User talk:KarenHunt

Welcome!

Hello, KarenHunt, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Help pages
• Field-by-field guide to entering new publications into the database
• Help:Getting Started
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
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• Wiki Conventions - How things are usually done on this wiki.
• Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki

Note: Image uploading isn't entirely automated. You're uploading the files to the wiki which will then have to be linked to the database by editing the publication record.

Please be careful in editing publications that have been primary verified by other editors. See Help:How to verify data#Making changes to verified pubs. But if you have a copy of an unverified publication, verifying it can be quite helpful. See Help:How to verify data for detailed information.

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Hauck 15:56, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Shadow Magic

Hello, I've rejected your submission. As per your intended notes, you're trying to include an Ace August 1986 printing (the 4th). You're also trying to achieve this by modifying a declared 1988 Ace printing (which alas is not well sourced). In such case (with reliable information in your possession), it's better to add a new publication (the 1986-08 one) and left the existing 1988 one which may correspond to a later printing and may be later verified by another contributor. To quickly enter your proposed publication, go there and use the "Clone This Pub " link on the left of the screen. This will lead you to a screen where you'll be able to change the "incorrect" (i.e. not corresponding to your book, like the date, or missing like the number of paged) to match with your copy. After approval, this will generate a new publication to the title. Note that the image that you intend to use is not the correct one as a $2.50 price can be seen. If you encounter any problem during this operation, just ask me or another moderator. Thanks for contributing. Hauck 16:12, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Caught in Crystal

I have rejected your submission. You were editing the ACE first edition. Per your note ("$3.50 for one saying "Ace edition / March 1987", also with "never been previously published." (printing list says: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4)"), you have the four printing. We enter each printing as a separate publication. In this case, the fourth Ace printing as already been entered here. We do appreciate your submission. ISFDB has some conventions that need learning, but everything should be in the help links in the welcome message above. We hope you will continue to contribute. And please let us know if you have any questions (ISFDB:Help desk is a good resource for asking). Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:02, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I've had to reject your edit to the 4th printing as well. You were giving it the date of the 1st printing. Dates should be specific to that printing. Often, books will list only the date of the first printing even on later printings. In that case, we use "0000-00-00" to indicate unknown. Occasionally, you see books that list dates for each printing. Please let me know (you can just post here as I will watch this page) if that explanation needs more details. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:46, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't mind at all, I'm still brand-new and learning (and I wouldn't be trying edits if I wasn't sure that you folks would reject bad attempts). The book does say March 1987, but I did not know that this does not mean that later printings were the same year (in fact, I found it odd that it would name the same month and year as the first printing). Once I'm comfortable making simple changes and verifications, I plan to start updating the Lois McMaster Bujold section with quite a few foreign-language translations and some pictures (see http://vorkosigan.wikia.com/wiki/Translations for work that I've spent the last several months compiling - I don't expect to be able to put everything into your site, but what I can do, I will). I've spent the last hour reading FAQ info to learn the ins and outs, but I still have a lot to learn. Any tips would be welcome (I don't have physical copies for any of them, but some of your permitted sources, such as worldcat, can back up most of what I've learned. I figure anything I can get good cross-checks for is a candidate for addition to your site).KarenHunt 18:15, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

There is this pdf-downlodable book by one of our moderators that may be of interest to you even if it's not completely up to date. Hauck 18:31, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Kunnian sirpaleita

Hello, I've approved your submission and made a few changes: deleted series info (it will be inherited from the parent) and uploaded scan (the thing to do when you're not sure if we're allowed to deeplink to the hosting site) and varianted the cover (even if you'll be able to see that it has been slightly redrawn). The result is here. The only step left is to variant the finnish title here to the original Shards of Honor?. Hauck 10:09, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I've done the varianting now. Indeed it is Shards of Honor, though when I get to the Bulgarian ones, the expected answers will not match the correct ones (I swear they shuffled some standard Bujold covers and grabbed at random from it for some of their books).

I have scans of a lot of covers, so if I can't find normal sources for them to deeplink to, I'll try it that way.

Thanks for all your help (and I'm sure I'll need more for a bit - there are maybe 100 books I'll be adding),KarenHunt 14:11, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

王城闇影 variant

Hi, and welcome. I have your proposed variant of 王城闇影 on hold. The proposed new title looks identical to the original. I'm wondering if you intended to make the new record's author be Lois McMaster Bujold? You can cancel it and resubmit, or, if I missed something (which is quite possible), let me know. Thanks. --MartyD 03:00, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I've supposed (as per info given in the notes) that 王城闇影 is a translation of The Curse of Chalion, I've varianted the title (and already have "pseudonymed" the author). Hauck 09:07, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the publisher's website shows that quite clearly. So since that is the variant we would want to have anyway, I have rejected this submission that I held. The proper variant relationship is now in place. Thanks. --MartyD 11:40, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the help - yes, it's a Curse of Chalion, and yes I was being confused in trying to put this one together. There are many many more books for me to do, one more of which is Taiwanese and a dozen are Chinese. Is there a way of distinguishing Taiwan (which uses Traditional Chinese script) from mainland China (uses Simplified Chinese script)? I didn't see anything for that, so I expect to run them all as Chinese.

