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 ExceptionsJune 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...
Quote:
Cover dates should be entered in Month/Day/Year format. Always enter the day as "1", even if the Cover Title is released weekly. If there is no date printed on the cover, check the indicia. If there is no date listed in either places, the month should be January. Example: 1/1/1999. Two exceptions to this rule are for Free Comic Book Day and Dynamite Entertainment issues. These should be entered with the month that the book came out listed as the date. Example: 5/1/1999. If the issue is an annual and does not have a month listed on the cover or in the indicia, then the month is entered as December. Example: 12/1/1999. If the date is listed by season, use December for Winter, March for Spring, June for Summer, and September for Fall. The cover date should never default to the release date.
this will be changed and should be read as...
Quote:
Cover dates should be entered in Month/Day/Year format. Always enter the day as "1", even if the Cover Title is released weekly. If there is no date printed on the cover, check the indicia. If there is no date listed in either places, the month should be January. Example: 1/1/1999. If the date is listed by season, use December for Winter, March for Spring, June for Summer, and September for Fall. The Cover Date should never default to the Sale Date.
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 IssuesInvalidating Cover TitlesOccasionally, 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-6fca8c2454adValid title:
http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/CoverTitle.aspx?id=9bb9e810-1711-416e-b435-50f3afc07ddaSpecifically, 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.
Settle down beavis.