Comment by idoubtit
3 days ago
Wikidata is a FRBR-compatible public database of books. I don't know if it's good enough for the kind of books the author wants, but in recent years the quality of wikidata greatly increased for the books that deal with (about 1000 items).
BTW, they misunderstood their own example of "Hotel Iris" by Yoko Ogawa when they wrote "the same work is duplicated four times." In fact, those four entries in the list point to distinct works.
One of these is a French publication by the publisher Actes Sud. Translations are not the same work as the original. They are derived works.
But it's true this list is a mess. Another entriy has 3 editions, one in English and two in Spanish, so it's obviously an error that mixes two distinct works.
In FBRB translations are generally considered the same work.
In Openlibrary specifically they should be combined as one work. The editions can store the language and the translator info.
The current grouping is probably because semi-automatic (and some manual) merging is easier for titles in the same language.
I'm not sure I like merging translations together. They really make a difference, not like merging irrelevant things like paperback vs hardcover. A lot of classic literature from non-English originals (and I assume vice versa) suffers from old, dry translations -- I remember reading Dostoevsky in high school and not liking it much but that's because it was using translations from the early 20th century. More modern translations feel much more alive.
Their guidelines on what gets its own work, and what doesn't, are here:
https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/editing#works-special-cases
So an abridged or bowlderised or annotated or illustrated version are collected under the same work, even though people might have good reasons to want one over another (the language used and the specific translator being just two important attributes)
But summaries or adaptations or plays and screenplays are not.
There's always gray areas, but note the edition info isn't lost, it just lives in a subordinate position that is linked directly from the work.
> Translations are not the same work as the original. They are derived works.
Which adds yet another layer. Because you still want them to be considered as part of a larger single entity. If you're performing a search, you want to find the single main entity, and then have different translations listed the same way you have different editions listed.
Is this not what semantic search enables?
No? I don't know how that relates or what you're trying to suggest.