Confessions of a Library Clerk: Series Labeling

Ah series labeling, simultaneously both a joy and a headache. Why when it is such a useful (and, in my honest opinion, important/necessary) thing for a library to do? Because series labeling is not as simple as it sounds. 

A couple years ago now, my library decided to go through our entire fiction collection (all departments) and label all the books that had a corresponding series/series number.  Sounds simple right? Think again.  Here are some of the reasons why:

1) Not all websites agree on what is or is not a series.  At present, my library primarily goes by Fantastic Fiction, however, as we have recently encountered a number of errors/discrepancies on Fantastic Fiction, we also refer to Goodreads, Fiction Database, Librarything, and, when possible, the author's own website.

2) Not all websites agree on series names.  When checking to see if something needs a series label or not, it is not at all uncommon for me to find out that ,yes, it does belong to a series but there is disagreement on what the name of the series actually is.  Some websites default to the name of the first book as being the name of the series, while some might name it according to the main character(s)' s name, and some other site might have a totally different name from either of those. Let me give you an example: Sophie Hannah's Culver Valley Crime series.  On Fantastic Fiction, it's called: Culver Valley Crime; on Goodreads I've seen it referred to as both Culver Valley Crime and Spilling CID; on Fiction Database it's called: DS Charlie Zailer and DS Simon Waterhouse; on Librarything it's Spilling Detectives, and elsewhere I've seen it called Zailer and Waterhouse. To make matters worse? The author does not specify any particular name for the series on her website and on Goodreads (where she is a member) I have seen her use more than one name for the series.  Now, I know that sometimes a book when written over-the-water may have a different name than how it is released in the U.S., but I see no reason for why on earth you would have completely different series names.  That's just balmy. 

3) Not all websites agree on series number.  Why is this?  Oh there are many reasons, but here are ones I usually encounter:  

• Sometimes a website might forget to include a book as part of a given series.

• Publisher and author disagree on series order; believe it or not, it is not uncommon for a publisher to rearrange an author's reading order.  Most notoriously, this happened with C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, but, really, this happens quite often when an author writes a series order differently than the chronological order of events within that series.  Or, when the author goes back later and writes a prequel, as is the case with Clive Cussler's 'Dirk Pitt' series. 

• Author also wrote novellas within that series;  sometimes these will be given half-numbers, while other times they're given whole numbers, or they're not numbered at all making it even more confusing.

4) A fourth reason, and one of the most frustrating, is this: some authors can't seem to make up their own mind what series to make a book and make it part of multiple series!  This one is really, really frustrating.  I know of several authors (Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kresley Cole, and S.M. Stirling being the most notable) where they have a series within a series (and sometimes within yet another one, two, or three other series).  It happens a lot whenever there is a spin-off series within the universe of another series.  For instance: S.M Stirling's 'Emberverse' series.  Emberverse seems to be the overall name for the series, then you have: Emberverse I series also called 'The Change' which is the first 3 books (plus one novella); Emberverse II also called 'The Sunrise Lands' which is the next 3 books; Emberverse III also called 'The Montival' which is, again, the next 3 books; Emberverse IV which is a single title and the author's site says can also be considered as the last book of Montival/Emberverse III; Emberverse V also called 'Rudi's Children' which is another 3 books.  There is then a concurrent series to the Emberverse books called 'Island in the Sea of Time' which is another 4 books.  Then there is Kenyon with her Dark-Hunter series and half-a-million sub-series.  Similar to this issue, is where the author has two separate series and decides to overlap them for a few books (not necessarily one-after-the-other either).  Among these is, J.A. Jance where some of her books belong to both J.P. Beaumont and Joanna Brady.  And, yet another, way this happens (and really messes things up) is when two (or more) author's write together overlapping their series.  Then what do you do?!  The book belongs in two different series by two different authors: case in point - 'Stirred' by J.A Konrath and Blake Crouch it's book 8 in the 'Jack Daniels' series and book 4 in 'Andrew Z. Thomas.'  And then of course you have people like Jayne Krentz who also writes under the names Jayne Castle and Amanda Quick and 'co-authors' series with herself publishing each book in the series under a different name.

So you see, labeling is not so easy after all.  It's great when it's all finished and you can see just how many books actually belong to a series, but it's a never-ending struggle to make sure it is as accurate as possible.  The process is very much a love-hate relationship.