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This is a clear user need, that I'd like to be able to tell them, when I know they are interested in a particular volume/issue. I guess MFHD is _theoretically_ capable of expressing this. But hardly anyone's ILS is actually going to produce anything that can be machine-interpreted. And I'm not even sure MFHD can express it -- if you think that ISBD-like standard for using punctuation and such to express 'runs' counts, forget about it, that doesn't really result in unambiguous machine-parseable statements even when users don't make mistakes entering it, which they do.
= False economies =
Obviously, a single cataloger can't be expected to spend hours recording every possible bit of metadata that could apply to a work, nor can most libraries provide the level of funding to afford that. However, it ought to be possible to distribute the work and incrementally improve our metadata; although bibliographic utilities could be a nexus for that sort work, valuable information often gets left out of many records.
== Tables of contents and composite works ==
Much science fiction, to give an example, exists as short stories that end up in libraries as anthologies. Without even a 505, it's impossible for a patron to see if the library has 'The Cold Equations' by Tom Godwin.
