Help:How to record a pseudonym

 CURRENT HELP PAGE (Beta replacement below) 

Recording a New Pseudonym Relation
There are a few different situations in which you might want to connect two independent author records.


 * 1) Scenario #1: Suppose there are two or more different Author records in the database, but in reality there is only one person behind them who is using different names. In that case you will first want to determine the "canonical name" of the author, which should typically be the most commonly used name. Sometimes it may not be the same as the author's real name, e.g. "Murray Leinster" was a pseudonym that Will Jenkins used for almost all of his science fiction output, so that's what we use as his canonical name. Note that the ISFDB doesn't support joint names like "Jonathan Wylie" as canonical names. Once you have selected the canonical name, then you will need to display the Summary Bibliography page for each identified pseudonym. When the page is displayed, select the "Make This Author a Pseudonym" choice in the navigation bar on the left. You will then be able to enter the "Parent Name" (i.e. the canonical name identified above) in the provided field and submit it for approval. Finally, once the pseudonym relationship has been set up, you will need to mark each pseudonymously published Title as such -- see below for details. This is necessary because of ghost writing, uncredited collaborations and other situations when authors publish stories as by other authors.
 * 2) Scenario #2: Suppose you see a title record for a story by Edward P. Bradbury, and you happen to know that this is one of Michael Moorcock's pseudonyms. If the ISFDB does not show "Edward P. Bradbury" as being a pseudonym of Michael Moorcock, you should enter this information.  This page tells you how to do this.
 * 3) Scenario #3: Suppose an author has some records entered incorrectly in the database: for example, some records for "S. P. Somtow" might be entered as "S. Somtow", but the latter is incorrect as the publications in question in fact listed the author as "S. P. Somtow". In this case, you could change each publication record, one by one, but it would be more convenient to simply tell the ISFDB to merge all these records under "S. P. Somtow".  To do this, see the merge author help page.

Here is how to mark individual titles as pseudonymously published:


 * 1) First be sure that the title you are looking at really was a pseudonym.  You need to have a reliable source for this.  The best source is a statement by the author somewhere that "Joe Author" is their pseudonym.  You can also use sf encyclopaedias and other reference works.
 * 2) Once you're confident that a title was written pseudonymously, take a look in the ISFDB to see how it is currently recorded.  For example, you can look up Heinlein's "We Also Walk Dogs", which was originally published under the pseudonym "Anson MacDonald", in Astounding.  A title search will return two records; one by Anson MacDonald, the other by Heinlein.  If you click on Anson MacDonald's name, and then on "Short works" you'll see the story listed there.  Clicking on the stories, instead, gives you slightly different results depending on which version you click on.  If you click on the Heinlein version, you'll see a display of that title, with a note saying that the story has a variant title, and showing that it was published in 1941 as by "Anson MacDonald".  If you click on the Heinlein version, the same list of publications is displayed, but the page says that this is a variant title, and provides a link to the Heinlein version.  So in this case, the link to the pseudonym is made, and you don't need to do anything -- the ISFDB understands that the Anson MacDonald version is a variant of the Heinlein version, and hence understands that "Anson MacDonald" is a pseudonym for Heinlein.
 * 3) If you find that the ISFDB does not know about the pseudonym you are considering, then you can go ahead and enter it.  To do this, you simply make the pseudonymous version of the title a variant of the canonical, or standard, version.  See How to record a variant title for a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

  BETA VERSION, SUGGESTED HELP PAGE REPLACEMENT 

Recording a New Pseudonym Relation
For directions on entering a new work that was published under a pseudonym, see Help:How to enter works published under a pseudonym. This help page assumes that you have created a new pseudonym relation that needs to be recorded, or you have discovered a pseudonym relation between authors currently in the system. This section discusses how to establish such a relation, and the next section discusses how to handle a case where an author or book has had a pseudonym relationship set up incorrectly, and you want to correct that.

In the following directions, there are several places where you may need to wait for a moderator's approval between one step and the next. Usually, we don't mention that.

There are several situations in which you might want to enter a pseudonym:  An author's name is the pseudonym of a person not in the database. Check the true name carefully to see if it's in the database under some variation. For example, "Michael Williamson" might be entered only as "Michael Z. Williamson". (Suggestion: Go to "Advanced Search," use the Author Search form, and enter the main parts of the first and last names in two different fields of that search form.) If the true name is not in the database, then they haven't published any relevant work (that we know of) under that name. In this case, we don't try to add that name to the database. Instead, "Edit Author Data" and enter their actual name as the legal name for this author.

