These authors could use work

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

Anderson
Atkinson
Bass
Brinkley
Butler
Curtis
Ferrell
Griffin
Holloway
Horngren
Kaplan
Kaufman
Kolb
Kraus
Manning
Mitchell
Moorhead
Patterson
Pechenik
Pride
Putnam
Reece
Stratton
Walton
Young

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

Ok, a somewhat bigger issue than all of the stray author names. Another publisher as author: DK Publishing with over 1500 books

[rivka, Former Moderator]

O_O

[Lisa]

Kaplan is a "real" author, I think.

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


famous college prep program place with published study books

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Looks like there might be 1 or 3 of the several hundreds that need fixing, but yeah.

[Hope]

The picture displayed with this book doesn't match the title. The title doesn't match the author(s?). I couldn't find the isbn on World Cat.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Weird.

Every site that thinks it's the Anderson book can be traced back to Amazon; the couple that think it's Cold Hit did not. So I figured that was slightly more likely (although none of the relevant publishers seem to recognize the ISBN, which is also weird) and changed it accordingly.

Very bizarre.

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

Last batch for now (promise :-)

Allen
Baker
Barber
Doherty
Edwards
Fearon
Feldman
Gibson
Hillier
Katz
Klein
Mankiw
Mansfield
Olds
Papalia
Ridley
Rogers
Schiffman
Wise

[Kristen]

Question on those (totally evil) RH Value Publishing folks.

Usually, they seem to be using ISBN's that don't show up anywhere else. They could still be valid, of course.

But in some cases, the ISBN (both of them, in fact) matches an edition of the same title but a different publisher. In those cases, should the record be cleaned up to match the other publisher, date, etc?

With the unmatched ISBNs, I'm just fixing the author and leaving them as the pub.

Thanks!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Sounds like you're doing it exactly right. :)

[Hope]

I've spent a bunch of time with Anderson over the last couple of days, and whittled it down to 15 books, most of which are impossible to decipher or have too generic of titles to be sure about. I may keep at it, but if anyone else is interested, I wouldn't be disappointed if they finished them off.

Butler is down to 4, at least one of which is a Periodical Index with no particular author. How do we handle those?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Martin is down to 5 impossibles.


How do we handle those?

List the editor, if there is one.

[Cait]

I came across a couple of attributed-to-the-publisher sets that I can't make head nor tails of myself:

Piggy Toes Press
Price Stern Sloan Publishing and Price Stern Sloan

It looks like some of these may be not-a-books....

[Hope]

Feldman is down to 4, one of which may be a novel by someone with a name completely different from Feldman. I didn't want to change it since I couldn't be sure.

Mansfield is done.

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

Completed Durand, McCabe and Petty

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Piggy Toes Press is mostly board books with no known author; those can probably be left alone. PSSP I'm working on -- quite a few have real authors. PSS was all games, so I merged it with Not a Book and had done with it. :P

Hope, I've found that a great many of these really do have names unrelated to what Amazon has. If I find it at a reasonable source (or better yet, more than one), I go with it. Which book -- can you link, please?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I did as much as PSSP as I could; the rest (I think) have no real authors.

And King is done, done, done! Every last one. :D

[Lasairfiona]

Yeah, I worked on King most of today. I had missed a few but going through all those foreign language editions was rough. Wiki in other languages really helped. What was that one Norwegian book?

edit: Oh drat, I was talking about Stephen King, not King the generic. Sorry. I guess I just wanted to gloat about my hard work (from 375 to just under 200, all foreign language). Right, off to merge some more. Thanks for all these lists people. It really helps.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Well, I'm partly to blame -- a couple of those Kings ended up in your lap. ;)

[Brandy]

Sorry. I guess I just wanted to gloat about my hard work (from 375 to just under 200, all foreign language).

Oh, come on! That's not even fair! I went through back in February and cleaned the Stephen King listing all up--and then more foreign editions appeared? Dagnabbit!

I SO share your need to gloat about it, because it really is a royal PITA. Every now and then I spot-check Stephen King (because he's an easy author to clean up, for me), and I've noticed the number going up and down a lot lately, so don't think nobody realized you were working on it! :)

[Lasairfiona]

:) I'm stuck on a Norwegian book added by a member and the few compilations in other languages without the included stories listed. There are also a couple of books by a Stephen King that are obviously not by Stephen King the horror writer. Did he write a german chemistry book? I don't think so. However, there are enough Stephen Kings in the Library of Congress (with no middle name listed) that I am going to have to start putting two or more spaces between names. Any better suggestions?

Oh, and watch out for german and other language text books. I have found a number where the publisher was listed as the author. I can usually find the author on other books sites though it isn't always easy to read. I can figure out titles in german but I don't actually read it.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Stewart is down to three impossibles. And I think I finished up someone else last night just before I conked out, but I may have dreamed that. O_o

[rivka, Former Moderator]

All the Breyers are gone.

Guess we'll have to have Dreyer's instead.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Pearce is down to two impossibles (one of which may actually be correct as is).

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

I finished off the stray Stewarts and the Pearce's. Well, one of the Pearce's was legitimate, in-so-much as it is a pseudonym for a pair of comic artists (I added a bio with the basic info).

