Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Policies & Practices
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Authors for sacred texts
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I updated the author profile for Anonymous with this information.Bizarrely, here's what it had been:
Southern Ontario born & bred 'canajun' artist, multi-disciplined 'loony lindsay' has five book titles & one experimental documentary film to her credit.
Mid-career, she's also known for her award-winning Canadian fine furniture, 'Lindsay' typeface design, ethereal pinhole & digital photographic works, PLUS several hundred oil paintings ....see: http://canadadaPHOTOGRAPHY.blogspot.com
NOW AVAILABLE: Second Limited Editon of 'Bush Chord: New Pinhole Photographs & Poetry'.
For a sample of her writing, visit her 'quasi-anonymous' literary blog: canadada.wordpress.com, click on map ... "
I suspect our wacky Booktour integration struck again! :) (ETA: yup!)
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LOL. But obviously that should have been changed anyway.
rivka wrote: "Thanks, Cait. I added one (weasel) word. ;)"Sounds good! Now, how long do you think that'll last before Booktour overwrites it again?
LOL. But obviously that should have been changed anyway.Edit: That's a good description Cait.
That is a good description. Maybe that will help keep the category as clean as possible.
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I saved it in a Google Doc in case we need it again.
Alright, I have been swayed by your author profile for anonymous. I'm on board.
So does that mean we have a green light to make the changes to religious texts authors as anonymous? (combining them will be fun, the combination page is mind blowingly huge already)
HELLO, I am Cherokee, I am not sure what is going on so will stay out of it, but was wondering what or who booktour is. i have so much to learn. I will stay out way and learn I hope. Cher
Hi, Cherokee. "Booktour" is a company partnered with Goodreads to provide information about authors who go on tour with their latest books. Most of the time this is excellent information! But there have been a few problems in the past where book tour information meant for one author has been attached to the wrong author -- and, as happened here, the results can often be comical. Librarians find amusement in cataloging errors. :)
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Actually Otis, with the benefit of hindsight I can offer you one VERY good reason why we should use various instead of anonymous. The sheer amount of Sacred texts (mainly bibles) that have authors as various is staggering...this is going to be rather challenging
Otis - so what is the consensus? I have usually changed the author of the Bible as ‘Various’ in the past. I feel that all ‘sacred texts’ that cannot be directly attributed to a specific individual should be marked as authored by ‘Various.’ What say you?
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Otis wrote: "Let's do "Anonymous". Unless someone can make a compelling argument against it."AND, it seems as though GR librarians are already doing edits and making the author Anonymous for these books.
Lisa wrote: "Otis wrote: "Let's do "Anonymous". Unless someone can make a compelling argument against it."AND, it seems as though GR librarians are already doing edits and making the author Anonymous for thes..."
I just did a quick check, and it seems that a GR Librarian or two has been changing the author of many of the Holy Bible entries from 'Various' or 'Anonymous' back to the names of the Preacher who 'wrote' that version, to the Company names that produced them (i.e., Tyndale (Publishers)), the translation committee that did the original translation (i.e., New World Bible Translation Committee), and/or similar names.
Any way you can get these folks to read this string & follow the guidance? If not, we'll just have one group of people changing the author fields and another changing them back.
George, Ugh, Thanks for that information. I'm wondering if we need to have some sort of note at each "religious text" although I don't see that as a feasible solution. We should do something though because otherwise the workload will certainly increase.
Sounds like the policy on "Anonymous vs Unknown" needs to be added to the Librarian manual, and maybe the new edit book instructions.
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I know I got in this WAY too late, but I really think it should be 'unknown' as was suggested before. I dont see how anyone can really truly "know" who wrote the bible or any major religious text. And maybe this isnt 100% the case, but anywhere ive seen 'anonymous' its been in a case where the author doesnt *want* to be known. In the case of major religious works, its pretty obvious that because most were written (or "conveyed" in some manner) prior to pen and ink or written on rocks and lost/deteriorated/whatever that its not possible to know the author(s)' identity -- not that the author doesnt want to be known.I also really like the new idea of 'unidentified' that muhammed brought up in message 60
I agree with Ubik that "Anonymous" is completely inappropriate, since it generally applies to authors who choose to conceal their identity. "Unknown" and "Unidentified" are not entirely accurate either since, for example, the Bible contains some books written by authors with known identities. Why not use "VARIOUS"? - It is accurate, at least for the Bible, and it is sufficiently ambiguous.
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Most people have, and librarians have started making changes based on this new policy. I think an ad-hoc, case-by-case decision is likely to be confusing and cause many more problems than it solves.
Otis, As you said, there will never be 100% agreement. If we can't do no author, Anonymous is what librarians have been doing so I suggest we go with it. If we go on a case by case basis my guess would be each text would be changed constantly by different librarians. I think that it's better to have some consistency, even if it's not a perfect solution.
I thought the decision was made and the Librarian manual updated to reflect that. We shouldn't keep reopening this discussion because someone new chimes in. Someone will always disagree with this one.
I agree that we should stick with the decided-upon 'Anonymous'. I saw yesterday that a lot of work has already been done by librarians to add the term.Perhaps add a disclaimer that this is the definitive term that GR has decided upon for these kinds of texts and leave it at that. We aren't trying to call it the most 'perfect' term, since there is no agreement on that; this is a business decision to keep GR moving forward.
End of discussion, perhaps we should close this thread. = )
perhaps we should close this thread. = ) Ah, but Carolyn, Then another thread is certain to start up at some point. ;-)
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Whether that is a compelling argument or not, I couldn't say. I don't strongly object to anonymous, just vaguely feel like we're dumping all those books in the "don't know what to do with" pile.