Template talk:Infobox book

Multiple publications

Some books have multiple publications. For example, The Dark Fields. In the UK under one publisher, in the US under another. As a hardcover one year, as a softcover the next. Then under a new title to coincide with a film release several years later by a third publisher. How to infobox this? Multiple infoboxes? -- Webrobate (talk) 15:31, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Separate fields would be best. We should ideally stick to the first publication, but the problem is that English language rights have traditionally been split between the US and rest of the world. Most globally successful authors have contracts with both London and New York publishers. Things may now be changing (and for some other languages such as German the rights are usually worldwide) but for a lot of notable books there were separate editions, each claiming to be the first publication. Some were absolutely simultaneous, some were virtually so due to the vagaries of local marketing, some had a longer gap between the two, and some were published first in one territory to success before publishers in another territory showed an interest. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:51, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree, separate fields seems best. An ISBN refers to a specific release, and no other releases, so this infobox seriously should support multiple ISBNs (variables isbn, isbn2, isbn3...) so that people can include different local first-versions and/or hardback vs. paperback releases. 207.65.109.10 (talk) 05:47, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I would like to see multiple ISBN's (and OCLCs) for multiple first editions, but not for later editions. I use Worldcat (OCLC) which provides a link to see all versions and editions. With hardcover, softcover, ebook, audio book, large print, et al, there are just too many to list so our users won't know what to expect. I'd rather provide them the first edition(s), along with a link to where a constantly-updated list of later and other editions is available. (And thanks for explaining the US/world thing - I had just run into that with Jon Ronson's books and had no idea what was going on with London and NY.) Flatterworld (talk) 20:11, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm less certain about "our users won't know what to expect." It seems to me that we should allow (probably) these four:

• first US hardback [hardcover] (possible variables: ushard or us-hard or us-hc)
• first world hardback [hardcover] (possible variables: worldhard or world-hard or world-hc)
• first US paperback [softcover] (possible variables: uspaper or us-paper or us-sc)
• first world paperback [softcover] (possible variables: worldpaper or world-paper or world-sc)

and nothing else. They should be labeled as such in the infobox and then both the readers and the editors would know what to expect. ("world" standing for first of the (non-US) English-language countries' version/s) I'm just throwing out ideas here. Would this be reasonable? 207.65.109.10 (talk) 02:20, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

esoteric span with nbsp causes title to be un-centered

|above= {{{name|{{PAGENAME}}}}} <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt={{urlencode:info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book}}&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle={{urlencode:{{{name|}}}}}{{#if: {{{author|}}}|&rft.author={{urlencode:{{{author}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{last|}}}|&rft.aulast={{urlencode:{{{last}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{first|}}}|&rft.aufirst={{urlencode:{{{first}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{pub_date|{{{release_date|}}}}}}|&rft.date={{urlencode:{{{pub_date|{{{release_date}}}}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{publisher|}}}|&rft.pub={{urlencode:{{{publisher}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{location|}}}|&rft.place={{urlencode:{{{location}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{pages|}}}|&rft.pages={{urlencode:{{{pages}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{series|}}}|&rft.series={{urlencode:{{{series}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{oclc|}}}|&rft_id=info:oclcnum/{{{oclc}}}}}">&nbsp;</span>

I’m not so concerned about the meaning of this crap because I’m sure it’s useful to somebody somewhere. Still:

1. Must it really be part of the title-bar of the infobox?
2. Couldn’t we remove the spaces so the span is empty and adjacent to the title (which in turn shall remain centered)?
3. Should we set ​span.Z3988 { display:none !important; }​ and forget about it?

―cobaltcigs 21:43, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Author(s) [grammar]

{{editprotected}} Please change |label1= Author → |label1= Author(s) in order to make the infoboxes of multi-author books grammatical. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

This change has now been completed. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 03:33, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Make LC Classification field link to Library of Congress online catalog?

It would be nice if the Library of Congress classification field was an external link to the LoC online catalog. This could be done by expanding any text provided to the congress parameter with the existing {{LCC}} template. (See Categories for the Working Mathematician for a hand-coded example). I presume it's not a trivial edit, at least because some invocations of Infobox book would contain invalid syntax. However, submitted for your consideration... AHMartin (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Name parameter

The documentation states that the name will be inherited from the article name if the name parameter is left blank. However, the behaviour I see is that the name is inherited only when the name parameter is omitted, and leaving the name parameter blank also leaves it blank in the infobox. Either the documentation is incorrect, or the behaviour of the infobox is incorrect. Does anybody know how it is supposed to work? -- Whpq (talk) 20:59, 3 January 2012 (UTC)