I'm trying to learn all the ins and outs, but I think I've given myself a complicated task here.... KarenHunt 21:48, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to that question. I'll point Ahasuerus here -- he'll know. As for the entry, it shouldn't be too bad. You enter what you have and then make that a variant of the "canonical" version. There's no chaining to keep track of. So in the example here, there's translated version of the title and the translated version of the author's name, but we don't do a variant for each; we just point this title + author credit at the English title + English author credit. If you go to Lois McMaster Bujold's summary and scroll down to The Curse of Chalion, you'll see:

2 The Curse of Chalion (2001) also appeared as:

Variant Title: 王城闇影 [Chinese] (2007) [as by 洛伊絲．莫瑪絲特．布喬 ]

So it's showing both the translated title and the translated author name. I hope that helps. --MartyD 03:00, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Chiming in re: Simplified Chinese versus Traditional Chinese. At this time the list of languages supported by the ISFDB software includes only one language code for "Chinese". I could certainly implement additional language codes like we did with "Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic" and "Serbo-Croatian Latin" a while back. However, we generally follow the MARC list of languages as maintained by the Library of Congress and all I see there is one code for "Chinese". We generally don't add codes every time a language adopts an orthography reform, but I don't know enough about Chinese to judge. Let me ask User:Linguist to join the discussion. Ahasuerus 03:51, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello. Chinese (Mandarin) and Taiwanese are two distinct languages, the latter belonging to the Min dialect group. It is written with traditional Chinese characters, but its writing system is not normalized; and there are many visible differences with written Mandarin Chinese. Taiwanese can also be noted in a romanization system called Pe̍h-ōe-jī or POJ; see here for more details. Note there also exists a local variety of Mandarin, but that would fit under "Chinese". Hope that helps, Linguist 10:15, 13 January 2017 (UTC).

Thanks for clarifying! Checking ISO 639, I see that they consider "Min Nan Chinese" to be a separate language, a member of the Chinese "macrolanguage". Checking other languages, it looks like ISO 639 calls a number of (what is usually considered) dialects separate languages. For example, they list 4 Albanian languages, 2 Yiddish languages, 2 Estonian languages, 30 (!) Arabic languages, etc. I would hesitate to use their approach in part because it would lead to fragmentation and in part because we are typically not qualified to decide whether a particular Arabic book uses "Hadrami Arabic", "Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic" or some other Arabic dialect. If memory serves, that was one of the reasons why we decided to use the language codes listed by the Library of Congress instead. Ahasuerus 15:57, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, Serbo-Croatian is going to give me a bit of trouble later as well! There's a group of Lois's books published in Croatia and a distinct group of books published in Serbia (the books are using the roman alphabet instead of Cyrillic, for what that's worth). KarenHunt 11:34, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

That's right, Serbian books can use either Cyrillic or Latin. There are a number of other "multi-script" languages like that. Ahasuerus 15:34, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Looking up in wikipedia says that the two groups consider their languages to be distinct. I'm guessing I'll stick with "Serbo-Croatian Latin" for both and simply annotate in the notes which group they are. KarenHunt 11:34, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

In the case of Serbian and Croatian, we follow the lead of the Library of Congress. Prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, they used "Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic" and "Serbo-Croatian Latin", so that's what we use for pre-1991 books. After the breakup, they switched to "Serbian" and "Croatian", which is what we use for post-1991 books. Ahasuerus 15:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Except that Serbian may be written in either Latin or Cyrillic. The orthography is nicely designed so that there is a one-to-one correspondence between letters in the two alphabets, making transliteration simple. So you should check, if possible, which alphabet the work is actually printed in; it may be in Cyrillic but transliterated to Latin in a secondary source. In either case, the language would be Serbian... I think the "Serbian" language code covers both alphabets, right? --Vasha 19:29, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

That's right. We use only one language code for multi-script languages like Serbian and Azerbaijani. Ahasuerus 19:32, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I know the Serbian books are written with the Latin alphabet for the books I wish to put in, so that'll be easy enough. If we have Serbian and Croatian as distinct, that'll be very helpful for me - all of Lois's books for those languages were translated after 1991. If not, I'll make a notation in user notes. 23 (non-English) languages in all for her books.... Vaguely wondering if that's a record for this site, or if someone else has more.

