I’m just trying for the first time to add an introduction to an edition.
In bookbrainz it seems to be considered as a “work” with the type “introduction”. But how should the title of that work be named: Nearly all introductions are just titled “Introduction”. So we would have to add "Introduction for “edition” by “author”. Or am I missing something?
Wouldn’t it be better and more elegant to add a new relation field “Introduction/foreword written by” to the edition form?
I like this. Would love to see “Afterword by” or some such relationship too.
I agree, it would be a lot simpler, and adequate for most cases. We have a ticket open for that: https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/BB-520.
It would only makes sense to have a separate Work for an introduction in some rare cases
I’m thinking for example of multiple preface/introductions with titles, different authors, etc…
This book I have with me has:
• Preface 2001: Democracy Matters in Race Matters
• Preface to the 1994 Edition
• Introduction: Race Matters
• …rest of the book…
• Epilogue to the Vintage Edition
If I wanted to describe this as thoroughly as possible, I might want to have the ability to create a separate Work for each preface. The prefaces might be by different authors too.
If I only had “Author A wrote preface to Edition” and “Author B wrote preface to Edition”, that doesn’t really tell the whole story.
That being said, I’m of the opinion that it’s a bit overkill in most cases to create Works for introductions, prefaces and the like, where a simple relationship would suffice.
An ideal approach in my opinion would allow for both solutions and recommend a simple Author <–> Edition relationship unless there is a particular reason to have a separate Work.
Yes, that would be great. The Only thing I always have on my mind is “the average random user” that will come certainly, when the database becomes more well-known. It happened in discogs and even in bookogs, which still is/was a database baby.
If there is a work field “Introduction”, a certain amount of users just will use it, adding the title “Introduction” as it appears in the book and if all goes “well” they even forget to link it to the correct book. So at some point you will have dozens of “Introduction” works, that are “lying helplessly around” in the database.
I know this is a general problem of open databases, but I’d like to minimize the possibilities of polluting the database.
PS: Same applies for poem titles like “Song”, “Sonet” etc. but I will bother you with all problems concerning poems, when I start adding hundreds of them soon enough 
sorry for coming in here ages later but I wanted to say I very much agree with this approach, creating a separate work for every introduction is folly, it will only lead to the database being filled with basically an introduction copy for every work, an impossible scenario that does not help at all.
I have created a new Author-Edition relationship
Author wrote the foreword for Edition
A separate “introduction” rel is forthcoming, but I must research how different foreword/introduction/preface is, if their meanings overlap and so on.
I’d say only use this UNLESS the same foreword has been reused in other places
Would you say that a separate “Author wrote Preface” rel is necessary too?
Thank you, that’s nice. Of course, we will have to talk about when to use the rel and when to create a separate work.
A rough guideline might be: A short foreword by the same author should be preferably added as a rel. An essay-like foreword by a different author should be added as a seperate work.
Since there are books with a foreword, followed by a preface, we might need both.
Intros do get reused a lot in re-issues, but again, in most cases the editor won’t be able to compare the one book they’re editing to any ‘other places’. And in rare cases they WiLL be able to compare and tell, but to other editors their choice of options won’t look any more credible than of someone who couldn’t. The representation of this will lack integrity across the database.
what was originally meant, is this:
A foreword as a separate work in the database, should only be created if it is a separate thing, reused elsewhere (ie not re-issues of the same work/edition) but in other editions by other authors, this should be exceedingly rare.
Generally “Foreword” as a separate work is a grandfathered-in concept, as there are always exceptions.
as far as revisioners adding data to the database goes, likely using the “Author-Edition” ie “author wrote preface, introduction, foreword” is never wrong and that should later information surface that contradict that, a separate work can always be added later.
More likely, old “introduction/foreword/preface” works should be merged or removed and the data they represented be replaced by the new “author-edition” rels.
In my books, those signed forewords usually also have a title. Where will the title information go if the Work is replaced as a relation, or is the presence of a title enough reason to still create a Work? And sometimes those titles don’t even seem worthy to bother keeping (like, in Doyle’s Lost World book a foreword can be titled “Doyle and his ‘Lost World’”), but still, it’s information, the editor needs to be really bold to just throw it away knowing that maybe they’re the only editor who will ever have access to this book.