Sorting of collections

[Vince]

I was looking at the Haycraft-Queen collection on SE for no particular reason, and noticed a couple of things.

First, O Henry’s The Gentle Grafter is a short-story collection, not a novel, and is therefore wholly contained within our existing O. Henry Short Fiction collection. The placeholder, therefore, either shouldn’t exist, or should point to Short Fiction, or something. (If you’re wondering how a book of O. Henry short stories ended up on a mystery “cornerstone” list, get in line.)

Second, the ones we don’t have are a mixture of ones that aren’t PD yet, and ones that are PD but we just don’t have them, and ones that are PD that we don’t have that are Wanted, and some that are that but are in progress. Currently, those are all sorted together. I wonder if it’s possible without a lot of trouble to at least sort the ones that are PD ahead of the ones that aren’t. That way if people wanted to see if there was something they were interested in in a particular collection, it would be easier for them to find something to work on. (Extra credit if the “Wanted” ones were sorted at the top of the “already PD” list, but I realize that might be too much.)

[Alex Cabal]

I added a new optional element to collection metadata,
se:title-in-collection, which you can add in cases like O. Henry where
the ebook we have is under a different title in some collection. That's
live now.

Ordering how you describe would be too complicated in the SQL I think. I
don't think it's a huge deal to leave it as-is for unsorted collections.

On 1/14/26 7:16 PM, Vince wrote:
> I was looking at the Haycraft-Queen collection on SE for no particular
> reason, and noticed a couple of things.
>

> First, O Henry’s /The Gentle Grafter/ is a short-story collection, not a

> novel, and is therefore wholly contained within our existing O. Henry
> Short Fiction collection. The placeholder, therefore, either shouldn’t
> exist, or should point to Short Fiction, or something. (If you’re
> wondering how a book of O. Henry short stories ended up on a mystery
> “cornerstone” list, get in line.)
>
> Second, the ones we don’t have are a mixture of ones that aren’t PD yet,
> and ones that are PD but we just don’t have them, and ones that are PD
> that we don’t have that are Wanted, and some that are that but are in
> progress. Currently, those are all sorted together. I wonder if it’s

> possible without a lot of trouble to at least sort the ones that /
> are/ PD ahead of the ones that aren’t. That way if people wanted to see

> if there was something they were interested in in a particular
> collection, it would be easier for them to find something to work on.
> (Extra credit if the “Wanted” ones were sorted at the top of the
> “already PD” list, but I realize that might be too much.)
>

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[Vince]

Awesome, thanks! I’ll just note…

The SEMoS text says “…containing a short story that is the actual entry in the collection,” (ephasis mine) while in this case, the issue is that there is a book called The Gentle Grafter that contains several of his short stories, and that book (and therefore all the short stories contained within it) is what’s in the H-Q collection. IOW, there is no story titled “The Gentle Grafter” here or anywhere else, only a book with that title, and that book title also doesn’t exist anywhere except as an entry in the H-Q collection.

So you might want to add to/modify the SEMoS description to make it clear that the value of se:title-in-collection doesn’t have to be a title within the current work.

On Jan 22, 2026, at 12:46 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I added a new optional element to collection metadata, se:title-in-collection, which you can add in cases like O. Henry where the ebook we have is under a different title in some collection. That's live now.

…

[Alex Cabal]

It's just an example

On 1/22/26 3:59 PM, Vince wrote:
> Awesome, thanks! I’ll just note…
>

> The SEMoS text says “…containing /a short story/ that is the actual

> entry in the collection,” (ephasis mine) while in this case, the issue

> is that there is a /*book*/ called /The Gentle Grafter/ that contains
> several of his short stories, and that /*book*/ (and therefore all the

> short stories contained within it) is what’s in the H-Q collection. IOW,
> there is no story titled “The Gentle Grafter” here or anywhere else,
> only a book with that title, and that book title also doesn’t exist
> anywhere except as an entry in the H-Q collection.
>
> So you might want to add to/modify the SEMoS description to make it
> clear that the value of se:title-in-collection doesn’t have to be a
> title within the current work.
>
>> On Jan 22, 2026, at 12:46 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks
>> <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> I added a new optional element to collection metadata, se:title-in-
>> collection, which you can add in cases like O. Henry where the ebook
>> we have is under a different title in some collection. That's live now.
>>
>> …
>>
>> On 1/14/26 7:16 PM, Vince wrote:
>>> I was looking at the Haycraft-Queen collection on SE for no
>>> particular reason, and noticed a couple of things.
>>> First, O Henry’s /The Gentle Grafter/ is a short-story collection,
>>> not a novel, and is therefore wholly contained within our existing O.
>>> Henry Short Fiction collection. The placeholder, therefore, either
>>> shouldn’t exist, or should point to Short Fiction, or something. (If
>>> you’re wondering how a book of O. Henry short stories ended up on a
>>> mystery “cornerstone” list, get in line.)
>>
>

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[Vince]

I realize that, but it’s an example of the title existing within the current work, without any verbiage anywhere that indicates it can be a title that doesn’t exist within the current work. I would not have gotten from that description that we could add The Gentle Grafter as a value. In fact, I did not get it—I had this question written before I downloaded the updates to O. Henry to see what you’d done, because it didn’t seem the SEMoS description fit the circumstances at all.