Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hi all,

I am happy to be a freshly minted Goodreads Librarian. I look forward to bringing my skills as a professional librarian and cataloger to bear on the metadata here. I have been reading over some of the discussions and manual, and I have some questions.

Is there any established rule for consistent author description and name disambiguation?

Are there rules for where the title comes from?

I think that's it. I do like that multiple editions are kept under a "master" record, though.

Thanks!!!

Jason

Hi Jason

Name Disambiguation - the information in the manual. It used to be we would disambiguate the less prolific authors with more spaces but with the influx of ebooks and reprints that does not really help any more. Its mainly use your common sense.

Book Title: There was a discussion about this recently, but current practice is to use the title on the cover of the book either in hand or from the image on GR. If there are issues check World cat and the LOC is generally final decider for a lot of things.

Can you clarify what you mean by author description? The author profile or the designation author on the book page?

Well, so that initials, dates, etc. are added to preferred names for authors so that they are readily identifiable. I am thinking about a preferred name that I would generate for a name authority file. Maybe I am just thinking too hard about it, though!

Thanks!

The current standard is no data other than author name in the name field including no titles. Initials can be used if that is how they publish or a better way to disambiguate authors than spaces.

Dates can be added in the date fields and other information in the description field

The Libarian Manual is helpful: http://www.goodreads.com/help/librarian

But it is kinda scant imo, so you might want to check its folder discussion: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_...

If in doubt, just use the search feature of the group to look for old threads. Chances are, we probably discussed the question already. If not, just make a new thread here in this group like you just did now. =)