Is Taiwanese likely to show up as distinct from Chinese? (I think there might be a bunch of work going through all the "Chinese" language entries to sort them out if so, but I guess it's not my suffering...) For now, I'm content to call it Chinese and make note of the distinction. KarenHunt 21:07, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Τα όρη του θρήνου

I'm confused by your proposed deletion of Τα όρη του θρήνου. Per the moderator's note, it sounds like you want to delete because you want to update the notes to include the translator. All publication fields are editable. You don't have to delete and start over. In this case, use the "Edit This Pub" link on the left menu and you can add to the "Pub Note" field. If there is something else you are trying to do, let me know. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:48, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

me confused here is nothing new. I've been putting the translator into the "Title Note" field when I add books normally. But when I bring up the editor, it doesn't look to me like that field is present. I can add to "Pub Note", but not to "Title Note". I have a worse problem with one of the other Greek books I added - I put the wrong ISBN into it. That field also doesn't appear to be editable.KarenHunt 15:32, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

For your first problem, the publication is editable here and the title is editable here. Behind all this is the fact that when entering a book, even if there's only one screen, you're in fact creating two records (one for the "immaterial" title, the other for the "physical" publication) with different specific fields. After these creations the records are to be accessed separately so "Title Note" is only editable at title level. For the ISBN, it's strange, to which publication are you refering to? Hauck 15:41, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

For ISBN it looks like I jumped to conclusions. One of the edit screens for the three Greek books claimed the ISBN was a duplicate of another ISBN, so I was guessing that I must have mixed two of my records and put the same ISBN into two records. So I spent an hour this morning sorting all the information I had into what I believe is three correct records for the database, and I've been working out how to put it all in correctly. When the title editor didn't offer me a way to change some fields, I figured I ought to delete the three entries and start over on all three. Now, though, I'm figuring on trying to rescue them better, using the correct editor this time. It doesn't look like I have the ISBN wrong anywhere after all (checked that), so I don't know what the claimed conflict on the editing page was after all. I've been going slowly for these early books because I hope to be able to put a lot in at once as soon as I understand the system here better.... (I tried counting the number of books I'm wanting to add in all - looks like it's going to come to something like 250.) KarenHunt 16:06, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

The system will provide a warning if there is a duplicate ISBN. This is done so that if you add a new pub, you are giving a warning if the pub possibly already exists. However, there are times when a duplicate ISBN is valid - for example, when adding a later printing of an existing pub. It also occasionally happens that a publisher re-uses an ISBN for a new book. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:11, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

CHAPBOOKs

CHAPBOOK publications, short fiction published standalone, have two content records: a CHAPBOOK title record for the publication and a SHORTFICTION title record for the actual story. The title of both records will be the same. With that in mind:

• Λαβύρινθος: I have rejected your edit that would change CHAPBOOK type to SHORTFICTION type. The CHAPBOOK record is needed for the publication and there is already an existing SHORTFICTION record. I have also rejected the variant. The SHORTFICTION is already varianted to the original English version (I did that earlier).
• Τα σύνορα του άπειρου: I accepted these changes. But in addition to changing the NOVEL title record to being a SHORTFICTION, the publication has to be changed to the CHAPBOOK type and a CHAPBOOK title record added to it. I've made these changes.

Please let me know if that explanation was clear. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:44, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's clear. I'll try to match that system when I get to the other instances of short fiction/chapbook later. Thanks,

KarenHunt 17:06, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Loiz Mekmaster Bižol

Hello, I've reverted the language for this author to "English", as precised in the title of the field it's LMMB's working language (english) not the language in which this specific pseudonym is used. Hauck 19:20, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I see. The others will need reverting as well. Thanks, KarenHunt 21:11, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I've changed the greek one that I found. Hauck 07:40, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

ISBN-10/-13

Hello, please correct the ISBN to ISBN-10 for the following: 9788674365908,9780006951476, 9780006951483, 9780006951490. These are pre-2000 titles and so can't have an ISBN-13 as you probably entered it. Thanks. Hauck 07:42, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Will do. I've wondered what's the correct thing to do with that situation - google searches like the isbn13's better pretty often, which is why I switched to them whenever that works out for my searches. I'll do this for future entries as well...

I think I'm almost to the end of easy mistakes I might make (though there's still a large pile of omnibuses I can get confused with later for French, German, and Russian). I wonder what my harder mistakes will be...

