Other Authors and anthologies.

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Other Authors and anthologies.

1andyl
marraskuu 29, 2020, 6:31 am

I have recently seen what I think is a creative misuse of Other Author on the work Doctor Who: Short Trips and Side Steps and a few more in that series.

Basically instead of Contributor the role is 'Author "short story title"' or even 'Co-Author "short story title"'. Now someone has gone to a lot of trouble as I know these were all set to Contributor originally. But it isn't consistent with our story authors in anthologies are handled elsewhere in the system.

I don't like just zapping people's work in that way. I guess as the individual short stories have not been entered into the system the person who did this used it as a way of contents cataloguing rather than just either adding the individual short stories or using notes to not the content.

2MarthaJeanne
marraskuu 29, 2020, 7:06 am

That's a mess! I won't bother with that one, but if I saw it on a book that I own, I would certainly change it back.

3gilroy
marraskuu 29, 2020, 7:29 am

Guess they didn't like the short story titles listed in the disambiguation notice...

4Stevil2001
marraskuu 29, 2020, 8:27 am

Yeah, I don't like this. But yeah, I also would be loathe to delete all this.

Is there a history for Other authors? There are some Doctor Who audio dramas with very detailed other authors data of late (though not to this extent), and I wonder if it's the same person.

5aspirit
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 29, 2020, 2:53 pm

I know that's not a community-agreed use of the section, but I liked it at first glance. (Note: This was my first time seeing it.)

Experimenting just now (which can be undone if needed), I learned these entries are helpful in adding work relationships. The stories and their authors can be read behind the popup. In disambiguation notices, authors are usually left off, and the story titles run together. This way, seeing which stories have work relationships entered is also easier with a little scrolling or dual screens.

When stories can't be found within LT for the work relationships*, the story title still shows up on the author page with the anthology work entry, which helps someone interested in the story find where it has appeared.

At the moment, I'm not seeing that adding the story titles in the Other Author section harms anything.* Is it really a misuse of the section?*

* See below.

6lilithcat
marraskuu 29, 2020, 2:34 pm

I don't like it, I think it's clutter-y (is that a word?). And I do think it's a misuse. I don't like the fact that it creates a work page for a short story that has not been separately published.

7aspirit
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 29, 2020, 2:55 pm

>6 lilithcat: it creates a work page for a short story that has not been separately published

Does it? I don't understand how.

ETA: nevermind.

Thinking more on how pages are generated on this site, I can guess how that's happening in the system.

And, unfortunately, adding the stories like that goes against Tim's rule against adding short stories only to create the work-to-work relationship.

8aspirit
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 29, 2020, 3:07 pm

On further thought, I don't like this, and I agree it is a misuse of features (possibly unintentional, as this doesn't seem widespread).

For consequences: Zero-copy works without authors are annoying in searches and are even more confusing when not linked to their anthologies or collections.

The accepted methods of adding works and their relationships tend to make more meaningful pages, and I doubt that way takes much more time than editing Other Authors to add titles did.

9gilroy
marraskuu 29, 2020, 3:10 pm

>5 aspirit: If you're having trouble with running the anthology titles together, you need to add proper coding so they go line to line. It takes a {br} (only with greater than and less than symbols instead of brackets) after each story title. Example

Anthology Contains:{br}{br} story 1 (by author){br}story 2 (by author){br} story 3 (by author){br}

creates:
Anthology Contains:

story 1 (by author)
story 2 (by author)
story 3 (by author)


Honestly, if it's the same author for the entire anthology, I don't see the reason to include the author in the disambiguation notice for each story. Now if it's a different author for each, then I do. But then I've been told I do some things wrong.

10aspirit
marraskuu 29, 2020, 5:05 pm

>9 gilroy: If it's the same author for a collection, then no, there's no need for the author's names in the disambiguation notice.

My point was that discerning which story in a work-to-work search belongs to an anthology is a challenge without the author's name beside the story title. Yours is a good example of how to the contents understandable in the field.

For breaks, I appreciate the reminder that HTML tags are accepted in the disambiguation notice. I frequently forget which fields do. If we can only let more people know where, how, and why (or not) to use the tags, maybe we'll see more use of them.

11SandraArdnas
marraskuu 29, 2020, 5:13 pm

>10 aspirit: Even without manually inserting the html tag for break, if you copy/paste from text editor (where you wrote with breaks when needed), the system will insert the html tag

12Opteryx
marraskuu 29, 2020, 9:28 pm

Yes, any text in the description box or disambiguation box gets line breaks automatically turned into BR codes. It looks like it's all run together when you first save it, but if you reload the webpage after that, the automatic BRs should take effect.

13wolfepack
joulukuu 14, 2020, 2:44 pm

I was searching in this Talk about Common Knowledge to see if there was a standard way to identify the separate novels that are contained within a work published with multiple novels, common for mysteries and science fiction. The mention that short stories in an anthology can be listed in the disambiguation notice presents an obvious solution to the problem. Is there any other way that you know of?

14AnnieMod
joulukuu 14, 2020, 3:03 pm

>13 wolfepack:

Use works relationships -- these work for novels because there are records for the novels. See https://www.librarything.com/work/118230/ for an example (this one is both inside of a larger set AND contains multiple novels so there are relationships in both directions.

You can always add a disambig note as well of course.

15andyl
joulukuu 14, 2020, 3:11 pm

>13 wolfepack:

I always list contents and authors in my Comments like below for "John Creasey Box Set 1"

"Contents: First Came a Murder -- Death Round the Corner -- The Mark of the Crescent"

But of course that is just for myself. I always try and fill out as much of the Work Relationships. If the individual works have more than one author I will fill out the Other Authors.

If it is a short story anthology you can do the same - however not all of the constituent stories are always catalogued - which is why people go the route of adding them to the disambiguation notice. With an omnibus or multiple novels then the constituent novels are usually already catalogued and the Work Relationship is easy to set up.

Although one big advantage that Disambiguation gives you is that it is printed when you try and combine works.