Questions bugging me since working as a librarian

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

While anyone can post any book issues in librarian group and everyone (librarians, super-librarians or staff) happy to help, I am trying to get straight in my own mind who can do what. Partly because (although again can just post to this group and gets taken care of) sometimes it's an author or a fellow librarian asking "how to?" or "did I do something wrong?".

I don't want to frustrate someone asking "how do I" by giving them directions to do something that takes a librarian/super-librarian/staff. Generally, I'm pretty clear about most things (or can find in manual or post question here) but a few of the below things have been bugging me or I worry that I'm doing something the hard way.

What I think I know:

1. Only the author can set the featured/primary/default edition (usually used to show a particular bookcover in search, on author page, series, etc.). If they do not set, goodreads uses the most popular edition. If for some reason they have trouble setting, have to contact staff for help because librarians cannot.

2. Once an author profile is claimed, only author and staff can edit (only staff can merge, usually because a member manually added a book but mistyped author name). Librarians cannot edit profile, not even just to see "similar names" or the librarian note explaining how that author name was disambiguated.

3. Once an edition has 5 or more ratings/shelvings, super-librarian required to delete.

4. Authors cannot overwrite existing bookcovers. (Librarians and super-librarians can but there are rules set out in manual. Frequently, an author is requesting because has a new cover for ebook = make alternate cover edition but do not delete the existing published bookcover.)

What I question:

5. Can authors add or edit series? (I keep seeing lots of attempts to do so by putting series information in parentheses which I know doesn't work anymore)

6. Can authors combine or separate editions? (Lots of threads questioning what went wrong when an author or a librarian try—usually just that they created a new edition and assumed it would combine without hitting the "combine" feature. Sometimes a librarian responds to an author on a thread that they need an alternate cover edition with no additional explanation or indication as to whether author can create themselves or if they are supposed to request librarian to do.)

7. Can authors add an official url? (This one has so many can/cannot threads that I suspect might be a bug if authors are supposed to be able to add. On some threads, an author has been able to add for one of their books but not others [primary author on both books]).

8. I don't think anyone has a choice to add to a series when creating a book (no field/option for it). The only way I know to add to an existing series is (after creating book) to go to the series page, "edit" and "add books." If for a new series, after creating the book, edit the book and then there's a "series (add new series)" option (putting in a series name creates it). Anyone know a different way?

9. To separate out the most popular edition of a work (for example if incorrectly combined with omnibus or split volume editions), either have to get a super-librarian or separate all the other editions and then re-combine correctly. Anyone know a different way?

10. Other than wading thru existing threads in this and feedback group, is there a list of current bugs somewhere? (Current ongoing bugs I know related to librarians are where librarians or authors have to manually refresh ratings details and broken cover images where thumbnails have to be regenerated by librarian deleting then re-adding exact same bookcover.)

[Cait]

To the best of my knowledge and experience, bearing in mind that I'm not staff:

1-4: Yes.

5. No, authors can't create or edit series. Additionally, series information is added to the title in parentheses in order to make it show up in results lists/my books/search indexing (places where the series information is not yet available).

6. Combine, yes. Separate, I'm pretty sure yes.

7. I thought yes, but I am also confused by bug reports.

8. Those are the only ways to add to an existing series/create a new series.

9. Super-librarians can't separate the most popular edition using the "separate" link either. The way to do this is to use the separate tool, then select all editions other than the most popular and separate them as a single lump. You could individually separate and then recombine each edition, but why would you?

10. Not really, no -- certainly we have no access to a bug-tracking system used by developers. There are occasional sticky "to do" lists put up in the Feedback group.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

On 5, I knew that optionally the series info could be typed in parentheses just so it would show in searches, etc. — but at one time, I think it really was how series were set up and that was where some confusion was still happening. A peril of that's-all-I-used-to-have-to-do and reading older threads versus checking current librarian manual on the part of authors and members adding books.

Good to know that authors can't do series stuff; I'll try to be more vigilant about asking if a series is needed when working on a book issue for a work that sounds like it's part of a series. (And about glancing at ratings detail box in case I need to refresh.)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Authors can combine, but not separate, unless they also have librarian status.

There was one single transition date when series added on title lines automagically got converted to actual series elements. That was a couple years ago, and I doubt many authors are referring to it.

However, for any author with at least a couple librarians following their work, series and books thereunto get added pretty quickly. Authors might easily think it's happening by itself, when it's actually our busy bee librarians.