Thanks, KarenHunt 13:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Kario mokinys

Hello, I've approved your submission here but note that the title language is set to "english" which is probably false. It's likely due to your default language setting and is an "easy" mistake frequent with contributors that work on multi-language publications. Hauck 15:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

yep, I've already got it marked in my notes as needing correction. (I keep wishing for a button on the submitted-to-database page that says "go back and fix typos" - seeing the info laid out in a different manner gives my eyes a second chance to see what I missed doing. It's actually Lithuanian.) KarenHunt 15:21, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Barrayar

Regarding the moderator's note on your Barrayar submission: You can link to Amazon for the cover image. Since your note states that the cover artist credit is from Amazon, than you should add that to the publication notes. Whenever information comes from a secondary source, it should be noted in the publication notes. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:12, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

A follow-up to the note to the moderator in your subsequent submission. I found the artwork on Les Edwards' website, so keeping the credit is fine. I added a note and link (also added the link as a web page for the cover title record). --MartyD 02:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I think there are a couple more covers that I'll be doing something similar with later, where I deduce an artist by knowing another one for the language and doing searches to find out if I can hook up the first artist to one or more of the other books (a Korean one was that way, if I recall correctly) KarenHunt 02:11, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I saw you found the same link. Your note trumped mine upon acceptance (which is fine). When you find covers like that, you can make the later usages variants of the original appearance, even though the titles are not themselves related. The relationship among them is the common artwork, not the work illustrated. --MartyD 02:15, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

That gets to a question I've had. I've put up a small pile of pictures into the site, some with attribution and others not. Nothing I can do about the ones I haven't found attribution for just now (though I like to imagine someday solving them). But the ones I know about... I've seen a few places where isfdb is aware that the same picture is being used for multiple covers, and I've thought I ought to try to spot such things myself. But when I go to the artist page, it's not easy to search it to find the pictures by that artist to be able to sort them into variants. Is there a good way to do it? I keep imagining a page where all the pictures by a given artist are displayed together, and I can eyeball them to find the match, then click on it and indicate that this picture is a variant of that one. KarenHunt 14:49, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is not such a feature. It has been proposed, but not implemented yet. Sometimes, for translations, the artwork gets reused from an original language publication so you can go to the publication's title listing and look at all the covers ever used for that title. But if the artwork came from a different publication, that doesn't obviously help. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:23, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Net addresses

Hello Karen. When indicating Internet addresses in the notes, as you did in your recent submissions, you may use this format to create a link : <A href="address">Site designation</a>. This will give you for instance :

Data from <A href="https://www.rahvaraamat.ee/p/m%C3%A4lu/802797/et?isbn=9789985338254#">publisher's website</a>, which will appear in the notes (but not on this page) as "Data from publisher's website".

This way, any user can just click on the link instead of having to copy and paste the address if they want to use it. Thanks ! Linguist 10:47, 17 January 2017 (UTC).

Shall do - I'm still learning... As a note, I looked at that site more closely, and it's not where I got the cover artist names from (at least not for all the books). Should I go back over them and put extra refs into the notes when there's missing information? KarenHunt 11:53, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

It's always useful to indicate one's sources. By all means, do so when you've got time ! Linguist 12:51, 17 January 2017 (UTC).

남자의 나라 아토스

I have your variant of 남자의 나라 아토스 on hold. You are making it a variant of new Korean title. That doesn't seem correct. It should be varianted to the English version. Am I missing something? -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I wanted to call it a second publication of the same title - there were two distinct publications of The Vor Game in Korean, with the same titles, so I tried making one a variant of the other. I don't know if that's right or wrong, to be honest. (I made the two distinct publications of The Warrior's Apprentice be variants of the English version because they had different titles. I don't know what's right, so I put a message on the portal help page as well.

I find the Korean versions of the book somewhat confusing, I admit.KarenHunt 18:28, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Caught your other comment. Looks like all four should be distinct, since the translators are not the same for the two The Vor Game books. (They are the same for the two The Warrior's Apprentice books, but those have different titles.)KarenHunt 18:32, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes. Variants cannot have variants. We only have one level so if there are two translations, they are both variants of the original work. They don't have a direct relationship between themselves. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Duplicate ISBN

Hello, can you have a look at the two publications that share the same ISBN 953-6450-56-9 ? Thanks. Hauck 16:22, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Will do. I won't rule out a typo by me.... KarenHunt 16:35, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Got it - the isbn is correct for Pamćenje and not for Ples Zrcala. I was experiencing a bit of tangledness going through the new books at about that point. I thought I'd gotten them all fixed, but I think I'll have another look at the Croatian books to make sure there aren't more problems KarenHunt 16:40, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Zimoslavni Darovi

Hello Karen, as our resident expert on Bujold-in-translation (and probable author of the record), can you have a look at this CHAPBOOK. It lacks a content (you've got to add the novella) and the date is quite strange: 2002 for a text that appeared in english only in 2004 (I even remember to buy the NAL collection to have this text). Thanks. Hauck 08:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

That tale is famous for coming out in Croatian before it came out in any other language, including English (Russian was second, English third). There's a bit of a story behind that, mostly coming down to American publishers not wanting to do just a novella. I'll fix the content, though! KarenHunt 11:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Hauck 13:56, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Transliteration of Бараяр

