New feature: Series in Bookbrainz

BookBrainz
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Hello everyone !

This summer we participated in Google Summer of Code again, and @akashgp09’s proposal was accepted.

It was a pleasure working with him over the summer, and he did a great job implementing a new Series entity in BookBrainz:

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This feature is currently released on our beta website and will be deployed in production very soon in production !

Please do try it out, and report any issues you might have encountered for us to fix :slight_smile:

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Just tried the new feature. Good work…thx :wink:
I just miss a series/series relation field. We need this for subseries and for translated series that has different series numbers (so an alias won’t work).

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I was just looking at your new additions, and saw the lacking series-series translation relationship straight away too :wink:
Thanks for trying it out, and please do keep the feedback coming if you notice anything else missing or askew !

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I’ve created a ticket to track the missing Series relationships: https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/BB-634

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A third relation variant might be predecessor / successor. There are pub. series that changed their names
throughout the years but with consecutive numbers and no generic term for the complete series.

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Just an example for a “worst case” of pub. series:

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please go to krimisammlung - Goldmann Verlag - Uebersicht
and translate into English

If we can handle this we can handle everything :slight_smile:

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I think we also need a series-author relation. Many publisher series have credits for series editors and other staff members that worked on this series.

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I have just been trialling the Series function which is a great feature.

I have also discovered a bit of problem. In the example of collections which only have an Edition Group, there is no way of adding them to the Series.

An example is The Thirteen Problems (1932) by Agatha Christie which uses a framing device to connect the various short stories. The stories all feature Miss Marple: The Thirteen Problems (EditionGroup) – BookBrainz

On Goodreads the collection The Thirteen Problems is given the number 1.1 of the Miss Marple series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/51798-miss-marple

The only work around that I can think of is numbering the various short stories in the collection, which have their own Work, as 1.1, 1.2, etc.

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My idea for this special case is and was: add “The Thirteen Stories” as a work (which I did a century ago ;-), since there are good reasons for it: embedded short stories with a background story. Then add the short stories as parts of the main story. Problem solved.
Or, if this is not wanted, the only solution is to add the stories as 1.1, 1.2, etc…

But if we choose the 2nd, what happens to the parts of the background story? The will be lost in the depth of the universe…

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Yeah I remember that discussion but it is known as a collection by most sources: The Agatha Christie official website: The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie - Agatha Christie (UK), the fandom wiki: The Thirteen Problems | Agatha Christie Wiki | Fandom etc, etc.

I agree it is borderline and the short stories were published monthly prefixed The Tuesday Night Club in The Royal Magazine from December 1927 onwards: Magazine Contents Lists: Page 8141

The framing device is part of each story so it is never going to be lost regardless which way we go.

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OK, then just add the stories as part of the series as you proposed, no problem.

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Done, thank you sir.

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Could you please check the order of the Miss Marple series, according ro The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie | LibraryThing it’s number 2, Number 1 is The Murder at the Vicarage.

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A lot of this is personal preference. I’m not familiar with LibraryThing so I’m not sure what they do. Goodreads is my go to site.

If the series is based strictly on order of publication then it probably should look like this:

  1. The Tuesday Night Club - The Royal Magazine, December 1927
  2. The Idol House of Astarte - The Royal Magazine, January 1928
  3. Ingots of Gold - The Royal Magazine, February 1928
  4. The Blood-Stained Pavement - The Royal Magazine, March 1928
  5. Motive v. Opportunity - The Royal Magazine, April 1928
  6. The Thumb Mark of Saint Peter - The Royal Magazine, May 1928
  7. The Blue Geranium - The Story-teller, December 1929
  8. The Four Suspects - Pictorial Review, January 1930
  9. The Hat and the Alibi - The Story-teller, January 1930
  10. The Resurrection of Amy Durrant - The Story-teller, February 1930
  11. The Herb of Death - The Story-teller, March 1930
  12. The Affair at the Bungalow - The Story-teller, May 1930
  13. The Murder at the Vicarage, October 1930
  14. Death by Drowning - Nash’s-Pall Mall Magazine, November 1931
    and so forth!
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yes, that’s how it should be. Could you please add this (“following the publication order”) to the series page and correct the wrong entries? Would be great :wink:

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I think that is the best way to tackle the problem as the Goodreads’ way is flawed.

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hmm lib thing follows wikipedia with this order:

  1. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930, Novel)
  2. The Body in the Library (1942, Novel)
  3. The Moving Finger (1943, Novel)
  4. A Murder Is Announced (1950, Novel)
  5. They Do It with Mirrors (1952, Novel) - also published as Murder With Mirrors
  6. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953, Novel)
  7. 4.50 from Paddington (1957, Novel) - also published as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!
  8. *The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (*1962, Novel)
  9. A Caribbean Mystery (1964, Novel)
  10. At Bertram’s Hotel (1965, Novel)
  11. Nemesis (1971, Novel)
  12. Sleeping Murder (1976, Novel)
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Thinking again, I think we should go with the way isfdb is handling the issue.
Just adding the novels in the publishing order with numbers and adding the short stories without numbers at all…