This topic will be updated and cleaned out as necessary to be the single place to find changes to change request policy and guidelines.

Changes to Cover Date Exceptions
June 6, 2009

It has been determined that Cover Date (publication date) should not default to Sale Date if no cover date is provided. Effectively, all cover date exceptions should be removed from the guidelines and any book without a month noted should default to 1/1.

However, to ease this change, any current exception should remain until a Sale Date is added.


To restate, in the curent guidelines, it says...



this will be changed and should be read as...







Definition of Magazines for CCL cataloging purposes.
May 27, 2009

To determine when to classify something as a magazine as opposed to a comic book, the approvers will work by the following guidance.

Magazines are about the hobby. Magazines generally contain multiple articles, interviews, news, photographs and/or price guides related to items you would generally find in a comic shop (comic books, Star Wars, gaming cards, etc). While a magazine may have some small percentage of sequential art within (8-12 pages of exclusive or preview material), the general focus is not on sequential art.




Technical Summary on Invalidating Cover Titles and Issues

Invalidating Cover Titles
Occasionally, cover titles will make it into the library by mistake (meaning that it already exists in the library or (less frequently) is not, by CCL's definition, a cover title at all).

In the future, a Merge Tool will be used to remove and correct these mistakes. However, in the absence of this tool, a standard process has been developed to mark these titles as invalid to both inform users and to assist the future Merge Tool.

Currently, in the web-based library, there is special formatting in place for cover titles to help users find valid titles from invalidated titles.

The following titles are presented as examples...

Invalid title:
http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/CoverTitle.aspx?id=2b08abe7-6511-4914-a30f-6fca8c2454ad

Valid title:
http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/CoverTitle.aspx?id=9bb9e810-1711-416e-b435-50f3afc07dda

Specifically, the "Invalid, please use Blood and Glory" link is created on each page view because the caption for the title has been set to "[use:9bb9e810-1711-416e-b435-50f3afc07dda]".

In this instance, 9bb9e810-1711-416e-b435-50f3afc07dda is the title id of the "valid" title and can be found in the URL for the "valid" title ... http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/CoverTitle.aspx?id=9bb9e810-1711-416e-b435-50f3afc07dda .


There are also further recommendations for invalidating titles that, from a technical standpoint, may help the future Merge Tool do its job.

If the invalid has a coresponding valid title, set the caption to [use:{id of valid title}] (as above).

If you're marking a title invalid you should put ' (Invalid)' at the end of the title. It should not be '(Invalid, use such and such)' or anything other than, at most, adding ' (Invalid)' to the end of the title.

The description/caption should be handled differently depending on the type of invalid. If you want the title referred to a different title, you'll need the '[use:cover title id]' format. If the invalid title should not point to another title, put '[invalid]' in the description/caption.

Other information to describe the invalidation should be removed from the title and the caption/description. It may be moved to the bio if desired.

Even in the bio, completely remove verbage such as "this will be removed" and focus on citing correct indicia, presenting the common confusion that causes the problem or other such helpful text (if it seems necessary). Also, the bio for invalid titles should NOT include the bio for the valid items being pointed to.


Invalidating Issues

Issues may also make it into the library by mistake. They may be added to the wrong title or not qualify as a valid issue or variant.

For issues, there is a similar special formatting mechanism in place to help users find valid issues from invalidated ones.


The following issues are presented as examples...


Invalid issue:
http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/Issue.aspx?id=3d5c4ddf-bcd2-478c-8d65-ff81ffcff22c

Valid issue:
http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/Issue.aspx?id=abde90a6-8fa8-4f0c-8e65-3d57997d1bf7

The "Invalid, please use Blood and Glory 1-A" comes from setting the issue's caption to "[use:abde90a6-8fa8-4f0c-8e65-3d57997d1bf7]".

In this instance, abde90a6-8fa8-4f0c-8e65-3d57997d1bf7 is the issue id of the "valid" issue and can be found in the URL for the "valid" issue ... http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/Issue.aspx?id=abde90a6-8fa8-4f0c-8e65-3d57997d1bf7 .


There are also further recommendations for invalidating issues that, from a technical standpoint, may help the future Merge Tool do its job.

If the invalid has a coresponding valid issue, set the caption to [use:{id of valid issue}] (as above).

The variant should be set to 'Z-INVALID'. Or, if there are multiple invalids for a particular issue number, the variant of each should start with 'Z-INVALID' and be followed with numbers enough to differentiate the invalids.

List item links (credits, publishers, characters, etc.) should be removed.

Sale date, if any, should be blanked.

Item Bio text should only contain information relevant to the specifics of invaliating the issue.

Do not blank the cover price or cover date.

Changes Regarding Annual Titles
Effective 22 July 2009

With the CCL staffing cut, there is little to show that the longstanding issue on how to handle annuals was going to be addressed anytime soon. The CR Policy Committee decided to move forward and came to an unanimous decision:

Annuals - For annuals the "number" field should represent the issues' chronological release order, it should never represent the year. The "non-number" field should represent any yearly or out-of-order notations if required, it should never be made to match the number field. This will allow for issues to both be properly ordered and properly displayed in the database.
i) Current CCL guidelines do not allow for a second volume for any annual title. As such, "non-numbering" display will show any numbering or volume reboot without a break in the title listing while following chronological order in the "number" field. This is unique to annuals only.

