Common Knowledge

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View a list of all of the HelpThing topics.

The first rule of HelpThing is "be bold!" If you can add or edit it, go ahead. We also have a HelpThing Style Guide.


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<< back to Help and Frequently Asked Questions

This is a Help or FAQ page

Please answer LibraryThing related questions here (and on the other Help and FAQ pages). To ASK questions, however, please use Talk.


Common Knowledge (CK) is a LibraryThing system that lets you contribute interesting facts and data about books, authors, editions, and other items within the LibraryThing universe. This information affects all users and is visible on works pages. Some of it can also be made visible in your personal catalog by editing your display style.

If you want to edit the information about your own copy of the book, use the Edit Book page linked to from the pencil icon in your catalog, or from "Edit your book" in the left column on the book's page. See HelpThing:Work/Edit for the help on that page.

The Common Knowledge discussion group is an active group where you may post questions or join discussions on many facets of CK data.

Formatting rules and usage guidelines

General

  • Entries within Common Knowledge serve as links to a page listing all works or authors with the same entry.
    • If you want to include multiple entries, use the + button just below the field to create another field; if you put two things together in one field, you will have created a single entry that contains both things. E.g. "New York, USA" entered as an Important Place for a work will link to a page listing all works with "New York, USA" as an important place. "New York, USA" and "Minnesota, USA" in separate fields will create links to both pages. "New York, USA; Minnesota, USA" will link to a page listing only works that also have both states listed together in the same order.
  • You can use parentheses in most fields to include "meta" information that is secondary to the item.
    • All data after the first open parenthesis is considered to be part of the metadata.
    • While it is not necessary, it is certainly helpful for future expansion if you separate meta values by pipes "|" in the parentheses (first value | second value). Spaces around the pipe are optional.

Canonical title, canonical name

LibraryThing aims to display the most general, common and accepted form of a work's title or an author's name. So, for example, we prefer "The Princess Bride" to "The Princess Bride (25th Anniversary Edition)." To get this common form, LibraryThing chooses the "democratic" answer--the title or name that is used the most on the site. The "Canonical title" and "Canonical name" fields are there for when this falters.

Guidelines

  • Normally, calculation is the answer. Reinforcing calculations with Canonical Names is often a sign of misunderstanding (those Canonical Names/Titles should be deleted).
  • In edge cases, the social name wins. See Wikipedia or common usage. So, Mark Twain (not Samuel Clemens).
  • Authors with a name-change win.
  • Canonical Names/Titles should remain in place unless they already match the system name for that author/title.
  • Pen names should be combined—there is only Anne Rice and Stephen King, not Anne Roquelaire and Richard Bachman. Needless to say, their Works may go by these authors—the author page is different.

Canonical Names/Titles should not be entirely deleted from the CK of an author or work unless they are identical to the existing system Name or Title.

The goal is the most general, common and accepted form in the language of the site, not the most "correct." Please note: At the moment, entries in the canonical name field are carrying over to all LibraryThing language sites, so when anything is entered in the .fr or .de sites, those canonical names carry into the .com site as well. LT staff will be making changes to CK-language handling shortly [note added 4/17/2011].

  • The Brothers Karamazov. The Russian Братья Карамазовы is generally known in English as "The Brothers Karamazov," although both "The Karamazov Brothers" and the Russian title are arguably more correct.
  • J. K. Rowling. In English the author of the Harry Potter books is known as J. K. Rowling, not Joanne Rowling or Joanne Murray (her legal name). In Germany, however, her books are ascribed to Joanne K. Rowling, so this would be the canonical form of her name on LibraryThing.de.

If you leave the field blank, LibraryThing will continue to use the democratic method. When in doubt, trust in that.

Names, generally speaking, should follow the MLA Style Manual, §§ 3.6 and 6.6.1, and Chicago Manual of Style 15th ed., § 18.41 (q.v.). Do not list titles (Dr., Sir, Saint, etc.) or degrees (PhD, MA, DDS, etc.) with names. A book whose author is named Edward Pedant, PhD should appear simply as Pedant, Edward. However, suffixes like 'Jr.' or 'II' should be included. To combine examples, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be listed as King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Note: Canonical titles and names are not a solution to these three problems:

  • Library vs. Amazon capitalization differences
  • Combination problems
  • Multiple-author problems

The Canonical Title of a work should be in the language of the site. E.g. The English version of the site (www.librarything.com) should have the English title; the French version of the site (www.librarything.fr) should have the French title.

Legal Name, Other Names

See Tim's post on the LibraryThing blog. The format is the same as Canonical Name.

