User talk:Mskerstetter

Welcome!

Hello, Mskerstetter, 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
• FAQ
• Wiki editing help - Tips on how to use the wiki-specific features when editing wiki pages.
• 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! Annie 19:20, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

N. K. Jemisin's books

I approved all 3 but made a few small changes:

• When the price is not specified as here, do not put "see note", just leave the field empty.
• We use "Orbit" for the UK Orbit and "Orbit (US)" for the US one - so I corrected that in the Publisher field.

As these were issued as a set, you should also add the complete set (as an omnnibus, then you import inside the 3 novels and the collection and all stories from it). I can assist with that if you need help and/or guidance. The results are here, here and here. I responded to you over in the Help page but if you have any additional questions, do not hesitate to ask here or over there.

Welcome again! Annie 19:25, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Annie, is clicking on the + tab and typing in here how I reply to you? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mskerstetter (talk • contribs) .

That starts a new conversation but it works as well :) Instead look next to the title of this conversation ("N. K. Jemisin's books"), on the far right side of the screen. there is a small Edit there. Click that. It will open the editor. Scroll to the bottom and type your message. You can sign using ~~~~. Annie 20:40, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Ah, thanks. Hopefully I'll learn quickly. I just submitted the collection except that I forgot to indicate hardcover format. Looking back, I think I was also supposed to put C in the Contents field. I'm still unclear about adding/merging/importing the contents as you mentioned in the Help Desk post. Do I sign off literally with just the four tildes or do I need to type in the surrounding html codes, the user id and date information? Guess I'll try the tildes now. ;^) Mskerstetter 21:09, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Nope, no need to add C - it will happen automatically. The Contents field is only for Omnibuses :) I fixed the format while approving and fixed the title - we normalize case (See the help page. Each field on the form has a small question mark - if you click it, we have a help page there).

It is just the tildes - they get converted :)

For the import. Let me explain with "The Awakened Kingdom". You go to the author page or use search to look for it here on the site. You find it here. See the number in the corner - 2734851? Note that down somewhere. Find this number for all stories in the collection.

Now go to the publication I just approved. here it is. Look on the left menu and find "Import Content" and click on it. It will open this page. As we will import individual titles and not all titles from another book, you need Option 2. Add the IDs we found earlier, one per line in there (the + sign opens new lines). Press Import Titles. Now you can add the page numbers and you can also add any additional titles that you cannot import because we either do not have them OR we do not have them under the exactly same title as they are in the book. And then submit and a moderator can approve.

Let me know if I can explain something more :) Annie 21:19, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Ok, that seemed clear enough. I gave it a shot and submitted the new information. Hope it looks right. Thank you so much for your help! Oh, incidentally, how do I get the tildes to put in Mike rather than Mskerstetter? Mskerstetter 21:40, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Any time :)

Change your "Nickname" in preferences :)

We cannot have a collection inside of a collection. So instead of importing the other collection, we import the contents of it. I fixed it after approving-- when you have a chance, update the page numbers of the stories.

If the set was sold as a SET and not just matching hardcovers, you should really add it is an omnibus as well and then import the novels, the collection (here you can) and then the stories as well. If you are not sure how, I can create the omnibus for you and then you can just verify? Annie 21:46, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Pages for the stories added. Yes, the four volumes were sold as matching number sets, but this is not the definition of an omnibus. An omnibus is a volume containing several novels or other items previously published separately. These are still separate volumes. Had the issuer chosen to do so, he could have sold the volumes individually. Mskerstetter 22:06, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

In the strict sense of the word- correct. But in this DB, we record Boxed Sets and any other sets as Type: Omnibus and a note explaining what it is exactly. So yes - this will be an omnibus here. And the fact that they can be also sold individually is why I approved you adding them individually - they exist as both. See: [1], the part "Boxed Set::

• Boxed sets. Boxed sets which have additional data elements (ISBNs, cover art, etc) not present in the individual books that they collect should be entered as OMNIBUS publications. Boxed sets which do not have additional data elements and are merely bundlings of pre-existent books should not be entered.

