Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

The books by Iris Johansen are labeled inconsistently.

This is not a question of what the series fields should be, but rather about how to determine what is in a series (as in definitively.) This issue was raised by a GR user who was confused as to why the numbering system was so far off what she knew the series to be and asked for a correction to be made. When I looked into it, it was all over the place.

The Eve Duncan series, is the first one that was brought up. If you go to the Iris Johanson page on Fantastic Fiction, you find that they have listed 8 books in the Eve Duncan series.

If you go to the author's personal website, the author has listed out what characters have major and minor roles in the different books.

So, the Eve Duncan character is the main character in the 8 books in the ED series, but also is a 'featured character' as opposed to a 'principal character' in a couple of other books. These books are listed as standalone on Fantastic Fiction and when I query WorldCat, are not listed as part of the Eve Duncan series.

Should the numbering system take these into account, or should we just go by the publisher info? Or some other authoritative source? I'm not referring to the novellas about a character published in books with other stories, but this kind of situation specifically.

Then there's Final Target, which someone has taken pains to go in and rename multiple editions of it with the series info (Eve Duncan, #10 and/or Wind Dancer, #4). This one is particularly confusing, because the book has neither Eve Duncan or the Wind Dancer series characters in it (from both the author's site and the book description.)

How many series can a book be attributed to simultaneously? (I mean that we want, not that the system will allow.)

On another note, another author has a series problem similar, but different.
On the Kay Hooper author page, someone has gone in and labeled a bunch of her books like this: (Fear trilogy #2 - BCU #8).
But Fantastic Fiction lists them all out as separate series, with nothing interconnecting them. I read through a bunch of the book descriptions and they don't have a unifying character at all. The similarity seems to be that one of the characters in each book has some kind of paranormal talent that they use to find the killer/solve the crime/save the day. The publisher/author has separated them out into at least 5 different series though.

What bothers me the most about the way this is labeled is that, even after looking through all these book pages and WorldCat, I still have absolutely no idea what BCU is supposed to stand for. So this series has a made-up subcharacterization (did it come from the publisher? where did it come from?) and it's in code, so it is unintelligible and confusing to anyone else using GoodReads (unless you happen to already be 'in the know'.)

So, what is allowed? and what should be the standards?, for labeling series?

Thoughts?

I have no real opinion on this, but I agree that agreed-upon policies would be a Very Good thing.

I did the Kay Hooper series info.

The series is the Bishop Crime Unit series overall, and it is made up of several trilogies, all interconnecting (Fear trilogy, Evil trilogy, Shadows trilogy, and Blood trilogy).

You can see this page on her website for information about it.

For people familiar with the series, they recognize BCU as representing the Bishop series arc. It just seemed too long to write out Bishop Crime Unit into each book. If they were just labeled by trilogy, people would have no idea they were connected, and no idea in what order the trilogies should be read in. And since the author labels them as one overall series, I thought adding both series information was valid.

Thanks for your explanation Isis. I see where you got that from, but I would say that the BCU needs to be spelled out. As you say, it would make sense to people familiar with the series, but doesn't mean anything to the rest of us, especially someone new to or considering reading the series.

The title field is more than long enough, so writing it out could give someone something to Google to find out more about it. Just the initials are too nebulous, and can't be googled with any accuracy. (I tried it before.) When I just now googled the whole term, the first couple of hits were books on Amazon, the third or fourth was to the specific page on the author's site you just referenced in your post. Since the front page of the author's website lists The Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Series, the "BCU" could still be confusing...

I have no comments on these specific cases, but books can often belong to multiple series; in some cases the specific series changes through time because the author's plans change (I can think of a specific case where a book was originally published as #3 or 4 in one series and somehow later became #1 in a different, related series, while it's original number was "lost" by the publisher in future editions). And the numbering can be really screwy if you're looking at smaller series nested within a larger series. It gets even worse when the books are written in a different order than the internal chronology; should the series number represent chronology or publication? Even author intent doesn't always work. And publishers will change the numbering through time, depending on how they're trying to market or sell a series.

The GOOD news, is that these complexities are not the norm. Most series are very straightforward. The ones which are not, are usually disasters.

re: BCU - It can be changed if necessary. I guess I'm just not a fan of having a whole ton of text after the title.

But regarding series labeling in general...I would first try to contact whoever labeled the series and ask them the reasoning for their numbering. Because the fact of the matter is that the readers often have the best understanding of series connections, outside of what the author has in their head.

And some people/sites/readers/etc have different considerations of what constitutes a series. Fictiondb lists 12 books in the Eve Duncan & Friends series.

With these complicated recurring character/same universe series, there always seems to be disagreement. Some people don't think some books should be considered part of the series, some do. Others think they should be labeled a .5, etc. And there's no fair way to say who is right and who is wrong.

