These authors could use work

[Jeanette]

I am wondering about some Beatrix Potter books. There are several complete/treasury type books for her. Titles like The Big Book of Beatrix Potter, The Complete Tales, Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter and many many more. Should these all be combined or left separate? Then there are also all the Peter Rabbit collections too...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Greyweather, thanks for pointing that out. Fixed!


Jeanette, unless you have good reason to believe that the collections have the same works, no. Generally I assume that collections that are "complete" probably are -- others are often not.

[Tamsyn]

Hello everyone, I'm new. I'm from Utah and I'm loving goodreads so far, and so far I've been a lurker so I can learn how to be a good librarian. In response to Greyweather's question, I've combined authors in a round about way by editing the books. For example, I would go in and change Catherynne Valente to Catherynne M. Valente as the author, and then it automatically combines the two. If there were a lot of books by the author this wouldn't be the best solution, but when there are only a few, it works great. I actually did this so I could combine books, but it worked!

[Cait]

Tamsyn & Greyweather--

There's an easier way to combine authors! :)

If you look at the author's profile page, there's an "edit data" link up by the biographical information, and if you save a change to the author's name there, it'll change for all of the books by that author. If you save a change that makes one author identical to another, the two authors will become one.

Careful, though: if you change an author to make it identical to another one, you'll lose all of the biographical data (date of birth, bio, genre, etc.) on the author that you edited.

(Also make sure that *all* of the books listed for that author are really by someone with the new name. Sometimes when people have common names you can get several different authors' worth of books listed under the same name, and you might not want to change them all -- for example, it's unlikely that The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trees and Teaching Classical Ballet are by the *same* John White, but if you edited the author profile for John White you'd be affecting both of them.)

[Janie]

Sometimes when an author CHANGES a genre..like from fiction to non-fiction books, they will use a slightly differnt name on their books to keep readers from being confused. Might be why she has TWO differnt sights and names. Look at the books listed. If they are completely differnt in genre, you will know that is why. If they are the same....then I do believe they can combine the two.

[jenjn79]

Just passing it along since I saw in the edit logs that there were a couple other librarians who occasionally worked on the books...but Nora Roberts books are all cleaned up; her combine page was a big fat mess. So if anyone happens to wander that way, there shouldn't be anything left to fix and distinct works should be around 293.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

At the rate she writes books (and her publishers release new editions and translations of her old ones), who knows if it will stay that way for long. ;)

Thanks for all the hard work!

[jenjn79]

LOL, Rivka. Yeah, it won't stay all fixed for long, but hopefully it won't get as bad as it was (i.e. 600+ distinct works).

[rivka, Former Moderator]

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

I'm wimping out here. Bill Bryson could use a more experienced librarian to clean him up. There are several things that I think should be listed as "Not an author" but they're so weird and varied that I'm a little afraid I will mess it up if I do it my own newbie self. Anyone else want to take it on? There aren't really THAT many.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Well, I already found four other authors that are really him and consolidated; I'll see what else I can do. Looks like you got a whole bunch of 'em already, though.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yeah, there were some weird ones there. Think I got 'em all though.

[Jessica]

Got this request from a friendly member:
"You have combined books from Andre Dubus (father) and Andre Dubus III (son) as if they are by the same writer. Andre III is author of House of Sand and Fog, Bluesman, Cagekeeper and Other Stories and The Garden of Last Days. The other titles on your list are by his dad."

Thanks, you crazy cool librarians!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I can work on that. Someone want to clarify which one the photo is of, please? I think it's the son, but I'd like verification.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Never mind. Wikipedia confirmed, and provided a picture of pater.

[Evan]

Erin Hunter needs to be edited. Erin hunter is three writers and images and info can be found... I believe at warriorsite.com

I will update any information I can.

[Hope]

Philip Yancy could use some help. There are a lot of foreign language editions, and several different set of books listed simply as "Bible." There are also a lot of workbooks and such that seem to go with other books, sort of.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Workbooks should (generally) not be combined with their "parent" book, I think, only with other editions of the same workbook.

[Amy]

I came across an issue which I'm not sure how to deal with - while trying to enter Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul (ISBN 0439273218) I realized that four authors were listed as one. I edited the author to be the first one listed on Goodreads (Mark Victor Hansen) - looking at my book, I believe that Jack Canfield would be the appropriate first author, and I can change my book.
However, I did a search because I thought there were probably more additions, and I came across this author:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

From my quick read of the biography, the author listed (Cynthia Brian) is a co-author of one of the Chicken Soup books - yet has several books which should be credited to Jack Canfield.

Any suggestions on how to fix this (easily)? The only method I can think of is to change authors on each individual book, and then edit the Canfield author to Cynthia Brian. This would seem to be a lot of work - I don't think I can tackle it today.

There are probably other, unidentified issues with the Chicken Soup books as well....

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I don't see a shorter/simpler way to fix that either, unfortunately.

[Amy]

Re: Chicken Soup (aside)-
When I changed the author on the ISBN listed above and properly combined it, I discovered that I already owned the paperback version of this book anyway! Kind of funny...

