Question about librarian notes and many authors "David Brooks"

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

The original David^Brooks has a librarian note stating

"David Brooks the political and non-fiction writer is David^^Brooks.
David Brooks who writes photography book is David^^^Brooks.

Please move their books to the appropriate profile instead of updating this profile to reflect their information. Thanks!"

I just merged a "David Brooks Ph.D." that had a photography book into "David Brooks"; saw the note, edited the photography books so that they had author as the David^^^Brooks the librarian note said wrote photography. Did the same for a stray "Glamour Photography" book.

But, looking at the David^^^Brooks profile, it now says he is an Austrailian literature and poetry writer versus photography.

I am not familiar enough with the author(s) to be comfortable overwriting a librarian note; but, I am equally sure the books are not correctly attributed.

The similar names think David^Brooks wrote "Social Animal" but most editions seem to have wound up on David^^Brooks.

There are now:

David^Brooks at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/... (note did not say what he wrote and looks like has become a catchall)
David^^Brooks http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/... (note said political and non-fiction but looks like a mix)
David^^^Brooks http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/... (note says photography; profile and books say literature/poetry and has a lot of books showing)
David^^^^Brooks http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/... (note did not mention; profile says Illustrator and this profile/books looks like is in good shape and does not need editing)

I'm thinking David^^^Brooks needs to be left as literature and poetry; a David^^^^^Brooks needs to be made for photography; and librarian note needs to be changed to reflect. I have no clue what David^Brooks profile should be (librarian note did not specify).

Anyone familiar with David Brooks? Okay to overwrite the librarian note or should the more complete David^^^Brooks get changed so original librarian note stands?

[Vicky]

Well, they were correct when I made that note, I remember organizing him.

When I separated them, I moved all pertinent books to the authors with extra spaces and purposely left David^Brooks ambiguous as there were several books I wasn't sure I could attribute to a specific author without stretching out to David^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Brooks with one book on each profile. ;)

I'm going to look at it some more and see if I can sort out what happened.

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

<=== clueless, so thought I'd ask. Definitely after your note someone wrongly edited the 3-space profile to change photographer to Australian poet.

[Vicky]

I don't think there's an exact policy, but I prefer to leave the 1-space author ambiguous, since it is the most likely place new authors with the same name or new editions of books by existing David Brooks will import into. The 1-space author is, more-or-less, the catch all. Especially in the case of a well known David Brooks - I think it would be more obnoxious for his profile to be constantly inundated with books by other David Brooks.

Looking at all the profiles, kept the poet as 3^ and moved the photographer to 5^. Both fans of the 3^ profile are Austalian, so I think it's safe to say they are fans of the Australian Poet and not the photographer. However, I wouldn't do this all the time. If an author has 10 fans and a librarian updates the profile to reflect a different author then those fans are now fans of the wrong author - similar to the stance on alternate covers, if someone was there first it should revert back to what it was originally.

I moved some books from David^Brooks to David^^Brooks and his book list is definitely correct.

I edited the librarian note so it should be correct now.

Also, I took out the mentions you put of the spaces in the about the author section of the profile and moved them to librarian's notes on each profile. These notations don't mean anything to anyone who isn't a librarian and has access to the note anyway. ;)