Series creating combining relating unraveling

I am relatively new to this whole helper world and have stumbled into a multilayered project. I would appreciate advice on how to proceed and warnings of what potholes to avoid.
I dwell happily in the swamp of government and academic Transactions, Bulletins, Series, Papers, Contributions and similar nefarious documents.
I have currently waded into a series of US National Park brochures that pose some challenges for a tenderfoot. These pieces are all designed to perform the same function, to provide cursory information to potential and actual visitors.
So at it's most basic there would be a single document in the series for each National Park, Monument, Seashore, Lakeshore, Historic Park, etc. This was first done in the 1930's (as far as I have encountered). Then the documents were redesigned in the 40's, again in the 60's, again in the 80's again in the 2000's (this may be a simplification). While each redesign maintains the same goals and the same types of information, the details, design, format, etc. change.
The challenge comes in that each series redesign maintains the same (or similar) title and none of the documents have credited authors (may be some exceptions in the first iteration), so LThing logically assigns them all to the same work.

My Process: What I have done so far. Accepting the existing series as a base I have created three related series each treating redesigns of the brochure/booklets. Two of these I have linked to the original with overlapping title. The third I have not linked because of a lack of overlapping titles. (How might I establish this link?) Unfortunately, the new series (sub-series I created) use the original cover photos from the existing series which do not reflect the designs of the newly created series.
(I'm sure I've lost most of you by now!)

My expectations: I expect to approach this thusly. First, title by title, one by one, will have to remove each work from the original series. I will than have to separate the works into individual books. I will than assign each book to the appropriate series. Now as each book has a primary assignment to a separate series, may they then be recombined into a work or do they remain separate and by counterpoint if they should remain separate what is the best way to facilitate this since they have the same Title and Author?

And than, how do I best communicate what I am doing to people who have done previous work on the series and make sure I am not destroying a separate concept that they built under?

(Fortunately each work has a small number of copies often, unique copies, but they are spread across many members libraries. As with many series of this type there is one member with many titles, a few with some or a few titles and many with only one title.)

Thanks, related questions will wait for another post.

For you skilled and technical minded here are the links to series involved (so far).

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/19639/Nature-Study-Guides
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/316611/National-Park-%240-15-Brochures
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/316614/National-Park-small-free-brochures
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/316602/US-National-Park-Service-National-Pa...

>1 1Carex: Once the books are separated they need to be recombined into works for each era/series. How are you deciding what book goes to which era though if the titles are the same and they have no ISBNs?

Ah, this is not one, although it is the type of thing that would end up in my library. This is a commercially published work and part of series of "field guides" or "identification guides", by the Nature Study Guild Publishers. I believe it is now expanded into the Pacific Coast Tree Finder, It may have been distributed or funded by a Dept of Agricultural Economics.

What I was referencing are governmental or institutional publications (even more obscure than the commercial series). Although I don't think it really matters.

The crux of my overlong question was really "How do I catalog multiple works with the same title and same author?" Any tricks that would successfully harvest new entries by the Lthing community.

The US National Park Service provided guides to each park, usually titled Yosemite National Park, California or Acadia National Park, Maine. Over the years the guides the park service provided changed radically but the names remained the same and there is no author, although people often enter "United States" or something similar as the author.

Well, in your catalog, they will each come up as separate items if you put them in as such. But they will be lumped together as a work for the sake or series and such.

What you might want to do, to keep them separate, is label each one with the publication year in parenthesis. So maybe "Rushmore Pamphlet (1960s)" or something. This would then allow for a better breakdown. (If you are the only one with them cataloged, that makes it a little easier, anyway.) Then, with that designation on the title, when you look into the editions page of a work, you'll be able to separate out the individual piece.

>4 jjwilson61: Yes, that is what I am trying to figure out! If you look at the items they are obviously different they range from 36 page booklets with foldout maps inside the back cover to single sheets folded to ~3" x 5" with a tiny map and limited text.

So it is not really an issue of figuring out which work belongs in which series. The issue is figuring out how to catalog the difference.

Can I post photos here? Otherwise, a look at the four series listed (something I tend not to due when reading forums) will illustrate how different they can be.

>5 1Carex: You have to add some distinguishing element to the title, say Yosemite National Park, California {1999} if the year is what distinguishes them.

I believe the institution publishing the work is normally considered the author in these cases and it helps distinguish when works share the title but nothing else.

>6 gilroy: That date, or date bracket (1959-1968), or the like has been my best idea. I was hoping to be able to sort the entire original series into sub-series but since I cannot alter others titles and I don't think that would work. There will, of course, be books that do not have enough information to sort at all so the original series will remain as a catch all. It looks like it's time to dive in. I don't think I'm in a position to screw things up, at least too badly.

