Collections: how do you manage series numbers?

[rmagere]

Hi

I was wondering what's the best way to manage series numbers when dealing with books collecting several others.

E.g. Fritz Leiber has written the series Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (https://www.goodreads.com/series/514...he-gray-mouser)
I have "The First Book of Lankhmar" which collects in one volume books 1 to 4 and the individual books 5, 6 and 7.

In calibre I do not appear to be able to mark "The First Book of Lankhmar" as spanning 1 to 4 and it seems wrong to mark the following three books as 2,3 and 4.

How do I avoid having the a series gap?

Thanks for your help

[JSWolf]

Mark the omnibus as 1 and the next book as 5. That's all you can do.

[theducks]

firstbook dot last book (last book is always assumed higher: 1.1 = 1-10

bookspot dot zero digit =series fill in's: 5.05 (5.01-5.09 available for books after 5.0)

[BetterRed]

@rmagere - I think some people split omnibus editions into individual books, fairly easy to do with EPUB's using this PI ==>> [GUI Plugin] EpubSplit.

BR

[Inferno]

I tend to put OMNIBUS as a tag. It helps me when I look at a series and see gabs to see there is an omnibus there. For series where the omnibus is not 5,6,7,8 but 4, 6, 8, 9 I will split out the individual books.

This happens when the omnibus is focused on a particular aspect of the books or the characters on occasion.

[rmagere]

Thank you for all the suggestions - will see which one works better

A question for theducks

Originally Posted by theducks

firstbook dot last book (last book is always assumed higher: 1.1 = 1-10

bookspot dot zero digit =series fill in's: 5.05 (5.01-5.09 available for books after 5.0)

So in your approach would you mark book 5 as 5.0 or 5.5 (because it starts and ends on book 5)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rmagere

Thank you for all the suggestions - will see which one works better

A question for theducks


So in your approach would you mark book 5 as 5.0 or 5.5 (because it starts and ends on book 5)

5

5.5 is something that slots between 5 and 6

I used to try and range omnibus 5.67 (5,6 and 7), but that broke bad at 9.10, so I am switching (existing) to first.last (which will break again at 100 )

There is still 1 case not handled: Omnibus that SKIP (6, 8, 9)
I have only seen a few of those
Nothing seems perfect

[eschwartz]

I mark them as tags:"=omnibus" and title them "{series}, Books x-y".

I do not mark them in the series column, because they aren't.

(And because it is too much trouble and just doesn't work.)

[rmagere]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I mark them as tags:"=omnibus" and title them "{series}, Books x-y".

I do not mark them in the series column, because they aren't.

(And because it is too much trouble and just doesn't work.)

Given that it is not (a) a rare issue (b) everybody as some sort of solution (c) nobody is happy with it. Is there any point at all to ask in the feature request to add the ability to store numbers in the series box with also a dash and/or a comma to allow better categorisation or at least to add a secondary number box?
Or has some sort of request already been placed and turned down?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by rmagere

Given that it is not (a) a rare issue (b) everybody as some sort of solution (c) nobody is happy with it. Is there any point at all to ask in the feature request to add the ability to store numbers in the series box with also a dash and/or a comma to allow better categorisation or at least to add a secondary number box?
Or has some sort of request already been placed and turned down?

I doubt it is possible.

Food for thought: If you have pbooks 1-9 of a series and you also have the omnibus 4-6, where on your shelf would you put the omnibus?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rmagere

Given that it is not (a) a rare issue (b) everybody as some sort of solution (c) nobody is happy with it. Is there any point at all to ask in the feature request to add the ability to store numbers in the series box with also a dash and/or a comma to allow better categorisation or at least to add a secondary number box?
Or has some sort of request already been placed and turned down?

series_index (the value seen inside the [#])
is a number type value
minus may only precede a number [-42]
(you can't have a range in a numeric field)

Changing this field would have a massive ripple effect on the code and user installed base.

You could have a custom column #series_index_ending (implied - between), but that fails if the omnibus skips 1,3,4

There is no single solution (dratted publishers and authors for making this difficult. Novels ONLY guys)

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by rmagere

Given that it is not (a) a rare issue (b) everybody as some sort of solution (c) nobody is happy with it. Is there any point at all to ask in the feature request to add the ability to store numbers in the series box with also a dash and/or a comma to allow better categorisation or at least to add a secondary number box?
Or has some sort of request already been placed and turned down?

The series number is stored in the database as a floating point number. Changing it in the way you asked for would require a change to the database structure and consequential code changes which make assumptions about the data type. I think this is the prime reason why this is not considered to be a viable change.

[rmagere]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Food for thought: If you have pbooks 1-9 of a series and you also have the omnibus 4-6, where on your shelf would you put the omnibus?

I would put it just after book 4 and before book 5.

Originally Posted by itimpi

The series number is stored in the database as a floating point number. Changing it in the way you asked for would require a change to the database structure and consequential code changes which make assumptions about the data type. I think this is the prime reason why this is not considered to be a viable change.

I suspected as much i.e. too much legacy associated with it. That's why an alternative would have been to at least include a second floating point number field associated to series to allow sorting - which is not quite the same as a custom column as custom column do not play a role in sorting ( though I could create a series sort column from those two... might have a play around)

Originally Posted by theducks

Changing this field would have a massive ripple effect on the code and user installed base.

You could have a custom column #series_index_ending (implied - between), but that fails if the omnibus skips 1,3,4

I think I might try this path - the jumping omnibus are not something I have come across yet.

Originally Posted by theducks

There is no single solution (dratted publishers and authors for making this difficult. Novels ONLY guys)

Indeed

There are some comicbook management programmes that handle this issue rather gracefully - however trade paperbacks are much more common so the need is probably great in that field.


Thank you all

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by rmagere

I would put it just after book 4 and before book 5.

Then it should be marked as book 4.5

[jhowell]

At this point it is what it is and we just need to make the best of it.

But it would have been nice if all fields could have allowed multiple values, not just authors and tags. I have come across several cases where it would have been nice to have to have a book be a part of multiple series, each of which could have multiple indices. Books can have multiple languages, multiple descriptions, and alternate titles. It would also be nice to have multiple instances of the same format per book entry.