David Robbins/David L. Robbins/David Thompson?

There's a prolific pulp author named David Robbins who has written many, many (many!) books. His books are split over at least two author names and I can't figure out how to merge them.

These two authors should be merged:
https://www.librarything.com/author/thompsondavid-1
should be merged with:
https://www.librarything.com/author/robbinsdavid-4

The first listing is combined with an author named David Thompson. Not sure how that happened. Robbins has written under many aliases, but has not used the name David Thompson so far as I know. When I try to split out the name on the David Thompson page, he appears to be the primary author listed there.

I don't have the time to deal with this right now, but https://www.librarything.com/author/thompsondavid is a mess, and the various names need to be taken apart. (see Includes).

They were combined because there is an author who has used both names. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Robbins_(Oregon_writer)

That does not make the combination right.

I finished the split of David L. Robbins.
https://www.librarything.com/author/robbinsdavidl

There's no great solution here because all three (David Robbins, David L. Robbins, and David Thompson) have multiple author splits. So we can't alias an author split into a unique other author name. I guess the best solution is to alias the particular splits of David Robbins and David Thompson into David L. Robbins and then split them again there? Which looks to already have been done for David Thompson (split #1). I don't have the time to do that for David Robbins (split #4) right now but that should probably be a next step.

To make things worse, there are two David L. Robbins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Robbins_(Oregon_writer)
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Robbins_(Virginia_writer)

Oregon writes pulp and westerns. Virginia guy writes historical novels.

In the real world, Oregon guys books are just listed on the cover as by David Robbins (unless he uses one of his many nom de plumes).

Virginia guys books list David L. Robbins on the cover.

Maybe for these two, canonical name should be the same as legal name? (Oregon guy's middle name is Lawrence, Virginia guy's middle name is Lea.)

>5 jseger9000:

Maybe for these two, canonical name should be the same as legal name?

No, that’s not what the canonical name field is for. Default is NO canonical name. See the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Common_Knowledge

Okay. I just thought it might help clear things up, a little anyway.

I did as much as I felt comfortable with last night before starting this thread. I know what should be done, but not necessarily the way to do it, so will leave that to others who are better at LT-fu.

>7 jseger9000: Adding Canonical titles usually causes more issues than it solves in such cases - it does not change how books get added and where books land - it just makes it harder to figure out why the two authors appear to be the same when they are not (or vice versa) :)

Plus using a legal name if that is not the author's name on any of their books will cause a lot of confusion on where data comes from.

It is not a bad idea per se -- but the way the system is built, it won't help the way you hope it will.