Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

How does one "clean up" the characters for an author?

For instance, look at the characters for Kelley Armstrong. Most are listed more than once. Some are also listed without last names.

And what do the "edit" and "merge" buttons mean, when you're adding characters to a book? (I'm afraid to just go experimenting, when I have no idea what they might do.)

Is there any way to sort the list of characters?

Thanks!

If you click on a character name, it will tell you what book that character is listed for.

Edit will let you edit that characters name. But if the name you're changing it to is already in the system, it tells you that character is already there. So you have to use merge. When you click merge, it will ask you what character you would like to merge into by having you type the character name.

I forget which way the merging goes (i.e. what name stays when you merge), but if it does it wrong, then you can just edit the name after to the name you want.

Thank you!