Richard D. Wolff / Richard Wolff

One of the books of the economics professor Richard D. Wolffs works Capitalism Hits the Fan keeps combining with the theology writer Richard Wolff, the book keeps listing its author as Richard Wolff which must be producing the error. When I try to correct this LT combines the two into one. When I then try to split them into two separate authors, it puts the mislabelled book back into Richard Wolff.

I've tried to add the book to my collection so I can correct its author, its page then says Richard D. Wolff but when I click on it to go to the author page - its not there. And searching for it shows the author name as Richard Wolff and that author page is unique with no other works https://www.librarything.com/author/wolffrichard-1

Yeah I kept making that mistake. Okay how do I fix 37 people having the author as Richard Wolff?

You cannot. That's what they have in their library, and you can't change their data. The thing to do is leave the book on https://www.librarything.com/author/wolffrichard-1 which is aliased into https://www.librarything.com/author/wolffrichardd so the book appears on the correct page. That's all that can or should be done.

But that's incorrect its the same author why have it split because of some error

Richard Wolff (1) is the same author as Richard D. Wolff - and that is correctly represented by aliasing.
There is a different author named Richard Wolff - on LibraryThing he's Richard Wolff (2) - which is why Richard Wolff can't be combined with Richard D. Wolff.

How can this be fixed?

It is fixed.

Thanks. What did I do wrong or how can I fix this sort of problem if I ever come across it again?

Works listed under the same author page by different people can be split. (Author division on the right side of the author page.) If an author has another page on LT, the books in that split can be aliased to the other page. The split works then show on that page.

If you cannot do it yourself, ask for help in the Combiners group.

Wrong author names are frequently related to Amazon mistakes. You can request corrections on that Amazon page. It will not affect current copies, but should improve data on future imports.

>Author division on the right side of the author page.

Yes I had tried that. It would screw up and combine the two different Wolffs. I'd split them - and the book would be back with the wrong Wolff.

It was you that did the split that's there now (you can see the history on https://www.librarything.com/author_split.php?author=wolffrichard&page=assig... and it is correct.

Having said that - are you sure that all of the works you've attributed to Richard Wolff (2) are by the same person? The religious books as well as The Moon?

When you're doing the author splits, you can leave individual works as "unknown" if you're not sure.

And the urban planning book?

I've done some research. Wolff 2 was born in 1927, and most of the books still listed there are by him (including Moon according to LoC), although I'm not sure about all of them. I found several other Richard Wolffs and put a few books back into unknown.

I did not remove all the books not listed in LoC, although perhaps I should have. They list 11 books of the 15.

The non-religious books could be a third Wolff, but they're not by the economist Richard D. Wolff.

Could be a pack of Wolffs.

ba dum tish

Closing.