Other authors best practices

Doing some cleanup of my Series led me to enter the contributors for an anthology (it started with removing the Series entry for an anthology based on a single short story it included, then I noticed that only one short story was listed as "Contained in", and it all went from there). In this particular case (Xanadu edited by Jane Yolen) the editor also has a story included in the work. I confirmed all the other contributors as secondary author / contributors, but was uncertain about what to do in a case like this, where one person wears two hats (editor and author of one of the contributed stories). For now I didn't try adding her as a secondary author as well as the primary author / editor, but I'm wondering if I should.

(On a side note, my OCD is really aggravated by the fact that one single story out of the contents of the anthology is not listed as a work on LT, and thus I can't list it as Contains In. If it were a stuffed bobcat or a bottle of perfume, I'd be allowed to add it to LT. But a short story, to have a complete listing of the contents of an anthology? Relevant bibliographic material about books? We can't have that, not on LibraryThing!)

But a short story, to have a complete listing of the contents of an anthology? . . . We can't have that, not on LibraryThing!

Sez who? I see a lot of short stories listed on LibraryThing. How do you think that "one short story" got listed on "Contained in"? Somebody entered it in her library!

Tim and/or Jeremy has asked us not to.

http://blog.librarything.com/main/2011/02/librarything-gets-work-to-work-relatio...

>2 lilithcat:

Sez Tim. We're allowed to list short stories. We're not allowed to add them for the specific purpose of using the "Contained In" feature. All the others had already been added by someone else, for other purposes (they weren't in the Contained In, I added them.)

Edited to add: The exact text, which shows when you are doing a search to add a work/work relationship, is: "Connect only existing works; do not create works in order to connect to them. " That's pretty unequivocal. He doesn't call it a TOS violation or anything but does specifically tell us not to do it.

> 4

Okay, I didn't realize you were talking about adding a short story for the sole purpose of putting it in "Contained in".

Anyway, that was a side issue; my main question is about whether to double-list an author who has two distinct roles in a single work (in this case, and probably the most common scenario, editor of the anthology and author of one of the included stories). Thoughts?

> 6

I find it odd when I see it, but lord knows I have some where the illustrations by the author are as important (sometimes more so) than the text, and I'm tempted to double-list the person as author and illustrator.

I don't usually do it, but in the case you posit I think I would. It seems to me even odder not to acknowledge the person's role as editor, or to do so but then have her the only non-listed "contributor".

I would be tempted to add such an author as both.

I would add the author twice, myself. If (for example) an author is also a contributor, and you are including all the other contributors, then it seems to make sense to give the editor credit along with the others.

I think I'd make a customized entry like editor/contributor or author/illustrator.

>10 2wonderY: The problem with making such a customized entry is that the editor is a primary and the contributor a secondary author, and there isn't a way to express that -- a one-and-a-half-erary author?

I can't put my finger on where, but back when this feature was rolled out I thought it was said that such a double role (editor + contributor) shd get two distinct entries. And this makes sense; however I confess I often don't double list the editor when she's also a contributor.

As to entering a story just to fix/complete the series... I suppose strict-constructionwise this is contrary to Tim's express wishes; however, I suspect he said that because he foresaw a tsunami of folks entering stories just for the purpose of, etc. Considering the insane number of unregulated and poorly labelled short stories (and other short works -- poems, anthologized plays, etc) already entered on LT, sometimes for no good reason ("I've got three volumes of this guy's collected works & I'm gonna give every one a separate entry - for reference' sake? to swell my catalogue?") I think the occasional entry of a rogue-Tim story for a defensible reason is, well, defensible. I don't do it very often, but I've done it a few times. And how would it be detectable among all those other stories? who would know? Tim? God?

>11 Crypto-Willobie: I also remember there being no problem with double entries.

>1 lorax: I'm the one who entered the stories in Xanadu as separate entries*. If I skipped one, it was either a mistake or something so short and ephemeral that it didn't seem worth bothering with. I'd be glad to help your OCD and add it if you tell me which one.

*I didn't put them in Contained in: so it wouldn't look like I entered them just to do Contained in, which I didn't, but if I had added them, then in might look like I had -- in other words, I think there is something fundamentally wrong with Tim's thinking here ...

>12 aulsmith: there is the solution... Contributor A adds an item to LA for contributor C to encontain. Does that evade the letter of the other Tim's regulation?

Or just add the short story for the purpose of adding a review ("No" is good) and then it's perfectly ok to add the work-to-work relationship.

*snort*

For all of my anthologies I have listed authors in as many roles as they have appeared. Sometimes it's as editor, introducer, and contributor. For example, I would argue that a George R. R. Martin fan would want to know if any one of his edited anthologies also happened to include a story by him.