Talk:Sources of Bibliographic Information

Locus1 has this line:

The Compass Rose (Bantam Spectra 0-553-23512-5, Nov ’87 [Oct ’87], $3.50, 271pp, pb) Reissue (Harper & Row 1982) collection of 20 stories. 4th printing.

What does the "[Oct ’87]" mean? The Bantam list at Locus1 lists this pub under November 1987, so I'm going to use that date. I'd like to know what the October date is for, though. Mike Christie (talk) 16:49, 6 Jan 2007 (CST)

If I understand the Locus conventions correctly, they list two dates: the date stated in the publication and the "date received". I think they only list the "date received" if it's earlier than the stated date, which makes sense. Ahasuerus 17:29, 6 Jan 2007 (CST)

Old SF mags

http://www.westcity.org.uk/ has catalogues of old SF magazines online, with covers. Some contents listings, too.

Good point, they have good coverage of some non-US titles. I have added a link to the main Sources of Bibliographic Information page, thanks! Ahasuerus 22:43, 29 Dec 2007 (CST)

Contento moved to www.philsp.com

There is this message displayed at http://contento.best.vwh.net/0start.htm:

THIS SITE HAS MOVED TO www.philsp.com/homeville/ISFAC/0start.htm. Please update your bookmarks.

The new page Last Updated: January 26, 2008. --Roglo 10:37, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks, I have updated our link. Ahasuerus 11:47, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)

I see it's moved intact, even containing the "donations accepted" bit to help keep the old site going... ;-) Anyone feel like checking if we can provide a better "Top Ten Most Reprinted Stories" yet? BLongley 15:11, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)

Well, Contento's index stops in 1983, so we would be comparing apples and oranges unless we limited our script to pre-1984 titles. Also, his coverage of fantasy and supernatural horror was very limited before he joined forces with Locus, so that's more apples and oranges.

From the computational POV, it would be easy to count the number of Publications that each Title has appeared in, but that would lead to overcounting since we would be including every printing of every edition that we have cataloged. Extracting unique Collection/Anthology Titles from the affected Collection/Anthology Publications shouldn't be too bad, but it can get messy with Omnibuses-encompassing-multiple-Collections and other weird beasts. Still worth a try if somebody has some free time. Ahasuerus 15:38, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)

I've HEARD of free time, just not experienced such for a while. :-/ And we seem to have "Variant" issues to cope with too. Still, eventually we should not only be able to record extra primary data but report it comparably as well. (I fully expect to be the sucker that has BOUGHT the same story unwittingly most times!) BLongley 16:07, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)

True, we would have to combine Variant Titles with their parents for the purposes of this script, but that should be easy to do. Hm, now my curiosity has been awoken, let me see what I can do tonight :) Ahasuerus 16:15, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)