Hi. I only know some Russian and no Bulgarian, but I think the transliteration "Bariar" for Бараяр isn't correct. I think "я" would be "ia" (or "ya" or "ja") in its own right, which would mean there should be another "a" before it. See what you think. --MartyD 15:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I'd say you're right - it should be aya instead of ia there. I'll be making changes soon (adding a pic), so I can make the correction then if you'd prefer I make the change. KarenHunt 15:38, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

That's fine. Thanks. --MartyD 16:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Наемниците На Дендарии and collection, omnibus, and content indicators

I am going to accept your Наемниците На Дендарии submission but have various thoughts about it for your consideration before you go back and edit it. For starters, to answer your question about what to do for contents, de facto standard seems to be to use the lowercase, two-character abbreviation for the length. So, for example, here you would use 1N+1nv (nv = novella, nt = novelette, ss = short story; I suppose you could use es = essay or pm = poem if the need arose).

That said, I also wanted to point out that a novel collected into a publication with shorter works doesn't necessarily have to be typed OMNIBUS. It can be typed COLLECTION. The help around this is fuzzy, but the intent is that if two works were published as standalone "book" publications in their own right, then a publication collecting them should be an OMNIBUS. But a book collecting one previously-published book and some additional short works would normally be typed COLLECTION. See Help:Screen:EditPub#Pub_Type and this example. So if "Планините на скръбта" was not published as a standalone work (or was published as such, but only after it appeared in this publication), you could use COLLECTION here. OMNIBUS is not wrong; I'm just mentioning the possibility.

Follow-up: I see "The Mountains of Mourning" was published as a chapterbook, so OMNIBUS is probably the way to go here. --MartyD 16:23, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

And finally, I don't know Bulgarian capitalization rules, but in the absence of any actual knowledge, I would be inclined to use "на" instead of "На" on the general grounds that short prepositions should not be capitalized. So I figured I'd point it out in case its capitalization isn't a deliberate choice. --MartyD 16:17, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the followup (though TMoM wasn't published in Bulgarian separately - does that matter?)

Yes, it appears that the "На" should be "на" - I think the capitalized version is a holdover from my original research and made it past my correction stages. I'll fix that when I come back to it.

As a different question - I figured on going through more of my books at home to verify them, and I was wondering - if a book is cloned from another, and it has a different price shown on the cover, should a new cover be uploaded? (see http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?217865 for the one I want to verify)

KarenHunt 16:28, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it matters whether it was published separately in Bulgarian. I think the spirit is whether the collecting is of works that appeared in some singleton form separately, in the canonical sense. Translations are sort of a bolt-on treatment and are not thoroughly considered within all of the various practices and policies.

For your question about the covers, a matching cover image is always better than some other edition's cover, as it the cover can provide provenance for some of the data (e.g., the price) for the specific edition. In fact, if the actual cover differs from the linked image, really you should describe the differences in the pub's notes. The cover title records are merged, so it's fine for each printing to have its own cover image, if appropriate. --MartyD 18:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Regarding this omnibus - it doesn't match any of Lois's English-language omnibuses, so I can't variant it to anything. Is there a standard way to cause it to appear in her main list of books, or should it stay as listed only under Лоис Макмастър Бюджолд? KarenHunt 18:02, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

You can make a variant to a new English parent title and name. Her main bibliography will list the English title and then say that it only appeared as the Bulgarian title as by the Bulgarian version of her name. It should look fine. --MartyD 18:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Sources for Bulgarian books - chitanka

Hi Karen,

I saw in За честта на Вор that you linked to chitanka. Chitanka, as popular as it is, is a bit in a breach of the copyright laws - some publishers have agreements, some do not; some simply ignore it. If you want to link to a Bulgarian source, SFBF is a better idea. Thanks! Annie 22:40, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't known they were a problematic group. (I do know of and avoid some such groups in other languages) I've gotten a few things from sfbg instead of chitanka - would it be best to replace the references that are to chitanka with some from sfbg instead? (There are still about a dozen books I haven't put up yet - it won't take me that much work to change them over, I'm mostly wondering about the ones that are already up.) KarenHunt 22:53, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah... SFBG is only bibliography (which is not a problem under copyright laws), chitanka is bibliography and full texts (and that later one gets them in hot water now and then). They are a good resource - just not really legal. I'd use SFBG (and plan to when I get the rest of the Bulgarian books in). If you do not feel like changing the ones you added, I can update them for you - I'd rather not see chitanka linked from here - it probably won't get shut down permanently but still :) Annie 23:00, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I can take care of them - I'm doing the collection a few at a time because of the uncertainties that I have, so I'll just revisit them and change over the references. For an example of uncertainty, The Spirit Ring (Оковният пръстен) is listed as being by the publisher Amber, but the Bard website lists it as one of their own. Should I list it as being by Amber or by Bard? KarenHunt 23:06, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Officially it is ИК „Амбър“. It is an imprint of Bard technically - which is why Bard lists it on their site :) So you list it as Амбър (all of them have only that name on them - none of the books say Bard). As I said earlier - just ping me for any Bulgarian books questions. If I do not know the answer, I can ask. Annie 23:14, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I think I'll actually have more Russian questions than Bulgarian ones. I'm mostly succeeding in figuring out the situation with the Bulgarian books (apart from the troubles with chitanka and Amber vs Bard). Russian I'll be seeing three ISBNs for single books and half a dozen publishers, along with a really tangled mess for omnibuses. Fantlab is a big help, but they don't seem to know why 3 ISBNs any more than I do.