>8 SandraArdnas: That works well for the items in my library but is there a way to use it on the rest of the series universe?
And more generally on this note is there any punctuation besides the colon that will effect Lthing's reading of the title?
And again, libraries seem to vary on how they list the publishing institution. In reality this series probably isn't as bad as it could be but the publishing institution could conceivable be: US gov(t), US, (Washington,.), Dept of Interior, DOI, NPS, National Parks, National Park Service, etc. Obviously most of these should on no circumstance be combined. I presume the most common use would rule (5>3).. But stop stop, I will digress more later.

>10 1Carex: That works well for the items in my library but is there a way to use it on the rest of the series universe?
You mean for titles? That's one of the most common reasons to use 'canonical title'.
Or do you mean how to recognize what other members have really catalogued and where it belongs? For that, if editions page doesn't provide any additional data (sometimes there are links to MARC records and such there), occasionally there's a cover or tags used that might indicate something distinguishing.

>11 SandraArdnas: And third A small second s Capitol achieves sainthood in one small corner of the universe. Thank You.

LT lumps all books with the same title, author, and ISBN into one "edition" which is what shows on the editions page. So if these pamphlets don't have an ISBN and different ones have been entered by other people with the same title and author then there is no way to put them into different works.

>13 jjwilson61: "So if these pamphlets don't have an ISBN and different ones have been entered by other people with the same title and author then there is no way to put them into different works."

I know what you mean about when things get so combined that they can't be separated without an owner changing some of their own book's details, but I'm guessing that won't happen for most of these items due to the low number of owners and probably not a lot of consistency in how they were entered.

So 1Carex should be able to sort them into different works in many cases by either viewing MARC records where available as Sandra mentioned (depends on the source someone added a book from), or going to the book details in the libraries of individual owners (those who don't have private accounts), or by viewing what's available on the split-apart edition page if it's owned by a private account (be sure to 'recalculate covers' after separating, BTW; sometimes a cover appears then that wasn't showing before).

If you end up with a few unidentifiable leftovers at the end, owned by public accounts, 1Carex could then try PMing (sending a profile wall comment) to the relevant owners, politely inquiring about the specifics of the brochures they own, and asking that they edit their titles a little to distinguish them for separating/recombining if needed.

Can't edit every day but am approaching this in small steps. I have been generally following Opteryx's method although I am largley ignorant of how to use MARC (although a couple have showed up and been reviewed) and ReCalculate covers I haven't touched as I had no indication of its function and I am not a huge fan of the "try everything just to see what it does' method of learning. It does sound like it will help however. I have only encountered one instance where the different revisions have been grouped into one inseparable edition. Visiting individuals library copies had been the most effective. Thanks for all the help and advise.

>15 1Carex: Recalculate Covers makes the system re-check the book records currently attached to a work to find any cover images people are using that haven't shown up on the top-level work page, in addition to the primary function of redetermining the default cover image when that is missing or incorrect. It often finds previously-overlooked cover images even when a work hasn't been split/combined recently, and makes them available for more people to use.

MARC is a complicated records format used by public/university libraries. You can read between the coding sometimes to pick out useful bits like the year of publication, contributing authors, etc.

>15 1Carex: Recalculate cover is for the default cover shown when you don't have the book catalogued, also shown on series pages, tag pages and such. It doesn't really do anything in you personal catalogue. Sometimes it helps get a cover that's not showing after combining and separating works.

I have cataloged a bunch of these one page fold-up brochures myself, and I think I even made or added to a really big series:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/48590/National-Park-Brochure

Is this one of the series you are trying to edit? I don't really have a preference for how these should be organized, and if you want to put in work on any of these, I would glad to accept whatever system you use. I like having a way to see all of the brochures in my library, along with others that I might still get someday. But I could always use a tag like "NP brochure" in my own library if necessary.

On how to add relationships: Under "Edit Series", there is a link for Relationships/Combine. If you use the "Add Relationship button", you can search for a series name and add a relationship between two series even if the series do not overlap. I think I have done it at some point.

>18 al.vick: al.vick. The structure of National Park Brochures should remain the same and stay focused on the current and recent editions of the brochures with the photo and black title block and a map and limited description on the other side. As I work (been a week now) I separate the "books" in each park, than assign them to National Park Brochures or a related sub-series.
While I am processing each park your series assignments may not show up right but except for errors on my part should come back together as I move on.
Thanks all for the recalculate covers function info.

>7 1Carex: Can I post photos here?

Yes, you can. See here under #2.

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Basic_HTML_/_How_to_do_Fancy_Things_in_Y...