Dates

  • Dates should be formatted in the ISO-standard format: YYYY-MM-DD
  • The format can be shortened in the case of unknown data: 2007-01 or merely 2007
  • If there is some question about the date and you would like to show that then put a question mark in parentheses behind the date like 1600 (?)
    • If there is a BC/BCE designation it should immediately follow: 1600 BCE
    • AD/CE is implied if the era designation is not there.
    • You may use whatever form with which you are most comfortable, BC/AD or BCE/CE, the system will handle it correctly.
  • For dates that have only a rough approximation (birth/death dates for some historical figures for instance) you can use circa: c. 14th Century or c. 1350

Place Names

  • U.S. State names should be spelled out (Mississippi, not MS). Do not use state abbreviations. Don't forget to include USA (Georgia is a country, Georgia, USA is a state).
  • If the name of a location has changed since the time of writing please use the name used in the work. You may optionally add a line for the modern name of the place (or any other names that it has been called). These extra lines will help for cross-linking items.
  • When referencing the city of New York it should be entered as New York, New York, USA [1].

People/Character Names

  • Use a single line for EACH character
    • If you have a married couple Mr. Smith would be one line and Mrs. Smith would be a second line
  • Use separate lines for alter egos.
    • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde should be separate entries.
    • Superman and Clark Kent should be separate entries.
    • Do NOT list alter egos as meta data in parentheses. This may give spoiler information that some people do not want to know. For instance, listing Clark Kent (Superman) would be a spoiler to those who did not know that fact. This information should be listed as separate entries.
  • Titles (Dr., Colonel, Lt., etc.):
  • Nicknames should be in quotation marks, not parentheses. Parentheses mark the end of the actual entry, and would exclude the nickname. E.g. Tommy "Tip" Paine instead of Tommy (Tip) Paine because the latter will link to an entry for just Tommy.
    • Unimportant nicknames for a character need not be included. The entry should identify the character.
  • Only enter characters that are actually named
    • Do not add Character archetypes (Alpha Male, Billionaire) or names that would refer to a group of people as one lump
    • Do not add group names to act as delimiters. So don't put Avengers then list the team members beneath.
    • Do not add places as a character
    • Do not add animals unless they are integral to the plot. So you can add The Cat in the Hat but not Terry, the Smith's pet dog
  • Character should have a significant part of the story to be included in the list.
    • A character that shows up for a part of a scene and then is never heard from again can be left off the list.
  • There is no need to tack on the book title to the character name

Gender

Gender applies to an individual - not a group of people. Therefore an individual person may be male / female / other (i.e. someone who does not gender-identify or who has-been/identifies-as neither/both). Anything other than an individual person would be "n/a" (this includes corporations and groups of people working together; even if all of the people are individually the same gender the group itself does not have a gender).

  • Male
  • Female
  • Other / Contested / Unknown - Use this for individuals who identify as other than male or female, or where gender is unknown or contested (e.g., a historical person or pseudonym).
  • N/A - "Not applicable". Use this for entities that lack gender as a class. For instance, corporate authors, or any single name for multiple people.
  • Not set - "Not set" means that the Common Knowledge field for gender has not yet been set for this author.

See your library's author gender statistics at http://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/memes/gender .

Education

  • Education entries should be Common Name for School (Degree | College or major | YYYY)
    • You may optionally add the city location information for the school to the parenthetical information if you wish to distinguish multiple locations for a school. The entry would look like: Common Name for School (Degree | College or major | YYYY | City, State, USA)
  • In the U.S. the most common name is the University level.
    • Example: Mississippi State University (B.A. | Graphic Design | 2007)
  • There is no decision on whether to include periods in the degree abbreviation. Is it B.A. or is it BA?

Relationships

From Tim in the LibraryThing blog [2]:

Relationships. We've also added a "Relationships" field, intended to capture when an author's spouse, son or other relative is also an author (eg., Martin Amis). So far at least, it's only intended to capture author-to-author relations, creating author-page links. LibraryThing can't be an all-out genealogy site!
The result can be rather fun. Starting from Isabel Fonseca, author of Attachment you can now go to well-known British novelist Martin Amis, to his well-known father Kingsley Amis, to his second wife, the British novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, to her first huband Peter Scott, a popular naturalist whose father was Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic) and godfather Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie, great grandfather of Kevin Bacon (not true).

