How each list is checked

Order and years

For every series the order and the year of each book are taken from one named list, currently the series list in the relevant Wikipedia article. A copy of that article is kept exactly as it was fetched, and the build of this site stops if any title, year or position on a page cannot be found in that copy in the same sequence.

What Open Library is used for

The year printed for each book is always the first-publication year from the order source. Open Library, a catalogue run by the Internet Archive, is used for something narrower: to confirm the book is catalogued, and to show the earliest edition it lists. It never replaces the year.

Each book is matched by exact title against Open Library's list of the author's works. If more than 3 works share the title, we cannot tell which one is the book, and the list says "Open Library lists no edition year". Otherwise the work with the most editions is used; if it has fewer than 10 editions, or none of them carries a year, the list says the same thing. We do not fill a missing year from anywhere else.

For the rest, we read every edition of that work and take the earliest year that appears in its publication date. When that year matches, the list says so and links the edition. When it is later, the list says "Open Library's earliest listed edition is later" and gives that year. When it is earlier than the first edition, the record is most likely a pre-announcement or an entry made in error, and the list says so and links it. The year kept is the first-publication year in each case.

Other titles and notes

If a book was sold under another name somewhere, that name appears only when a source says so in words, and those words are quoted on the page. The same goes for notes on a series, such as where prequels fit or how later editions renumbered the books: they are quoted word for word from the order source, and the build stops if the quotation cannot be found in the saved copy.

What is left out

No cover art, posters or film stills, and no plot summaries. Lists keep to the titles a source counts as part of the series; spin-offs, companion books and stage plays are named as outside the list rather than mixed in. We do not publish a suggested reading order unless an author or publisher has set one out.

Sources used so far

Wikipedia text is reused under CC BY-SA 4.0 with a link to the revision that was read. Open Library data is released under CC0.

Typefaces

Headings use Libre Caslon Text (Copyright 2012 The Libre Caslon Text Project Authors) and body text uses Outfit (Copyright 2021 The Outfit Project Authors). Both typefaces are free fonts, released with version 1.1 of the SIL Open Font License: Libre Caslon Text licence, Outfit licence.