Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hello

I was just looking at the works by Elizabeth Tunstall (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...) and noticed that the page has combined books by two different Elizabeth Tunstalls. I can say this with certainty as I am one of them but have not got an author's page as of yet :)

Essentially, The Succession Debate and Contested Authority in Elizabethan England, 1558-1603 was written by me, while the other two works are written by Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall.

Any help on fixing this up to avoid confusion would be wonderful.

Thanks!

Can anyone help with this issue?

Elizabeth wrote: "Hello

I was just looking at the works by Elizabeth Tunstall (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...) and noticed that the page has combined books by two different Elizab..."

Done. You can claim this profile if you wish: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Susanne wrote: "Same problem with Robert Forster. The musician by the name (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...) is out with a new book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2......"

I’ve moved Songwriters on the Run to the correct profile. Could you please provide direct links to the books that need moving for Robert Forster so this can be reviewed? Also, for future requests, please create a new post rather than commenting under another author’s request.

Tami wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "Hello

I was just looking at the works by Elizabeth Tunstall (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...) and noticed that the page has combined books by tw..."

Thank you so much!

Done.

Susanne wrote: "Sorry for being annoying, but I think these two books does not belong in the profile https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...-..."

Yes, you're right, in fact, I've moved them.

hello! I am Kalika, I have written Eidolon and I got a separate author profile which is blank, can someone please merge this profile with that new one?

ISBN : 979-8902698180

Amazon link : https://www.amazon.in/eidolon-Kalika/...

Thank you for your help!

Done.

Stefano wrote: "Done."

Hello, I was going to handle this earlier but saw you had already worked on it. I’ve now gone through everything and made some corrections. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ll explain what I changed and why, because disambiguation can get messy very quickly and the manual doesn’t really cover all of this. And sorry, it's going to be long, but I wanted to explain everything well so as to avoid any misunderstandings.

The main issue was changing the musician’s profile and moving only the default works. That profile already had followers, and when doing disambiguation we really have to think about the readers. These people followed the musician, and suddenly they would be following a completely different author (the Facebook guide author). People do go back and check authors they follow for updates, so this kind of change can be confusing. A single book can have many editions, and they do not move automatically. So if you move the default one, the rest stay behind. That’s how you end up with one edition under one Robert Forster and the others under another Robert Forster, which happened here.

Also, if the real author later claims his books, they lose those followers or end up with things split across profiles, which just creates more problems long term.

There is also the problem with links. When a profile is changed or merged, links do not redirect. So anything already linked (on Goodreads or outside) will now point to a different person. For example, earlier links to the Australian musician ended (for example, Susanne's links in message 7 and 10) up pointing to a completely different author after the change. This is why I reverted that. This profile has existed for many years (around 8 years), so there are likely many links already out there.

About the default profile: it had been associated with the actor for many years (since around 2012), so there are followers tied to that, and likely a lot of existing links. Reassigning it to the historian after 14 years is less than ideal. Also, the audiobooks narrated by the actor were then credited to the historian, which is not correct. Because of this, I restored the actor and kept the default profile as a catch-all instead, which is usually safer when there are many authors with the same name.

There was also some confusion with the music books. There are two different authors here. One is the Australian musician, and another is a German author who wrote a dissertation on Mozart and Beethoven and edited piano books. One of the piano books was assigned to the Australian musician, but it belongs to the other author. This is why asking for exact book links is important, otherwise it can get confusing quickly if requests are vague and group things by "all music books".

Here is what I ended up with after fixing everything:

1. Default / catch-all: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

2. Actor (audiobook narrator): https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

3. Australian musician (I preserved the bio you had written, but I didn't put the photo back, I had to merge to preserve Susanne as follower as she had started to follow the new profile, so followers for the australian musician were split. You can add the pic back, those are always lost in merges. I don't feel comfortable adding pics on author pages and have never done so, sorry): https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Also per his website he has an essay in this cricket book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
"Robert Forster has essay on the Australian cricketer of the 1960s and 1970s Doug Walters included in a new book Australia: Story Of A Cricket Country, published by Hardie Grant in November 2011." - https://www.robertforster.net/rfolder...

4. Historian (I kept your bio here as well): https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

5. Journalist (this includes the Papua New Guinea book, which was previously incorrectly under the historian): https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

6. Facebook author: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

7. Physical therapist: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

8. German music author (Mozart/Beethoven dissertation and piano editions): https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

When doing disambiguation, it helps to:

● Check followers before changing a profile
● Move all editions, not just the default one
● Be careful with links, since they do not redirect
● Check older history/logs when unsure
● Often keep the default profile as a catch-all
● Check quotes and topics about the author, in this case there were none but it might apply in other cases

I hope this helps, and I don’t mean this in a bad way at all. Disambiguation can be tricky.

Kalika wrote: "hello! I am Kalika, I have written Eidolon and I got a separate author profile which is blank, can someone please merge this profile with that new one?

ISBN : 979-8902698180

Amazon link : https:..."

Stefano wrote: "Done."

Stefano, by removing the period, the book was instead added to this profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Per the manual: "When separating single name authors, an alternative is to separate the author's books from the default profile by adding a space followed by a period to the author name.

Example:

Catherine^.

Catherine^^.

NOTE: The ^ = 1 space and is just used to demonstrate the number of spaces.

Also please note that any new books by the authors of that name will be entered into the main profile by default. They will have to be edited once they are added to Goodreads to shift them to the right profile." https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

I've gone ahead and fixed the author name per the librarian manual.

Kalika, you can go ahead and claim this profile. On desktop, click the link that says "Is this you? Let us know." and fill out the application form:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Hi Tami, thanks for the explanation, I've read one time but i think I'll re-read at least another time cause I haven't get all the points.

In any case, thanks for the clarification.

About the second point all clear.

Stefano wrote: "Hi Tami, thanks for the explanation, I've read one time but i think I'll re-read at least another time cause I haven't get all the points.

In any case, thanks for the clarification.

About the sec..."

No worries at all 🙂 If anything is unclear later, feel free to ask.

Tami wrote: "Stefano wrote: "Done."

Hello, I was going to handle this earlier but saw you had already worked on it. I’ve now gone through everything and made some corrections. I hope you don’t take this the wr..."

About the followers and the links, if now I've understand correctly, moving every edition willi also move correctli all links and followers, right?

Is it correct to ask people who wants books removed from their profile to ask support to be moved out from the default profile they are using (one space) ?

If you edit the author profile name, followers will be carried with it.

If you edit the name from the book pages, they will not.

If the action requires moving a large number of books I direct them to support.

Scott wrote: "If you edit the author profile name, followers will be carried with it.

If you edit the name from the book pages, they will not.

If the action requires moving a large number of books I direct the..."

Thanks