Original published year vs edition published year?

[rebl]

How do you guys store the initial, original published year of a book versus the publishing year of a reprint (edition)? Do they matter to you? Which one do you prefer to store in the published year?
For example Jules Verne, whose works are public domain, has at least three meaningful publishing years. For example for "20,000 Leagues Under the Seas":
- 1870 initial publishing date in French
- let's say 1980 first translation in my language, in and "old style" dialect
- let's say 1976 2nd translation, old orthography in my native language
- and finally 2012 a current reprint with changed orthography and better graphics
If I got copies of all these, how/where would you advise me to store the years?
Thanks.

[pdurrant]

You can have separate entries for the different editions (I think - you might need to use titles with modifiers

This clearly is the right approach for different translations, and might be worth-while for substantially changed editions.

You might also want to add a custom column for 'first published' date, and leave the standard column for the edition date.

It all depends on how much effort you want to put in, and what you really want to record.

I tend to just use the standard column for the first published date, even if my text is from a revised edition. For instance, I have The Hobbit as 1937, even though the text is of the revised second edition of 1951.

[rebl]

Thank you, I was assuming that might be the best solution too.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I tend to just use the standard column for the first published date, even if my text is from a revised edition. For instance, I have The Hobbit as 1937, even though the text is of the revised second edition of 1951.

This is how I record the dates.
Apache

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I tend to just use the standard column for the first published date, even if my text is from a revised edition. For instance, I have The Hobbit as 1937, even though the text is of the revised second edition of 1951.

Same here. I use the date of first publication.

As Calibre cannot register dates before year 101 due to a limitation of the date libraries it uses, it's impossible to use the publication date field accurately when adding ancient works. I just use a date of 1000 there, as it's the first date containing four digits.

Maybe I'm going to use my "Annotation" field to record the true publication date.

If the book is an omnibus, containing works of one author, I use the date at 60% of his age. An omnibus containing works of an author who lived from 1812 to 1887 would get a publication date of 1857. (1887 - 1812 = 75; 75 x 0.6 = 45; 1812 + 45 = 1857.) Then I'm at least in the ballpark regarding the writing time of those stories. OK, I know this can get weird with authors who died really young, or authors who wrote most of their works in their later years. Then you can get publication dates at a *really* young age, or even before the first work was written.

IF the book is an anthology, containing works of many authors, I use the publication date of the book itself.

[Apache]

Could you not use the 0101 format for dates before 1000?
Apache

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Apache

Could you not use the 0101 format for dates before 1000?
Apache

Yes; the lowest calibre can go is year 101, which is stored as 0101. I don't like that, however. Therefore I use 1000, and will start to put the real (estimated) publication date in my Annotations field.