rhigman
commented
7 months ago Original description may have misstated the initial problem, as Issue Ordinal does not have to correspond exactly to "issue number", but only indicate appropriate ordering. It would therefore have been acceptable for Issue 12 vol 1 to be # 12, Issue 12 vol 2 to be # 13, and Issue 13 to be # 14 (etc). There was a different reason (display issue on white-label website?) why the "Book Set" resolution was chosen.
Example: Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts (three Thoth records: Set, Volume 1, and Volume 2; Thoth work ID for Set is
5ba259f3-f1e8-4090-ba44-11c36ff75c77).Multi-volume works which are part of a series have the potential to cause problems with the numbering of issues in that series. For example, the work above is Issue 12 of its series. We cannot record this at the volume level because we cannot give two works the same Issue Ordinal. We could label one volume as Issue 12 and the other as Issue 13, but this would mean that the true Issue 13 could not have its metadata correctly recorded. The recommended resolution for this is to add a parent work of type "Book Set", and record the series information there only.
However, when distributing metadata e.g. OAPEN ONIX, the receiving platforms do not necessarily support "Book Set" records, or have any other method of storing relationships between works, so in many cases the only information they will store will be what is given in the individual volume records, which omit the series data.
This can be seen on the ONIX website: the work above is represented as two records, one for each volume, neither of which indicate that it is part of a series (compare another work in the same series).