[Cait]

I've seen that sort of problem before with books that have multiple authors -- it seems very random which authors get listed and in what order. Frustrating!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yeah, I fixed a bunch like that last week.

[Lisa]

I fixed some yesterday. :-)

[Amy]

I fixed the Cynthia Brian problem - but Jack Canfield still could use some work, and Mark Victor Hansen has many books which should be shifted to Jack Canfield.
I'm done for now but will try to come back to it -

[Hope]

Isabel Allende has 4 titles in Arabic that I can't do anything with.

[Ashley]

Isaac Asimov (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...) is, well, a mess. There's lots of foreign stuff in there, and with over 1,000 works it makes my eyes hurt. I'm also not very familiar with Asimov, so I don't trust myself to do too much.

[Hope]

Ellis Peters, http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
has quite a few German and French titles. I did what I could using Google and Babel Fish, but there are a lot left.

[Hope]

There seems to be a problem with Elizabeth George. There are two distinct authors with that name, and it appears that the mystery author by that name has two spaces between first and last name. The problem is that this doesn't seem to be doing enough to get her books under her own profile. Quite a few of her mysteries are ending up under the other Elizabeth George, who is a Christian spiritual writer. Any suggestions on how to distinguish the two?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

As far as I know, someone(s) with a great deal of perseverance is going to have to edit each book by hand -- and check back every so often for new interlopers.

Have fun. ;)

[Amy]

While adding my copy of When We Were Very Young, I noticed that there were several different variations of A.A. Milne, all appearing to be the same author judging from the works listed. I edited the authors to combine them, and have combined as many of the titles as I could based on my knowledge of the author.
I suspect that someone more familiar with the author or amazon terminology could probably clean this up some more.....

[Hope]

The problem with Elizabeth George is that the fix doesn't seem to be working. I edited a couple yesterday, checked back today, and they are still showing up under the wrong author. The system doesn't seem to be picking up on the double spaces between the names.

[jenjn79]

Hope, it looks like for the ones that haven't migrated to the "2 space" profile, not all editions of a given book have been edited to add the 2nd space in the name. I tested it out on one book that had a couple editions with 2 spaces but most 1 space and once I'd added a space to each edition that was missing one, the book moved to the right profile.

So whichever ones are still listed wrong, there are editions with spaces missing.

[Hope]

Ah! Now I see! Thanks. I'll try again.

[Jen]

Paul Auster's City of Glass is a graphic adaptation of City of Glass, and I don't think the two should be combined. I tried to separate out the appropriate title, but it's still showing as combined (because of reviews, maybe?)

Paul Karasik is one of the illustrators.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I think I got them all separated out properly.

[Kristen]

Re the City of Glass adaptation. I went in to confirm that I'm still linked to the adaptation rather than the original novel but now it shows I don't have it on my shelf at all, in any version.

Is that one of those things where edits sometimes take 24 hours to catch up? I'd hate to think I'm randomly losing books.

Also, Karasik is the writer. Like how a screenwriter will adapt someone else's novel for the screen. Mazzucchelli is the illustrator.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I didn't delete any of them, so I don't know why it wouldn't be on all shelves it was before. But it certainly doesn't appear to be on your shelves. If I did that (and I don't see how -- lots and LOTS of other people still have it shelved), I do apologize!

I listed Karasik as primary author on the graphic novel.

[Jen]

Sorry, I only had the one name :)

[Jen]

Great, thanks.

[Meen]

This profile is NOT this author:

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

Margaret Marshall Saunders published as "Marshall Saunders" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Janice Williams definitely didn't. :)

Thanks!
Mindy

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

You know, this is the 3rd or 4th time I've seen an author profile applied to the completely wrong author (not even remotely similar names). I wonder if it can be a rare, sporadic database error as opposed to some rogue librarian.

[Lisa]

Hmm. And no librarian log for these.

The default book data come from Amazon.

Where do the default author profiles come from? Since many authors don't have personal data in their profiles, does that mean all added data have come from GR librarians and GR authors?

[Meen]

Here's another one:

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

It's Kim Addonizio's books, but Dorianne Laux's profile.

I vote for a rogue librarian 'cause that's just funny! :)

[jenjn79]

I came across one of these a few months ago. The author was Lori Foster, but the profile info was for, I think, Sylvia Day. It even had author appearance events available.

I always wondered whether someone just goofed up adding the info, or whether it was done on purpose.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

That's bizarre. This needs a new HELP thread -- I have a feeling this is too likely to be a weird GR hiccup.

[jenjn79]

You know what I just noticed...on the edit page for the last author Mindy mentioned, it has the link:
From http://booktour.com/author/2021

in the copyright info box. Which stood out to me because when I corrected Lori Foster's profile a while back I remember a similar link was pasted there as well. And I just checked the other author Mindy posted, same type of link.

So however the incorrect data got there, it looks to be from the same source.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Oh, them again! They have some sort of deal with GR, and I had to correct a bunch of their events (a signing with William Shakespeare! among others) that were incorrect.

[Lisa]

a signing with William Shakespeare! among others

Oh, that's is too funny.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

It did seem slightly suspicious. ;)