For the most part here, as long as I don't see any flat out mistakes, I leave series labeling as it is.

Even if we did come up with some agreement, it won't really do much good unless GR sends out some kind of notice or makes it more official somehow. Because as I came to find regarding our discussion on series formatting in another thread - where librarians here came to some agreements - most librarians don't watch this group, and most just do what they think is right. I messaged a librarian about series formatting and sent them a link to the discussion we had on it, and the librarian was rather annoyed these kinds of decisions were made and why weren't others consulted, and how were they supposed to know and all that.

Which is basically the same thing that would happen here. As much as I would like to unity in something like this, putting it into practice has problems.

Very true, but I wanted to see if I could get some kind of consensus (not just my opinion) before messaging the other librarian or the person who originally complained and asked that it be changed because it was confusing.

Thanks for the FictionDB link, I've never been on that site. = )

Fictiondb is a really great resource, especially for series information. After author official sites, that's where I usually go to look up information on a book.

I know the librarian who did the edits on the Iris Johansen books. If you haven't already messaged her, I'll send her a note and ask her to chime in.

I haven't messaged her, if you would, that would be great!

Thank you, Isis, for the PM.

Twas me that put the series info in for the Iris Johansen books. My source was fictiondb. I tried to use the author's Site, but it was hard to follow her order series the way she has it laid out--what a mess.

She links her books by characters like Karen Rose, Isis. She indicates Eve Duncan's appearance(s) in books and other characters and whether they are primary or secondary characters. She indicates that though some of her books are related, they are meant to be read as stand alones.

For me, it's frustrating when author's state their books are stand alones, but the characters pop in an out of various books. I can only assume this is a marketing tool so as not to dissuade someone new to the author from picking up #10 of a series....

I like fictiondb and feel they have a lot of book source information. They usually have the images, synopsis, series order, harlequin #, too. Where I've noticed they struggle is with anthologies and their part(s) in a series. Wish they included page numbering!

By all means, if someone has read Iris Johansen's books and knows they need to be ordered another way, have at it. I have not read her Eve Duncan books.

I think using an abbreviation for a long series title is fine. For me, I see they belong together and can--usually--figure out what the abbreviation stands for by reading the synopsis or a few reviews, or following some discussions in a group(s).

What do others think?

Well, if you're not in a group that discusses those books, that doesn't really help. If it is specified in the description field, that would work, but some of the book descriptions don't even mention Bishop's name...

Like I said,I'd rather it be spelled out, so I can google it, or just know what it means, rather than some alphabet soup. (I live in the DC-area and we are perpetually surrounded by 'alphabet soup'.)

In the "discuss this book" area, there is now a link to the Romance Series Lists: Bishop Crime Unit - Kay Hooper post. The list has been around for a while, but I recently added links with the add book/author widget so that the books would link to the post about the series.

So there is a way now for people to get better knowledge of the series.

That is definitely an improvement, thanks Isis!

I was trying to get the series orders right and combine some of the R.L. Stine Fear Street books, and ran into a problem with some of the non-English books. For example, with the German and Spanish translation of the Fear Street books. The series order of individual books is not the same in all three languages. So do I combine the books based on content and let the series order of the non-English books fall by the wayside, or do we want to keep a "German series" an "English series" and a "Spanish Series" that are numbered with those series orders?

We can certainly keep the "German series number" in the title of that edition and merge with the book with the same content.

I would just like some feedback. There are many books here and I'd hate to get it wrong. :)

Combine books with the same content, even if the series numbering differs. (Although do double-check that the content is the same -- series translated from English to German sometimes end up with different numbers of books, which means that there many not be combinations possible.)

I'm with Cait on this one, series numbering is not an issue, combine the ones that you know the content is the same. Also ditto on the double-check - many books when translated end up as multiple volumes, so even if a title is similar, it may not have all of the original content.

Are we anywhere near to having series available as entities in themselves, to which books can be added as appropriate? I'm sure I've seen mention of that as a wanted feature, but I don't recall where, or whether it's imminent or even likely.

I would imagine, as mentioned above, that individual editions of a book would be added to a series. Not only for the sake of the different language editions, but also for re-issues. In particular, the recent "Science Fiction Masterworks" series comes to mind, which includes reprints of classic SF books. It would not be appropriate to be showing the original editions of those as belonging to the series.

On the other hand, it might be that it could be optional that membership of a series would apply to all editions. Where that classic book was part of a series, for example, the new edition would equally as well be part of that series and should be so implicitly instead of having to be added explicitly.

Not sure how coherent that is, but I hope the thought manages to struggle through.

Phil wrote: "Are we anywhere near to having series available as entities in themselves, to which books can be added as appropriate? I'm sure I've seen mention of that as a wanted feature, but I don't recall where, or whether it's imminent or even likely."

It is on the to-do list, but I am not aware of a timeline.