Authors with same name: by seniority or popularity?

[Courtney]

Hi,

I'm looking at the John Churchman author page for this one.
There are multiple authors with this name in the same record (more later). I've consulted the librarian guide - it says to add spaces to create a new author page. So Dr._Seuss would be 1, Dr.__Seuss = 2nd record, for example. Is there a standard for seniority that is used, though?
Seniority (by date they were published/existant), or by popularity (theMary Shelly vs. a new author with the same name) for example?

Going back to the John Churchman page:
According to an LC search, there are four authors named "John Churchman" (no initials used, etc.):

1) Churchman, John, 1705-1775
2) Churchman, John, 1753-1805
3) Churchman, John, 1957-
and 4) Churchman, John.

3 & 4 are current authors.
1 & 3 have the most books listed, but #1's are mostly multiple copies of the same title.
(#2 might not even have a book on the list, but is a possible candidate for having contributed to the book on Quaker Tax Resistance as it doesn't specify which of the two was used as a (historical) source during it's writing.)

So, who would be first in this instance?

My best guess would be #3, #1, #4, and then #2 if he actually is the 'contributor' to the tax book.

[Hannah]

I was under the impression, which I think is correct, that it goes strictly in order of who is added here when. Wouldn't matter with age or popularity...just who claims that spot first.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Since additional authors with a given name are most often separated out one by one as they are found, there is no established policy for who gets the lower spaces.

For practical reasons, it is usually best to keep the default (single-space) author the one most likely to have new books and/or editions published and added to the database.

[Courtney]

Okay, thanks so much!