List of Incomplete Series in library

Something that I've been thinking for a while would be useful is the ability to see which series in my library I haven't completed yet - a brilliant way to start a list whenever someone asks me what I want for a gift...

I'm aware that https://www.librarything.com/stats/MEMBERNAME/series exists already, but that only shows gaps if I've skipped numbers ("You have 1 and 3"). It doesn't show "You have 1 and 2 but not 3 through 6".

Complications that immediately spring to mind: filtering out anthology entries in a series where you have the individual entries (or the reverse), or where the anthology partially covers books you own (e.g. anthology of books 1-4, and you own 1-3).

If we were to have that, I would want some export formats. For example, I use an outliner on the computer and iOS devices that can import OPML (an XML-based structure for outlines). This includes the hierarchy, notes, and a checkmark to indicate things I have. I would like to be able visit a series page and extract the list in this form since it is convenient to have such a list for shopping.

James

The vast majority of the 1200 series I have listed, I don't WANT to complete. For example, there are 9 'For Dummies' series on the list.

>1 Vecna: While I would love to have that, it will cause a lot of people reshuffling series...

Take Perry Mason for example. Some people would want the core series to be just the 82 novels. Some would want the 82 novels + the 3 collections (the way how the Publisher called and listed them). Some would want it the way it is now (with the Chastain novels added). How do you reconcile these different needs/ideas?

And then there are the series such as The Dresden Files - where all the numbering crosses across the groups - so would you want the Grouped (and if so - which groups?) or the ungrouped view to control what you want next?

What about series which are not fully translated in your language (and translated out of order)? Or what about series in a different language - which language do you get if you have books in more than one language from the series?

In a perfect world, we can have a solution that allows you to chose your options per series (and a default overarching them for the ones which are set the way you want them).

Just thinking aloud. I'd love to be able to pull such a list - I am just... thinking.

>1 Vecna: Isn't that what going to each individual series page and looking at it is for?

I think it would be nice if there were a way to "favorite" a series. There a lot of series that I own a book in (201 Latin verbs for instance), for which I would not care if I had the whole series, and some like the Dresden Files, or Iron Druid Chronicles that I would.

>5 gilroy: Perhaps, but I have 515 series and honestly I don't want to have to manually look through them all every six months for birthday and Christmas. :)

Even just filtering the list down to (for the sake of argument) 400 series that I haven't finished (and perhaps even hide the actual books in the series) gives me a list I can more easily skim to work out which ones I want the next book for. Especially if its a modern series and I might have missed a new book was released, etc.

>7 Vecna: The new series page (under charts and graphs) can be filtered by collection. So you can create a special collection called "my series" and add into it one (or more) books from the series you care to look at. When you change the view from "My books" to "All Books" it shows as owned all the books in ALL collections but only if one of the books is in the collection you started from. Then this will give you the list of only the series you care about (unless a book is in 2 series and you just care about only one series - but then you can chose a book just in one collection?

I know it is not perfect but that allows you to control which series you want.

>8 AnnieMod: Genius!
A bit of work to get there, but I will be doing this

>9 reading_fox: Power Edit to the rescue (after making your page as big as possible so there are less pages) and using a view that shows you the series - I did that when I was setting a system of series tags a few years ago ;) It is a bit of work but it is not that tedious really.

>8 AnnieMod: Had a long think about this - and I think it doesn't solve the original problem (for me) for three reasons.

1. It comes at the problem backwards - I still have to start by manually looking through the 300 series in my fiction collection to work out which series are incomplete at this point in time, and then add a book from that series to the new "My Series" collection.
2. It is only addresses half the problem - it only shows collections where I know there's going to be a sequel, it just isn't out yet. It doesn't show me series I didn't know were going to extend, because I didn't know to include them in the "My Series" collection to start with.
3. It doesn't actually solve the problem - it still only provides me with a list of series that I need to manually examine to see if I'm missing a book. The list of series is shorter but the list still only shows me the books I own, because its the same feature as currently exists.

