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Guidelines for publisher names #62

Closed dcapillae closed 2 years ago

dcapillae commented 2 years ago

I would like to know what guidelines we should follow to enter the name of the publishers. It is common to find in the catalog the name of the same publisher written in different ways.

For example, for values such as "Collins Publishing", "Collins Pub. Inc.", "Collins Publishers", etc., that refer to the same publishing company, they could simply be entered as "Collins".

I think that the name of the publisher should be expressed as concisely as possible, provided that it is sufficient for unambiguous identification. Does that make sense?

seabelis commented 2 years ago

I typically enter it as it is on the title page. Publishers change their names over time and the way the name is in the book can sometimes help with search facets. For example, HarperCollins vs. Harper and Brothers, Harper and Row, Harper, Collins, William Collins, HarperTrophy, Harper Festival...

seabelis commented 2 years ago

I don't love the idea of shortening the names; I've seen books from the 1800s entered as "Harper" when they are Harper and Brothers. At the time, I guess it was standard to shorten it, but now there actually is an imprint that just goes by the name of "Harper", so that muddles things, at leat for me, sometimes.

dcapillae commented 2 years ago

I also don't like the idea of shortening names, especially if it makes relevant information disappear or that short form causes ambiguity. Conciseness refers exclusively to what is not properly the name of the publishing company ("Pub. Inc.", "Press", "Publishing Company", etc.).

The rule of entering whatever appears on the title page seems good to me. It is objective: two different people would enter the same publisher name following that rule (that's good!). What commonly appears on the title page is the name of the publisher along with "Press", "Books", "Publishing Group", etc. That would be the part of the name that I think we could leave out.

I have preferred to ask because I do not know the custom for books in English. In Spanish catalogs (not in all), it is common to find only the proper name of the publishers. For example, "Alianza Editorial" is "Alianza", "Ediciones Destino" is "Destino", etc. ("Editorial", "Ediciones" = Publisher, Publishing)

If the concise form causes ambiguity in any case, it would be preferable to keep the full name. However, I think that in many other cases the ambiguity does not occur.

seabelis commented 2 years ago

I'm generally fine with that, but I can think of one example off the top of my head in the case of "Press" where it would make a difference, Scholastic, Inc. vs. Scholastic Press; they are different imprints.

seabelis commented 2 years ago

@dcapillae I've been thinking more about this. I think it would be fine to leave off the words that are typically abbreviated. Inc., Co., Ed. Can you think of any more? Press and Books are commonly an important part of the publisher or imprint itself; I think we should keep those terms. The term "publishing" and "publishers" is sometimes significant and sometimes not. Probably okay to drop it if it's abbreviated and tacked onto the end. If it's spelled out and an important part of the name I'd keep it.

dcapillae commented 2 years ago

Ok. I will avoid changing the name of the publishers. The criterion of introducing the name as it appears in the book seems correct to me. Perhaps the problem of multiple names for the same publisher can be solved in the future, when it will be possible to assign a unique identifier for each publisher.

seabelis commented 2 years ago

Closing for now.