Jump to content

General question about weekly magazines


Recommended Posts

As weekly magazines get added to the database, I wanted to ask this question before these titles are in the database for such a long time that people are afraid to make corrections "because it will mess up everybody's inventory."  

Many weekly magazines do not number their issues sequentially.  Instead, they often have a volume and issue number.  A few don't even do that.  And in recent years, many magazines that are supposed to be weekly actually have occasional issues that count as two issues, i.e., the magazine has a "skip week."  (Time and The New Yorker are good examples of this.)  This situation increases the chances of a numbering mistake if the issues are all sequentially numbered in the database.  Hypothetically, if the database includes Weekly Magazine issues #1 through #7562 and later on it is discovered that there actually was no #6451, then everything from #6452 on up needs to be corrected.  I can imagine that magazines that change their frequency from weekly to biweekly (or vice versa) would be especially susceptible to these types of errors.  In addition, I suspect collectors of these magazines don't normally think of them in sequential numbers, but instead think of them in terms of their cover date.  

Would it make more sense to enter weekly magazine issues into the database using an eight digit number?  So the December 15, 2008 issue of New Yorker would be entered into the database as #20081215 (first four digits for the year, next two digits for the month, last two digits for the day).  This would allow the database to list all of the issues chronologically and make it easier for a collector to zero in on a specific issue they are looking for when browsing on Atomic Avenue.  For issues that list two dates (i.e., an issue that is covering two weeks instead of one), the convention could be to simply use the earliest date.  

This method also has the benefit of allowing users to submit random issues of weekly magazines that they know exist and/or have in their collection without having to try to do detective work (or guesswork) as to the prior publication history of that title.  For some magazines this wouldn't be too hard, but for more obscure magazines the suggested approach should reduce the time spent by HC personnel on correcting errors in the database listings for magazine titles that have a large number of issues.  

This practice would also work well if ComicBase expands to include weekly (or even daily) newspapers.  

Thoughts on this?  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

our current approach  going forward with adding in new magazines into the database can be found here:

We used this format with recently added magazine titles like Time Magazine and Life (Time) which use a multiple volume issue scheme

We're not too familiar with The New Yorker and how they handles their issues. Any online resources out there that archive past issues where we can investigate further?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless things have changed recently, The New Yorker was for quite some time handling things by cover date only.  They do have an archive, but it is behind a paywall for subscribers.  There might be other online resources for them, but I am not sure.  

I understand the volume/number approach, but is that a convention that collectors of those magazines routinely use?  Or do they tend to use cover date?  (I'm guessing that it is the latter -- but that is just a guess on my part.)  The answer to that question is important since you want to encourage those collectors to use Atomic Avenue.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...