Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I added my editions of a couple of Rafael Sabatini books today, and came across an author profile that had the author's first name misspelled as "Raphael."

There were four books under the wrongly spelled name. Two of them had no cover art, so I corrected the author's name and merged those books with their other editions. These two books have cover art that includes the misspelling:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...

In each case, I corrected the author's name, combined the books with their other editions, and added a librarian note that his name was misspelled on the cover art.

While looking at Sabatini's combine page, I came across this book that still needed rescuing:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...

It was already combined with other editions of "The Life of Cesare Borgia," and the one review of that specific lost edition was about that book, so I went ahead and rescued it.

All I put into the "rescue this book" form was the title and author, but now it shows up with the author's correctly spelled name, an editor that I've never heard of, and a misspelling of Sabatini's name.

There is no longer any cover art attached to it, but the book includes a note from another librarian saying that its cover art included a misspelling. They handled that by adding the correct spelling and moving the misspelling to "second author" status.

If it helps, this is the only edition I can find that includes that editor's name and may have been the misspelled cover, though that misspelling is different than the one currently on the edition that I linked to.

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Cesare-Bor...

I was assuming that we wouldn't want that wrongly spelled author profile in the database just because some quickie print-on-demand or ebook publishers got it wrong on their end, but now I'm second guessing myself. Since there are editions here and there with misspelled cover art, should the misspelling be relisted as a secondary author for them?

Donna, I would say yes. The reason is that if someone is looking for that book (or if they want to add that book with the misspelling), then they can find it in the database. Also, we do go with what is on the cover, so having both will be beneficial.

Okay. If that's the typical policy, then I'll add the misspelled profile back as a secondary author when I get home tonight.

Multiple misspellings of Karl Ove Knausgård keep accumulating. I've merged them a few times in recent months.

It also means that multiple duplicate editions of the different translations of his works keep building up on GR which probably need to be cleaned up. Not sure I can do this as a standard librarian so have so far left it alone.

Given that there have been a number of different misspellings, rather than one very obvious one such as Rafael / Raphael above, what should be done, if anything?

With translations author spots go as follows (for transliterations anyway):

1. Established for of author's name as used in English
2. Form in the language of the translated edition
3. Translator name (Translator)
4. Any editors - especially for Classic authors (Editor)

Hope that helps a little. With a name like Knausgård, he will accumulate errors though as many imports don't seem to cope well with diacritics etc. With that, it's just monitor and grab them as you spot them... :S

I am having a problem adding a book excerpt to my page. I attempted to load a chapter from Under a Poachers' Moon 2 - More Stories of a Wisconsin Game Warden. Everything worked fine until I typed in my name. It keeps rejecting my author name. I had an earlier problem adding the books originally which was corrected. However now I can't seem to be able to use my name on the "add my writing" page.

Hi Steven, did you ever get your problem solved? I remember helping you with your author profile. Are you trying to add your middle initial? The author name should match that exactly in your profile. If you're still having trouble, it may be a technical issue, and you should try posting in the author feedback group here: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/3...

Z-squared wrote: "Hi Steven, did you ever get your problem solved? I remember helping you with your author profile. Are you trying to add your middle initial? The author name should match that exactly in your pro..."

Thank you for responding. I just figured it out. I was typing my name in the box next to the book displayed at the bottom where it asked for author of this book. Once I typed in that author instead of my name, everything worked fine. Thanks again.