An author's name is the pseudonym of a person who is in the database. In particular, you've discovered that there are two or more different Author records in the database, but in reality there is only one person behind them who is using different names. So now you need to set up an actual pseudonym relationship. You will first want to determine the "canonical name" of the author, which should typically be the most commonly used name. Although in many cases it will be the author's real name, there are times when it is not, e.g. "Murray Leinster" was a pseudonym that Will Jenkins used for almost all of his science fiction output, so that's what we use as his canonical name. For more details, see the help template for Canonical Names. Now we can set up the pseudonym. As an example, let's say that you've discovered that "Toby Duane" is a pseudonym for the writer whose canonical name is "W. Paul Ganley". On the page for "Toby Duane", click on "Make/Remove a Pseudonym" in the Editing Tools bar on the left. Enter the name "W. Paul Ganley". (If you make a spelling mistake here, the system will warn you that you're entering a non-existent name, but it's a good idea to copy and paste from Ganley's author page.) This will set up an "alternate name" relationship, but won't actually have "Toby Duane" send visitors to Paul Ganley, nor will works by Toby appear under Paul's bibliography. So now, open one page for each of the works credited to Toby. For each such work, click on "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work" in the Editing Tools bar. For each occurence of "Toby Duane", replace that name by "W. Paul Ganley", then click the "Create New Parent Title" button. (If he did joint work with someone, make sure you only replace Toby's name. However, we're supposed to list names in alphabetical order, so you might need to move the other author(s) around.) Although not absolutely necessary, it's a good idea on the "Toby Duane" page to click on the "Bibliographic Notes" link at the top, create a new "Author:Toby Duane" page, if necessary. Make sure this page starts with " ", to use the standard template, and then add the documentation as to why you know that this pseudonym relationship is correct. This may be useful to the moderator approving your changes, and will certainly be helpful to other users of the database later. Make a note to yourself to verify this author, wait until your changes have been approved by the moderators, then verify that everything looks right. 

A work by a known author was published under a non-standard variation of the author's name, e.g. using/not using a middle name, published using a misspelling of the author's name, etc. The author's name can occur in many places within a book: The cover, the copyright page, the table of contents, the title page, etc. Normally, we enter a work using the name that occurs on the title page, and ignore varations that might occur elsewhere. For more details, see the help template for Author Fields. Assuming that this name is different than the canonical name for an author, see the help page on Recording a Variant Title for details on how to proceed. (But it's really the same as setting up the pseudonym in the previous item.)

A name in the database is a pseudonym for a writing team of 2 (or more) people. <li>If all of the actual authors are in the database, get their canonical names, then proceed much as in option #2, slightly modified: <li>Click "Make a Pseudonym" once for each author, adding that person's name as the "Parent Name", and submitting once for each author. <li>For each publication, click "Make This Title a Variant", replace the pseudonym name with one of the author's names (the one whose last name comes first alphabetically), then "Add Author" for additional members of the writing team (in alphabetic order by last name), adding their names as well, and submit; <li>Make a note in the Bibliographic Comments field as to the justification for your changes. </ol>

<li>If one or more of the writing team does not have their name in the database, then you proceed as above except do step (2) first (so the authors are forced into the database), and then do step (1). You will have to wait for the variant titles to be approved by a moderator before you can make the pseudonyms, and here it's more important than usual that you leave a note in the Bibliographic Comments as to your documentation for this joint pseudonym, and leave a note to yourself (somewhere) that you have to come back here to finish the second step. (Of course if you "discovered" this because you entered a book by such a team, then you will also have to wait for the New Book to be approved before you can begin the steps above.) </ul>

<li>The same pseudonym has been used by 2 or more authors. We're referring here not to a "team" of authors who collaborated, but a "house pseudonym" that was used by several different authors individually writing books, or a similar phenomena where multiple authors independently used the same pseudonym. Here it becomes important to be confident which actual person wrote under that particular name for which works. If you have identified the true author for a book written under that pseudonym, you proceed just as above: For the publication, "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work", change the pseudonym name to the true name, and submit. If there is already a link between that pseudonym and that name, you're done. Otherwise, add the pseudonym relationship as described above. With most pseudonym relationships, the system should be set so that when you go to that pseudonym's name, all you see is a link to the canonical name for that author. In a situation such as this one, that may not be the case. It is very possible that we will have some works for which we can identify who the true author is, and others for which we cannot. For example, as of 2011-3-12, Victor Appleton has 79 books in the database. But if you go to that link, you would only see 6. The other 73 could be found by clicking on the "Used As Alternate Name By:" links (or via "Advanced Search"). This page will not have the traditional "large" pseudonym links at the bottom. That means that editors have been successful at identifying the true authors for 73 of "Victor Appleton"s books, but have so far been unsuccessful at this identification for 6 others. </ol>

Correcting a pseudonym/variant error
This section how to handle a case where an author or book has had a pseudonym relationship set up incorrectly, and you want to correct that. It assumes that you are already familiar with the steps involved in recording a pseudonym, as described in the previous section.

