THE Group for Authors! discussion
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How do I add a book I've written to my list of works?
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David, in order to distinguish you from the other David Barkers with books in our database, there is an extra space between your first and last name. It only shows up on edit pages, but it means that any books imported to the database will need to be edited to add that additional space. Post in the Goodreads Librarians group and a librarian will be able to take care of it for you.
Thanks, rivka. I now remember having been told such a thing before, but forgot it in the interim. I'll make a request in the Librarians Group. The help pages don't mention this, or at least I didn't find it there.
It may be that the only note on the help pages regarding this issue is for librarians. I'll see what we can do about adding something for authors.
Thanks, rivka. I'm a database analyst and I can't help but notice that the method for disambiguating authors (adding extra spaces between first and last names) is a bit funky and non-intuitive. I don't know anything about the Goodreads database, but has any thought been given to making it easier to distinguish between authors with the same name? You could add fields for author birth year and birth city -- that should clear up almost all cases of multiple authors with the same names. Or, you could assign a unique ID number to each one, something arbitrary. If these new fields were visible to the user, authors could separate their own works without needing the help of a librarian. I know I probably should just butt out, but I thought I'd mention these possibilities. Thanks again.
Many ways of disambiguating authors with the same name have been discussed. This is the way it works for now.
I understand that changing it would involve work and probably expense. I guess it's something to add to a wish list for future improvements.
When I type the book's title into the form for adding a book to my list of works as an author, if the book is in the Goodreads database, it appears with the instruction to use the existing database record and not create a new one. When I click on the existing book, it goes to the book's page, but I can't figure out how to claim it as the author. If I try to edit the details, it says I don't have permission to edit anything but meta data. This has happened on several of my books. Can I claim these myself, or does a librarian need to add each one after I request it?