OCLC will link together different printings, and in many cases even editions.
The is a reason for ISBN multiplicity: they are in origin a device invented by booksellers for managing their inventory, and subsequently adopted by libraries as a practical matter of convenience, as described in detail in the WP article. From the point of view of a book dealer, obviously each separate packaging is distinct--and we can hardly expect they will ever think otherwise.
From the point of view of a library, the numbers for different
printings of the same edition need to be linked, since except for rare books libraries do not catalog separate printings individually. OCLC does a fairly good job at this, though it does not get them all. Libraries consider such matter as paperback/hardcover, and thumb indexed, and so forth as printings, no matter whether publishers call them editions. Typically publication in different countries amounts to different editions, though--they are not always they same. The actual rules for this are complicated, legalistic, and change from time to time, as they need to deal with all the different situations publishers have deliberately devised or accidentally perpetrated.
The linking of different true editions is a little more complicated. Libraries do list them separately.. Library cataloging has various devices for bringing them together, and OCLC and other library catalogs generally do a fairly sophisticated job of this. Related works are also brought together; the details are again quite technical, but the bases are what we call a "uniform title" and the concept of a "work". The intention is to provide for any useful level of aggregation.
You'll see it in action if you look for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in any library catalog. And in a large library you'll see it for Great Expectations too, for there are translations into other languages.
There is no need for WP to figure this all out internally.
On 9/19/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Typically, sellers of new books will only show the ISBNs of current editions. Books that have a new edition each year will have a long range of ISBNs and will distinguish hard and soft cover, or even whether there are thumb tabs in the fore edge. I very much agree with the usefulness of a reference work that would sort out the different editions.
Of course, for the average English-language work, you have the US edition, and the UK edition, and possibly an Australian or Canadian edition... and hard and softcover in both... and people have started giving ISBNs to some reprintings, or work on a "new cover art, new ISBN" model... or have the "anniversary edition" with identical text but new blurb be a new edition...
...it's insane.
There do exist such reference services for crosslinking. They're patchy, they're sometimes available and sometimes not, and they're going to be subjective* and incomplete for the forseeable future. I would *love* to see what Open Library can do with this, or suggestions for how we can help**.
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
- Yes, subjective. Boundaries are fuzzy. Great Expectations with two
different editors is the same work. Is 20,000 Leagues with two different editor-cum-translators the same work? ** One of the best ways we can help is to do the spadework. Writing an article about a book? Do the research and give us a comprehensive history of its editions, with publications dates and annotations and ISBNs where they exist. Our article is better, and we have the raw material to feed an ISBN resolver in the future.
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