If this set has a limitation number and a box(?), it has additional elements so it gets added. If they do not have a box but are just a matching set, then no need to add indeed. Annie 22:14, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Well, there isn't a box, but they do each have a limitation page showing the number and the author's signature. So I guess by DB definitions, this is an omnibus. But dinner's ready, so it'll have to come later. Mike 22:20, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

If it is just the limitation page then not really an omnibus under our rules either so all is good - you really need a box or a common ISBN for the whole set or something like that for the paper sets to qualify. Thanks for clarifying - for some reason I thought it HAS a box. Bon Appetite! :) Annie 22:25, 6 June 2020 (EDT)

Hi Annie. So I scanned the covers, but I see an instruction limiting the size to 600 pixels a side. How does someone ensure the scan meets that limit? Incidentally, I submitted new, similar publications for each of The Broken Earth trilogy titles. Mike 14:54, 7 June 2020 (EDT)

Depends on the type of scanner you have usually - each has its own settings on the size of the scan. And if you are working on the image later, you can also resize there. Annie 16:14, 7 June 2020 (EDT)

The Pages question

Hello,

I moved your question to the Help Desk (here) and posted some initial answers. The Help Desk is the best place to ask such questions - while someone will notice the question on the other pages, it may take weeks or months - as they are not monitored and only a standard sweep for advertisements and weird edits via Current Edits will unearth it :) Annie 23:06, 9 June 2020 (EDT)

The imports

You are hitting two different new things at the same time so let's see if I can assist in making them less weird.

• When you import a complete book (what you had been doing with "The Saga of Pliocene Exile", it imports all internal works except for the container. For novels, the container is the novel itself. For collections, it is the collection. So when you do omnibuses like this one, each book is imported with two Import submissions:
  • The one you are doing which will bring in all maps and introductions and so on.
  • A second one, using the lower part of the Import screen with the ID of the novel only.
  • So if you want to import this book, you do the Book Import (Option 1) with ID 188157 and the Novel import (Option 2) with ID 1572 (for this). Then you do it again for the next book. :)
  • Alternatively you can import just the novels instead by just doing the second import.
  • We do not have a book to book link so we import the contents itself.
• Now you have everything inside but you have the number of pages of the individual books so the software has no clue how to order as it does not know they are not from the same numbering. This is where the piped order comes into play - you use an ordering number. So you do something like 1|1000 instead of just 1. This will show the first number but it will sort by the second number (so 1|1 will be the same as just putting 1). For omnibuses like this one, I would usually use |1000, |1001 and so on for the contents of the first book, |2000 for the second and so on to keep it easy.

See how I reordered here. I will approve your other imports and do the second imports and the reordering again. Let me know if you have any questions and/or concerns. Annie 13:38, 10 June 2020 (EDT)

All is approved and you can see the result. The third novel was imported from an edition with no maps an so on - was that intentional? Annie 13:45, 10 June 2020 (EDT)

Oy. My head hurts. Let's see if I can address all this.

• Last question first. No, I didn't "intentionally" fail to import the extra material. Looking at the book I imported this book, it doesn't look like anyone included the extra material in the contents. I guess I'll have to do that. Once I do, will the extra material appear in the omnibus contents automatically?
• That being said, examining the second book that was imported this book, I see that the first of the maps listed in the contents is NOT included in the omnibus contents. Any idea why?
• Yes, I used Option 1 on the Book Import screen for my inputs. You say above that I should do both options. I don't understand why. What does the second one do that the first one doesn't? And you tell me what I CAN do, but what SHOULD I do?
• As for the piped ordering, where does this happen? What input screen?
• Lastly, I still need to import this book into the omnibus, so I'll try your dual import thing with it. However, I see that like The Golden Torc, nobody has put in its contents, so I guess I'll do that first.

Mike 21:01, 10 June 2020 (EDT)