Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

is there a way to make it clear that the "author" is not really the author of a collection, but simply the editor? specifically in relation to isbn 1-4039-3476-2, but there are so many cases...

You could put the name with editor in the description field. And also maybe put something in the description field about it being a collection with many authors. At least it would provide the proper information.

I think that the best way to do this is to use the author field, but then indicate that the person is the editor: e.g., "Jane Doe (editor)". That way, the book is still searchable under the editor's name, whereas if you use only the description field, it isn't. And as I mentioned in our discussion thread about including the names of those who write forewords and introductions, the ability to search on these names is compatible with all other online buying or lending sites, from Amazon to the Library of Congress.

if you replace "Jane Doe" in the author field with "Jane Doe (editor)", then it sees that as a whole new person whose name is "Jane Doe (editor)". so then if you want to find books by Jane Doe, but you click on "Jane Doe (editor)", it only returns books with "Jane Doe (editor)" in the field, not books by Jane Doe. But the worst thing is that the book is REMOVED from the list of books by Jane Doe...

And, unless this has changed?, it interferes with combining books by the primary author, and also any other authors if the author(s) don't match other editions.

I believe Otis has plans to resolve this...in the meantime we just have to wait :).

what i did in the end was put "(editor)" in the field for the second author, which looks ok, and i can't think of any problems it would cause. but obviously it's a sort of ugly work-around, and it would be nice to have a proper solution built-in.

Rob, the only problem it will cause is if there's other editions I don't think they can be merged together unless all the editions constain exactly the same authors information.

whew. you had me worried there, lisa, but it seems to work ok. e.g. if you look at the book in question at (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...), you can see i've got the two editions combined, one with the second author as "(editor)" and one with the second author as "(ed.)". i even made sure by separating them and then recombining them after changing the second author, and it was ok. i think the main point is that at least one author must be identical (in this case the editor, Mark Beeson).

Combining editions is based solely on the primary author. As long as that is the same, no problem.

Rob, Sorry! Rob and Rivka: glad to know. I thought otherwise.