How to blank an author entry

[mumdigau]

Hi,

I have a collection where erroneously the publisher has been placed in the author field. I moved it to the publisher field, and blanked author and author sort. But when I close the metadata change dialogue and reopen it, author and author sort are back again. How do I blank them?

Best regards

mumdigau

[kovidgoyal]

Dont blank them, set them to Unknown

[mumdigau]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Dont blank them, set them to Unknown

Thanks for your quick reply.

Unknown does look ugly, and actually isn't true. The book is a collection of several short stories by different (known) authors. Instead of entering 20 or more authors I want to reference the book by its publisher, and leave the author field empty. This isn't possible?

mumdigau

[texasnightowl]

You could use "Various" or "Anthology" for the author field instead of unknown

[itimpi]

You can never leave the author or title fields empty - if you try then calibre will set them to Unknown. I suspect that one of the reasons is that the values of these fields are used to construct the file/folder paths that calibre uses in the structure of it's own internal library.

[mumdigau]

Originally Posted by itimpi

You can never leave the author or title fields empty - if you try then calibre will set them to Unknown. I suspect that one of the reasons is that the values of these fields are used to construct the file/folder paths that calibre uses in the structure of it's own internal library.

Yeah, that is what I suppose,too. But why shouldn't publisher jump in, so at least one of author and publisher must be set? And, not forget to mention, calibre (0.7.13) doesn't set the blanked author to Unknown, but reverses to the old value. Strange.

Ciao

mumdigau

[mumdigau]

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

You could use "Various" or "Anthology" for the author field instead of unknown

That is what I finally did. Thanks.

mumdigau

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by mumdigau

I want to reference the book by its publisher, and leave the author field empty. This isn't possible?

You can use the publisher to reference the book. You can't have an empty author. Author is part of the folder structure (where Calibre stores the book) and you can't have an empty folder name in any OS supported by Calibre. To avoid an empty folder name, Calibre uses "Unknown"

Feel free to use anything you want in the Author field, but you can't leave it empty or Calibre will label it "Unknown" (or leave it unchanged if it's already filled in).

[mumdigau]

Originally Posted by Starson17

You can use the publisher to reference the book. You can't have an empty author. Author is part of the folder structure (where Calibre stores the book) and you can't have an empty folder name ...

Yeah, easily to be seen from the dir structure calibre establishes when storing books. Would be fine if there were an option that publisher could take the role of author. Why using author if there is no author? Of course, one can solvage the situation by introducing a dummy author (various etc.), but to me, this is only second choice.

Ciao

mumdigau

[texasnightowl]

Originally Posted by mumdigau

Yeah, easily to be seen from the dir structure calibre establishes when storing books. Would be fine if there were an option that publisher could take the role of author. Why using author if there is no author? Of course, one can solvage the situation by introducing a dummy author (various etc.), but to me, this is only second choice.

Personally, I'm lucky to remember author's names. I would never remember a publisher name. So if there are multiple authors, I use the most well known one OR if it is a particular story or chapter that matters I use the author of that story OR I use the aforementioned "Anthology" or "Various". But I personally can't think of any situation where I would prefer to leave the Author field blank and try to reference by publisher.

OK, maybe one instance...if it was the Encyclopedia Britannica, then maybe...but I would probably just use "Encyclopedia" as the author

[mumdigau]

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

Personally, I'm lucky to remember author's names. I would never remember a publisher name. So if there are multiple authors, I use the most well known one OR if it is a particular story or chapter that matters I use the author of that story OR I use the aforementioned "Anthology" or "Various". But I personally can't think of any situation where I would prefer to leave the Author field blank and try to reference by publisher.

OK, maybe one instance...if it was the Encyclopedia Britannica, then maybe...but I would probably just use "Encyclopedia" as the author

Your personal approach, for me to many OR's: After some time you don't know any more which of your OR's you made your decicion upon. I think in such situations it's better to follow the general rule public libraries are using:

If there are more than three authors, take the the first and add 'et al.' which is the abbreviation for 'et alii', the Latin expression for 'and others'.

Best regards

mumdigau

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by mumdigau

If there are more than three authors, take the the first and add 'et al.' which is the abbreviation for 'et alii', the Latin expression for 'and others'.

I put a few of the best known authors in the author field and all the other authors in the comments field. Usually there is a list of authors inside the book, and I copy/paste that list into comments.

This allows me to find the less well known authors with a search (which will search both the author field and the comment field.)

[speakingtohe]

calibre now recognizes multiple authors for a book.
It is listed under each authors listing so easy to find but is only stored once under the first author listed I believe.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

calibre now recognizes multiple authors for a book.
It is listed under each authors listing so easy to find but is only stored once under the first author listed I believe.

Yes, but this was a case where he didn't want to type in all the authors in an omnibus into the author field.