Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Book & Author Page Issues
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Announcement: New Author Sort-By Field
What about GR authors? I'm thinking specifically of Alexander McCall Smith who is unlikely to be making his own changes.
I think those need to be done by staff, just like profile merges?Isn't Smith the correct sort name in this case?
Yaaaay!lethe, at my library he gets sorted under McCall. (Well, actually MacCall, because my library thinks patrons can't tell the difference between Mc and Mac for some reason, but anyway.)
I think it's McCall Smith everywhere.I added a note for Honoré de Balzac that he correctly sorts as Balzac, Honoré de, so that he wouldn't be changed. I think it would be good if we were to add notes for authors that should be left alone even when they appear to need a change.
Sophie wrote: "Yaaaay!lethe, at my library he gets sorted under McCall. (Well, actually MacCall, because my library thinks patrons can't tell the difference between Mc and Mac for some reason, but anyway.)"
OK. I find those English double names confusing, I have various on my shelves that I don't know what to do with.
That Mc/Mac rule is actually to make sorting easier for librarians :)
I suppose Walt Disney Company should be sorted under W, not D, right?
Lethe, to verify the proper sorting, I am using a major library. My choice is Brooklyn Public Library because I use it for my challenge group, but probably any library in a major city would provide the information quickly and accurately.
I love that you have added this much requested and much needed feature. But Sheesh! This is yet another item that doesn't hit the log. Why didn't you make this implementation complete as long as you bothered to do it?
Thank you, again. This was a feature I've always wanted.Abcdarian wrote: "What about GR authors? I'm thinking specifically of Alexander McCall Smith who is unlikely to be making his own changes."
Good point: I came across another one, Wu Ming, that should be "wu ming" (not "ming, wu") (it's a pen name)
How Gabriel García Márquez should go? Currently it's organized as Márquez, Gabriel García but should it really be García Márquez, Gabriel as those Spanish names go up a bit differently (I also looked it up from Elizabeth's link, and it, too said Garcia Marquez as surname order)?
Another GR author that needs fixinghttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
(I'm posting here until staff says otherwise)
Maarit wrote: "How Gabriel García Márquez should go? Currently it's organized as Márquez, Gabriel García but should it really be García Márquez, Gabriel as those Spanish names go up a bit differ..."García Márquez appears fixed on the edit page: it takes some time for the fix to be effective, though
#13, 15: GGM was the first name I fixed :)
The idea that interfiling Mc and Mac makes sorting easier for librarians is just silly to me. We know how to read spine labels! /pet peeve
It's been a while now, still crossing my fingers that it will finally work :-)
Sophie wrote: "The idea that interfiling Mc and Mac makes sorting easier for librarians is just silly to me. We know how to read spine labels! /pet peeve"I've never heard about this interfiling. Ma has always come before Mc as far as I know.
I'm not sure what interfiling means, but what Sophie referred to in message #6 is that author names starting with Mc are changed to Mac for sorting purposes. So the labels on Richard McGuire's books would read MACG instead of MCGU.
lethe wrote: "I'm not sure what interfiling means, but what Sophie referred to in message #6 is that author names starting with Mc are changed to Mac for sorting purposes. So the label on Richard McGuire's books..."Please don't do this. I want my books to sort alphabetically. Mac comes alphabetically before Mc.
Question: If there is no comma in the sort-by field will it place the name in the order in which it is entered?Name: Natsume Sōseki
Sort by field: Natsume Sōseki
Alpha Listing: Natsume Sōseki
I don't do this, public libraries do, it's in the international cataloguing rules. I've always found it silly. We don't do it in our (academic/special) library. And it isn't done on GR either.
lethe wrote: "I don't do this, public libraries do, it's in the international cataloguing rules. I've always found it silly. We don't do it in our (academic/special) library. And it isn't done on GR either."Oh, good. I was misunderstanding your post about it. I don't think my library does it, but frankly I haven't looked closely.
EDIT: It does. I'm ashamed of them.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "EDIT: It does. I'm ashamed of them."Haha!
Another question:Authors with Jr. I believe should appear
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
NOT
Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M.
Please confirm.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Another question:Authors with Jr. I believe should appear
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
NOT
Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M.
Please confirm."
Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M.
Don't know if GR wants to deviate from that.
ETA Eh. I had a look at my book of sorting rules and it actually gives this example:
Bosch, J.G. (jr.)
Come to think of it, that is how my library does it as well, except we use capitalization:
Marcotte, P. (Jr.)
lethe wrote: "Come to think of it, that is how my library does it as well, except we use capitalization:Marcotte, P. (Jr.) "
I was fairly certain the Jr. would come at the end. Let's see what Rivka says about the parentheses. I think the manual needs to have a section on this.
Mod
rivka wrote: "I'm not an expert on sorting author names, but I'd think it would be Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M."I thought to look:
Worldcat uses
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
https://www.worldcat.org/wcidentities...
In any case, we need this standardized in the manual.
Having Jr. after the last name makes more sense to me.
