Do these books belong in the series? Opinions please.

I was looking at Suzanne Brockmann's romance series "Tall, Dark and Dangerous" which comprises books authored by SB with a returning cast and a timeline.
http://www.librarything.de/series/Tall%2C+Dark+and+Dangerous

Two books listed as part of the series are omnibuses containing romances by various authors (including one of SB). They don't have a common topic, but are (apparently) just a collection of various romances.
My opinion is that those two omnibuses do not belong in the series, because the rest of the books in them have nothing to do with the series.
http://www.librarything.de/work/10838633
http://www.librarything.de/work/3793284

Could I have other people's opinions on the matter?

With the way many people complete series these days, if they have even a short story related to the series, it belongs listed in the series.

So in answer to your question, yup. They belong.

Prince Joe is part of the TDD series and in both of those bundles.

Sorry, I completely disagree. The contents of the omnibuses are correctly listed in the "Contains" section, and the constituent works themselves are correctly listed as parts of their series.

The Series section should not duplicate the Contains section, and the omnibus is not at all a part of the various series.

Specifically, Prince Joe is indeed part of the TDD series, and Prince Joe is listed as such. Blogger Bundle Volume VIII is not part of the TDD series - it's part of the Blogger Bundle series.

"With the way many people complete series these days, if they have even a short story related to the series, it belongs listed in the series."

True. I have series that consist of old original hardcovers, recent reprint hardcovers, omnibuses, and e-books (all from the same author, though).
It pains me a bit to see the collections/bundles show up (if we're unlucky they outnumber the original books!). On the other side it will help collection and Reader's Digest readers to find out about the series :-).

Edit: I see there's a Nay. So maybe it's not clear-cut. More opinions from the audience, please?

>5 GirlFromIpanema: Nothing is clear cut here. There will be votes to both sides. I didn't say I agree with the policy, I just said what's being done.

Honestly, I don't like the short stories included with the novels. I think they constitute asides but not part of the actual series. And I'm frequently told I'm wrong. *shrug*

I'm fine with short stories included in series with novels - they are part of the narrative of the series after all. But not with an anthology or omnibus that contains mostly other unrelated works - that's just distracting clutter. (Just look at the first three lines of Tall, Dark and Dangerous - Prince Joe is listed, correctly, then two works that aren't part of the series are listed, just because they contain Prince Joe which is already in the list. The correct way to indicate that Prince Joe is in those omnibuses is by going to the Prince Joe page and using Work-to-Work Relationships - which has been done.)

In some cases people have created two series - one just for the novels, and one for the novels and short stories. That works for me. (I wouldn't do it myself, but I don't complain.)

>7 r.orrison:

I agree with r.orrison here. I have mentioned it a number of times with SF&F series.

Including all occurrences of short stories is completely wrong - some short stories exist in 10 (or more) anthologies and collections.

Historical conversation on this https://www.librarything.com/topic/115834 and https://www.librarything.com/topic/113136

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of including multi-author anthologies with a single relevant story in a series listing, but clearly a lot of people out there are.

>7 r.orrison: Except that the short stories aren't loaded as single items here, they're part of a collection or anthology.

>10 gilroy:
Personally, I'd add the short stories as individual works before including an anthology in the series.

In the case of the original post, the contained works in question are all already cataloged and included in the series on their own.

Hm, I looked more closely at this particular case, and I think I would delete the two collections. Like, I get it if there's a short story in a series of novels that for some time at least only appears in a particular anthology-- put that in the series for the completists. But book 1 of this series is reprinted in an anthology with unrelated other books? That doesn't belong. Work-to-work is more than sufficient.

Except that if you look at the series page, you see no indication that you own the book. By having the anthologies there members can see that they have it. Work-to-work doesn't do anything.

>13 MarthaJeanne:

Maybe raise a RSI for an indicator of indirect ownership?

TBH your complaint doesn't really hold water for me generally. If there is a short story that is widely anthologised, and in a number of collections, plus in an original magazine should all those appear in the series?

Do you really think this hasn't been brought up again and again?

It's why people do it, and why if you delete it, someone will put it back.

Oh, I get why it happens, and obviously some people will always put it there, but I'm with andyl here, I don't think it's good enough.

(In this particular case, Prince Joe is in 456 libraries; the two anthologies here are owned by six members combined. So just over 1% of readers of Prince Joe have it in this format, and yet there it is cluttering the series page.)

Not a fan of the practice, but yeah...

>12 Stevil2001: I agree; The Unquiet belongs in the In Death series, as the original and primary source for the short story. But the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland series could be overwhelmed by all the collections that Alice has been stuck into; the work page lists 8, and and I bet we don't have the half of it.

One can always move it to the end of the list so it's not as obvious.

I have deleted the Blogger Bundle and Romance Collection from the Tall, Dark,... series (in German and English CK). Also cleared up some data that were entered wrongly: titles contained in the omnibuses entered under "Alternative Titles" for example. Transferred the info to Disambiguation notice for the time being.

I used the Publisher Series field and entered the collection/omnibus title there (Publisher series can be collections of books that need not have a timeline or the same characters).

Where can I enter work to work relations? (Can't find it by looking through the pages, do I need to have the book in my library?)

I'll try and sort through the shorts/novellas, too (put them at the end).

>20 GirlFromIpanema:
Where can I enter work to work relations?

It's on the main work page, e.g. https://www.librarything.com/work/10996379, in the "Work-to-work relationships" section.

I'll try and sort through the shorts/novellas, too (put them at the end).

I don't know if it's the case with this series, but shorts/novellas are usually interspersed with novels at the point they occur in narrative of the series. Please don't move them to the end, as a rule.

Well, a publisher series is a series created by a publisher, not by the author, right? The series called Troubleshooters was created by Suzanne Brockmann, the series called Blogger Bundle was created by Harlequin publishers, based on a survey on some blogger's website ("Blogger Sarah asked the readers of the SBTB blog which Harlequin books hooked them on romance. The list was epic, but was ultimately narrowed down to five SBTB readers' contemporary romance picks!", so quoted under library descriptions).

The Romance Collection (the other case under discussion) might even not be part of a series at all, just a one-off (would need research for other such titles).

Quote from the Help text on the Series page:
"A good rule of thumb is that series have a conventional name and are intentional creations, on the part of the author or publisher. For now, avoid forcing the issue with mere "lists" of works possessing an arbitrary shared characteristic, such as relating to a particular place. Avoid series that cross authors, unless the authors were or became aware of the series identification ... "

r.orrison : Thanks for the pointer towards the relations :-).

> 22 RE: shorts. Okay, I won't change that (and undo the 2 I had tried to move). There are quite a few with the Troubleshooter series (http://www.librarything.de/series/Troubleshooters). They actually form a series of their own (also in LT), "Troubleshooters Shorts and Novellas".

My understanding is that "Publisher series" refers to series of editions, not of works. So Penguin Classics is a Publisher series, because only certain editions of the relevant novels are included. I'm not sure that quite applies in this case.

Don't let the name fool you. A "publishers series" is a series where some of the editions of the books in the series do not belong in that series. Examples are things like a series of classic books which include Huckleberry Finn which of course exists in lots of other editions that aren't in that series.

Note: Way of the Warrior. Anthology removed from the series under discussion, but needs the work relations to be added in the right spot.