Network Bulletin No. 97-52

Date:  October 10, 1997

Subject:  Book collection

Index term:  Good Earth Trilogy

Authors and publishers frequently do not decide that books
are part of a series until more than one volume has been
released. In such cases the earliest volumes seldom contain
any reference to a series, although a series title may be
added in later editions. And, sometimes the actual title of
a series may not be uniform among individual books of a
series, even when published by the same company.

Something like this seems to have happened to the Good Earth
Trilogy by Pearl S. Buck. Volume one is _The Good Earth_ (RC
37294, BR 9400), volume two is _Sons_ (RC 37612, BR 9578),
and volume three is _The House Divided_ (RC 43659, BR
10743). Bookcards for _The House Divided_ have recently been
mailed to you.

The problem arises because NLS previously announced that
volume three of the Good Earth Trilogy is _The Mother_ (RC
38117, BR 9579). This is no small accident; we dutifully
followed Library of Congress (LC) cataloging information and
suspect that LC in turn followed the title page of a
published version that was in error. To make matters a
little more confusing, the trilogy is also known as the
House of Earth and both series titles--the Good Earth
Trilogy and the House of Earth Trilogy--and each individual
book title is also cataloged as part of the Oriental Novels
of Pearl S. Buck series.

Because book cards, _Talking Book Topics_, _Braille Book
Review_, and NLS catalogs have all at some time stated that
volume three is either _The House Divided_ or _The Mother_,
there is a good deal of misinformation that we cannot
withdraw--it would be too costly to re-print all of these
publications.

However, we request that you alert your staff and, if
possible, add a notation to your database so that the
correct volume three (_The House Divided_) will be sent to
interested readers.  NLS will update the _Union Catalog_ to
reflect the corrected information. We sincerely apologize
for the inconvenience.

For further information contact:

Ruth J. Foss
Head, Collection Development Section