Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I can't find details of what authors can do on the site.
I always assumed their privileges were to work on their own profile and books, but have recently helped authors put right errors in books they added authored by other people. Should they be adding works outside their own authorship?

Martin wrote: "I can't find details of what authors can do on the site.
I always assumed their privileges were to work on their own profile and books, but have recently helped authors put right errors in books th..."

I suggest you add Attention: Jaclyn to your title.

Thanks, I have now added that

I wondered if they add the book from their own page but change the author name before saving.

They really need to review author privileges. Like, why are they ever able to change their names?

Hello hello. Thanks for flagging - I'll look into this.

I agree. Thanks for bringing this issue up.

I haven't seen it for a while, but in the past I have seen authors who were able to work on series. Possibly they were librarians before they were authors.

Also there are authors able to add awards. Generally (that I have seen) they only work on their own books. If they have read the manual they don't understand it (awards are tricky)

Bumping this as it has dropped down the page.

Looping back here. It's possible that some authors still retain Librarian status, as this dual status was previously allowed and not retroactively revoked when the rule changed.

Authors' permissions are intended to allow them to edit their own books and author profile. Please flag edits where you see authors changing their names to perform edits for others.

If an author still has librarian status would that show on their profile?
Thanks for the wider clarification.

Martin wrote: "If an author still has librarian status would that show on their profile?"

No it doesn't.

Many thanks Jaclyn for keeping us informed.

Is it intented design that any Goodreads Author can add new book records for any author name? I'm unsure if adding new records for other authors require dual status or not, and knowing could help us Librarians to give correct advise to authors visiting this group.

From what I know adding new records for other authors does not require dual status. All authors can do it.

Tami wrote: "From what I know adding new records for other authors does not require dual status. All authors can do it."

From what I've seen I agree.

Authors can be very helpful so I'd hate for this to come to an end. Solution could be for Goodreads to look at this on a case by case basis and cut abilities for authors who misbehave.

Sometimes authors ask for help in editing books they have added for other people. As they have been able to add a book but then cannot edit it I assume they don't have librarian rights. I don't know how this happens but thought that maybe they go through the same process as adding their own book but change the author name before saving.

Martin wrote: "If an author still has librarian status would that show on their profile?"

If you trigger their user page, then yes, you can check if they have dual status or not. For example, this author has dual status:

[redacted to remove the author]

Corinne wrote: "how do you "trigger their user page"?"

Here's one way.

If you go to an author's bookshelves (left side of the page above their friends list), the user ID number in the URL is their user profile ID number rather than the author ID number.

Copy that number and then go to your own profile page and replace the ID number in the URL with the one you just copied, then add ?stay=true to the end of the URL, hit enter and you'll be on the author's user profile page.

Corinne wrote: "well lookie there and how do you "trigger their user page"?
what bit of magic is that?"

I use another method. If you go to an author's list of books the url will look like this https://www.goodreads.com/ author/ list/ some numbers. Author_Name

If they only have one page of books then add this at the end ?page=2&per_page=30

If they already have more than one page in their list of books just edit the url to change it to a nonexistent page. If they have 5 pages of books then go to page 5 and just change it to 6 and their user profile will appear. The format is the same at the end you'll see ?page=5&per_page=30 change to page=6

Corinne wrote: "I think you should tell us but remove the links to an actual person."

Okay, I edited my reply to remove the author :)