)
http://www.librarything.com/work/9358017/commonknowledge/54575815
and then (11, 15, 17|foo 11, 15, 17)
http://www.librarything.com/work/9358493/commonknowledge/54580404

The LT order is correct. LT is fine. Simple text sort would show (11, 15, 17|foo 11, 15, 17) first.

42> You're still doing it wrong. You the indicator before the pipe should be only ONE sorter. So 11, 15, OR 17, not "11, 15, 17".

>43 keristars: Please feel free to make the change. I did not get the point.

You put a single number before the pipe, which indicates where the entry should be sorted.

Right. So it should be "(11|11,15,17)" or "(15|11,15,17)" or "(17|11,15,17)".

Putting a list before the pipe with commas will cause it to sort oddly. This also happens if you use multiple dots - like "11.1.2".

ETA:
The "sort" indicator is independent of the label. "(SORT|LABEL)". They do not have to be the same thing or even related to each other. The sorter doesn't play well with more than one decimal point or multiple sorting schemes. It's generally best, in my experience, to sort with a strict numerical scheme and leave all the fancy stuff to the labels.

>47 keristars: Thanks for the information about multiple dots: I looked at all works from http://www.librarything.com/series/National+Geographic+Magazine mentioned at http://www.librarything.com/topic/100271#2240710
which have a text string as label. "Complete Year" http://www.librarything.com/work/6716292/commonknowledge until http://www.librarything.com/work/7155185/commonknowledge , "Multiples" http://www.librarything.com/work/10188883/commonknowledge , "Unknown" http://www.librarything.com/work/10250572/commonknowledge

All the SORT values are numerical either using one dot as "10.10 at the first work in the series http://www.librarything.com/work/6716292/commonknowledge (10.10|10.1-10.6) or integrers.

I wounder what would happen if a user would add one work without label or with a string label.

I will make such a test. mySQL (or whatever database software) needs to sort then a "set of datas having different types (nubers, strings)". Hope to post the test result in a few hours.

I was thinking about how to get an efficient and fast overview about what is going on on series (but also on characters, places).
Looking at CK history for The Man Outside one might see why this book has no book number assigned in series and the series title apears in sort order (the empty field is the sort value there). See Series: rororo.

I was thinking that a sort of "?trace=1" parameter could provide a quick overview:
a) The raw content of the "Series" (alternativly "Characters", "Places") filed
b) The list of LT sites involved (eng, ger, ita, ...) involved for that work.

This is a feature request, the implementation requires some LT resources but maintenance would be very efficient.

P.S. fixed Touchstones to correct work

rororo? Isn't that just another publisher's series?

50> Can't comment on that specifically, but I have to think that publisher series are MUCH more common on LT on the other language sites. They don't really have quite the active cleanup the the English ones do, right? Especially the sites that aren't even used by our multilingual Combiners and such.

Re 48 -- OK I along with many others have entered National Geographic Magazine as one entry, representing the magazine as a whole, rather than each each issue separately. The magazine itself is NOT a series. The magazine should not have been given the canonical title National Geographic Magazine Unknown. Sheesh.

http://www.librarything.com/work/10250572/commonknowledge

>50 Nicole_VanK:, >51 brightcopy: re: publisher's series

I am in the process of tagging the books relating to what LT site the series information might be interesting. Some LT sights might be interested in that kind of (publisher) series. Things could be discussed at http://www.librarything.com/topic/100210 "Internationalization, Internationalisation topics or group".

It would be nice to transfer CK information to other LT sites with simple editing / syntax by addidng a CK prefix or whatever would be the best easiest idea / procedure.

The goal is to get the most benefit from the set of LT sites avoiding unwanted interfearence.

52> But what about all the entries that ARE for unknown issues of the magazine? The problem is that both situations are in the same "unknown" category. How does the Canonical Title affect you adversely? That's a serious question, I'm not just being rhetorical. I figure it must pop up somewhere that's annoying.

ETA: Not saying I agree with the "National Geographic Magazine Unknown" CT, though. I can understand it for the series label, but I'd say "National Geographic Magazine" is a better title, versus "National Geographic Magazine May 2004" or whatever. Or even "National Geographic Magazine - Various Issues".

