These authors could use work

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

This thread has gotten rather unwieldy and its getting harder to keep track of what's been done and what is outstanding, particularly as names drop back multiple pages of posts. Would it be worth creating a locked author list (similar to the publisher "author" list) to collate names which need work?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Probably. I'll make you a deal -- you create it, and I'll lock it? ;)

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

Fair enough

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Ok, you're done, right? You can edit posts in a locked thread, so no problem there.

[Lisa]

Is it possible for us to delete "author" profiles when we've finished finding the true authors and there are no books under that "author's" name anymore?

Such as Holloway.

Thanks.


And Frost.

Etc.

I don't see a way to delete an "author" profile.

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

I thought author profiles were supposed to delete themselves when there were no books remaining, but some of them seem to stick around for quite awhile.

I think this may be partly due to the fact that the book counts are often incorrect. For a lot of the authors on the list I just posted, the number on the author's page listed as "X distinct works" was wrong. When you click on that link it would jump to a page with a very different number. And these are not all immediate changes which have not updated, but in some cases edits from a week or more ago. For some reason this number is not updating properly (or at least, efficiently) anymore.

[Lisa]

Michael, Ah, Ok. I got Byars too. Guess will check them in a day or two and see if they disappear. I'd also thought an "author" with no books would delete themselves but I am not seeing that at all anymore, at least the ones that I've done.

Ah well. Better to have blank author profiles than books with incorrect authors showing.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

If they stick around, it's easy enough to merge them with one of the authors we edited them to (like merging the now-empty Brigham with Eugene F. Brigham).

[rivka, Former Moderator]

And thanks for all that work, Michael! It's much easier to see what needs work. And very satisfying to deal with authors that only need 1-5 books to be taken care of, after spending the afternoon on the endless Scholastic!

[Lisa]

Rivka, Yeah, Just did Byars. Will do the others, and will just do them as soon as they're empty. (senior moment excuse)

And yes, thank you Michael. Gave me another push to start working on these again; they're once again easy to find.

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

Huh, I never thought to merge an empty author. What a simple solution.

Not a problem. It was just getting time to try to compile them in one place. I'll try to update it every few days or at least weekly.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Cool. :)

[Anna]

I became a librarian just few days ago, but I try my best with adding books and authors. I add mostly Polish authors, cause most of them isn't well known abroad apart from Sienkiewicz or Kapuściński.

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

A lot of these might be correct because they appear to be group works, but Zondervan Publishing should be looked at.

Edit: And also Running Press

[Cait]

I don't have time to go through this myself, but here's a useful link for Running Press:

http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/runn...

[Lasairfiona]

I have been working on stupid Rh and I can't find authors for some of them. Often, I can't get the isbn to pop up in worldcat, much less LoC. If any one wants to take a crack at the first 20 or so, be my guest. I updated them recently so double check the author line as they may not be updated yet.

[Cait]

Can anyone tell if Robert J. Langs and Robert Langs are always the same person or just sometimes?

[Lisa]

Same person from all the books I could look up. I merged the authors to J. I hope that I did the right thing. They all seem to be written by the same author. Not all the books show the J. But when I go to his profiles without it, the J. shows up somewhere on the site(s).

If I made a mistake here, let me know; I will correct it.

[Melody]

Not sure if these are the actual books or a discussion of the books Linguisystems

[Lisa]

Melody, They seem to be discussions of those books. The authors of the actual books are listed as the second author at Amazon. Looks like one of those cases where Linguisystmes IS the author, but I/we will check it more carefully.

[Amanda]

I dont know if this is the right spot to post this, so I'm sorry if it isnt! The page for Jhumpa Lahiri's book Interpreter of Maladies needs a bit of fixing....the author name is listed as "Juppha" Lahiri, not Jhumpa. Also, there is no "The" in the title, and "Interpreter" is mispelled.... The book page is here - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29... .

[Lisa]

Amanda, This was a good place to post. It was an easy fix. Thanks for finding it.

[Melody]

Here is a publisher listed as an author. Rh Value Publishing
Zhondervan
Zhondervan Publishing

[rivka, Former Moderator]

The first and last of those three are already on the list; I combined the second with the third.

[Cait]

Whoa. Is et al on the list yet?

