This "author" needs help

[Jessica]

Thanks for fixing Rosen, JG!

[Gina]

I'm not sure what to do with this author as we have him listed w/3 different names.
Augustine of Hippo
St Augustine of Hippo

St Augustine



The Library of Congress has all but 1 book listed as Saint Augustine Bishop of Hippo.

Any suggestions on how he should be listed?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Since we have said previously that we omit titles except when necessary to alleviate confusion, I vote for Augustine of Hippo.

[Gina]

I also have a feeling that

Aristotle & Aristote are the same author but I can't be sure since one's books are all in French. Do we have a policy about combining authors with different non-English spelling?

[Heather]

Ooh, my vote would be to leave Aristotle/Aristote alone until pseudonyms are enabled.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I think previous consensus was to stick with Library of Congress spelling.

[Cera]

I'm pretty positive you're right, Gina, and they're the same author -- but I agree with Heather & vote to let it be until the pseudonyms are taken care of, since the point of not combining pseudonyms is (as I understand it) to make the author findable as readers would look for them.

[Gina]

Thanks!! *Leaving them alone* :)

[Ubik]

I dont understand something. The "etc" list (linked above) still has mostly all of what Ive already converted over still listed in the "books by" section. The number doesnt seem to go down. Its really frustrating that there are still like 10 pages that have had the "etc." removed from the author line and theyre still showing up.

Note that for right now Im only going through the ones that have at least one other actual author and just removing the etc. Im not taking the "etc." onlys and finding their real authors yet. My plan was to wait until all the other ones were gone so just the etc onlys were isolated, but its discouraging when the numbers arent even going down...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

It's a caching issue that seems to be related to the new way second and third authors are stored. I've already mentioned it in the Feedback group, but I agree that it is frustrating and makes fixing things difficult.

[Lisa]

Ubik, All your hard work and other librarians' hard work can be seen though. When we go to these non-authors, the fixed authors can be seen at their books so it's obvious a lot of editing has been done. I assume it will be fixed soon.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I hope so! It's very difficult to figure out which books still need work and which don't. Especially when several librarians are working on one "author", or when coming back to an author you last worked on hours or days ago.

[Ubik]

Well, at least while Im going through all of them, I have been correcting a LOT of random errors along the way. Middle initials with no period are suspicious and almost always need merging and then combining, any name with initials, capitalization, and various other things so that alone makes me feel like Im accomplishing something even if the etc count isnt going down at all.

By the way, how do some authors' names get SO fnuggered up? Like first name comma 'Ed' comma someone else's first name and then two last names ran together and stuff like that. And authors that consist of about 17 authors on one line. Sorry to say I dont even mess with these unless its SF that Im familiar with. They scare me.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I'll take care of those if you link them here.

Most of the really icky ones like that are due to people misusing (deliberately or accidentally) Amazon's author fields. The errors then get imported to GR -- and we get to fix 'em. ;)

[Ubik]

As I see them, Ill link them. Not sure if here is the best place... Where should I post them? Ive fixed a few here and there that were SF anthologies, but when I dont know ANY of the suthors and cant solve the mystery Im too scared to touch it LOL.

[Lisa]

I'll fix them too. Links in this thread make sense to me. A whole bunch at once vs. one or a couple at a time might be helpful as I know there are a lot of these.

Checking World Cat and google books often show the correct spelling of an author's name and so they're often an easy fix.

[Ubik]

OK, Ill try to get a few together before I put them in here. I hate feeling like a slacker, but its weird, I have a method going now and Im focused so when I see something like that, its like its out of my "scope" I guess you could say. Thanks Lisa

[Larry-bob]

The Seth one is pretty funny... there are two Seths - one is a graphic novelist, the other is a channeled entity. It's funny that the quotes show words from the entity, and a graphic of the graphic novelist.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I'm afraid to ask, but what is a "channeled entity"?

[vicki_girl]

Found another one - "multiple"

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...


And another one - "Others"

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

I'm too tired to work on these now, so other librarians feel free...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I got multiple.

[Cera]

I've been straightening out E. F. Benson & noticed that there are a large number of 'sticker books' in his works. Should they be separated out into their publisher, or just outright deleted because they're not books, they're stickers?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Are you sure they're not text with stickers? There are plenty of kids books like that.

*examines a few*

Huh. I'm not sure how they got tagged with this author at all -- Google Books doesn't think they should be. And they do indeed look like just stickers, not text, so I'd Not a Book 'em.

[Ubik]

Got a new one: Editor

There are only 21 so thats good. As soon as Im donw with these etc's I'll help out with editor if there are any left.

Good news! For "etc.", the system finally caught up to all my work and now there are only 2 pages. I know I didnt do *that* much so there had to be someone else (or more) working the list as well, but its finally good to see it down. Last I checked it was still over 1200 entries.

