Authors with two "official" first names

[Lorenzo]

Hei there!
I'm wondering what can I do whan an author is signed with two versions of its own name, both of them authorized.

Sometimes it happens.

Let's take V.Pelevin as a good example of what I'm speaking about.
If you have a look around, you can see how his name is written in both ways, "Victor" or "Viktor"

Well, I thought it should be nice and less confusional if only one Pelevin exists, but which of the two ones?

Do you have any suggestion to give me?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Wait for the AKA option?

[Lorenzo]

Hehe, yes. It sounds wise to me. Let AKA be!

[Otis]

AKA option is at least 3 weeks off. Hope you can wait that long!

[John]

I just ran across this issue as well. How exactly will that work?

[[deleted user]]

hey lorenzo!
viktor is correct.
source: library of congress catalog

[Maria]

Any news on the AKA option? I just found that some of Virginia Andrew's books is listed under VA - others under V.C. Andrews. I know that some of the VCA ones are written by ghostwriters, but AFAIK "Flowers in the Attic" and "My Sweet Audrina" were written by the lady herself.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Huh. When did she start publishing books as anything other than V.C. Andrews? But she clearly does -- there are covers (of different editions of the same books) with both versions of her name.

[Otis]

The AKA feature seems to be continually 3 weeks off :(

I'm going to shoot for 2 months (xmas), and hope to hit that!

[Anna]

I'm thinking, meanwhile - wouldn't it be a good idea to have a subforum for things that people with librarian status needs to work on (separate from the how-to-forum)? That way anyone who found something could just add that to the forum, and when it was done, we could just write "fixed/ done" in the subjects-line?

It would make it easier to see what was fixed, and what remained, I think.
Or...?

/The organizing-freak :)

[Tiffany]

Anna - I've been thinking the same thing lately. Kind of like a group-wide to-do list. I second the motion!

[Otis]

Very cool idea! We're hoping to add the ability to put topics into folders soon, which whould make that much easier. We're shooting for 3-4 weeks from now!

[Kathrynn]

Has there been an update on this on another post?

I've run across the V.C. Andrews, V. C. Andrews, Virginia Andrews, too.

[Kathrynn]

I found the other discussion on authors with more than one "official" name and see the AKA feature is 2-3 months away.

Gotcha!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Meanwhile, current policy is (I think) to use the version of the name the LoC knows her by. And in the case of double-initialed authors, to omit the space.

[Kathrynn]

LoC: Library of Congress, check.
Omit space between double-initial authors, check.
10-4!
Thank you and Happy Easter to ya!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

It's actually recovering-from-Purim-and-avoiding-cleaning-for-Pesach (Passover) Day for me. ;)

But thanks for the thought, and same to you. :D

[Kathrynn]

I wonder if it was considered an option to list both names the author uses. One name on as author 1, the other name as author 2?

That way we can combine editions and slow down people adding books that are already here....

Thoughts?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

You can only combine editions that have the same author #1.

[Kathrynn]

Okay, so if one person is known as:

1. Virginia Andrews

And

2. V.C. Andrews

Is it okay to list both author names as
author 1 Viriginia Andrews
author 2 V.C. Andrews

Then they come up together and some have added books using one or the other name, so we would be able to combine them books by title?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Seems reasonable to me.

And it's pretty much what Otis agreed with here.

[Kathrynn]

Thank you Rivka.

[Kathrynn]

Well, heck. I've been working on the V.C. Andrews/Virginia C. Andrews books and thought I had lost my mind when I found a bunch not changed...

Another librarian is changing them all back.

SUGGESTION: I think it would be neat to have a "communication box" when you click on edit for a book so that librarians can communicate with one another explaining their rationale.

She may very well have her reasons that are much better than what I was thinking, but who knows...now the books are "unavailable" for edit. So some are both names, some are not.V.C. Andrews

[Lisa]

SUGGESTION: I think it would be neat to have a "communication box" when you click on edit for a book so that librarians can communicate with one another explaining their rationale.

Kathrynn, what a terrific suggestion!!!!

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

Kathryn, you might want to add a note to Virginia Andrews as well, since many of the books are also listed under that name and it is the only one with a true author profile.

[Otis]

That is a neat suggestion! We'll put on our todo list adding a comment when you edit an author or book, so it can go into the change log.

[Kathrynn]

I looked at a couple V.C. Andrews/Virginia Andrews and under the Librarian Change Log it indicates "goodreads" changed from V.C. Andrews to Virginia Andrews.

a) the other librarian left
b) management wants to keep them separate for each of the names the author is called.

I'll leave them alone unless I hear otherwise.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I consider #2 highly unlikely. #1 is quite plausible; the other possibility is there was some sort of automated function that did it, but that doesn't seem terribly likely either.

I'm betting it's #1.

[flexaJ]

Yeah, but what if after combining two books you chage the author of one of them. Will the combining link survive? Or a change will automatically separate the books?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

The combining link survives. And separating them at that point is a huge pain.

[flexaJ]

What is the AKA option exactly?

[Lisa]

AKA is the "also known as" that would enable us to combine the books of an author, even if that author used many different spellings names in publishing their books.

[flexaJ]

And how long should we wait for this option?
My guess is three weeks :)))

[Lisa]

It's been many months, if not over a year. I think that it must be one of those challenging (programming?) problems that Goodreads faces.

[Mikkel]

I just came in here to suggest an AKA/pseudonym feature and found this thread.

It would look neat if pseudonym profiles were "pseudo-profiles" that basically just linked back to the actual author.

Of course this requires changes to how authors are handled at all levels of MVC.

[Sandra]

The AKA feature has been 'in the works' for a very long time. If it was easy it would already be here :)

Regarding linking pseudonym profiles - this is already widely done. eg Stephanie James

[Mikkel]

I know. I link them myself, but it does seem like a hack that should be properly integrated in the system.

[Cheryl]

So, I'm trying to understand what to do with one person who goes sometimes by Molly Bang and sometimes by Molly Garrett Bang... I need to combine the different editions of Molly Garrett Bang's Tye May and the Magic Brush....

I could just take the 'Garrett' out of those works and give all the books to Molly Bang, maybe with a note in the description. But that doesn't seem right, especially because the bookcover so clearly displays the 'Garrett.'

If I want to make linked pseudonym profiles, somebody is going to have to explain it carefully to me. But is this the best way to handle it?

What would you do?

Note, that whatever we decide to do, there will wind up being work to do to clean up individual books for both names.

[Timo]

I have similar problem with Tõnu Õnnepalu /Emil Tode . Both names are used by the same person (actually he has 3rd name also). Original book "Piiririik" is written in estonian by Emil Tode, english translation "Border State" by Tõnu Õnnepalu, swedish, finnish, german, spanish, latvian, lithuanian etc. translations also by Emil Tode. So I'm kind of confused by all this. I can't change them into one account since "Border State" is translated under different name (some books in estonian are also written under this name). Should I do the same as Sandra did and use both names with all the books and change Emil Tode's Role to pseudonym?