Grouping Overview

Owned by Ashley Sneesby, created
Last updated: Aug 17, 2021
4 min read

This document is an overview of grouped works in Pika, including basic grouping factors and logic. There is linked documentation for the more specific grouping factors throughout.

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What is a Grouped Work?

A title may be represented in many different ways; as a book, as an updated edition, as an audiobook for example, but ultimately these are all representations or manifestations of the same creation called a “work.”  A bibliographic record is meant to describe one kind of representation of that work. Pika collects all of the records describing the same work into a grouped work.

A title may be based on or derived from another work; in this case the derivative is a unique creation that should be represented as its own work.  As an example, a movie title based on a book is a unique and separate work from the book’s work.

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Grouping purpose and benefits

Traditional library catalogs present all formats of a title as individual search result entries which makes it difficult for patrons to determine which option meets their needs. Similarly, lengthy results can even lead them to believe that the library does not own the format or title they want.

By presenting search results to users centered on a grouped work, a user is able to choose amongst a simplified, easy to read list of possible works of interest without being bogged down by the unneeded noise of formats and editions on offer.

Upon discovery of the work of interest the display of the grouped work facilitates the intuitive selection of the actual format the user prefers.

Benefits : 

  • First and foremost getting a user to a title of interest while being agnostic about the format.

  • Popular or classic titles with numerous editions and formats are collected into a single search entry, greatly reducing confusion over why titles appear multiple times in the catalog.

  • eContent is displayed intuitively alongside physical content

  • Metadata for each record of a group work populates the searching data making search entry information more robust for a work than a single bibliographic record would have on its own.

  • When patrons select a format to place a hold on, Pika will automatically sort editions to give the user the best edition based on a number of factors including how recent the edition is (for non-fiction titles), the availability of the edition both locally and at other libraries in a consortium, and more. If a patron does not want the preferred edition, they can easily choose any other edition as well.

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Grouping process

Pika uses four overarching grouping factors to group records into a work. A set of records group onto a grouped work when all of the factors for each record match. These factors are combined together and used to generate a grouped work ID.  When bibliographic records have identical grouping factors they end up with the same grouped work ID. Here is more information about the grouped worked ID.

The links on the grouping factors describe the details of how that factor is determined for a record.

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Factors affected by grouping

  • Searching

    • All search queries search for grouped works that match a search phrase.  

    • The search filters and facets are based on grouped works. 

  • Content Enrichment

    • Reader’s Advisory, Syndicated Reviews, Series Information, and Reading Level is collected at the grouped work level

  • User Enrichment

    • User ratings, reviews, and tags are tied to the grouped work

    • The 'Recommended for You'  feature presents grouped works of potential  interest to user

    • User lists are collections of grouped works rather than bibliographic records

    • User Reading History is presented as grouped works with ancillary information about specific formats that were borrowed

  • Browse categories

    • Browse categories are indirectly based on grouped works because they are based searches or user lists, which are based on grouped works

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Grouped Works display

Records that represent the same format (e.g. book, eBook, DVD) are displayed as a format manifestation on a grouped work.  The book format is always at the top, when applicable. The rest of the formats are listed alphabetically. 


If there are several editions of the same format, the Show Editions button will open the editions table. The editions table for fiction is sorted by most available for the user; and sorted by latest numerical edition for non-fiction.

The Quick Copy View link displays a pop-up of basic copy information for the format manifestation, including items from all the bibs that contribute to the format manifestation.

Pika displays eContent as separate formats on the grouped work based on the eContent source.

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