Book cataloging

A sad day, but LibraryThing is not the ideal book cataloging database, I am afraid to say.

Of course, not currently in existence _are_, but that is because I have not been allowed to dictate the design of their databases!

A /person/ has a /role/ with a given /name/ for a given /work/, /translation/, or /edition/.

You and I, in our libraries, contain a /copy/ of a given /printing/ of a given /edition/, containing a set of /translation/s of /work/s. We might have read a given /translation/ of a /work/. We may wish to buy a given /edition/, or wish to read a given /work/. A given /edition/ may contain, in additional to normal /translation/s of /work/s, some pictures, perhaps photographs, perhaps drawings. A set of /work/s may constitute, in a given order, a /work series/. Additionally, a set of /edition/s may constitute an /edition series/.

This must all be fundamental!

Each noun above may have some additional attributes, perhaps publication data, physical dimension, biography, plot summary, review, etc., etc. Additionally, you may give your copy a set of tags, or perhaps some other attributes, comments, dates of reading, private comments, status, shelf-name, what-have-you. This stuff is all just extra "stuff", that, while useful and good, is extraneous to the fundamental relationships between the nouns as given above.

To base your database around the flawed structures of other sources, such as amazon, or LOC, or whatever, is not a good idea! You run into all sorts of trouble, as library thing is now encountering with each new feature. Now, don't get me wrong, LibraryThing has a wonderful community of people working on it and with it, and it is the best book cataloging site I have seen online today. I use it and will continue to use it. But I grieve for its shortcomings, and fear that they are unwilling to address them in the fundamental ways that would be necessary in order to actually fix them properly.