Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I have a few questions (if the title couldn’t tell you). First, I’ve been seeing many added editions where the edition language is not the same as the language the entry is written in. Is this okay or should I change it or report the edition for someone to edit or remove?

That leads me to my second question. I’ve seen many editions of manga meant to be the Japanese edition but have American publishing information, English descriptions, and thus on. Should I create a new edition for the manga and include the Japanese information, or should I simply edit the editions that are currently on goodreads?

Third, I went to add an ebook of the manga What a Wonderful World!, Volume 1 by Inio Asano, but it has an edition that is currently untitled and unauthored. Can I change this to be the ebook version, or should I create another edition for the manga?

Also, I've found a few series that have summaries I've only been able to find on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or other sites which sell the book. Should I change the summaries to publisher summaries or should I leave them as is?

1. Please change the edition language so that it is correct.
2. If they are the Japanese editions please correct them.
3. Please edit the existing edition with the correct information.
4. Have you checked the booksellers info against the publishers, it may already be the same? If not once again you can correct it.

Hope that helps :)

Sandra wrote: "1. Please change the edition language so that it is correct."

This is the only one I have problems with. I went back and checked a few of the novels I had found, and the publishing info. is for the English version of the novel for which there is already an entry. Do I report this or can I change it myself?

Sandra wrote: "4. Have you checked the booksellers info against the publishers, it may already be the same? If not once again you can correct it."

Yes, I have, and it's not the same. I'll switch it to the publishers info.

One thing to be aware of is that there's a default description which gets applied to editions which don't have an edition-specific description, and this default description may not be in the language of the edition (it's usually in the language of most popular edition). If you open up an edition and it's using the default description, you can easily add a new edition-specific description without affecting the book as a whole.

When in doubt, it's generally better to add a new edition than to change publication information that might refer to a different edition. Can you link to some examples?

(For ebook manga editions, that's tricky! They aren't generally given new ISBNs or other identifiers, are they?)

Cait wrote: "When in doubt, it's generally better to add a new edition than to change publication information that might refer to a different edition. Can you link to some examples?"

My computer just crashed not but 10 minutes ago, and I've lost most of the examples I had. I know for sure one of the books I was looking at was Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami.

Cait wrote: "For ebook manga editions, that's tricky! They aren't generally given new ISBNs or other identifiers, are they?"

I don't know for all, but the one I listed doesn't have a different ISBN attached to it.

Shandi wrote: "My computer just crashed not but 10 minutes ago, and I've lost most of the examples I had. I know for sure one of the books I was looking at was Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami."

That's a case of a default description pulled from a different language edition, yes. If you have an English description, it would be good to put it on the English-language editions -- and, since we do prefer defaults to be in English or in the original language of the book, if you have an English description which isn't edition-specific it would be good to make that the default description as well. (Just make sure to copy the Thai description onto the Thai-language edition as a non-default description -- no reason to lose it!)

Cait wrote: "For ebook manga editions, that's tricky! They aren't generally given new ISBNs or other identifiers, are they?"

Shandi wrote: "I don't know for all, but the one I listed doesn't have a different ISBN attached to it."

They can be created without an ISBN listed as we do for alternate cover editions (and other non-ISBN books), but that does make it more difficult to search for them. On the other hand, most of the time there are a limited number of editions, so it shouldn't be too hard to find an ISBN-less edition of a book if you can find the book (and, if the ISBN is attached to the print version, searching on it will find you the book).

Cait wrote: "They can be created without an ISBN listed as we do for alternate cover editions (and other non-ISBN books), but that does make it more difficult to search for them. On the other hand, most of the time there are a limited number of editions, so it shouldn't be too hard to find an ISBN-less edition of a book if you can find the book (and, if the ISBN is attached to the print version, searching on it will find you the book).

I know, but my main point with that question was whether or not I should make the copy that needed rescued the ebook page, or if I should have created another version. I chose to rescue the copy.

If that was the wrong thing to do, please let me know.

Shandi wrote: "I know, but my main point with that question was whether or not I should make the copy that needed rescued the ebook page, or if I should have created another version. I chose to rescue the copy."

Was there any evidence that the unrescued book was the ebook? If not, it probably should have been left, since someone had it shelved who intended to shelve a different edition than the ebook; now they have the ebook on their shelves and they won't know why.

Cait wrote: "Was there any evidence that the unrescued book was the ebook? If not, it probably should have been left, since someone had it shelved who intended to shelve a different edition than the ebook; now they have the ebook on their shelves and they won't know why."

It's the only thing I can think it would be. The language was English, and it still had the English summary (even though this could be because it's English summary is the default). There's no Kindle edition from what I could find (I tried to search for it with no luck). It's possible it could have been meant to be the French, German or Chinese versions, but from the information it had that hadn't been removed, I don't see how it could have been.

However, you're right. I shouldn't have changed it without being explicitly sure.

Going to reedit the book to the Italian version. The only person with it added is Italian, and I sent her a message to ask if the book was translated in her country or if she read the English version. She's been active this month so hopefully she responds.