Bookhouse Series Combined Incorrectly

The Bookhouse series (there are at least three) have all been combined into the 12 book series.

The 6 book, 7 book, and 12 book Bookhouse series are NOT the same, the contents are different, and they should not be combined.

Here is the LT page where all are combined:

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/3742/My-Book-House

Under the Description area the link doesn't go to the page indicated. I have edited the Description to indicate the need to fix it.

I have the red series:

My Book House (7 volumes – red series)

Volume 1, In the Nursery (1925)
Volume 2, Story Time (1925)
Volume 3, Up One Pair of Stairs (1925)
Volume 4, Over the Hills (1925)
Volume 5, Through Fairy Halls (1925)
Volume 6, The Magic Garden (1925)
Volume 7, The Latch Key with Index (1925)

The series are outlined here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Beaupr%C3%A9_Miller

There's no workbench on the LT series page, so I'm posting here.

I would take the time to untangle this mess myself but currently am overwhelmed enough on the work and home front which would prevent me from assisting.

Anyone want to help?

A disambiguation probably needs to be added as well.

Thank you.

I don't see how you can separate the series if the individual works have been falsely combined. Just read the disambiguation notice here: https://www.librarything.com/work/945755

Someone carefully undid all the careful work to separate them.

>2 MarthaJeanne: yep.



It's too bad the disambiguation notice was not on the series page, it might have saved us some grief.

I can think of juvenile fiction series where thick volumes were split (with edits) into thin volumes. Two series by James A. Braden include the Auto Boys and the Braden Series. The repetition of the thick titles in the thin title series causes no end of problems. There are other examples.

More subtle but probably in more collections are series like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys where the first three dozen volumes have two editions. The original texts have 25 chapters and roughly 214 pages. The revised texts have 20 chapters and 180 pages (including illustrations). The copyright dates are another way to tell with the revised texts having copyrights in 1959 or later for the affected volumes.

In terms of the cocktail party conversation, it makes a huge difference whether one is talking about the original text or the revised text of a story. Some are simply cut down but others, like Moss-Covered Mansion, are dramatically different stories. That particular title has a slight difference in the title. Most others the title and volume is the same.

LT has no way to deal with these. They are treated as the same even though they are often far from it.

There are many mine fields when it comes to combinations. Some people and systems are over-zealous in their combining and it can create a lot of work to fix them.

The 7-volume red set of My Book House is rather scarce compared with the 6 and 12 volume sets. That said, there is not an easy solution for this kind of situation.

James

I spent a couple hours today trying to do the best I could to clean this series up. There were a number of entries that were distinguishable based on volume number -- such as "From the Tower Window" being volume 5 of the original 6-volume series and volume 10 of the later 12-volume series, and so splitting those out was not difficult. That still leaves many entries that don't have a volume number and so are unclear as to which one they are. And "In the Nursery" is especially troublesome because it's volume 1 of all three series versions, so the voluming doesn't help at all there; I'm 100% sure there are many of the original 6-volume left in the 12-volume work but I can't tell which are which. Where I couldn't place something I left it in the 12-volume works which seem to be the ones with the most entries.

I deleted the existing work disambiguation notices which must have been wonderful at the time but are now useless because they no longer link to the correct works. I put in a general disambig explaining that there are multiple versions of this series and pointing people to the series page to see the various versions. I put each of the three series versions, once I had split them out, into that series page.

If anybody has further suggestions I'm willing to assist, but I can't think of more to do with it.

>5 scott_beeler: Nicely done!

Work relationships would be important to prevent future combinations.

>5 scott_beeler: THANK YOU SO MUCH!

>7 MarthaJeanne: A Work Relationship would indeed prevent another improper combination, but which relationship would we use? I don't think any of the options describe the situation: a revision of an earlier edition. It's not really an abridgement or expansion.

I think I would use 'adaptation of'.

>10 MarthaJeanne: Seems reasonable. I've added that to the identically-named volumes.