Issue adding secondary author

[Liralen]

Per this request, I moved How to Notice to the author's profile. That part was successful.

I tried to add a "second author" with the middle initial (per the cover) to make search easier, the edit page said that the change had been saved, and...the second author field remained blank. Tried again with the same result. (It's also not showing up in edit history, which is interesting.)

I'm not sure if this is a superlibrarian issue, so apologies if this belongs somewhere else! It's not something I've seen before.

Thank you!

[Emily]

It requires a workaround that is not listed in the manual.

When authors have very similar names (usually the same last name), the system does not add the second one. For this situation, you would add
Melissa A.Butler
with no space
and save it

Then go back and add the space after A. Then you can move it up to be primary author.
Sometimes people use other ways like
Melissa A. Butlerx
then go back and remove the x. Just anything to differentiate the names.

The same goes for authors with the same last name but different first names.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Emily wrote: "It requires a workaround that is not listed in the manual."

But not a super. Moving thread.

[Renske]

In addition to Emily's explanation, merging the temporary name profile into the right profile also works, which can be faster if there are multiple books involved (and the right profile is not a GR author).

[Liralen]

Ah! Thank you! That's both helpful and interesting. (Is this new? I've edited a lot of book pages on GR and never come across this before.)

[Liralen]

rivka wrote: "But not a super. Moving thread."

Thanks, rivka. I'll try to remember the Questions folder next time :)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

It is not new. But it only comes up when dealing with two similar author names on a single book record.