false works? comic story arc combining

While creating some comic lists I have come across a common use of works to collect a story arc. Is this right?

For example: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #21 through 23 is really three separate comic books but someone has catalogued them into their collection as one.

I am still new to LibraryThing and learning. Is this considered an appropriate use of a work? It doesn't seem so to me. If it is not should I combine with the first issue? or...?

It's totally an appropriate use of a work. If that's how someone wants to catalogue their comics, they are welcome to do so.

It should only be combined with things that are equivalent. One part of the work is not equivalent. See for example Batman: Year Three, which was never released in trade; three people have catalogued what must be just collections of single issues. You can see on the "Work relationships" module that it contains (but is separate to) the four constituent issues.

Or, for example, Batman: Year Two. If you look at the editions page, you can see that while most seem to be the trade, one user has entered it as "Detective Comics #575-578," so it's probably the four single issues. But since those have the same contents as the trade, they get combined.

People can catalog in any way they want to - and that includes records like this one. It. Am be a bind-up. It can be just someone keeping the issues together so they cataloged them as one item. Or they just could not be bothered to catalog one by one. In any way, yes - this is a valid work.

It should not be combined with an individual issue or with a different selection of issues. This work contains issues 21,22 and 23 so it should only be combined with other works which contain these 3 issues and nothing else but these 3 issues. It can be added to the series where the issues are (in the collections and selections group) with a label showing what it contains. And you can use the relationships on the work level to indicate what it contains (as long as the individual issues are also cataloged by someone).

Okay, thanks for clearing that up.

As I understand it now a work has no rules about what it can be. It doesn't have to have been released like that by a creator. Anyone can combine any number of related or unrelated items into their own collection and call it a work? Is that right?

>4 zetetic23: This is not to say that we have to like it. But we do have to accept it.

Is there any more detailed help pages about works than this one?
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/HelpThing:Work

and these two very old blog posts:
https://blog.librarything.com/category/works/

>4 zetetic23: Yes, LT gives complete freedom to users to enter what they like in their catalogs. If you do enough combining, you'll see a lot of weird stuff; I was just looking at J. K. Rowling, for example, and found both Harry Potter Box Set (Books 1, 3-7) and Harry Potter Vol. 1 / 3 / 5. I guess you might do the first thing if you had a seven-book box set but lost one (though I would have entered all six separately) but the second baffles me... and three people have entered it that way!

>6 zetetic23: This might help, but it's pretty old: https://www.librarything.com/concepts#works

>7 Stevil2001: That bad data all comes from Amazon. Likely the users did not enter their books that way on purpose, they just were not paying close enough attention when adding books from Amazon.

That is commonly how libraries catalog periodicals and it doesn't surprise me that some have adopted the practice for comic books

Thanks for all the info