If rororo has some titles exclusive within the German speaking world it might be okay to have that series info on the German site - but only for such works, and only there. And if CK gets further internationalized not even there.

Of course some users will be interested in publisher series. However, CK is attached to an entire "work" - not any specific edition. If a book is also available in other editions, telling people that their book belongs to a rororo series simply provides many with incorrect info.

Frankly, if I get incorrect "series" info on any of my own books I simply delete that info. And I do "kill" entire publisher's series on the Dutch site.

55> Exactly, I imagine the Dutch site is one of the more Publisher Series free sites, at least on ones in your catalog. ;)

Hungarian? Russian? Croatian? Irish? Probably not so much.

>>54 brightcopy: But what about all the entries that ARE for unknown issues of the magazine?

They should be separated out, also any monographs published by the National Geographic Society that happen to contain the words National Geographic in the title. (I've separated out National Geographic Atlases the past). National Geographic the magazine should not be used as a general dumping ground for items that don't happen to fit into someone's housekeeping scheme. Adding the canonical with Unknown in the title only compounds things.

BTW the majority title for this work today is National Geographicnot National Geographic Magazine.

http://www.librarything.com/work/10250572/editions/14208526

How does the Canonical Title affect you adversely?

Other than by attracting works that don't belong there? For one thing CK know longer contains the original publication date of the start of the magazine.

57> They should be separated out

But how would you do that, without contacting each user and asking "Is this thing you've labeled 'National Geographic' a particular issue of the magazine, or a placeholder for ALL your issues of the magazine?"

How many people are going to have one issue of National Geographic that they're saving and want to catalog?

59> Some number larger than zero, I'd warrant. Other than that, I'd have to have some mind-reading powers.

I can at least point you to someone that has FOUR issues of NG that they're saving and wanted to catalog:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=ICW&searchall=1&deepsearch=...

In that case they've put the dates in the Summary field. So the answer to your question in 58 is to look at their entry for the magazine in their catalog to see what it is.

Another answer would be that LT doesn't support periodicals.

61> You realize, don't you, that people won't always put their dates in the summary/publication/whatever field, right?

The biggest problem with trying to answer your question is that it's impossible to tell if someone HAS entered one copy issue or if they're meaning that to be the entire collection, when the entry is just "National Geographic." It's a bit like trying to prove there's no such thing as leprechauns...

But as you said, the real answer is that LT is just not set up to support this, so by using it to do it you're going to have to settle for some shortcomings. A random pile of NG magazines you have do not constitute a "work." LT is built on works. Trying to make a work fit that is only a few steps removed from trying to make it fit a stuffed bobcat.

What's wrong with putting a general entry for the magazine if you only have one issue? In my case I used the general entry when I was really only interested in one article in one particular issue. I added the issue details to a holdings note in the publications field and the article details in comments. I might add more issues/articles later. If I want to find the particular article in my library I can search for it in comments by author or title, but the point of the exercise here was to catalogue the physical book to know where to shelve it. ( ie all the National Geographics together)

http://www.librarything.com/work/10250572/details/14208526

Someone else has entered the same article, without any mention of the magazine. That is not the way I wanted to do it.

http://www.librarything.com/work/5942439/details/34136176

But this is totally getting off topic. The reason I'm a little bit riled up about using canonical titles for series organization is that I spent several hours a few days ago sorting out one such 'title' in a publisher's series that contained four different works with the same title (or alternate title, three of which didn't belong there.

One of the 'editions' under the canonical title National Geographic Magazine Unknown is a book with the title New York.

63> It's not a right/wrong thing. It's a "you're swimming upstream" kind of thing. LT is built around a concept of "works", which have different physical incarnations of "editions." These works are abstract, but they represent real individual published works.

As such, that's what all the user interface is built around, and that's how the vast majority of the catalogers will treat the data.

To give an analogy: Imagine if I didn't want to catalog every the various Star Wars books I have. I just put them in as "Star Wars." Then people keep coming along and combining that with Star Wars. This is basically a parallel situation to the one you are in. You're not "wrong", you're just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And people keep coming along and trying to swap out your peg for a round one. ;)

FYI: feature request http://www.librarything.com/topic/100505 "empty SORTORDER at series, characters, places pages etc."