Ok, I’ve made some changes to the edition list on a book page. It now shows bigger thumbnails, publisher field, and the rows are sortable (click on the column header). Let me know how this looks.
I’m still looking at imprint, impression number, and edition number.
Hey, thanks! That’s a great start. The images are a good size now. Cheers.
Very much looking forward to the other columns going in. Especially impression number!
Step 2 might be to allow sorting within previous sort, persisting the sort between page refreshes, and perhaps add a filter text box / free-text combo box under/over each heading to allow filtering of rows based on that value in that field - that’s the thing that would be brilliant to allow to work as get-parameters so we can build urls for a subset of Editions.
Ok I fixed that. It was running fine locally for me and just shows the schemas and a visualization of how they connect. It was for my own use but may be helpful to others!
@xceque I added two new columns to the editions list on book pages:
What do you think? The editions table is getting pretty wide now with all these columns (thumbnail, title, publisher, format, language, location, dates, impression, notes). I’ll be thinking about ways to condense or streamline the display so it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Open to ideas if you have any thoughts on what’s most vs. least useful at a glance.
Thanks for this!
Honestly, I didn’t think you’d do the notes column. It kind of requires the rows to be double-purpose - columns in the top half, notes in the bottom, image spanning both - each per row. If you wanted to simplify it, drop the notes for now.
In an ideal world, I think we’d be able to customise per-user which, out of all of the possible properties, we see in Credit-type views, and in the Book view.
I think, ultimately it’s going to be impossible to get the perfect view, so that’s where filtering and grouping would really help. Sorting Book by Impression, if it was eventually an intelligent sort (numbers sorted numerically, alphanumeric sorted alphabetically), and date, would be the most useful, if you could also filter or group by, say, Imprint/Publisher.
Grouping would allow you to drop the column for the property being grouped, and make the table more manageable.
Have a think about how to identify items in a view that are in the Collection, Read and Wantlist, too.
This is all thinking out loud, so feel free to offer suggestions. I think it’s up to you how far you think you want to allow the users to customise their view, and what stages you want to do it in to get there, but I think also that the more a user can view the data in a way that makes sense to them, the more people are likely to get something useful out of the database.
To be honest, Notes can be such a mixed bag that it seems a bit excessive to display it on the Editions page.
What I would expect to see on the page:
Title / Publisher / Location / Year + Format / Edition/Printing / Special Edition
Notes:
Edition/Printing - should be just simple 1/1 or something, not the whole printer’s key
Year - should be most recent year entered
Special Edition - basically the ability to note things like “150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition”, maybe similar to the Discogs Free Text Field. Not sure what to call it though.
I can also understand the need to have Language, but don’t think it’s that important.
Author would be there too but it is already on the Book page, and there’s no need to repeat it.
On the assumption that by ‘Editions page’ you meant Editions list on the Book page…
I agree regarding the notes. I suggested it because there is a lot of different types of information that you might need to identify a row in that table as being unique - or at least to narrow down what you’re looking for to a small, manageable number of rows. Notes can be used to show something like that, but it’s going to be important how it’s displayed to minimise clutter.
A Free Text Field like on discogs, which has already been mentioned several times now, would be more use than the Notes, in fairness, and with apologies to @Burnett for going to all the trouble of putting Notes in!
The idea with having the printer’s key in there is as a fall-back to when ‘Impression No’ hasn’t been entered. I was trying to save columns by having both bits of data in one column, with priority to Impression. Since they effectively show the same broad thing in a different way, it’s better than having two columns to show what impression the row is for.
As long as there is sufficient data being shown in the list to narrow your search to a couple of rows, so a user can best find their specific printing, that’s really all it needs. I don’t think Publisher Location would help narrow that down very much when Publisher is there. Market might - since I’ve been using Location as Market, it helped me find the Australian printings I entered amongst the mass of UK ones.
In any case, being able to filter by any property would be an amazing help narrowing it down. Being able to choose per-user which columns you want to show would be even more amazing. Both would be amazingly amazing. 
Yes. 
I figured as much. Some keys are kinda long, so together with Notes, it can look a bit cluttered.
Could you link an example? I’m curious. What are the differences?
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - Books - ctlgs
Here there are impressions published in the UK but printed in Australia for the Australian market. With publisher addresses in several countries.
Example: https://ctlgs.org/c/books/edition/292181/the-warlock-of-firetop-mountain/
edit: I just updated the images on that one ^ they were still the old ones, and I’ve been updating my old bookogs images with ones that have more accurate colours!
Also impressions published in the UK (and Australia for the same printing, but I haven’t added those credits yet - I’ll do those as a separate pass!) but which aren’t explicitly for the Australian market.
Example: https://ctlgs.org/c/books/edition/821977/the-warlock-of-firetop-mountain/
(took a while to find that one because of exactly the issues I’m trying to resolve in this thread! :D)
@xceque No problem! Notes was easy to add and I’ve just removed it. Also made the impression column sort numerically. I’m working through the ideas in this thread and am working on collection indicators now (btw they’re called skittles on Discogs, a community-coined feature).
I agree this section should show enough information to help you find the right edition, or notice the one you have isn’t there yet. Though I would like to wait for more users and feedback before going deep into per-user customizations.
Of course they are Penguin books. 
The printing location does not necessarily indicate the full market either; both the UK and Australian printings were most likely sold in other countries as well. Because the market is rarely explicitly stated on the book, it’s an educated guess at best, just like in Discogs.
In addition to the printing location, the most common location mentioned on books is the location of the publisher. That’s why it’s usually used.
There are multiple solutions, including:
Publisher Location: Harmondsworth
Printing Location: Australia
Location: Harmondsworth (Printed in Australia)
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - Penguin Books - Harmondsworth - 1984 - UK impression
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - Penguin Books - Harmondsworth - 1984 - AUS impression
Just some ideas.
(The location used by libraries is often sourced from the title page. If it’s not there, then you have to look at the copyright page. Usually the main publisher/headquarters is listed first.)
This is fair enough, and I’m fine if the Location field becomes definitively used for this. I just want the doubt removed! 
I think there’s probably value in Market Location, Printer Location, and Publisher Location fields. Documentation ought to explain the circumstances under which they should be filled, and with what.