CK: The more you know....

What do you wish other folks knew about stuff that goes in CK?

Me? Even a dead author can have an Agent. (How else does stuff get reprinted?)

Anything else?

'Agents' is a CK field on author pages. People who are interested can do the research and fill it in.

As I read it, >1 karenb: knows the Agent field is there and wishes that more users had populated it. It’s much less time consuming to read CK than to do the research ;-)

I’m pleased we have the ‘cause of death’ field now - there is a lot of catching up to do with that.

I'm not going to populate those fields, because I don't really care, at least not enough to do the research. People who care can do it. I suspect that filling in agents is going to be very slow indeed. It already gets frustrating looking for the things I do fill in. Even gender is not always easy to determine. Birthdate (even year) is usually available for living German authors, but not so with English language ones.

I don't particular care who someone's agent is; it's not information for which I have a use.

I do wish people would fill in the "other names" field when they are combining a page with pseudonyms, so I'd know right away that it's not an error. On the other hand, a transliterated name is not an "other name".

Cause of death, to me, is only interesting if it's something like a surfeit of eels.

If the place where I found the other information was an obituary (He is survived...) and the cause of death was listed, I would probably enter it, but I wouldn't specifically look for it.

I wish I knew more about how the date of publication field works. Does entering an exact date make finding books by first publication year more difficult? Does anyone need more than the year? Some people might want to know the month, too, for a book's first awards seasons, but the day of month? I feel as if the day is more of an interference than a help, but I'm not sure.

>1 karenb: I'm now also curious about best practices for entering agents. Is anyone listing an author's agent history, or is only the most recent agent(s) listed. When applicable, how are the different agents (YA fiction, adult fiction, non-fiction) for the same author noted?

Other things I wish people would know:
There is a gray help text on how the field is supposed to be entered, when you click the edit pencil. It appears just below the edit field, but above the Add More button.

>6 MarthaJeanne:

Same here.

I frequently add obituaries to the links, and will use them to add lots of CK. They're a great source of info, at least the press obits.

I wish people understood that "short biography" does not mean "list everything you know about this author, and don't forget to include what's already in the CK fields above, a psychological analysis, and links to where you can buy my books".

I also wish that it were made clearer that "relationships" is for relationships with people who also have an Author page on LT.

I wish people easily understood (and I include myself) which way round relationships worked in the Relationships field. Not a new wish, as there is at least one RSI thread on the subject (https://www.librarything.com/topic/133325). The English language version of the grey help text currently says:

"Huxley, Julian (brother), Orwell, George (student), Huxley, Leonard (father)" - which you would have to be an English literature graduate to find helpful.

Have any of the other language versions of LT taken the opportunity of translating to give better local examples?

>11 Cynfelyn: And I prefer to use gender neutral relationship terms: sibling, spouse, parent.

>11 Cynfelyn: I know I complained about that years ago. And therefore don't enter relationships. No idea how they are supposed to be entered.

Ah, I was OP in that topic.

>11 Cynfelyn: I agree that I have to stop and think before I add a relationship but it's not all that difficult. You add the related persons name with the relationship that person has with the author whose CK you are editing. Simples!

I do so agree with >10 lilithcat: about adding relations who do not have an LT author page of their own. I very, very rarely delete things that others have entered but I confess to erasing such entries when I come across them. Sadly it still leaves the untidy orphan page in the system but the ability to delete those would be a nuclear option that none of us could be trusted with.

>7 aspirit: I need month as well as year for stories that are part of a series to establish publication order, as in the series Tombstone & Speedy, when the stories appeared in more than one issue in a given year. As some magazines were (are) published weekly or biweekly, I could see having a need for the day of publication as well for stories first published therein, too.

(Note: For convenience, and because it is readily available, I use the cover date, rather than whatever date the issue actually went on sale.)

>16 harrygbutler: I feel that those are special use cases, and while the day might be important for such series, it doesn't say anything about how useful or otherwise the specific day might be in other cases.

The year of first publication is usually right there on the copyright page of a book. Anything else will usually have to be specially researched, and may not be readily available. Therefore, at the very least, publication year is an acceptable entry.

>17 MarthaJeanne: I made no claims for the need for days for other cases. I was simply answering the question asked in >7 aspirit:: "Does anyone need more than the year?" In short, I do some of the time.

>7 aspirit: For dates, the exact date of publication can make a difference in copyright status, particularly in the US (works published in the US pre-1989 within 30 days of first publication have to follow the (sometimes more stringent) US rules to have copyright).

re: agents -- I only add the info when I find it. The info can be useful, for people wanting to reprint stuff, and for other/new authors looking for agents.

re: relationships
Yeah, which direction to use could be clearer. I usually assume it's from the point of view of the author whose page I'm on?

Also, searching to see if someone is already on LT usually leads to . . more author page edits. Endless rabbit holes to fall into, there.

>12 2wonderY: Yes, gender neutral is the way for me too. What do you use for kid-in-law?

re: dates
>19 prosfilaes: oooh, good point.

>2 MarthaJeanne:
Yes, >3 abbottthomas: got it: I have entered agent info for living and dead authors, because often their works remain under copyright. Unfortunately, at least one other user has deleted the agent info from the CK for dead authors.

(Sorry, I was too brief in my original post. Thanks for pointing that out.)

Even if the author is dead, the agent information is still the same. Whether or not the agent is currently active for them.

I just entered a book with publication date in the book and data source 4/2018

The ended up in LT as 4201
Data source was Südwestdeutschen Bibliotheksverbund