When the LC refers to the set, and the SBNs refer to theindividual volumes

I've just encountered another "type" of combination mess. I have both volumes of The gods of the Egyptians, by E.A. Wallis Budge. (Currently https://www.librarything.com/work/580705/workdetails/242845829). Both physical volumes have the same library of congress number: 72-91925. Volume one has SBN 486-22055-9; volume 2 has SBN 486-22056-7. (Yes, these are old enough that it's SBN rather than ISBN.)

I've frequently seen the case where some one has helpfully combined individual volumes into a work that includes the whole set. I understand that standard procedure is to split out individual volumes into their own works, and create "contained in" relationships with the set, as a discouragement of recombining. I plan to do this with these books.

My concern is that my editions are old enough that I used the LC to search, rather than the SBN, and others are likely to do the same. And that points to the set, apparently legitimately.

Any thoughts on best practices?

I would also add disambiguation notices, just as one more place where people can see that their copy is wrongly combined. It will continue to happen, but that is the way it goes with these sets.

Most people seem to have entered them separately, as those two works have over 300 each, and the set work is around 70.

I finally found the UI for adding relationships again. It's pretty well buried. So I fixed that.

But I'm now pretty much used up. I don't know how to add disambiguation notices, and I've spent more than an hour just adding these two books to my library.

There are still more problems with this group of works.

I'm less than impressed to report that https://www.librarything.com/work/580705/work/580705 claims the book was first published in 2005.

I have in front of me an edition first published in 1969, that claims to be an unabridged republication of a work originally published in 1904.

I guess Routledge published *their* first edition of this work in 2005.

But what is their claim doing on our work details page? I suppose it belongs on a book page for Routledge's edition; if they want to mislead their readers, that's presumably their privilege.

But do we have to have this on the work page? (And no, I can't see any way to fix this.)

Re the 2005 date, it is in the descriptions link (left hand sidebar) and has accrued several flags, for only applicable to some editions, and not a summary at all, and for me has disappeared from the work page now due to these.

The disambiguation note is in the Common Knowledge area of the work page, and would just be a case of adding a line such as "This is volume one of... please do not combine with the full set" or similar.

Original publication date is also in Common Knowledge. This was just a bad work description. LT gathers its info on OPD from CK if that field is filled. Descriptions are on work level, they do not apply to particular editions, so this one couldn't end up showing only for Routledge, but as pointed out it an be flagged and after hitting recalculate it will be replaced by something else, unless it's the only one available

>5 SandraArdnas: Yeah. I'd like to see original publication date more prominent - and more often set, for that matter.

That's the information I care about - whether to help judge the reliability of non-fiction, or the likelihood of me enjoying a work of fiction. It matters very little whether I'm reading the same text as published in 1904, or as reissued in 1930, 1969, or 2005. (OTOH, I care about revised vs original editions.)

Note FWIW that it appears that some of our sources provide original publication date of the work in such a way that it ends up in the publication date field in "edit your book", while others provide the publication date of the book.

Also, that I'm guilty of routinely modifying the "publication" field in "edit your books" to include copyright date and/or original publication date. These days, I'm explicit about what my dates mean, and don't delete the book's publication date, if present. (Originally, I thought the field referred to the *work*, by analogy with bibliographies and at least some card catalogues.)

>6 ArlieS: I enter OPD for every book I enter if it isn't filled already (I always care about OPD, but rarely about the year of my particular edition). But until someone fills it, it will be empty, like the rest of CK. You can rearrange how work page looks and put CK somewhere more prominent. I keep it right below book info because I use it a lot.

Edited to add, just checked and you can edit that CK field from catalogue too, so another option is to include it in one of the styles and just double click on it without going to work page at all