Use the New Britannia Book Number (NBBN) for your player-made books...

Great idea, yet it is perhaps overkill.

 

Perhaps talk to @Elgarion and @Browncoat Jayson about inclusion of the numbering system at RPOTA and sotawiki for long term referencing.

 

Please reserve 00470 for the: Tower of High Sorcery (The Great Library)

Edited 13Aug16 @ 2104hrs. (9:04 pm) EDT / reason: altered information slightly to fit better with Library concept. (Sorry for any additional work you may have to do).

 

There may be other classification systems that eventually come into play, the correlation being like the ISBN and the Dewey Decimal System. But there needs to be a generic number that doesn't get embroiled in concerns about how books should be classified. If SotA really wanted to get fancy, it would allow you to append an index number after you own a book. (Similar to assigning a tool tip to a sign right now). That way, individual players could classify their books in any way they want.

 

It is of course.. just a suggestion.. the author under the NBBN system can use the 5 digit book ID as they see fit. The thought occurs that we need no necessarily be limited to numbers.. I myself have multiple projects where I would want to use the book ID to be able to track which edition the book is and which printing it was made with without having to fiddle with the title page every time. As it is.. use of any system is complete voluntary.

 

My comment was more about retention of your compiled list here and propagate it to exterior sites of record. If anything, Elgarion's use of databases could in theory cross-reference the NBBN numbers to any other party's reference system (if allowed).

 

44444 Knights of Valoria

 

NBBN will be included on a site I'm also working on.. as is. I will also keep a list of reserved publishers from this thread. Which (@Berek) really needs to be stickied. and probably moved to the Library forum.

Whether you realize it or not you've already set the standard here. and I will happily promote it as is.. I do think at least one other standard may be needed (possibly appended? but preserving the NBBN).. as you point out the Dewey Decimal.. those building large libraries may need their own indexing system.. and that's one of the things I was thinking when I came up with my coding system before.

 

Just to clarify.. is NBBN to be limited strictly to numbers or are letters acceptable? ie if I wanted to reserve 0KONB as a publisher?

 

I was hoping to keep it numeric at this point... having letters can get into the need for moderation of words unfortunately. This is MMO-land!

 

Ah excellent point.

 

Ok, lets review an example. Say we have this book:

It's NBBN code is 10000-01321

We can extend it to, as in the example above: 10000-01321-NF01A-01 ?

This way we keep the standard and have the benefits of the extensions. I am correct?

 

Since everything after the first hyphen is publisher code, I don't see what it matters there.

I'll get a Community page added for this when I get home this afternoon.

 

That's kind of the direction I'm presently leaning towards. Except.. if someone wants to append something to the NBBN then they should avoid using 5 numbers/letters to avoid confusion.. or have it separate entirely with a space or " | " or some other divider. ie 10000-01321 | NF-01A-01

You'd want it to be clear you've got two separate things there.

 

I suggest to use the KISS methodology by adding a alphabetical and or numerical number to denote topic and to give food for thought as have signs:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=9085#tab-outdoor_decorations

to give a simple way to make that determination. For example I make a book or letter about Alchemy. My book number might look like 00470-alchemy-01. If I make a book about Alchemy and Gems. My book number might look like 00470-alchemy-gems-01.

This is just a simple example of what might be useful.

 

I don't see why not if someone wanted to do it for themselves or another classification system.

It's hard to get people to agree on more fine-grain classifications. Three different people might want to classify a book as "history", "warfare" or "weapon systems" for example. That's why it would be really good to have the NBBN and other classification systems developed by players that could be "appended" to a book once acquired. Ah, for more attention to the functionality of books!

I like Bowen's suggestion of adding a little separation.

 

Well I'd be reserve some numbers while there are some left..

00102 Knights of New Britannia

hmm come to think of it.. this is a publisher ID.. not author ID so I suppose only one will suffice.

 

A couple of other ideas:
publisher number-main topic-revision = 00470-alchemy-rev01
publisher number-main topic-sub topic-revision = 00470-alchemy-gems-rev01
publisher number-main topic- number of books in volume -revision 00470-alchemy-vol01-rev01

The more complex you go then people may not want to adhear to a paticular format so it's best to try and use a simple methodology.

KISS = Keep-It-Simple-Stupid

 

I will assume that most larger libraries will use some variation of Dewey to organize books by subject. This is a good solution to locating books by publisher.

 

I am going to dwell on an indexing system for awhile and seems like a good time to get the Scholar's website ready to launch.