Display Series Problem

[tripwire8]

I've been having a problem figuring out how to display a series of records properly. Basically I have a number of records that contain a "Series", a "Title", "author", "date", and "body" . Certain "titles" will fall under specific "series" where those "series" are all the same. On page 1 I want to show a listing of all the "Series" records ONLY once. The problem I'm having is that duplicate "Series" records are displaying in my sort.

Here is what I have so far:

<?php
if( $series == $seriesSet ) 
          { 

      } else {
?>
<tr>
<td valign="top" class="bodytext"><div class="title"><a href="viewSeries.php?seriesID=<?php echo $seriesSlashes ?>" class="title"><?php echo $series ?></a></div>
<?php echo $author ?><br />
<?php echo $img ?>
</td>
</tr>

<?php } $seriesSet = $series;  } ?>

I know the problem occurs when a "series" was not entered into the database in a consecutive order by date, but I'm not sure what else to try.

[tripwire8]

Ok, perhaps this needs simplified a little. Let's say we have a library database full of magazine content. Within this content the magazines are categorized by series, such as Time Magazine etc. Under Time Magazine will be sub titles that list all the different issues that have been put out. Now let's say we have over 100 magazine series listed in this database each with numerous sub titles. How would one go about displaying the different series on a page ONLY ONCE without having any of them duplicated, since calling all records would produce numerous listings that would display the same series over and over again.