I may be able to help with Russian as well :) The multiple ISBNs was sometimes a tax-trick (so they claim less copies), sometimes different printing presses were doing impressions and sometimes they just messed up. If you get me examples, I may be able to find out. Welcome to the new order in Eastern Europe :) Annie 23:28, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Here's a pile of mysterious ones (more are strange than this, but this gives the picture):

• 2012, Игра форов / Igra forov (ebook and print: The Vor Game), ISBN 9785271442605; published by AST, Astrel, Neoclassic; translated by I. Dernov-Pigalev, illustrated by Anatoly Dubovik
  

  This one is published by Астрель, which is a part of the АСТ publishing group. Neoclassic is in the same publishing group and occasionally get printed on reprints. You can ignore it when adding this book. The "97852" prefix is theirs for the most part (to help you untangle multiple ISBNs below) Annie 18:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• 2012, Братья по оружию / Bratya po oruzhiyu (ebook and print: Brothers in Arms); ISBN 9785271439186, 9789851815919; published by Astrel, Harvest, Neoclassic; translated by Tatiana Cherezova, illustrated by Anatoly Dubovik

  Joined edition between Астрель in Moscow and Харвест in Minsk. The double ISBN is because there is one per publisher. My understanding is that all copies carried both publisher names AND both ISBNs but I will see if I can find more information. 9785271439186 is the Астрель ISBN; the other one is the Харвест one - "97898" is their prefix at least in these days. Annie 18:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• 2007, Гражданская кампания / Grazhdanskaya Kampania (A Civil Campaign), ISBN 9785170431823, 9785971348986, 9785976228887, 9789851634749; published by AST, AST Moscow, Khranitel', Neoclassic; translated by Оlga Kosova, illustrated by Anatoly Dubovik

  Хранитель is yet another part of the АСТ publishing group. It is always printed on the books together with the name АСТ, even if it pretends to be its own publisher. This is another Moscow/Minsk joined venture (You are missing Харвест, here but they are part of the venture - see for example). 9789851634749 is the Харвест ISBN; the others are the other publishers. Annie 18:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• 2007, Дипломатическая неприкосновенность / Diplomaticheskaya neprikosnovennost (Diplomatic Immunity); ISBN 9785170443178, 9785971350583, 9785976234673, 9789851614239; published by AST Moscow, Khranitel', Harvest, AST; translated by Olga Kosova, Tatiana Cherezova; illustrated by Anatoly Dubovik
• 2012, Дипломатическая неприкосновенность / Diplomaticheskaya neprikosnovennost (Diplomatic Immunity); ISBN 9785271401404, 9785421531913; published by Astrel, Poligraphizdat, Neoclassic; translated by Olga Kosova, cover by AB Tkachenko
• 2011, Криоожог / Krioozhog (Cryoburn); ISBN 9785170655793, 9785271393006, 9789851806160; published by Astrel, Harvest, AST, Neoclassic; translated by Sergey Lobanov, cover by AB Tkachenko (also 2012)

  Харвест ISBN: 9789851806160, Астрель: 9785271393006, the other one is АСТ. I think you got the idea? :) Annie 18:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Let me see what I can discover. For a few of them, it is changes in names of Publishers (the entry is for reprints as well while here in ISFDB we keep every printing separate), some of them are combined efforts between publishers. Will get back to you in a while when I chase down some answers. Annie 23:37, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Though one question: The book Falling Free (Без гравитация) has a montage picture inset; I got the background part of it as coming from a David B Mattingly picture, but the foreground woman is a mystery to me. Do I list cover artists when I only know one of several?

