Author disambiguation notices
I've added the ability to add and edit author disambiguation text. This isn't the "real" solution, which is still coming, but if you have the urge to clarify the difference between Steve Martin the author of Shopgirl and Cruel Shoes and Steve Martin the author of Britain and the Slave Trade, go ahead. It may help someone out ("This isn't funny at all!") and it will help us later when we have real disambiguation pages.Steve Martin doesn't have one yet, but Christopher Locke does.
Results show up in the Helpers log.
posted by Tim at 6:59 PM
7 Comments:
In the "Also Known As" column on author pages: "Q: What if disambiguation notice is wrong?" -- There's a "the" missing there.
Fixed! Thanks for the sharp eye :)
so the process of untying two authors is called "disambiguation"? What would the permanent solution be? This feature is not available on AMazon is it? Oftentimes I click on an authors name and books are pulled up that having no contribution by that author; I'd like to correct it but have seen no way of doing so.
Luke,
The permanent solution is what librarians call an "authority file." (see the world's largest one at http://authorities.loc.gov ). There one sees that there is a difference between "Locke, Christopher" and "Locke, Christopher, 1968- ". It's a feature available at Library of Congress, which I use in preference over Amazon all the time when I'm adding books.
Use author's names the way they are written on library records over the way Amazon enters them.
Melanchthon
I found Librarything when looking for Sarah H. Bradford, author of some books on Harriet Tubman. On LibraryThing I found that her works are combined with Sarah Bradford who has written on Jackie O and many other people. They are NOT the same woman since Sarah H. Bradford was a contemporary of Harriet Tubman and knew her for many years. I think the problem arises from the fact that in reprints of Sarah H. Bradford's books, the later publishers neglected to put the original dates of publication. There were two editions of "Harriet: Moses of Her People," the first without and the second with references and letters added in. Somehow, the publication dates are missing--even from the on-line Guttenberg eBooks. I tried to use the "Separate / Combine" routine on LibraryThing, but when I meant to Separate, it seems to want me to combine. So I can't work it. Maybe someone else can do it. By the way, it would be great if interested people in California would contact Barbara Boxer about two Tubman-related issues: (1) She should replace major slave-holder / slave-beater (and main proponent / enforcer behind the Indian Removal Act . . . Trail of Tears . . . and carrying it out) President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, and it would be fitting if Tubman-a woman and an African American--were to be the next person to have a Nataional Holiday commemorating her work against slavery. In these days when there are many discussing reparations, I think those two ideas go a long way toward meaningful reparations that will remind us of the struggle and the lives lived in misery under the slave system . . from which both North and South benefitted mightily for centuries. Thanks! Curtis in California
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