Editing:Merging Titles

There are three ways to merge title records:
 * 1) The first one is to use the "Show All Titles" link on an author's Summary Bibliography page, check the boxes next to the two (or more) titles in question and then hit the "Merge Selected Records" button. Note that this method doesn't work if the titles that you are trying to merge are on two separate pages of the "Title Search" page. This can happen when trying to merge, say, "Axe" and "The Axe" by a prolific author, when the second title record is displayed on the second or even third page of "Title Search".
 * 2) The second way is to use "Advanced Search" and search for the title. This method is a little more time consuming, but also much more powerful since you can use various AND/OR/NOT (ANDNOT is currently broken; We apologize for this inconvenience.) combinations, which allows you to merge any titles.
 * 3) The third way is to use the "Check for Duplicate Titles" link from the author's Summary Bibliography page. This scans the list of works by the author for ones which have identical titles or, if you select "Similar Title Mode" or "Aggressive Title Mode" at the top of the page, for similar titles. Once potential duplicates have been found, the page displays each pair (or larger group) together, with a separate "Merge Selected Records" button below each group. Each "Merge" button applies only to the group directly above that button.

Regardless of how you got to the Title Merge screen, once you hit the "Merge Selected Records" button, you will find yourself on the "Title Merge Results" page, which displays any conflicts/discrepancies between the two records that you are trying to merge. Select the correct choices and hit "Complete Merge".

Note that you should be careful to confirm that what you have selected are in fact different records for the same work. Follow links as needed to confirm this before selecting "Complete Merge". In particular, be careful if the title types are not the same, as it is not at all uncommon to have a collection or anthology with the same name as one of its contents, and not unheard of for a short story to be expanded into a novel by the same name. (For example: 42330 is a short story, while 36838 is a collection that contains the short story. And 42126 is a short story, while 196409 is a novel expanded from that short story.)

Once you click "Complete Merge" the software creates a Title Merge submission that will need to be approved by a moderator. Approving the submission merges the two title records and repoints the Publication records that used to point to the dropped Title record to the kept Title record. You can now review and edit these Publication records as appropriate.

Note that when you are adding new Contents items, the software automatically creates new Titles for every content line added. These new title records will then need to be merged with pre-existing title records if applicable.