[Hope]

Rivka- re the Feldman that probably isn't by Feldman - it is High Performance, by Lawrence Fields. Here's the link to our listing:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

When Google Books and WorldCat agree, I definitely believe them over Amazon. Any day, and twice on Sundays. ;)

[Hope]

Fearon is done. It is actually a publisher, not an author. Luckily the three books there were all easily found on WorldCat, with actual authors.

Hooray for WorldCat and Google Books!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yes, they are both very useful. So are Powell's, Barnes & Noble, and the Library of Congress. :)

[Brandy]

Lasairfiona, I may have solved the mystery of the Norwegian book--after much googling, I found a description that started "Thad Beaumont er forfatter og har i flere år gitt ut romaner under pseudonymet George Stark." I can't read most of it, but the highlights are "Thad Beaumont" "pseudonym" and "George Stark." It's been combined with The Dark Half. Hooray! I love solving puzzles like these!

Seriously, I have no idea how Stephen King books just keep appearing. His list just keeps growing, no matter how hard you try to keep up with it. It's a situation worthy of one of his plots! I think I need to give up on him, though; the frustration isn't worth it.

I have noticed that the higher-brow authors are usually pretty clean, but these mass-market writers are crazy-messy. Next I might try to tackle Dean Koontz--a task made harder by the fact that he's been churning out the same three books under different titles for 20+ years now...

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

It doesn't completely explain it, but the more popular the author, the more likely they'll have books listed under incorrect name spellings: King, Steven; Steven King; King; S. King; S King; Steve King; etc... In some cases they may be floating in from corrections, in other cases it's just database filling...

[Cait]

I had a bit of a go at Dean Koontz the other day; I left a couple of pseudonyms up with links in the author profiles, since I was worried that they'd pop back up again if the cover author name wasn't on them and there were too many for description editing....

[Lasairfiona]

Brandy: It is actually because I highly dislike Dean Koontz that I am looking forward to tackling him. I don't want it to say that they have so many individual works. Actually, I am like that with all authors. Weird obsession on my part. It is my favorite part of being a librarian.

When are we going to be able to link authors with their pseudonyms? That would avoid some problems.

[Cait]

It is actually because I highly dislike Dean Koontz that I am looking forward to tackling him. I don't want it to say that they have so many individual works.

Heh, you too? :)

Actually, I am like that with all authors. Weird obsession on my part. It is my favorite part of being a librarian.

There's something very satisfying about getting an author's list tidy, isn't there?

[Lasairfiona]

There's something very satisfying about getting an author's list tidy, isn't there?
Yes!

Okay, I'm a bit confused. For The Cranio-Cervical Syndrome: Mechanisms, Assessment and Treatment, none of the listed authors are correct. However, WorldCat says the author is J Chu and Google Books says it is Howard Vernon. A quick google search on the isbn comes up with Howard Vernon, Walters, Perkins, Jamie Scott, Schoon. Library of Congress just lists Vernon, Howard, D.C. So, what should I list and what is that DC?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Howard Vernon seems to be the (only? primary?) editor; all the others are contributors. I think the D.C. is some sort of title, and we omit those. So, Howard Vernon it is (and I fixed it).

Messy one.

[Hope]

Under Allen, there is a book called The Informed Argument Text. In WorldCat, the ISBN for it comes up with a completely different book with the same author as listed here. A search for the title on Google comes up with several possible books, but with completely different authors. Here is a link to the book:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76...

I'm going to leave it to someone with more persistence. Actually, most of Allen will require persistence...

[Hope]

Charlotte MacLeod could use some cleaning up by someone who can read German. There are a lot of uncombined editions that can probably be tidied. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I can't help with the German. ;)

As far as the Allen book, the LoC agrees with WorldCat. And so does GoogleBooks.

Silly Amazon. :P

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Moore is alllll gone.

[Cait]

Can anyone make heads or tails of this book? The title, author, and (tiny) cover art all seem to disagree, and the ISBN searches I've tried seem inconclusive....

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

Cait, the title and author are wrong (and do not go together either). The cover definitely goes with that ISBN. I've fixed it.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

As far as I can tell, the two Baileys left are correct with that as the one-name author. Took care of all the others.

Silhouette has a bunch of non-book audio cassettes, which is weird.

[Hope]

Baker and McKenzie are popping up under several of the authors needing work. They appear to be a global law firm, and not an author or set of authors. Here's a link to one of the books:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
Is there a policy for these?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

(Edit: Never mind, I woke up enough to figure it out. ;) )

I would say that Baker & McKenzie is a single author, since the books in question are essentially authored by the legal firm as a single entity.

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

A couple more publisher/authors who should be looked at a little more closely:

Metacom
Scholastic Books
Nelson World Publishing Group

[rivka, Former Moderator]

The first two definitely do. The third one, though, doesn't seem to have real authors -- just that corporate entity. No?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Silhouette is done.

So is Metacom -- all non-books (cassettes and CDs, music and radio dramas).

[Hope]

Ridley is done. The last two weren't by anyone named Ridley at all. A pox on Amazon!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yeah, I hate that.

Well, I thought Scholastic Books was done (the ones that are left really are books with no other author) . . . until I discovered Scholastic Inc. >_<

*sigh*