Book Data Requirements
Note: Some of these were taken from the old AlexandriaWiki
A user can keep several Catalogues of Books (for example, a bookshop owner or librarian might have a complete Catalogue of available Books). Distinct from this concept, a user can also have one or more Collections of Copies of Books. These are actual available PhysicalCopies (and DigitalCopies where this is appropriate).
The possible properties for a book include:
- title, subtitle;
- number of pages;
- ISBN (including SBN, ISBN-10, ISBN-13 - including handling invalid-as-published ISBNs - already implemented by Palatina);
- authors (and editors, translators etc.) - these are handled by the AuthorName pattern;
- physical book format (e.g. 'Trade Paperback' or 'CD Audiobook'), cover type (hardback or paperback), binding type (stitched, perfect binding, RepKover, spiral), whether it normally has a dust-jacket, file format for digital copies (e.g. MP3, PDF, PRC etc...);
- cover images (front, possibly also back and spine, maybe even other photographs for archive or advertising purposes);
- publisher, imprint, publication year, possibly a more accurate publication date;
- edition number, edition note (e.g. "Author's Preferred Text"), printing number;
- subject or category information, e.g. Fiction, History, Biography, possibly tree-structured categories, probably multiple categories for a single book;
- main language, origin language for translations, 'language pair' for facing-page translations or language instruction books;
- summary of the book (either written by the user or downloaded from the MetaDataSource);
- blurbs (a list of front-cover and back-cover review summaries, with text and writer and source publication);
- part of a series (possible relation to other books);
Absolutely all of these properties are optional, a book need have none of them (although a book with no distinguishing properties is not going to be very interesting). This is because some books have no titles, some are manuscripts and are therefore not strictly published, some are anonymous, obviously thousands of books were published before SBNs or ISBNs.
Copies of Books may have additional properties we are interested in. Some multiple copies will be essentially indistinguishable (as in a bookshop), some will have distinguishing characteristics. A Collection may have multiple Copies of a book. Properties for Copies might include:
- Physical location (for PhysicalCopies);
- Acquisition date (useful for book collectors)
- File name or URL (for DigitalCopies); file size and some kind of checksum would also be useful for electronic documents;
- Condition notes (e.g. water damage, torn pages, foxing, dust-jacket missing or damaged);
- Whether the Copy is Signed by the Author, whether there is an inscription (possibly including an image of the signature);
- Libraries may have a unique code for each copy (usually stored in a BarCode);
These properties for Books and Copies have been suggested, but require more information or research:
- Other identifying codes, ASN, DOI (DigitalObjectIdentifier), Library of Congress code, CallNumber for libraries;
- Whether it is out-of-print
- Whether it is a first edition
- Place of purchase
- Whether it was a gift (and from whom)
- Price paid and current worth
Anthologies
In a collection of stories, the user may be interested in keeping track of the Author and title of each story. Some anthologies are all from one Author. The Book as a whole will usually have an Editor who chose the stories and possibly wrote an introduction. (The individual titles should be viewable and editable in a table of some kind, as you would expect to view individual audio tracks on a CD.)For reading management, we may track the start and end page of each story. For historical interest, the original publication date of each story may be noted. Acknowledgment notes may record interesting details such as the first journal of publication and who holds the copyright (see "The Oxford Book of American Short Stories", ISBN: 0-19-282406-6, for examples).
Works and Series
It should be possible to refer to a Work by some author without knowing anything about any particular published version of the book. This will be very useful for reading lists - we could add "Bleak House" by "Charles Dickens" (optionally mentioning it was first published in 1853), and later on could find a particular edition we like and buy or borrow it. (At that point the Book can be linked to the Work.)
It should also be possible to produce lists of works in a Series or sequence. This will be very useful for keeping track of fantasy trilogies and the like, or for longer sequences of books with preferred reading order. (ReadingOrder itself is complex enough to require its own little plugin.)
CategoryDomainAnalysis
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