Frustrating authors

I have to vent. I just received a bunch of obnoxious emails and messages on behalf of an author who accused me of "violating the privacy" of an author because LibraryThing lists their birth year and date.

This although:

1. I didn't list anything. A LT member did.
2. The same information is found on their Library of Congress Authority Record--and is necessary to disambiguate them!
3. Various published sources, available online, also list the birth year.

Of course, as usually happens in these cases, the person refused to even pretend to understand my explanations, and just repeated the request. So I removed the data and left a note about how, if disambiguation were needed, consult the public data at the LC.

Argh.

> "on behalf of an author"

what, the author had someone else do their dirtywork?

ETA: "chicken!!"

It is just silly to complain about the dissemination of data that has already escaped into the public domain. I do, however, have some sympathy with those who worry about how much personal information is available via search engines. We knew the data was out there but also - pre-Internet - could be reasonably sure that it was too much trouble for the merely curious to find.

I used to use a very old phone number as a PIN but stopped when I found the digitised directory on-line (I have an uncommon surname). Paranoid or what?!

I've found the author you're referring to, Tim, and I can clearly see a birth date. Of course, if this name refers to two different people, which would explain the LoC using the birthdate for disambiguation, I may be seeing the "other" person's birthdate. But in that case, we should be splitting the author, or providing a disambiguation notice to indicate it's two people.

Putting the name into Google gets the birth year on the 5th hit (of 69000). Adding the birth year to the search term produces 5460 hits (some of which may contain that figure coincidentally).

I'm for putting the date back in, I'm afraid. And, if necessary put the google search into the links, so she can search it herself, and realise how hopeless it is trying to re-stuff the genie. (But then, I've got no legal responsibility for LT, so I can understand how your position is different.)

Disambiguate the author with a $q. I recommend $q (The Cranky One) .

I took the precaution of asking an author whom I know for her permission before adding to her CK. But then, that's only because I'm friends with her.

There's certainly no legal responsibility. Facts are facts. We aren't even required to get facts right, as long as we aren't intentionally trying to libel them.

I think we should tell people that if we remove the date, we're going to have to disambiguate by weight, credit card number or location of their house's "hidden" key.

They were more concerned about public knowledge of their age, than that their works had been co-mingled with another author?

Weird (well ok unexpected to me, I guess they aren't weird to the person concerned) priorities some people have.

Privacy sure, I'd be worried if an address (or phone no) were public, but age is a matter of public record, and difficult to hide. Were thye concerned their fans would think them too old? to too young?

> 7

Or that embarrassing nickname left over from 6th grade ...

> 9

We have a field for that ...

Their age. They said it was an identity-theft risk. Whatever...

I have to say, authors are definitely the hardest group to like, from the perspective of LT email. I get so many emails from authors that fundamentally misunderstand what LT is, but expect the world to hop to their tune. WHY ISN'T MY BOOK LISTED ON LIBRARYTHING!? (Answer: Because your self-published work is not owned by any of LibraryThing's 600,000 members.) WHY IS MY BOOK INFORMATION WRONG! (Because it's wrong on Amazon. Tell them.) WHY DID LIBRARYTHING STOP ALLOWING COMMENTS? (Because you spammed 70 people in the space of an hour?) Etc.

(end of griping)

I would think the birth year should be enough to disambiguate authors with the same name. You only need more detail when they share the same birth year.

In this world of google if someone wants to find out how old you are and you have any sort of publicity machine, they will find out.

Is the author in question (Eleanora Tate) going to have all the copies of The Continuum Encyclopedia of Children's Literature recalled and burned, so people can't get her DOB out of it?

Ha. Nosy me had to go look, noticed there was a suggestion to combine with Eleanora E. Tate, did so, and, lo and behold! there was her birthdate again.

So I deleted it again.

Honestly, some people.

Their age. They said it was an identity-theft risk. Whatever...

Hah! If only it were that easy! Not that I'm inclined to do such things - I just see the aftermath and it takes a bit more than a name, vague location and birthdate. Even knowing someone's name, full address and birthdate isn't going to get you too far - and if she's such a high-risk identity theft person, there are bigger steps to take that don't involve bullying people over publically available information.

Meh, I got a similar smackdown a few months ago from the representative of an author out of England. Not only was it identity theft, but we were encouraging stalkers. Of course, he thought we were encouraging folks to share phone numbers and the like...I didn't get the photo permission I was seeking.

I did write back assuring him that no one was sharing deeply personal information and that we were merely looking to see things like, "how many authors were once plumbers?" I also stressed that we were using information already available on Wikipedia, Book Dust Jackets and official web sites. He didn't write back.

I really wanted to write back, "how egotistical of the both of you - do you really think of all the authors in the world to stalk and/or steal an identity from that you're really in my top 1000?"

To add a different point of view to some of the comments here.

Note I'm not suggesting changing CK set up or practices.

