Help talk:How to merge authors

Suppose you enter the following two publications:

Test Title 1, by Test Author1 Test Title 2, by Test Author2

This creates two pubs, two titles, and two authors, and two records in pub_authors and two in canonical_author (which is the title_author cross reference).

There are now three possible merges: "All records", "Only title records", and "Only publication records". For these examples, the "target" of the merge is "Test Author1; the "source" (i.e the author which is surplus to requirements) in Test Author2.

1. If you select only publication records, the pub_authors record is updated so that the publication Test Title 2 now shows the author as Test Author1. However, the title record is not touched, so there is now a publication for Test Title 2, credited to Test Author 1 (in pub_auths). There is a link to the titles via pub_content, but this is pointing to a title record that is linked to Test Author1. This leads to some odd results. For example, there will still be a Test Author2 record, and a title record for Test Title 2 under that author, but there will be no publications for that title that point to that author. The result is that if you display Test Author2, you'll still see Test Title 2, and clicking on it will list a publication for it, presumably because the page displays pubs found under that title_id in the pub_content table. Then clicking on the publication shows the author, from pub_authors, i.e. Test Author1.
2. If you select only title records,
3. If you select all records,