KarenHunt 23:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Add notes :) I'd add David B Mattingly as cover artist and then also add a note in the coverart record that there are other artists involved and for each parts, still unknown. Annie 23:28, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Will do. :) KarenHunt 23:32, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Bulgarian Transliterations

Hello Karen,

I had been looking at some of the new Bulgarian books you had been adding (and you are doing a wonderful work of it) and I saw a bit of inconsistency in the transliteration of some letters. Я/я should always be Ya/ya (I saw both just a and ja in a few places); Ж/ж should be Zh/zh (as much as one would like to use "j" as it is not used elsewhere, that is the official transliteration) and Ц/ц is Ts/ts (and no "c"). And under the current official rule, ъ is "a". If you would rather use the shorter and different forms, that's fine but I would then advise to add a second transliteration as well. And I do not mind just fixing them all at the end if you would rather not deal with it of course :) Annie 18:10, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Please also remember to variant them to their canonical titles as they show up on our cleanup reports (I can only suppose that Комар is Komarr but my linguistic skills stop there). Hauck 18:19, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Herve, she usually does the next day after they are approved overnight - and if any show up a second day, I will make sure I variant it :) Annie 18:28, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Yeah, the Bulgarian books were a bit less carefully worked in my first learning passes through Lois's books - I think the transliterations are holdovers from what I got from the Dendarii website. I'll fix them up if you don't get there first. I expect to get the variant-ing for the newest books done pretty soon. Annnie: I'm content to let you fix the transliterations for the ones that are in place already, and I'll be sure to do the others better, KarenHunt 21:38, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Not surprised - there are 20 ways to transliterate basically - there are even people that use x for ъ. That above is the official transliteration table (and multiple transliterations are never a problem - I had been thinking if i want to do at least one more from the common ways from way back when). No worries, we will get them all sorted out. Did you see my notes above on your mystery Russian books? :) Annie 22:20, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I had missed them - thanks very much! :)

After a closer look - so I guess I'll be putting up titles according to ISBN for these? (I can match up the Astrel ISBNs pretty well with this. I'll probably have more questions when I get to the Russian books, but this should get me pretty well along in figuring things out) KarenHunt 00:50, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I would use the Астрель ISBN and name and add notes for the other publishers and list all the other ISBNs in the notes... As long as they are consistent, it is easy to change if something else is decided later on. And yes - just ping me if you need me - I may not be able to find all the answers but I may be able to dig out something.

ISFDB do not support multiple publishers at this point (unless if you do something like Астрель / Харвест for the ones that are the joint Moscow/Minsk production and then these won't show on Астрель's page. Plus this won't be a real publisher anyway so I would stick with Астрель) but it is on the list of projects posted lately so we may as well see it soon-ish. You know what - I will actually post in the conversation about multiple publisher about this case - let's see what everyone else thinks. Annie 00:58, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good. Where's the conversation going on? KarenHunt 01:00, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Over here. I was just coming back to post a link for you. It's the 4th bullet point from the start - you can not miss the Russian title in the middle of it :) Annie 01:12, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Authors with no titles

FYI, when you make an edit that takes away the last/only credit to a particular author/artist/editor, the system automatically removes the author page when that edit is approved. --MartyD 15:40, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Good, thanks! I was worried that I'd have to figure out how to do that... KarenHunt 17:07, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Artist's Preferred Name for Cover Art

I'm going to reject your submission to make a new parent title for this cover art. Ordinarily, we don't create a new title record unless the item (in this case the artwork) was published with that title. We wouldn't consider the web sites that you indicated to be a publication. If the artwork were to be published with the title "Dead City - Departure", say in art book, we could make such an INTERIORART title a variant of the cover art. In most cases the title of the first publication would be considered canonical. What I would recommend, is that you update the notes of the COVERART title, stating what the artist's preferred title is. Let me know if my explanation is confusing or you have any questions. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 22:39, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

That's fine, I'll put it down in the notes. I wasn't at all sure my action was legit. (there are others where I stuck with making annotations as well) KarenHunt 22:43, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Джентълмен Джоул и Червената кралица change

You had a submission go through to updateДжентълмен Джоул и Червената кралица, but it made no changes. You may want to check on it. --MartyD 03:10, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Rats. I was trying to remove the artist from the book - I had thought originally that it was the same cover as on the original English one, but it turns out to be a different work of art, therefore a different person. Since I don't know who that was, I figured on simply deleting the name. Looks like that didn't work. KarenHunt 12:40, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello, I've rejected your submission for changing the artist to "X" as it's not the actual credit. I've also deleted the credit to Miller as it seemed to be your first intention. Hauck 18:40, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. My apologies for the X - I was getting very frustrated (I tried 3 times to remove the artist credit without success. I still don't know what I was doing wrong. KarenHunt 18:48, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

No problem. Suppose that you want to delete (completely) the artist credit for this pub. The first stage is to go at publication level so the same place and use the "Remove Titles From This Pub" link on the left. You will be lead to a screen where you'll be able to delete the COVER ART record by ticking the corresponding box. This will only delete the publication record for the COVERART. To complete your task, you'll have to go at the COVERART title level here which would be without publication attached. You'll then need to delete it (the title record) via the "Delete This Title" link. Hope this hemps. Hauck 18:56, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I see it now, thanks! :) KarenHunt 19:44, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

