I’ve just found three books by J. Peter May with descriptions of mathematics notation in the title:

1. E [sign for infinity] ring spaces and E [sign for infinity] ring spectra
2. [The mathematical expression for infinite loop] ring spaces and [The mathematical expression for infinite loop] ring spectra
3. E [infinity subscript] ring spaces and E [infinity subscript] ring spectra

It is difficult to write software that can tell these titles are the same, yet they are. The Open Library book merging code has failed to recognize these are all the same book, and so we have three records in the database, where there should be one.

I wonder how often descriptions of mathematical notation appear in bibliographic records; this is the first time I’ve seen it.