Abridgements and excerpts - link to original Work or create unique Work?

BookBrainz
#1

I have encountered this Work: https://bookbrainz.org/work/c6f3b5a5-646e-46ed-8565-c9551c8a67d4

According to Goodreads this is “Jurassic Park: Intermediate Level” described as a version of the original book consisting of 1600 words. In other words an abridged version: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7686.Jurassic_Park

This situation also applies to excerpts. Should the Work be for the original version, or do excerpts, abridged versions have a unique Work?

#2

It’s not only abridged: “some original and some simplified”
I think for the simplified versions we need an own work. For abridged versions it will be easier to link to the original version. Otherwise you have to add a new work for any excerpt until you can prove it’s exactly the same as another one.

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#3

Thanks. I have never encountered these type of books before and I am not familiar with the content. They do seem like a radical departure from the original work. As you suggest it is probably a good idea to create a unique Work for them.

On Bookogs abridgements and excerpts were linked to the original Work, which I thought was a good idea. If someone is searching for a particular work then everything is listed in the one location.

#4

Hi! I added this (i borrowed all things called “Jurassic Park” from my library + added the tow books I my self own)
And added these as a sort of “datamodel example” (ie seeing all these links between works in action)

This book is one I added and, I added a separate work because this book was completely rewritten by the the F.H. Cornish author, I was also not expecting this to be so different when I borrowed it, but it was a completely different thing, no original text was actually used, everything is paraphrased to be more accessible to younger/non-english-native. It is an Adaption.

I don’t know if a somewhat abridged editions should have the same work or not - right now we actually have quite a few work-work relationships but no specific derivative one (an abridged version would be a “Derivative” I guess?).

I think this is something that needs decision by the community, my gut feeling is that very little editing should not create a new work, but heavy abridging (to the point of rewriting parts, combining several books into one) should.

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