 <li>A work already entered under a known author was actually published under a non-standard variation of that author's name, or under another name. Note that in the descriptions below, there will be times when you need to wait between steps for a moderator to approve your changes from the earlier step. As with creating a pseudonym, it can often be useful to annotate what you're doing, e.g. in the "Bibliographic comments" that can detail pseudonym relations. In other cases, you can go to the Moderator noticeboard] and add a note as to what you're doing -- especially if it's non-obvious. <li> First, make sure that you are using the name as printed on the title page of the work. The author's name on the cover, copyright page, title page, "About the author" blurb, etc. can often be quite different. Whenever we can, we use the name as it appears on the title page. In some cases, an anthology may not have a "story title page", or not have one with the author's name. In these cases, we use the name as it appears in the table of contents. For more details, see the help template on [[Template:PublicationFields:Author|Author Names. <li>If the work only occurs once, i.e. there was only one edition of the book, and there are no variant titles, then just: <li>Go to the publication record for this work and "Clone this pub"; <li>With the cloned publication, change the author's name to the variant; <li>When the cloned submission is approved, it will have its own Title Record. Go to that title record and "Make This Title a Variant Title" of the original title. (This connects this book with the canonical name of the author.) <li>If this is a previously unrecorded variant of their name, you will also need to go to the Author record for this variant name and "Make/Remove a Pseudonym" to make the name variation a pseudonym of the canonical name. </ol> However... <li>If this work is one of several editions, printings, or variants of the orginal title, you cannot assume that all of the editions used this name variation! Fixing this is going to take some more work. Let's imagine that you are verifying a book in the ISFDB that was written by Ursula K. Le Guin, and the title page says it is by "Ursula LeGuin". (Or to a pseudonym such as "Starbear", etc.) Then we want to list this edition under that name variation, and have it be a pseudonym for the canonical variation of her name. But it is very unlikely that other editions (or, at least, not very many other editions) will have the book credited that way. So we proceed as follows: <li> If you think there might be other editions with the same variant name / pseudonym attribution, you can attempt to identify other such editions. Approaches that might work here are to contact primary verifiers of other editions, see if Amazon has a "Look Inside" option for those editions, or see if Google Books will let you look at the title page. But if you cannot be sure of the "correct" name to use, leave it unchanged. <li>Unmerge all of the publications from that title that should be attributed to the other name. (At the title record, click "Unmerge", then check those which should be extracted.) <li>If there are more than two such publications for this title, merge those publications together into a single title record. The system should ask you which date to use, and you usually select the earliest date. <li>Now correct the new title record by changing the author from the old name to the new name, and change the publication date (if necessary) to the earliest date of all editions of that book (not just the earliest edition published under this name). Changing the name in the title record will force each of the publications connected to it to change their names as well. UNTESTED. I'm pretty sure this is true; can some expert verify this claim for me? <li>Make this title record a "Variant Title" of the original title record. <li>Finally, if this is a previously unrecorded variant of their name, you will also need to go to the Author record for this variant name and "Make/Remove a Pseudonym" to make the name variation a pseudonym of the canonical name. </ol></ol>

<li>A work attributed as a pseudonym to one author is actually by 2 or more authors <li> Go to the title record for the work. This should be listed as by the true name of the author (only the variant it's connected to will list the pseudonym). So edit the title record and add the second author (or more, if necessary). Remember, when there are multiple authors, they should be listed in alphabetical order (by last name), which may mean that you have to re-arrange the original author's name. <li>Go to the pseudonym author's page and "Make a pseudonym" to connect this to the additional author(s). If those authors weren't already in the ISFDB, you'll have to wait for step 1 to be approved by a moderator. </ol>

<li>A work already entered as a pseudonym (or name variation) was entered incorrectly in another way. For example, maybe an author's pseudonym has been incorrectly identified. Or maybe all of the works under a relatively common name were assigned to a correct pseudonym, but only some of those works fit there, and other works belong to someone who really has that name, or to a different pseudonym relation. First we need to break the existing connections. <li>If an entire name variation was in error, Click "Make/Remove a Pseudonym". Near the top of the screen, the existing pseudonym is shown, with a "Remove" button by it, which you should click. <li>Whether step one was necessary or not, you should now click each title that was entered in error, and for each one click the "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work" selection, enter "0" for the Parent Number, then click "Link to Existing Parent". The "0" entry is a special tag to break the link to the existing parent. <li>Once these submissions have been approved, go to the original person to whom these titles were linked. The title should still be listed in this author's bibliography. You should click those titles, click the "Delete This Title" link, explaining what you're doing in the appropriate field. <li>If you are separating works done by one person under a pseudonym from another done by someone under their true name, you are finished. Otherwise, go to the appropriate step in the Setting up a pseudonym above to create the correct pseudonym. </ol> </ol>