Help:Screen:Directory

The "Author Directory" link on the navbar leads to the ISFDB Author Directory which is a table showing the first two letters of the author last names from Aa to Az down to Za to Zz. You click on one of the pairs to view a list of authors whose last name starts with that letter pair. If there are no authors whose name starts with a particular letter pair then that spot in the table is grayed out.

The position of authors in the directory, or within the page for a particular letter pair, is controlled by the Last Name field of the Edit Author Data screen. If you spot an author that's filed in an unexpected spot in the directory then you can correct this by updating that author's Last Name field.

Drilling down: Some letter pairs, such as Pa, will have a long list of names. You can drill down to a subset of this list by adding the desired letter to the URL. For example, if you add the letter "g" to the URL so that the full URL is http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?Pag then this will show all of the authors whose last names start with the letters "Pag."

Foreign Language support: At present the Author Directory does not support authors where either of the first two letters of their last name is outside the range "A" to "Z". Thus an author such as will not appear in the directory.

An alternative to the author directory is to use the ISFDB's Advanced Search or standard search (at the top of the left navbar) features to look up authors. You can simulate the directory in the standard search by entering space followed by the first letter(s) of the last name. For example, " as" (space-a-s) shows a list of authors whose last name starts with "As." Note that this method does not work in Advanced Search as it strips leading/trailing spaces.

You can also do partial name searches, for example if you are unsure if it's Ursula K. Le Guin or Ursula K. LeGuin you can search for either "Ursula" or "guin" and the list will be short enough that you can locate the author record.