"Creator" and "Medium" fields

Whelekwet

I'm puzzled at why the Creator field doesn't give any option to show the First Name after the Last Name, it only shows the Last Name.

I see a column labelled Medium, but no way to actually put anything there. Is this supposed to be automatically populated? It seems to me the appropriate place for me to label an item either as a physical book or an electronic version. What is the purpose of the Medium column?

adamsmith

For creators -- if you only have one field, click on the white rectangle and it'll turn into two fields, lastname, firstname.

Medium doesn't exist for all item types. It's available e.g. for artwork, audio and video recording.

Whelekwet

Thanks Adam, but what white rectangle are you referring to? I should have been more specific, as I mean the field as it shows in the Creator column, NOT in the Info pane. In the Info pane I can see a black (not white) disclosure triangle next to the Author name, with both first and last names. But when that data shows up in the Creator column it is only the last name and I can't see any triangle of any kind.

Regarding the Medium column, thanks, that explains it.

ZoeCMa

I don't think that's possible, but I wonder why you needed that. Do you have many items with authors sharing the same last names?

dstillman

Yes, this is a very common request, particularly for people with lots of Asian names in their libraries, and is planned. There's a plugin that supposedly can do this, though we can't vouch for it.

Whelekwet

@dstillman - I've installed the plugin and it definitely works in allowing several options for the Title field (first name, last name, multiple authors). It has a ton of other features too, but since most of the detail of the explanations is in Chinese, it's a challenge to understand how to use them!

adamsmith

Use auto translation -- that should work quite well on the instructions