Work to Work-Contains

re: W Somerset Maugham "Mr Maugham Himself"
I don't want to mess up the entry, but I have this book in our library & there are more pieces contained in it than are listed in the Work-to-work Contains section. If I cllick » Add/edit work-to-work relationships, I read "All relationships go both ways" so that doesn't seem to fit the subsection CONTAINS.
If someone is able to fix this, here is the book
"Mr Maugham Himself" https://www.librarything.com/work/336098/book/176613790
and here are the 7 works it includes, as written in the Contents with the "from..." as entered in Contents, and the LT links (when I could find them)
Of Human Bondage p.1....this must be the entire novel
Some Novelists I have Known (from The Vagrant Mood) p.447
Mr. Harrington's Washing (from Ashenden) p.470 https://www.librarything.com/work/15558644
The Book Bag (from Ah King) p.495 https://www.librarything.com/work/11317963
El Greco (from Don Fernando) p.519
The Summing Up p. 539.......this also appears to be the entire work, & is currently linked
From A Writer's Notebook p. 680

>1 juniperSun: I read "All relationships go both ways" so that doesn't seem to fit the subsection CONTAINS

If Mr Maugham Himself contains Of Human Bondage, then Of Human Bondage is contained in Mr Maugham Himself. Not exclusively - it is of course published on its own and may be in other antholgies or sets.

But if you want to read Of Human Bondage you can find it in Mr Maugham Himself.

Your list of contents above matches the list in existing review, so I'd say go ahead and add them.

It's confusingly worded - all it means is that, if you add the relationship "Mr. Maugham Himself contains Of Human Bondage", the system will automatically add "Of Human Bondage is contained in Mr. Maugham Himself" as the corresponding relationship for that work.

Note that we are expressly forbidden from creating works that are not already in LT for the purpose of completing this linkage - this is in fact the only thing, other than spam, that we have been expressly forbidden to add. This would appear to be the reason for the incomplete listing you see here -- "Some Novelists I have Known" and "El Greco" don't appear to exist as works by Maugham, and as such cannot be linked until someone happens to enter them for another purpose.

I, for instance, have a separate account, where I added all my short fiction for the express purpose of having a list of all my short fiction. That I was then totally coincidentally able to create the relevant work-to-work relationships was a side bonus.

>3 lorax: Note that we are expressly forbidden from creating works that are not already in LT for the purpose of completing this linkage

I have a distant memory of a post by Tim about this but I have been unable to locate it... I'd really like to understand the reason behind this very explicit prohibition, did Tim elaborate on that?

>4 Felagund: We are supposed to create works "normally". In 2011, Tim was "anticipating the catalog will have one setting that shows you only your books, and another that then breaks everything out, so you can see everything you have in one form or another." The reason people were being discouraged from entering short fiction as works had something to do with his plans for "expressions" within editions, though I don't understand any of that.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/109523#2512070

Felagund (#4):

https://www.librarything.com/topic/109828

aspirit (#5):

We aren't discouraged from entering short fiction as works - we're just discouraged/prohibited (Tim told us in boldface not to, but it's not a TOS violation) from doing so if the purpose is to use the work-to-work linkage.

>6 lorax: That's a good link. I've learned that instead of using up my comments space for titles, notes about what's missing in LT may go in the Disambiguation notice.

What else may we do? Thingers have been telling each other for almost nine years that Tim discourages short stories entered for work-to-work relationships. That actually discourage many of us from entering short stories except when we're the most frustrated not having the records.

But there's no prohibition, it is? No one is checking that short stories aren't also added for tagging, reviews, comments, etc. There's no actual restriction or penalty.

What I'm seeing in his original statements is that Tim didn't want us wasting efforts for works that would be changed in a system overhaul, one that is no longer discussed as an upcoming project. Without upcoming expressions, I think his principles (listed in the 109828 thread) are what matters. As long as we're entering short stories we have read or hold in our collections, I don't see that Tim or any of the LT team cares. The new data enriches the database.

aspirit (#7):

Given that I have a second account to track my short fiction, I obviously agree with you. It's just frustrating that this, of all places, is where Tim chose to take a stand, on actual literary material being entered for what he saw as the wrong reason.