"Generic" titles

When we have essays using common titles likely to be reused over different text by the same author -- "Introduction", "Foreword", "Afterword", etc. -- we add the containing publication's title in parentheses to disambiguate. That principle holds true for non-English titles of the same nature. So I did that to "Nachwort" in (Barrayar Band 1: Cordelias Ehre. I'm not sure I'd notice in all of the languages you've been working with lately.... --MartyD 03:20, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

And in Barrayar Band 3: Gefährliche Missionen. Handy illustration! Of course, if both were the same text, then we'd have to do something else. --MartyD 03:24, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! I was wondering what was going to happen with those essays with the same names... I suppose I should have asked KarenHunt 21:34, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

You mean you didn't see it, buried way down in the very last bullet of this section of the help? :-) BTW, we use the same technique in some other cases -- for example, a recurring magazine feature given the same title each issue. --MartyD 17:49, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Scary thing was I probably did see it when I was first looking through all the FAQ and edit helps. But it wasn't relevant quite then, so I forgot... Working this database is very complicated. I know a lot more than I did when I started, though, so I probably would benefit by another read through the help pages - some things will mean more to me now than they did at first. KarenHunt 23:44, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

The Bulgarian titles

Hello Karen,

I had been looking at this series and there are a lot of publications out of sequence. Where do the dates for the later reprints come from - the publisher site do not have them. Are they from the books? And as they are reprints, there should be a note in them saying that they are "second printing" or whatever they are so it is clear why we have two separate entries. Regards, Annie 19:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe I have been basing the presence of two printings on sfbg's information compared to the publisher site's. I don't have the books, so I don't know about second printings. (I fantasize sometimes about asking Lois about the questions I have, but she told me she can't read the non-English books, so I don't think I'll get anywhere with that.) I'll get back to you when I've re-learned the sources of the information. (probably the weekend, but maybe sooner - I have too little time tonight to look it over, but maybe tomorrow will work out.) KarenHunt 21:23, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! :) The earlier dates for your duplicate ones are always correct by the way - in the early years of the series there were exactly 10 per year so it was easy to know which year they are supposed to be in. It is the latter ones (small numbers showing late) that I am wondering about. No rush - I am just going to be adding more books in the series (finally) so wanted to clean it up first if needed :) Annie 21:31, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

So I'm mostly interested in the later dates in that case? (I'd still be checking it all, because I want to be sure I've sorted everything into the correct piles, but it's good to know where the particular questions are.) KarenHunt 21:33, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Yep - if you look at the series - anything that looks out of order (like #19 as late as 1999 (books in 1999 are the 6x ones, the first printing of #19 is in 1995 (it is technically in the 1994 series but it did not make it until early the next year))) is second or later printing or the dates are weird. Annie 21:52, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

The later dates are the ones I got from the bard website, it would seem. see http://www.bard.bg/book/?id=176 for Barrayar (about halfway down the page, in a box on the right edge of the page). I have about a 1/2 hour before I head out, but this is a more interesting use of it than other tasks.... KarenHunt 22:13, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Later printings then. Can you add notes that the dates are from the publisher site (specifically) and that these appear to be later printings. Or I can add it if you do not want to deal with that. Annie 22:15, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I can take care of it tomorrow (definitely not enough time for that right now) KarenHunt 22:16, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Not urgent at all :) Have a great day/evening :) Annie 22:17, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

German Barrayar omnibuses

Hi, I somewhat modified the titles and notes for the Heyne omnibuses according to Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, which is the much more professional database - as it supplies prices and exact titles - than chpr.at (nevertheless the german language site for contents). Thanks, Christian Stonecreek 15:55, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I hadn't known about that site - I should probalby have a look at it. KarenHunt 21:49, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Changes to Penric's Mission ebook

Hi, I have made some changes to the ebook of Penric's Mission.
First, I have removed the ISBN 978-1-5384-0545-1, as that belongs to the Audio CD version, per [Amazon.com]. It appears the ebook does not have an ISBN. Second, I've added a lot of information to the Notes section about what is and is not stated on the Title page and Copyright page, plus links to document the cover artist and release date & price. Third, I've added the Amazon ASIN in the External IDs section.
BungalowBarbara 01:18, 12 March 2018 (EDT)

Changes to Mira's Last Dance ebook

I have also made some changes to the Mira's Last Dance ebook.
First, I've changed the publisher to Spectrum Literary Agency, which matches the other ebook in the same series. I notice that the [Amazon.com page] for "Mira's Last Dance" does not list a Publisher - just a Sold by. If you look at other books in the series on Amazon, such as "Penric's Mission" or "Penric's Fox"], you'll see that they list both a Publisher and a Sold by in the same section. So I think it is an omission on Amazon's part. Barnes & Noble does list the publisher as Spectrum Literary Agency.
I have also added a bunch of information to the Notes about what is on the Title page & Copyright page of book, plus some supporting links.
And I've added the cover artist, per the copyright page.
BungalowBarbara 01:33, 12 March 2018 (EDT)