Difference between revisions of "Help:How to separate two authors with the same name"
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Occasionally an author's name is identical to the name of another, different author. Although this is rare, it causes problems for the ISFDB if care is not taken to distinguish the authors. | Occasionally an author's name is identical to the name of another, different author. Although this is rare, it causes problems for the ISFDB if care is not taken to distinguish the authors. | ||
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To make this change, you must go to each publication record for each title, and change the data to reflect the modified author name. As you do this, the ISFDB will automatically move the title data over to the new author. | To make this change, you must go to each publication record for each title, and change the data to reflect the modified author name. As you do this, the ISFDB will automatically move the title data over to the new author. | ||
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Revision as of 17:27, 3 September 2008
| This page is a help or manual page for the ISFDB database. It describes standards or methods for entering or maintaining data in the ISFDB database, or otherwise working with the database. Other help pages may be found via the category below. To discuss what should go on this page, use the talk page.
If, after exploring the Help system, you still have a question, please visit the Help desk and let us know. We probably know the answer, but we need your help to know what we left out of the help pages. If you are new to editing the ISFDB, please see Help:Getting Started. For more on this and other header templates, see Header templates. |
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Occasionally an author's name is identical to the name of another, different author. Although this is rare, it causes problems for the ISFDB if care is not taken to distinguish the authors.
For any data entered where the "author" field exactly matches an existing author, the ISFDB assumes that the newly entered author is the same as the existing author. The data is connected to that author, behind the scenes, without any intervention on the part of the editor.
In almost every case this is what is needed. However, there are some authors, such as Robert Frazier, for whom it is not correct. There are (at least) two different Robert Fraziers who have written works that appear in the ISFDB. One is a poet, born in 1951. The other wrote book reviews for Fantastic Universe in the mid-1950s. These are clearly two different people.
To distinguish them, unfortunately, the only option is to enter their names differently. The recommended approach is to append the birth and death dates to the name of each of the authors, where known. In this case, that leads to "Robert Frazier (1951-)" and Robert Frazier (?-)". A more elegant solution may be implemented in the future, but for now this is the best option.
To make this change, you must go to each publication record for each title, and change the data to reflect the modified author name. As you do this, the ISFDB will automatically move the title data over to the new author.