Sounds like it works as a solution for some, but doesn't get at the heart of my use-case I think. :)

>11 Vecna: Well, part of what your asking is not something that Librarything does. We don't track new coming books, per say. We don't know when a series is going to be extended until someone adds said book to the system. We aren't connected directly to each publisher to have a list of all the potential published books.

And even then, someone would have to add it to the series. And of course sometimes people add books in anticipation that never get published.

>12 gilroy: And I wouldn't expect LT to track that - but it does have lists of series, and that's more than I easily have at my fingertips. If someone adds a new book to the series, then with the appropriate view I would be able to see that. I don't necessarily need to know in advance, but if I do a sweep every 6 months to get ideas for gift lists or something then it serves its purpose. :)

But given the two data sets exists of "Books in this series" and "Books Vecna has in this series", finding out the "Books Vecna does not have in this series" doesn't seem to difficult.

>11 Vecna: And I never claimed that this will solve all your needs - I gave a way to do that with the tools we have now and without the need to look through all series you have books in but just a subset - if the RSI ever get implemented, switching to it and abandoning the system is easy.

On 2 - that only depends on what series you add to your collection. You can add any series you enjoy - then if ever there is a sequel, it will pop up. The selection of series has absolutely nothing to do with knowing what is coming - you determine what you monitor.

If you prefer to just wait and not have anything, no worries - examine all series instead. :)

>15 AnnieMod:
It is just slightly clunky but as a way to use the existing tools I consider it clever, and intend to implement it in my own library as soon as I find the time.

...Probably in about two weeks. ;)

>16 LShelby: Oh, it is very clunky. But I have 900+ series in my library and I am nowhere near done cataloging.

I have a semi-implemented tag system (putting a "series:waiting" tag on the last book in a series where I want to see if anything new is ever added and then occasionally going through the tagged books and their series to see if anything new was added). Moving to the collection in the series page will make that easier to check 9and less likely for me to forget to add a series to the monitoring list) - a click and a scan through the list as opposed to opening each series. Still clunky, still needs to be manually seeded and still will contain series I may not want (multi-series books) but... beats looking through 900 series or manually opening each series.

A site that died in 2019 was called FictFact.com. It included a way for a single flag to indicate that you had or read (depending on your interpretation) a book from a series. They made efforts to add new volumes as they were announced or published.

In my experience, LibraryThing members add volumes to series as soon as they are known/published.

At the same time you get some less helpful entries in LT series when long volumes are reissued in two or more volumes. Some of this is related to the international nature of LT or the long publication history for some series.

Ultimately you will probably need to maintain your own lists. LT is a tool, like a word processor or a spreadsheet. Those tools won't write your novel for you or keep your business running but they will allow you to store your content.

James

>18 Keeline: I use https://www.fantasticfiction.com/ for the most part lately but it is author and not series based (you can monitor up to 200 authors). Still works to some extent and it sends notifications for new books by your author so... works for me - unless the author has a LOT of series and you care for only a few.

There are some other partial solutions out there as well (genre based or curated). None is perfect. LT being the sum of all libraries it contains will always have the issue of when books are actually added to the series.

The most common use case would have ways to track books you want to get and books you have read. With LT we record the date read. By cataloging there is an implication that one has the book (again depending on interpretation).

For series that I am actively pursuing, I keep the list in my outliner app on my iPhone. That's why I mentioned a desire to have the content on the series and author pages export to OPML. But I will probably have to roll my own solution for that. Here is a sample of the OPML for a single series:

<opml version='1.0'>
 <head>
 <title>Boy Hunters by Captain Ralph Bonehill</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <outline text='1. Four Boy Hunters' _note='Want C&L edition without circle on spine logo.' />
 <outline text='2. Guns and Snowshoes' _note='Have C&L edition.' _status='checked' />
 <outline text='3. Young Hunters of the Lake' _status='checked' />
 <outline text='4. Out with Gun and Camera' _status='checked' />
 </body>
</opml>

It looks like this in the CarbonFin outliner app on my iOS device or browser:



James