[Lisa]

Most of these seems to be books with no read authors, but here's another one:

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

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

Many of the et al.'s are being used for anthologies, when the editor should be listed as author. In some cases they refer to a set of artists for a graphic novel. Most can probably be cleaned up fairly easily; the others could perhaps be merged with the "Various Authors" author?

[Lisa]

Re posts 225 & 227: Most look as though can just clean up by keeping the correct author, but I haven't looked that closely yet.

[Lasairfiona]

Can we just get an editor line instead of putting an editor as an author?

In other news, The Rh publishing keeps returning "no isbn found" even on worldcat. It is getting very frustrating.

[Lasairfiona]

Did all of Montgomery excepting two that I couldn't find. ISBNs didn't come up in worldcat or LoC. Titles didn't work either.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I agree with Michael and Lisa on the et als; I'll add it to the list.

I didn't think Sparks Notes releases ever have an official author listed. Do they?


Can we just get an editor line instead of putting an editor as an author?

It's on the to-do list (along with fields for translator and illustrator), but I'm guessing expanding the database that radically is a non-trivial endeavor.


When WorldCat and LoC fail, try GoogleBooks, Powell's, and B&N. And GoogleBooks is spectacularly good at finding matching titles, even when the ISBN doesn't come up with anything. A straight Google search on the ISBN and/or title occasionally comes up with something helpful (once the website of a particular author whose first name I was having a heck of a time finding!)

[Lisa]

I think these don't have authors, but I can't resist adding this "author"(Bathroom Readers' Institute) to the to be worked on list:

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

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I am familiar with those books. "Uncle John" is as close to an author as they come. ;)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I think Kaplan is as done as it's going to get -- I fixed the ones with real authors, and combined test guides and the like.

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

I don't recall seeing this one before: Unknown

[rivka, Former Moderator]

But for most (if not all but a very few) that is accurate, no?

[Lisa]

I've changed 3 unknowns so far; 1 of them had an ISBN. But most, yes.

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

It might be accurate. But how many variants of this do we need? Is there a practical difference between Unknown and Anonymous, for example?

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

Huh. Someone has added some video games, specifically Halo, Halo 2, and Halo 3 (there may be others, but these are the ones I've stumbled across).

Since these are not books and do not have ISBN's I went to delete them, but cannot. Or to be precise, the system acts as if I've deleted them but they are still there. Any ideas?

[jenjn79]

Don't know why they won't delete, but I found 3 more video games added by the same person: Starwars Battlefront 1, Starwars Battlefront 2, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Is there a practical difference between Unknown and Anonymous, for example?

I would say that there is. Some things are published deliberately without an author; they are anonymous. Others may have had a known author initially, but because they have been transmitted orally, or without an author's name written in the text, we no longer know who the author is. That's Unknown, and IMO it is different than Anonymous. Or Various, for that matter.

I have noticed for a while that the system stopped letting us delete any items that have no other editions but do have reviews/ratings. I've just merged the items with other things before deleting, but that seems inappropriate in this case.

Maybe a Help, Otis post is in order?

[Otis]

It was a bug in the case where there are no reviews to merge from other editions. It will be fixed in the next release - sorry everyone!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I just figured you didn't trust us anymore. ;)

Thanks, Otis.

[Lasairfiona]

Re: Publisher lists: So it turns out there was an Inc. Scholastic as well as Scholastic Inc. I have taken gone through all of Inc. Scholastic and put in authors when I could find them. It has been merged with Scholastic Inc. So the number of works is higher if anyone was keeping track. I have worked through the books up to the Cs with many showing up as by Scholastic Inc. and many not showing up at all (all using worldcat - I haven't gone deeper than that).

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

Another publisher list: Chronicle Books. A majority of these do not appear to be legitimate.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Actually, a large percentage appear to be Not a Books -- postcards, stationery, etc. But not all. I'll add it to the list.

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

Whoops, I was unclear. That's exactly what I meant: a majority of these do not appear to be legitimate books. Left off the key word.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Ah! That makes more sense.

[Melody]

Stephen White

I don't think it's possible that the same author that wrote the Barney books also wrote a series of crime novels including Kill Me.

[Greyweather]

I noticed an author listed twice. Catherynne Valente and Catherynne M. Valente are the same person, is there a way to combine them?