Adding a Book (Basic):
The book type contains information about the book that will be true of all versions of the book. This also allows any articles or discussion about the book itself to be on one central place, rather than spread across several editions. Information about specific editions such as publisher and ISBN should be entered in the book edition type (see below).
- The convention is to use the full name of the book (including subtitle) as the name of the topic; if the book is commonly known by a shorter name however, the full name can be put in the alias field instead.
- Author is the person or people who wrote the book. Enter all people listed as authors.
- Pseudonyms: we currently cannot indicate whether a book was published under a pseudonym. Authors who are better known by their pseudonyms (such as George Orwell) are often in Freebase under the more well-known name, and that name should be used. But works published by authors who use multiple names must all be given the same author.
- Note also that the author of a book is not always a person; sometimes the author is listed as a company or other organization. If this is the case, just enter the name of the organization in the author field.
- Freebase will automatically co-type all authors with the type person, so if you have entered a company as the author, please fix this by clicking the name of the company, then removing the type “person” from the list of types near the top of the page.
- Editor is used if the book is a compilation of works, such as a collection of stories or poems, or if the book is a collaborative effort such as a dictionary or encyclopedia. A book can sometimes have both an author and an editor (usually a posthumous collection).
- The subject can be something formal, such as the Library of Congress subject headings, or it can be a general description of what the book is about. Books can have any number of subjects.
- Genre describes the class of literature the book belongs to, rather than its subject matter.
- Characters should only be used for works of fiction.
- Copyright Date: this is usually, but by no means always, the same as the date of first publication.
- Original Language: this is the language the book was originally written in. See Entering a Translated Work of Literature for help on entering translations.
Book Editions (More Advanced)
A Book Edition represents a specific publication of a book. Print, audio, and electronic versions of books can all be represented as book editions. Note that we are not, for the most part, interested in tracking separate printings of an edition, except in rare cases where there has been significant change between printings (such as a new cover or additional contents).
- The title of an edition can be entered several ways. The simplest is simply to give it the title that appears on that edition, which will be the same as the book in the majority of cases. In many cases, however, books have undergone title changes, and this is useful information to know. You can also include descriptive information if you think it’s merited (such as "revised edition", “limited edition”, “critical edition”, etc.). Bear in mind that the publisher, date of publication, ISBN, and binding all display as disambiguators, and do not need to be included in the title field.
- Publisher: enter the publisher from the title page, if listed.
- Binding/Format: this will be something like “hardcover”, “paperback”, “trade paperback”, etc. for print books; “cassette”, “CD”, etc. for audiobooks; and file formats for ebooks.
- Place of Publication: use the first city printed on the title page, if more than one are given.
- ISBN: enter the ISBN, ISBN-13, and SBN numbers here, without hyphens or spaces.
- LCC: this stands for “Library of Congress Classification”, and is the call number of the book in libraries that use this system.
- OCLC number: this is a unique identifier used by many library systems around the world
- LCCN: this stands for “Library of Congress Control Number”, and is a unique identifier for books published in the United States.
- Number of Pages: there are two values for this property, “front matter” which should be a Roman numeral for works in which the front matter is numbered differently than the body of the book, and “numbered pages”, which should be the last numbered page in the book.
- Some books (such as omnibuses and some Bibles) have multiple page ranges. To enter such a book, enter the highest number in the last range under “numbered pages” and click “save”. Then, place your cursor over the value just entered and click on the arrow that appears next to it, and select “view”. You can now add additional page numbers to the “numbered pages” property. Note that if you enter the pages in reverse order (last to first), they will appear in the correct (first to last) order on the screen. Note also that these extra values do not currently display on the book edition screen.
Translations
The simplest way to enter a book edition that is a translation is to enter it as an edition of the work. In this case, you should title the edition with the book’s name in the new language (or as close as you can make it with your keyboard, since Freebase doesn’t currently handle non-Latin alphabets). Note that you cannot enter the translator or the language of the translation. If you want to enter this data, see “Entering a Translated Work of Literature”.
Contents
If you would like to add the contents of a book, see “Entering Contents of a Book or Periodical”. Note, however, that this is currently a somewhat complex operation. See also Entering Special Kinds of Books for information about entering omnibuses and other unusual types of books.
Excerpts and Serial Installments of a Book
To enter data for excerpts and serial installments of a book, see "Entering Serialized and Excerpted Works of Literature".
