Add illustrator to book 📕👩‍🎨🖼

Hi,

(I’m new) I find the app brilliant & quickly added 200 illustrated children’s picture books before I realised the illustrator was not imported. Does anyone know how to do this automatically -I can do it manually but have a lot of books!

Thank you

Sometimes the Illustrator comes through - it depends on the source you use when you pick Add Book. As you have a private account I can't see the source you used.

I don't think you can add the illustrator to all the books you have previously added though as a batch operation. It will have to be editing the books one by one I am afraid. Or you could delete a book and try adding it from a source which does credit the artist/illustrator.

Hi & thank you for your help.

I did switch off amazon search after finding something online. But would love you to take a look (I'll change the privacy settings).

Is there an easy way of manually adding the illustrators, or would it be quicker to delete & add again? I am hoping to add a lot of books & I imagine this will happen again.

Thanks again,

Sasha

>3 SashaKing: The easiest way to manually add other authors (illustrators, cover artists, narrators, etc.) is to click on the pencil on the right side of the book in your catalog, and then scroll down just a little to the "other authors" field.

It's worth noting that while this will set the other authors for the copies in your catalog, it takes a different process to set the other authors for the work as a whole, which is what makes the works show up on the author (or illustrator, etc.) page.

Interestingly some of them just have the illustrator and not the author - for example A Horse in the House and Other Strange but True Animal Stories is by Kathy Osborn in your library and not Gail Ablow (with Kathy Osborn as Other Author).

I also tried adding another book Ada Twist, Scientist from the "British Library" which is the source you used. It added to my library with David Roberts as an Other Author (Artist.) - so I am not sure why it didn't work for you. However I use the main website and the "Add Books" functionality. I have not used the import facility or the phone app to add books.

Thank you for having a look.

I am a dangerously unsystematic person so maybe I scanned Ada before I changed my source (although I don't think so). It is odd that it usually picks the author but sometimes the illustrator, children's books are so varied (Pop-ups also have paper engineers that really affect the book style) I wonder if this is the best cataloguing system for them? I have managed to add illustrators but can not work out how to make them sortable (in the way authors are), maybe this is what you meant by "a different process to set the other authors for the work as a whole" I will investigate.

Thanks again.

Personally, I find that the data from other sources is not always great, so I add all my books manually, adding all the data myself.

Unfortunately, illustrators are currently not sortable or filterable within a catalog. But they are searchable. You could also add illustrators as tags, if you wanted. Tags are sortable (though only by whatever the first tag is) and filterable and searchable.

You can also go to an illustrator's "author" page, such as Lois Lenski, and you will see checkmarks next to all of the books that they have illustrated that you have in your catalog. Making the checkmarks show up is the part that is a different process, but for popular books it's probably already done.

>6 SashaKing:

I meant I used the British Library (the same source as you did) too and got a different result. Although I did search by title and not ISBN (which is what it does if you scan the barcode). Which is a bit weird. Are you using "Add Books" from the website to add titles?

Yes I always add by batch scanning the books on my phone, it is very convenient, but not always successful!

It is very frustrating not being able to sort by illustrator, or any other “author” for me that is pretty important.

Do you know of another library cataloging system that might suit me better? I like to scan by phone & I must admit I miss not being able to scan the cover (for those older books without barcodes)

Thank you for your work-around solution of using the illustrators page 👍😁

>10 SashaKing: There is a re-work of the site coming soon (allegedly?); maybe sorting by other author will be a feature.

>10 SashaKing: You can always add the illustrator as the author for your books where you consider the illustrator to be the primary creator of the book. Doing so will only affect your library so you don't need to worry about messing up anyone else's data.

The update sounds tantaliaing, thank you for the rumour :-)

I don't really want to mess around with the illustrator author settings although I can see this would work in many incidences.

>9 SashaKing:

Right - I think I have worked out some of what is happening.

When I add Ada Twist, Scientist from LibraryThing's 'Add Books' page (using the isbn 9781419721373) on the website it adds to my catalogue with David Roberts as Other Author (Artist.)

When I try to add the same book using the same ISBN (and using the same source) from the phone app it adds without any Other Author.

I consider that to be quite surprising and I would consider it a bug.

Interesting! Maybe the isbn number refers to a particular edition, perhaps one that does not have all the info added?

It still does not solve the problem of not being able to sort by “other author” 🙁 but feels a step closer to finding out what’s going wrong👍

>16 SashaKing:

I think it is a step closer. If you can get the books to add with the illustrator (or other authors) where they do occur at least you have the data on your book, even if it then requires more work to sort by. If you lose the illustrator you have to pick up each individual book and check your record on LT - which is a pain.

BTW - I have logged that bit of the issue on the Bug Collectors group so that LT staff / developers will notice.

Thank you!

I would certainly add the illustrator in other authors (and make sure that it is also set at work level), but you could also enter it in another field.

For example, the other call number, as you don't seem to be using that. (Some fields affect others, so don't use reviews, Dewey, LoC classification) Comment and Private comment are other possibilities, but they are useful for a multitude of things. Summary would be another possibility if you don't mind having to put in a space to keep it empty if you don't have an illustrator.