The entry should be in Lastname, Firstname format, just like Canonical Name, and the relationship should appear in parentheses. The relationship is who that person is in relation to the current person, e.g. on Isabel Fonseca's page, Martin Amis is listed as Amis, Martin (husband) or on Hillary Clinton's page, Bill Clinton is listed as Clinton, Bill (husband).

The Relationships field is not the container for all available co-authors. It is an appropriate container for "collaborators", which expresses a closer working relationship than "co-author". See conceptDawg, 2011/02/01, "Proper Usage of Relationships in CK?", Talk about LibraryThing group.

Disambiguation notice

This field allows you to write a short notice to other users about the identity of the author or the book. For example, if you find that an author has written a book under a pseudonym, you can combine the nom-de-plume with the main name of that author. If someone separates the two because he has never heard of the pseudonym, you can put a disambiguation notice on the author page to explain why the two were combined (a weblink that proves the identity is helpful). See an example: Chris Ryan

Same goes for the work page of a book. If people keep combining two versions of a book that are not the same, for example "Alice in Wonderland" with "Through the Looking Glass" or combine radio-play versions with the full-length audiobook version, then you should explain the problem in the disambiguation notice. See an example: "Alice in Wonderland"

Series and Publisher Series

In June 2020 a major revamp of LT series was introduced. Series are no longer part of Common Knowledge and their CK field has been removed. For details on the new series system, see HelpThing:Nseries_controller.

Original publication date

The original publication date refers to the original publication date of the work -- edition-specific publication dates are included in the edition records.

To include multiple original publication dates, simply add the distinguishing text in parentheses. For instance:

  • A work was first published in serial form and then in book form.
    • Add two fields; the first is "1893 (serial)" and the second is "1893 (book)" Talk, #55
  • A work was first published in English and then in Spanish.
    • Some people may choose to treat translations as simply editions. However, some people may wish to include in CK each "original publication date" in a new language. Use multiple fields, e.g., "1893 (eng.)", "1895 (esp.)", "1897 (deu.)", etc. Talk, #52
  • A work was published in multiple editions, e.g., Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
    • Include editions in parentheses.
      • 1818 (first publication)
      • 1831 (rev.)

Related movies

  • This field is specifically if the movie is a direct connection to a book. Not an inspiration or example of its storyline. The movie and the book must have a direct link.
  • This field is NOT for mentions of movies or TV shows in the book.
  • Find the movie's IMDB ID on IMDB
  • Create the CK entry on LibraryThing using the movie title, date and IMDB ID, for example:
War and Peace (1956 | tt0049934)
  • NB: This field pulls in some data from IMDB when search terms are entered (per CH, February 2013)

Awards and Honors

In September 2023 a major revamp of LT awards and honors was introduced. Awards and honors are no longer part of Common Knowledge and their CK field has been removed. For details on the new awards and honors system, see announcement topic.

Epigraph

An Epigraph is a quotation that appears at the front of the book. The quotation can be from a real or fictional work. Some books give more than one quotation.

Dedication

A Dedication is the inscription where the author names a specific person or group. Some books have more than one Dedication.

Publisher's editors

The Publisher's Editors are the individuals, working for the publisher, who have edited the book (in Lastname, Firstname format; use the + if there is more than one). It can be difficult to identify the editors; sometimes the author will mention them in the acknowledgments. It is not the name of the publisher; although as with all fields the publisher could be included in parentheses after the editor's name. See discussions here and here.

Blurbers

The entry is the name of the person who provided the blurb for the book, not the blurb itself; the name should be in Lastname, Firstname format [3]. Names of publications don't qualify [4]. If you want to include the blurb or other information, please do so inside parentheses.

LibraryThing members' description

Book description

This field allows you to write a short summary of the work. This should be your own summary, not text copied and pasted from a bookstore site or other source. This book of fiction discusses diplomacy by the US Senate with the Soviet Union and the Arab-Israeli Bloc during the Cold War. The Arab countries and Israel had resolved their hostility and formed a bloc which controlled the oil, and therefore the energy, of the world.

I read this book between 1953 and 1957. I don't know the title, author's name, or date of publication.

Haiku summary

Try your hand at summarizing your favorite book in 17 syllables (three lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables).

See the blog post or the Book Haiku page for examples.

Finally

And most of all HAVE FUN! Don't stress out too much over these rules. If you mess up somebody will be along to correct it.

History

The project's development codename was "fwiki"

Initial blog post:- October, 10 2007

Discussion of the rules for formatting data took place in this forum discussion. Last entry (as at June 27 2010) was July 19 2009.

Links

Retrieved from "https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php?title=Common_Knowledge&oldid=411984"