Grouping Title

By Ashley Sneesby
7 min

This documentation describes the Grouping Title grouping factor as used in Pika’s grouped work grouping logic.

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Grouping Title basics

The grouping title goes through a normalization process to reduce redundancies or duplications of data in the titles. These factors are combined together and used to generate a grouped work ID.  When bibliographic (bibs) records have identical grouping factors they end up with the same grouped work ID.  This is how Pika “groups” bibs together into a work. The process includes the grouping title, grouping subtitle, grouping title normalization, preferred grouping title, the entire normalization process.

The grouping factors for a record can be seen by viewing the grouped work for a record and looking in the Staff View section of a grouped work (you must be logged in to see this information).  From an individual bib, click on the Go To GroupedWork button to see the Grouping Title under the Grouping Information. Grouping titles and the title on an individual bib can look the same, though display differently in search results.

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Grouping title

For MARC records, the grouping title will be taken from the 245 - Title Statement, subfield a.   If the record has any non-filing characters in the second indicator, those are removed from the title.

If a record does not have a 245 field the record will not have a grouping title, i.e. it will be blank.

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Subtitles in the Grouping Title

For MARC records, the subtitle is taken from the 245 - Title Statement, subfield b (remainder of the title) when that field is populated.

For MARC records, the subtitle will include the 245 - Title Statement, subfield n (number of part/section of a work) or 245 - Title Statement,  subfield p (name of part/section of a work) when those fields are populated. This will include repeated fields.

If there are multiple 245|n and/or 245|p, all the subfields will be used.

Subtitles need to go through a normalization process before being combined with the basic title in the 245|a because some parts of the subtitle may need to be handled slightly differently. Subtitle normalization includes many of the steps detailed below. The step to note specifically that subtitle information in brackets is removed. 

Sometimes the 245|a contains subtitle information rather than subtitle fields.  This information is parsed by treating all text after the first colon “:” as the subtitle.  This text is then run through the subtitle processing above then combined back with the title.

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Grouping Title Normalization

Any information in brackets is removed.

 

 

If the entire title is in brackets the information in the brackets does not get removed during the normalization process.

Diacritic characters that have a Latin equivalent are converted for the title because some records will not have the diacritic characters, especially eContent. This will allow those titles to group together.

 

Titles that include a person’s initials, the periods will be replaced with spaces.

if all the normalization reduces the title down to nothing the normalization is reverted and the title that existed before the subtitle was removed is used.

Subtitle phrases and patterns that do not help with the grouping are removed like “a novel of,” “an autobiography,” “a biography,” a memoir,” “the movie,” “large print,” “the graphic novel,” “graphic novel,” “magazine,” “audio cd,” “book club kit,” “with illustrations,” “Playaway,” “the original classic edition,” “classic edition,” “a novel,” “a mystery,” “a thriller,” “a memoir,” “a story,” “book,” “series,” “chronicles,” “trilogy,” “by author name,” etc. from the grouping title.

Overdrive often includes series statements as a subtitle. These series statements do not contribute to grouping and are removed from the grouping title.

Titles with an ampersand character are converted to ‘and’ for the grouping title.

The special Unicode characters or non-Unicode letters characters are removed from the grouping title.

Edition statements with numbers are converted to letters and removed from the grouping title.

Any title with a number for series or season information or a numeric title will be converted into letters, up to 10.

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Normalization process for title and subtitle

The basic title and subtitle go through an extensive normalization processing to create the full title.

  • The process will locate any titles that did not have the articles or non-filing characters removed.

  • The process cleans up characters to replace the period after the initials with spaces.

  • The process converts any ampersand character to ‘and’ for the grouping title.

  • The process removes apostrophes.

  • The process removes any remaining special characters.

  • The process removes any subtitle patterns.

  • The process converts any numbers into letters for series and numeric titles.

  • The process converts any edition statement from numbers to letters and removed from the title.

  • The process converts any number for series or season information or a numeric title into letters.

  •   if all the normalization reduces the title down to nothing the normalization is reverted and the title that existed before the normalization is used.

  • The process trims down the title to the first 400 characters. The author’s information is trimmed down to the first 100 characters. 

  • The final step to the grouping normalization process for the title is the Preferred Grouping Title that will replace every instance of the Source Grouping Title for any grouped work with that Grouping Title, not just for a single grouped work of interest. 

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Preferred Grouping Title

  • The final step to the grouping normalization process for the title is the Preferred Grouping Title that will replace every instance of the Source Grouping Title for any grouped work with that Grouping Title, not just for a single grouped work of interest. This is for legitimate variations on a title where records will have one form of the title and some with another form of the title.  Both forms of the title are right and there is not a normalization or cataloging problem.  In that case, there is more than one way to catalog a work, so the Preferred Grouping Title form is used to add entries into a table when a normalized title will now display with a preferred title. 

    • Anyone with the cataloging role can populate this information into a form that will change the grouping title.

Here is an example of when the Preferred Grouping Title feature would be used. You have a title that includes a subtitle.  This title and subtitle get normalized.

Now, you have a title that includes a subtitle in brackets.  That title and subtitle also get normalized.

Both titles are correct.  However, the subtitle with the brackets gets removed, and the titles will not group.  If you use the Preferred Grouping Titles feature the subtitle can be added or removed allowing them to group.

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