Scott wrote: "Having Jr. after the last name makes more sense to me."It makes absolutely no sense to me and I've never seen it that way. The two Worldcat entries for the name in my example are:
Schlesinger, Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
The reason he is a junior is because he has the same name as his father. If his first name were different than his father's, there would not be Schlesinger Jr. The clarification becomes necessary when there is the possibility of a duplicate.
Scott wrote: "Having Jr. after the last name makes more sense to me."To me too, that's why I first wrote it like that in comment #29. Official library rules have Jr. coming last, but GR doesn't always follow those rules (page count f.e.).
I suggest we do what feels natural.
If you put the Jr. at the end like that it looks like it is another middle name (to the database--obviously we can tell what it is.)
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "The reason he is a junior is because he has the same name as his father. If his first name were different than his father's, there would not be Schlesinger Jr."Yeah, but why isn't he called Arthur M. Jr. Schlesinger then?
lethe wrote: "I suggest we do what feels natural. "Yes, I will. Therefore it will be
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
To me, that does not feel natural at all. His name is Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., so inverting that would be Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M.
With the parentheses, it's different. But just Jr. after his first (and middle) name looks very odd.
I think the question is how does the system sort. Schlesinger probably doesn't make much difference - the father and the son will be together in any case. I don't know how many Jr. and Sr. etc. we have. Will we want the Smith relatives to all group together? How does placing the comma affect the sort? Hypothetical Thomas Smith Jr.
Smith Jr., Thomas
Smith, Thomas Jr.
will come at different places in the listings. We want to know if Smith Jr., Thomas will sort between Smith, James and Smith, Lawrence, for instance and, if so, is that what we want?
You're right, that is why libraries put (Jr.) last and not after the last name:Smith, Mary
Smith, P.
Smith, Paul
Smith, Peter
Smith, Peter (Jr.)
Smith, Peter Paul
Smith, Peter (Sr.)
Smith, Pjotr
Otherwise, they would sort
Smith Jr., Peter
Smith, Mary
Smith, P.
Smith, Paul
Smith, Peter
Smith, Peter Paul
Smith, Pjotr
Smith Sr., Peter
I do insist on the parentheses, though :P
(Edited to add Peter Paul and Mary, just for the hell of it :) )
lethe wrote: "I do insist on the parentheses, though :P"I like how that looks, too, but I don't know whether the programmers will have the system recognize them and know what to do with them. As I understand it, the system will use the main field for capitalization and the sort order field for placement. If it uses the sort order field for placement only, parentheses will be ignored. This is an important question, Lethe.
For what it's worth... The Library of Congress, APA, MAL, and The Chicago Manual of Style all put suffixes at the end of a name following a comma:Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr.
ETA: I definitely think that the suffix needs to be at the end... for the exact sorting reasons Lethe points out in post #42.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "If it uses the sort order field for placement only, parentheses will be ignored."And you're right again. Time for me to retire to bed, I think. I obviously can't think clearly anymore :)
Vicky wrote: "For what it's worth... The Library of Congress, APA, MAL, and The Chicago Manual of Style all put suffixes at the end of a name following a comma:Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr.
"
Will the system know what to do with the second comma? I hope the developers will be asked so that we'll know what to do.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Vicky wrote: "For what it's worth... The Library of Congress, APA, MAL, and The Chicago Manual of Style all put suffixes at the end of a name following a comma:Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr.
"
Wil..."
Hmmm... I didn't think about that.
I would have assumed it would just ignore it, but I guess there's always a chance that is would assume that "Schlesinger, Arthur M.," is the last name and "Jr." is the first name. I'm trying to test it now with some dummy books, but it does take quite a while to take effect.
Vicky wrote: "For what it's worth... The Library of Congress, APA, MAL, and The Chicago Manual of Style all put suffixes at the end of a name following a comma:Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr."
Yeah, that's what "feels right" to me.
The code will understand "part 1, part 2, part 3" as three different sorting entities, if it's told to. And it won't if it isn't. I can name at least one big metadata database that does allow multiple commas in people's names for exactly this use case, and several that don't. I rather expect GR, being a US based site, will use those US style guides mentioned, since that's what will "feel right" to the developers too :)Since it's currently not working anyway, there's no point "testing" it, so might I suggest we wait until this one gets an answer so a whole lot of people don't have to go back and fix things they already changed?
Krazykiwi wrote: "The code will understand "part 1, part 2, part 3" as three different sorting entities, if it's told to. And it won't if it isn't. I can name at least one big metadata database that does allow multi..."Yes. My question was not "could it" but "would it" recognize the second comma.
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Honoré de Balzac (other topics)Justine Sebastian (other topics)
J.L. Aarne (other topics)
Stephen del Mar (other topics)
Gabriel García Márquez (other topics)
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Fret no more! Author profiles now have a new sort-by field, accessible from their profile edit page. Once edited, that information will propagate to all the shelved books on members' My Books pages, but it does take some time. Initially it will probably take a day or so, but it should become significantly faster over time.