How do we report the alphabetizing problem to BL? As a bug? Or a Feature Request?

Reply to post #31 (show post):
I'm guessing it's her middle name. That's how I would treat it anyway.

Reply to post #33 (show post):
I'd say report it as a bug. Might get looked at faster.

Reply to post #34 (show post):
It's currently set up to be her middle name - I can change it so her surname reads "carson black" and then the listing should sort her into the Cs under Carson. Would that be easier or would that just drive you crazy because you'd be looking for her under "Black"?

I'd be looking for her under Black.

I'm already crazy.

Edited to add -- She's alphabetized on Amazon under Black; that's where her titles show up on my Kindle when listed by author.

I also suspect that the backend stuff chokes on any initials in names overall. For example, imports keep sticking J.R. Rowling's books under J.R.R. Tolkien. So the J in J. Carson is probably confusing the sort function. :-|

Reply to post #37 (show post):
Ok, then I'll leave her alone. I don't want to make her sort correctly only to be difficult to find.

Reply to post #38 (show post):
Yeah, well, it's J. ***K.*** Rowling, so the "backend stuff" needs to get its shit together. ;-)

And if it can handle J.R.R. Tolkien, it should be able to handle J.K. Rowling and/or J. K. Rowling and/or J. Carson Black. (I'm being snotty, not angry.)

Reply to post #40 (show post):
Well, it really can't handle J.R.R Tolkien either; it often sticks his books in other author records that don't have initials. It's getting better - at the beginning it wouldn't even create author records with initials - it just stuck them all in the closest matching record with a full name. You still see it sometimes - if a book has the completely wrong author attached, most times it's because the books author uses initials instead of a first name.

Better, but not fixed completely. :P

Reply to post #38 (show post):
I know nothing about the coding end of this stuff, but it seems to me going just on basic logic and common sense (which as we all know is not common at all) that there would be a system/protocol for this. And that said system/protocol would be available to anyone who is entering and/or editing records.

So --- for all names with initials, said initials will be identified by standing separated from all other names and/or initials a space but no periods. Last word will be considered last name.

J Carson Black
J R R Tolkien
Eric R Eddison
J K Rowling
L Frank Baum

Two word last names MUST be hyphenated and will be sorted by first of two names.

L A Wheeler-Hilton

Or whatever system TPTB decide upon.

I have my personal spreadsheet inventory set up with separate columns for last name and first name/middle name/initials. That way when I do a sort, everything all comes out together. But I'm weird that way. ;-)

There is a protocol in place for librarians - initials *must* have periods and no spaces in between, and double last names don't need to be hyphenated, but they do have to be together in the surname field (which is why I asked about J. Carson Black). Middle names are put in the Name field.

But - and I have NO way of knowing this, I'm just guessing based on what I see in my shelf list when I'm trying to sort it, that someone didn't string the sort logic out far enough. Usually the logic works something like this:
Primary sort - last name, then;
secondary sort - first letter of first name, then;
tertiary sort - first name + first letter second first/middle name

But my guess is they didn't string the logic out beyond a Primary sort - which is why the shelves don't sort properly. And the Initials... not sure what's going on there. It's like the initials just find the first name that comes closest to matching the initials string and sticks it in there. Or something. That one defies any logic I can invent. :)

ETC an alarming number of grammatical errors.

Just now ran into the perfect example of this. Doing a quick clean up of a mystery author named

Carol J. Perry

and found a book she didn't write in her list and the correct author's name is

C.J. Perry

So, it seems it finds the first closest match to C*** J. Perry and sticks it there, instead of acknowledging the author's name is actually C.J. Perry.

Reply to post #44 (show post):
Wow. What do they do with all the additional letters in all the various alphabets? Anything? Or just ignore them?

Reply to post #29 (show post):
Sorry, Linda! I had just taken a quick look at my shelf page and I didn't notice an issue with the first few authors on my page, so I didn't realize there was an issue.

Reply to post #45 (show post):
Most foreign language alphabets translate over fine - the search, for example, will find inflected letters without needing the inflection an vice versa. A few letters don't - ø, for example, is not interchangeable with o. But BL polices those and bows to (unfortunately, imo) the english equivalent. So Jo Nesbø, for example, is in the database as Jo Nesbo. So far though, that's the only exception I've run into - most automatically interchange with the English language alphabet.

(Of course this doesn't cover Greek, or Russian or any of the Asiatic languages - those are input in their own characters and if you search with those characters and in that language, they appear.)