With the way the new 'nn' system is set up, we can solve the problem with the way annuals are listed very easily. We can jump back and fourth between numbered issues and yearly issues, and still keep them in order while being displayed properly even with really funky changes.

Examples:
Joe Blow has annuals 1, 2, 3, 2004, 2005, 6, 7, 2008, 8

With the former model these would be listed and displayed as:
#1, #2, #3, #2004, #2005, #2006, #2007, #2008, #2009

But with the new 'nn' system, we could have them catogorized and displayed quite easily as:
#1, #2, #3, issue 4 but display '2004', issue 5 but display '2005', #6, #7, issue 7.5 but display '2008', and #8

Even if a publisher goes really wacky and abandons the year notation and continues back with noninterupted numbering from a previous year (which is extremely rare) we can still use decimals to keep them ordered properly.

Further explanation of the new policy:

I) 'Chronological release order' is what we will be using to keep annuals in proper database listing order. It is determinded by order of release.

When a new annual title is released, whether the first issue Annual #1 or Annual 2009, the 'number' field will always be 1. If it needs to be properly displayed as '2009', that is the function of the 'non-number' field. Subsequently, every preceding issue will be listed in the number field as 2, 3, 4, etc... using the 'nn' field when needed to show a difference.

II) Additional volumes / numbering reboots will also follow chronological release order. Use the 'nn' field to show the restart of new numbering.

Example:
Joe Blow has had 12 annuals released previously. This year's annual will be a new volume starting again at #1, but the indicia still matches the previous title in name.

When adding to the database the 'number' for this issue should be 13, but the 'nn' field should notate it as '1'. This way all annuals are still under the same title, ordered chronologically, yet still display their proper notations.

Restructuring Previously Submitted Annuals
Much like changing variant reordering, this can become very tricky and lead to a mess and corrupted data if done improperly.

PLEASE: If you do not have a firm understanding of how the 'nn' system orders and displays issues and variants, DO NOT attempt to make changes!

When attempting to restructure annuals, try to start from the first issue in the title and work your way forward. This is the best method for allowing a thurough edit while requiring little, if any at all, multi-request edits for any single issue. Because of the nature of changing the 'number' field, major data issues can arise.

We've added this to all of the guidelines:

Some of you may have seen this already. We've made a small change to the format of title bios for comics and magazines to bring them in line with the other categories. The count of issues should now be in parenthesis. Here's what it says in the updated guidelines:


Here's an example of the change:
Old format
Title: Annihilation: Nova
Type: Comic Book
Key Pub.: Marvel
Caption: Marvel 2006 4 Issues

New format
Title: Annihilation: Nova
Type: Comic Book
Key Pub.: Marvel
Caption: Marvel 2006 (4 Issues)

The approvers would ask that we not see a flood of change requests converting every title to the new format. We'd prefer to work on them slowly, over time.

I just made a change to Outsiders Annual 2007 - changed it to Number 2, nn '1', as I have seen when correcting Uncanny X-Men annual 2006 (now just '1').
However, it seems...stuck. I keep logging in and out but it says the change is still in progress.
any idea?

Done.

I've been noticing some changes in some, but not all, book titles regarding the Volume of the book and I was just curious if this is something CCL is testing out or if it will eventually be implemented to all titles.

For example: The Wolverine mini series by Frank Miller
was listed as: Wolverine (Vol 1) (1982)
is now listed as: Wolverine (1982) (1982)

Are we removing the Volume listing and replacing it all with a year?

I have customers asking for specfic books by Volume and searching each volume when you don't know the year or which cover to look for is becoming time consuming.

Titles with the same name that were differentiated by volume numbers in the past are now being changed to the year the series started in the title and the date range of the series in the caption. This is being done to better separate the various titles.

So does that mean the Wolverine Vol.2 that ran from 1988 - 2003 will eventually read: Wolverine (1988) (1988-2003)?
Right now it just reads: Wolverine (1988) (1988), almost like it was a short mini series

Not sure where you see it read "Wolverine (1988) (1988)".

All I see is "Wolverine (1988)" with the date range of 1988 - 2003 in the Caption.

If I do a search for Wolverine (inventory or listed for sale) and roll over that series, it does read (1988-2003), but only if I roll over that title. Otherwise, if you look at the main inventory screen where you add issues to your inventory , it reads (1988) (1988).

It's not a big deal, I guess I was just curious about the changes.

Thanks

A more detailed discussion on this can be found in this thread.

It only shows in that one place because for some reason it was set to show title and date of the first issue in your collection (or first in the series). Look at Wolverine Saga (vol 1) which hasn't been changed yet. It shows (vol 1) and (date). What you're seeing with Wolverine is the title which now includes a date, and the date of the earliest issue.

Cool. Thanks guys. Just caught me off guard. Thanks for the info

Month/Day/Year format should be used for cover dates. Even if the Cover Title is released weekly, always enter the day as "1". Check the indicia if there is no date printed on the cover. If no date is given in either place, the month should be January. For instance, 1/1/1999. Use December for Winter, March for Spring, June for Summer, and September for Fall if the date is listed by season. The Cover Date should never be the same as the Sale Date.

Someone's been studying the Change Request Guidelines!