Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I "explored" the authors (finally). While it's nice to see all the authors who have signed up as GR authors, I was actually hoping to get to a plain old list of names. That would make it much, much easier to figure out whether or not there are multiple author profiles for some people (that are NOT for pseudonyms, just plain old typos or variations like including a middle initial). Or to catch those places where someone entered "Dr. John Doe" rather than "John Doe" and so on.

Am I just ignorant and overlooking something that's already available?

Thanks,
Cyn

I am not aware of any such browsing option. There are currently close to 3,000,000 unique authors (judging by the numbers assigned to new authors when one does a disambig), so it would be pretty unwieldy if there were!

Doing searches on names ("John Doe" will pull up both those variants, in addition to "Doe John" and other mistaken entries) is probably a better way to find such things.

Another way to catch some mistakes is by using the author field on the "add book/author" link above where we write our posts. For example, start searching for Patricia Cornwell. Type in Patricia then type in the C and enter. You'll get a list of authors whose names are Patricia C and you can find lots of mistakes that way. Also try searching for them with the last name first. When a list comes up, you can click on the author's name and link directly to the "author" profile and fix it from there.

I hope that makes sense.

That is very clever!

I wish I could take the credit for it, but someone else posted the idea somewhere on here a while back. I wish I could remember who it was.

That is a good idea, JG - thank you.

Unfortunately, I've seen mistakes that I would NEVER think of searching on. I'd still like to be able to browse a plain old list.

Otis has been even more responsive than usual to librarian requests of late. :)

I suggest asking him for the ability to do so. I imagine if it's not too difficult you might get your wish.