Convention Sketchbooks as Book Series

[Lance Fittro]

TLDR summary: What would be the preferred naming convention for tracking an artist's convention sketchbooks as an Overall Title in the Books media type? And can the "Book #" field for the Books media type be expanded to more than 3 digits to allow a year to be entered for annual publications?

Long-winded explanation of why: I would like to be able to track various artists' convention sketchbooks as an Overall Title series, with "[Artist Name] Convention Sketchbook" or similar naming convention, and the year in the "Book #" field. The reason being that rather than titling their publications [Artist Name] Sketchbook Vol. 1 or [Artist Name] Convention Sketchbook 2024, some artists will give each sketchbook a different title not having their name, year, volume number, or "sketchbook" in the title, which can make it a challenge to track a run or set of their sketchbooks even when they consistently put out one per year. Take Adam Hughes, for example, with titles ranging from How To Draw Boobs to Hissy Fit to Thongs You Know By Heart. The Overall Title feature for the Books media type would be ideal for simply searching "Adam Hughes Sketchbook" and pulling up a list of them all while still retaining them as separate title entries in the database based on the actual title that appears on each. 

"Why do you have to assign a book number at all? This would work without filling that field." - True. I think it would just be my preference to have the Overall Title search return results in order of publication.  If a preferred naming convention could be agreed upon to start with, the "Book #" entry could come as a later improvement.

"Why can't you just number them sequentially? Surely no artist has put out more than 999 such books in a series?" - This is true, but with this type of publication, it is very difficult to be sure one has a complete list in order to assign sequential numbering at the outset, without an additional discovery later throwing the numbering off (ala the Heavy Metal Magazine issue numbering difficulty). One could figure out what year a specific publication was issued though, and include that in the "Book #" field as each new title is created, so that when performing the Overall Title search, the titles appear in order of publication. There is still a possibility of one artist putting out two different sketchbooks in the same year, but it seems as though duplicate "Book #" entries within an Overall Title search shouldn't wreck the same havoc that tracking duplicate issue numbers within an individual title would cause.

[Gregory Hecht]

I have seen sketchbooks show up in the Magazine category and in the Book category.  So I suspect that up until now there has not been a strict policy on where sketchbooks should go.  (this isn't to say that there shouldn't be a policy... I definitely think that there should be a discussion about it, at the very least)

I do like the idea of being able to search for "Adam Hugues Sketchbook" (for example) and bringing up all of his sketchbooks that are in the database.  I will say that I do know of a couple of instances where an artist had more than one sketchbook in a single year, and also a couple of instances where the year of publication is not listed anywhere on the sketchbook.  So numbering sketchbooks by the publication year might not be a universal solution.  I do agree with you that sequential numbering is not the answer.  I wonder if something like the "Item Title" field in the Comics category might be the answer here.  

[Lance Fittro]

Thinking back on this and testing it out for my own database (not submitting those for master database use), it does seem easier than I thought to sort the results by "Years Published" without assigning a specific book series number. That would at least get the ones who put out more than one in a single year bunched up by year, and I suspect in a search like this is less critical for having them in exact order of publication than where it affects issue numbering.

Good point about the Magazine vs Book media type though, as I suspect that mixing the two media types in a search wouldn't work. Some of that inconsistency in the master database may actually be my doing when submitting new series for the master database. I'm not sure the most efficient way to go about updating information at the title level, but if there is a consensus on what the policy should be going forward for both media type and Overall Title naming convention, I'd be happy to follow that going forward to minimize reworking title info for the master database.

Would adding Overall Title information at the title level in my own database be overwritten (deleted) with the next update for any titles already in the master database?

[Steven L. Dasinger]

40 minutes ago, Lance Fittro said:

Would adding Overall Title information at the title level in my own database be overwritten (deleted) with the next update for any titles already in the master database?

Unfortunately, yes, it would be overwritten.

Also, you are correct that you can not do a Find (search) across different Types.