[Wendy]

The author Jean Webster is mysteriously popular in, I think, Iran. I was looking up Daddy Long Legs, and it came up in Middle Eastern alphabet. I combined all the editions I was sure were Daddy Long Legs, but the book is still listed with main title in Iranian (or whatever). And there are other titles listed for her in the same alphabet--I don't know what they are.

[Cera]

Thank you Rivka! I have not-a-booked the mysterious Benson sticker collection. There's one of them on Amazon which has E. F. Benson listed as the author, which I suspect is how the confusion crept into Goodreads.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

When all else fails, blame Amazon. ;)

[vicki_girl]

Found an author listed as "Wilson".

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Since this appears to be several people, each one will have to be looked up individually...


BTW, we probably need to add "Editor" to the Sisyphus (sp?) list.

[Ubik]

Etc. and Editor appear to be gone. I would add Editor to the list anyway because Im sure it will come up again.

Big thanks to Joe and everyone else who cleared away all the etc.'s. All 1200-some odd of them GONE! Woohoo!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Actually, etc. is still around, and it has been merged with Editor.

Adding it to the list won't help; if it comes up again, the author number (and thus the link) will be different.

[Ubik]

Sonofabitch! I thought thwy were finally gone!

Ahhh, youre right. I didnt think about that. Well, Sisyphean it remains then!

[Larry-bob]

Rivka, in reference to "Seth", see the wikipedia article "Seth Material."

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Lordy loo. People are weird.

[Brandy]

My brain can't do this tonight. I'm trying to think through a head full of mush. Please help.

Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is currently listed as "Betty Smith (Elisabeth Wehner)." (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...) I'm guessing the AKA feature hasn't come out while I wasn't paying attention, and there's nothing in the Librarian Edits to say when this part of the change happened.

I was about to fix this myself, when GoodReads wanted to know if I should merge her with "Betty Smith" (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...), which, no. I started to change that one to "Betty [space:] [space:] Smith", but that's already taken, too (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...) and I don't know if those latter two are the same or not.

While I'm on the topic, I'm pretty sure that Maggie Smith didn't rewrite this American classic in 2007, but I have no idea what name to change this book (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15...) to, to merge and delete.

Someone, please save my tired brain!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is currently listed as "Betty Smith (Elisabeth Wehner)." (http://www.goodreads.com/autho... I'm guessing the AKA feature hasn't come out while I wasn't paying attention, and there's nothing in the Librarian Edits to say when this part of the change happened.

I was about to fix this myself, when GoodReads wanted to know if I should merge her with "Betty Smith" (http://www.goodreads.com/autho..., which, no.

*LAUGH*

I encountered the exact same thing late last night, and decided to just let it be. It's actually not an aka issue -- she never wrote anything as Elisabeth Wehner, AFAIK. There are just too many Betty Smiths!

[Brandy]

So... we wait and see if someone magically fixes it? I can live with that.

I'm currently up to my eyeballs in RH Value Publishing, so I absolve myself of the responsibility. :)

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

I like absolving myself of the responsibility. I do it frequently. :-)

[vicki_girl]

et al is back

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Should I just merge with etc.?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Nah. It's going to keep coming back. I'll add it to the list.

[vicki_girl]

I need help with this author, marked simply as "--" (two dashes).

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

I got all but three of the items, which I could not track down.

[Lisa]

vicki, Thanks. I got one of the 3. It was manually entered but on no shelves at all and with no information at all, so I deleted it. The other 2 will have to be found by a librarian who knows the language.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I found one.

[Sherry]

Found another that is just a single name

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

[Novin]

well,as far as i know, the author is just know as "Simon".

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yes and no. The Necronomicon books, yes. Many of the others, no.

[Maria]

Rene Goscinny and Morris are in need of more help than I can give them. They're the author/drawer of Lucky Luke and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to combine them. How does combining books with multiple authors listed work? Can I only combine them if both authors are listed and in the same order?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

You can only combine books with the same primary author.

[Maria]

I feared as much.

Okay *rolls up sleeves* I'm off to do some combining!

[Maria]

*An hour and a half later*

Phew! I think I got all of them. I decided to make Morris primary author as that seemed most natural, seeing as he's been part of most of them.

I've combined several... I think I got all the English and French and most German, but somebody else should probably take a look at the Spanish, Italian as well as all the German I missed.

I really, really, REALLY hope Otis'll be able to make the "two phrase search" for combining. It'll make it SO much easier to be able to search for the same title in two languages at once.

[Petra X]

There is a workaround - I don't know what browser you use but Ctrl F4 brings up a search box in IE, Chrome and GreenBrowser and you search for each incidence of what you want from there - twice for two languages. GreenBrowser and Chrome also highlight the words so its easier.