How do I correct someone's entry that makes the series title come up as part of the book title?

Newby to this group, and trying to make sense of what seems to me a messy problem.

I'm trying to get all my little Quaker Quicks ducks in a row, but somebody has created weird titles by not being orderly. (Might have been me getting lost in the new way of doing this series job, but who knows?!)

The title of the book in my hand is "Quaker Roots and Branches" by John Lampen. Somebody has entered it as "Quaker Roots and Branches (Quaker Quicks) by John Lampen" and no matter what I do I can't get the danged mistaken entry to go away so MY book keeps coming up mistitled in the series.

Someone has similarly mistitled "The Guided Life: Finding purpose in troubled times" by Craig Barnett as "Quaker Quicks - The Guided Life: Finding purpose in troubled times by Craig Barnett".

Thank you for any solution to tidying this disorderly flock.

Solution: Enter the canonical title on each of these works.

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Common_Knowledge#Canonical_title.2C_cano...

The canonical title field is in the Common Knowledge section of the work page.

This is the result of people using Amazon as their source.

>3 MarthaJeanne: No, it's not. The series info in the titles was included in manual entries.

This is a result of more entries including the series info with the title than only having the title name. The way to remove the series info from the "winning" title that shows across the site is to use the canonical title field.

Some may be manual, but more are Amazon. This is typical Amazon formatting, and these are the titles that Amazon is showing.

>4 aspirit: I've done that repeatedly on the book in my library, but the incorrect one keeps showing up in the 'Series' list. (I'd like to show you screenshots of this but I don't know how.)

Is this a case of the first time an entry is made for a book - correct or incorrect - is the accepted one and can't be corrected?

>6 VicRML: No, the most common title wins, not the first one to be entered. And >2 aspirit: describes how to fix it.

quaker roots and branches
The Guided Life: Finding purpose in troubled times

Touchstones so people can see the books referred to in the first post.

I added canonical titles to the work pages for Quaker roots and branches and The Guided Life: Finding purpose in troubled times. I hope this helps.

>8 gilroy: >7 anglemark: >2 aspirit: Thank you all. I think I figured it out. I have to click on the pencil attached to "Canonical Title" on the communal "Work Page" and then put in the correct title. Right?

>5 MarthaJeanne: I avoid anything Am....n and forbid its use in our library.

Now for another learning, I hope. Experimental insertion of url to square brackets:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/331897/Quaker-Quicks

Wooopppeeee! :-)

>10 VicRML: Yes!

For series, use three square brackets around the series name. Quaker Quicks

>12 karenb: Thank you karenb. I'm sorry I missed you in my earlier thanking. And I would have taken another 5 years to figure out all that bracketing you just explained. Those 3 examples next to the writing box seem to be a cryptic puzzle and don't explain anything in plain language so I thought more brackets demonstrated someone's increased loudness or emotional excitement.

VicRML:

Those 3 examples next to the writing box seem to be a cryptic puzzle and don't explain anything in plain language so I thought more brackets demonstrated someone's increased loudness or emotional excitement.


How could it be clearer? Maybe adding (book), (author), (series) to the examples, so that someone doesn't need to know that Pride and Prejudice is a book while Umberto Eco is an author?

(I will admit I am baffled by how you get from the mention of "books, authors, and series 'touched on' in a message" with the brackets to "brackets mean shouting" - I can certainly understand not getting the distinction between bracket types, though!)

>13 VicRML: >14 lorax: I agree that the message is somewhat cryptic. When I joined LT 11 years ago, I would just look at that message in confusion. Until I learned the brackets and then it all made sense to me! 😂 I think I wasn't sure exactly what touchstones were at that point and why I would really care. I think it could be more clear if it said something like:

To add a link to a particular book, author or series in your message, use Touchstones (works, authors, and series "touched on" in your message) by enclosing the mentioned book, author, or series in brackets.

Examples:
Book - [Pride and Prejudice]
Author - [[Umberto Eco]]
Series - [[[The Lord of the Rings]]]

>15 rretzler: BINGO! If that were in the box I would have got it immediately. And for me, a 'Touchstone' is more of a gold standard, not a random example. I saw the examples as random and how they are exemplary was hidden.

>16 VicRML: >15 rretzler:

Post here: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/559/Recommend-Site-Improvements

It is an easy enough fix that they may decide to do it :)

A new situation with series, now I thought I understood how they work (sigh):

The title of the Quaker Quicks (QQ) "Money and Soul" is identical to that of a Pendle Hill Pamphlet (PHP). Pamela Haines is the author of both. The books are NOT identical.

The QQ Series page shows the PHP cover instead of the QQ cover. This bothers me and I don't know how to get the right cover to get on the QQ Series page.

Any fix for this?

Pamela Haines

There are two problems. One is that the wrong work is in the series. You can probably sort that out.

The second is that several copies of the QQ book are in the PHP work. I will try to separate them and combine them into the proper work.

A third issue is getting this Pamela Haines sorted out from the others. Do you have basic biographical data that would help with that? Useful would be year of birth and what other books she has written. I found enough to be quite sure that she is neither of the other two authors. Division done.

What would be really useful would be a work relationship, if you can figure out what the relationship is. I changed the Canonical titles to differentiate between them. Normally it's better not to have the series in the title, but here we need it.

>19 MarthaJeanne: Thank you so much for working on this.

I found a recent list of her books - ALIVE IN THIS WORLD; MONEY AND SOUL; PATHS TO QUAKER PARENTING (co-author); TOWARD A RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH FINANCE (lead author); WAGING PEACE: DISCIPLINE & PRACTICE; THAT CLEAR AND CERTAIN SOUND - at (https://www.quakercloud.org/cloud/central-philadelphia-monthly-meeting/events/pamela-haines-poetry-event-alive-world)

I've found other references to her but even on her blog the 'about me' is blank.

The concept of 'work relationship' hasn't found a sitting space in my brain or understanding yet. For me a work relationship is person/s who spend time at the same workplace and can interact there, but don't necessarily have to. Having no trouble seeing books working and sitting at desks, but I don't think that's what is intended here. Am just finishing Ozeki's "The Book of Form and Emptiness" and that book's narrator is a book...

In LT a work is the collection of all the individual books that have basically the same text including text in translation. So everybody's book of 1984 gets combined into a work. Most of the information that applies to every book exists in LT at the work level including all of the common knowledge fields. A work relationship is one that exists between works like one work inspired another or a work is contained in another {as with when a trilogy is sold as an omnibus edition}.

You can read about basic LibraryThing concepts like works here: https://www.librarything.com/concepts