However, IF I'd written a couple of books, say a few years back and they weren't world-shaking enough that I felt on public display or a 'celebrity'.... I would feel taken aback to realise that suddenly my date of birth and personal information was worthy of being served up to web viewers in an easy to find way. Via a worldwide books & authors website that wasn't around 5 years ago.

Look, I get that the information was publically available before in different sources. Obviously the date of birth (or year?) was in LoC records.
But it feels different to know that it was out there if anyone really tried to look it up vs. seeing it served up nice and tidily in a centralised format.

Obviously this author didn't handle their surprise very well, or communicate very effectively to LibraryThing about it.

We could say that they shouldn't have written a book if they didn't expect to get that kind of attention. Or be grateful that they are getting any attention from potential readers. And that they should realise that the modern world now serves that info up about anyone who's ever published, and they need to deal with it.
That appears to be the tone of some of the posts in this thread.

Why am I posting?

I think the CK is great for me as an LT member and I've used it to learn more about authors or books that I'm interested in. It's been a great feature of LibraryThing and the user-generated content will only become more useful to LT in the future.

However can we as members sometimes take a moment before writing a mocking post that not everyone who's written or contributed to a book is on the same LT 'journey' as us?
And that the motivations of anyone who's written a book is not automatically the same as the spammers who go 'me me me'?

Tim - I appreciate it IS different for you. As members we see the occassional driveby complaint whereas you're directly recieving and seeing a much higher volume.

/rant over

>15 stephmo: HeHe, so stephmo, who is in your Top 1000 to stalk? Maybe we should have a poll? Make it a yearly thing maybe? ;)

Is LT really more prominent or accessible than the LOC or Wikipedia?

LT is less accessible than Wikipedia, but way more accessible that LoC, going by the standard test for accessibility: Google pagerank. LoC data does not appear in google at all, so you have to know where to go and how to search.

And, of course, not all authors dates of birth are in the LC records, but they are in Wikipedia.

The published biographical indices of authors that have date-of-birth information didn't hire a private detective to dig it up. That information gets into the public realm because the author and/or publisher release that information in press releases and/or actively cooperated in the writing of their entries in these indices. The "African-American Biographies" entry on Ms. Tate, for example, certainly gives the impression that she cooperated in its construction. Ms. Tate's own publisher, Random House, lists her birthday on its Canadian website along with such obviously personally-provided tidbits as "hobbies: I love to shuck and jive, but when I'm not doing that, I love to saltwater fish and grow vegetables." Which saying is most apropos: the one on about having one's cake and eating it, too, or the one about putting the genie back in the bottle?

>19 djfiander:

Well, yes and no. Most libraries get their records from the LC. So, many will have pages with copies of that data. These pages are also on the "deep web," but there's a lot of them.

> 19

And, of course, not all authors dates of birth are in the LC records, but they are in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia doesn't have birthdates for every author listed. And I've found a lot of birthdates at LOC for authors who aren't in Wikipedia at all.

16

Yep, I would say that. If you don't want anybody to know anything about you, then don't inflict yourself upon the public in such a manner. I would also be inclined to add 'you idiot', but I am sure Tim is more polite than that.

I'd also be more inclined towards publishing abusive correspondence. Maybe on the author page. :)

"I'd also be more inclined towards publishing abusive correspondence. Maybe on the author page. :)
"

be fair. I'd publish it, AND the glowing responses that I'm sure Tim occasionally gets too.

>17 bernsad: the first rule of stalking is to never make your lists public. It makes the trials much more difficult if you don't write things down. :)

But, really, if someone wants to find someone it's not going to be via Google or LT. Perhaps this author is unaware as to what their tax assessor publishes about them online? I can get floorplans of houses in my county!

As to identity theft, one is far more likely to be a victim by going to any number of brick and mortar locations then doing anything on a computer - but we tend to see the "computer hacker" scenario pushed more than anything. So I hope that this author realizes that they should avoid shopping at the grocery, going to the bank and anything else where giving up any personal information is involved.

Even if someone was an interent scammer, fishing around various sites for enough personal information to get enough of someone's identity is about the least efficient and effective use of your time possible. There's a reason they do the phishing scams that have victims come to them rather than seeking out the information for themselves.

It is a tiny bit different for people in the public eye, where the issue is not so much internet scammers but individuals. For example, the first time a friend of mine was a guest at a comic book convention, he was advised by industry veterans to use a different signature when he was signing autographs. That way, no one could use his autograph as a template for forgery. Sometimes "fans" are creepy.

That said, genies are reluctant to return to bottles. I've got all kinds of personal info on the 'net, as does my husband, who has been in the public (subculture) eye for near forty years. At this point, we just want it to be accurate, dammit!

remind me to publish under a pseudonym & a limited liability corporation, not anything close to my 'real life'!!! actually a 'not-for-profit' corporation would be a more likely possibility... AS IF I would make a profit!! ha ha ha!!

What I don't get is, why email and rant at Tim, when she could have just changed it herself? Don't want the exact date? Fine, remove and leave the year. Don't want your age public? Fine, do a "circa" date and subtract a few years. Of course, it might get re-added, but then we're back into "put the genie back" territory.