Keith’s Comments (group member since Sep 19, 2008)

Keith’s comments from the Goodreads Librarians Group group.

Ellie [The Empress] wrote: "Shouldn't all these authors be merged into one?
https://www.goodreads.com/search?page...

Probably yes, though I could see an argument for keeping the KnowledgeNotes student guides on a separate author record, since they seem to have more than one set of editors working in different domains.

In correcting one work, I found a hornets nest with which I could use some assistance.

There is a series of ProQuest KnowledgeNotes student guides, many of which can be seen in this search, which are only a few pages long and merged with the books on which they comment, with the author of the original work listed as the author of the study guide: a perennial problem and perhaps a Sisyphean task overall.

As far as I can tell, ProQuest lists no actual authors for these. At least a few have been fixed and tied to ProQuest Editors or the older ProQuest LLC, though maybe there is a better or more "canonical" solution to such issues.

I expect I'll come back to these as I have time, but y'know, I didn't want to hoard the whole project for myself. Sharing is caring. ;-) And if anyone has tips on dealing efficiently with such matters, I'd be much obliged for your comments.

And for the reference of anyone who searches this thread later (including me), if you have the "work number" (which is in the URL of the "all editions" link), you can shortcut to the "Top Shelves" page by appending the work number to the URL goodreads.com/work/shelves/

Ah, thank you, I see it now. I must just have been repeatedly looking at books that were not shelved (enough?) to have that section appear on their book pages.

I seem to recall that, once upon a time, there was somewhere that one could see a list of the (top N?) shelves a book had been added to. Something like:

Read (536)
Currently-reading (23)
Want to read (1324)
Sci-fi (125)
Science fiction (47)
awful (3)

Does that still exist, either for works or editions? If so, can anyone tell me which e I can find it on, or which link to go to get there, or simply paste a URL where I should expect to see it? Maybe I'm just completely looking past it, or maybe that's an entirely false memory to begin with. Kinda crazy-making.

Thanks!

Misquote into QotD #5 (which remains unsourced)

A trick I sometimes use to ensure that the author name is canonical for GR—especially where there may be unusual numbers of spaces or special characters—is to edit the author profile that I know I want and copy from the Name field there into whatever page I'm really editing. Then I close the tab for the author profile before I have a chance to apply any mistaken edits. Because of the spacing conventions, copying even from the regular author profile page is often insufficient, and both WorldCat and Wikipedia often give an unhelpful result.

Yes, sorry, I meant combine not merge. Thanks for the confirmation. I guess I have a project. :-/ Hrm, unless someone beat me to it.... This looks different than I remember from last week. -shrug- Back to work.

Before I mess it up, I want to make sure I understand this correctly.

All of the books under Tomás de Kempis should be edited so that Thomas à Kempis is the primary author, retaining the Spanish profile as the secondary author. Then merge editions, but don't merge profiles.

If that is indeed right, do we have any cool tools or shortcuts for this which I may have missed? Anyone developed any nifty tricks? I imagine this will be mildly tedious by hand, especially combing through 345 editions of The Imitation of Christ looking for "de Kem".

Keith wrote: "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show......"

While cleaning up the quotes from that merge, I found this:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
which probably also should merge into Mark^^Lawrence
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
into
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
(Many mislabeled quotes)

While I wouldn't ever bother to add a list like that myself, given that it doesn't actually get in the way of any real function, I lean toward Barry and suggest leaving it there under the general principle of "never lose data." Plus leaving it there is less work than deleting them—we have better edits to make IMO.

There are a bunch of cutout Kindle editions under ACE that need the author changed and to be combined with existing editions. I did a few, but there are more left than I have time to deal with, so additional librarian help would be appreciated. (Or I'll get back to it in a few days.)

Sophie wrote: "Mike wrote: "What's wrong with using an ASIN for books with no ISBN anyway?"

Because the physical copy of the book itself doesn't have an ISBN, I would think. When you're looking at a bunch of editions trying to find the one you have, and it doesn't have an ISBN, you're not going to be looking for a book with an ASIN. That's Amazon's system, not GR's."

However, Amazon now owns Goodreads, and tagging a book with an ASIN, when it has one and does not have an ISBN, it about the only way to make the Buy on Amazon button actually work.

Mike wrote: "I have been adding the roll "Original Author" to the author, when the author is listed AFTER the "Adapted by," or, "Adapter," person."

FWIW, I have been using "Creator" for the same purpose. I agree that we should pick a standard recommendation for this and add it to the manual.

If I may be so bold as to prefer my construction, IMO the advantages include paralleling the more common single-word roles, and reducing the temptation for newer or less clueful Librarians to well-meaningly move the "Original Author" back to the top slot incorrectly (after which, someone will undoubtedly merge the adaptation with the original work, leading someone else to lather, rinse, repeat). Also, "Creator" works well for metabooks, like Spark Notes, Cliff Notes, etc., which also suffer from repeated merges.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
into https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
(Associated book already edited to show correct authors)

OK, so I'll push toward the initial. Thanks.

Hard to say with only two data points so far, but if there's a pattern distinguishable from that, it looks like with the initial for contemporary translation (i.e., living authors), and without the initial for classical translation (i.e., long-dead authors).

One more that's confusing me a little bit:

Jules Levinson and Jules B. Levinson are clearly the same guy, but each of the two books I've found so far uses a different orthography. If I merge, which should I keep, or if I should not merge, do I add both names to both books, or...? (Since he's mostly a translator, I expect I'll find him as a secondary author on more books later.) This author page elsewhere uses both name forms.

Thanks again, rivka (etc.)

I was just noticing this as I added two new (old) editions of a book, and it seemed to work entirely as intended. Thank you for the fix!