Searching for creators / authors whose names contain initials or middle names

amandafrench
When searching our library at https://www.zotero.org/groups/steepletop_library/items/ for "A. E. Housman" or even "A.E. Housman" with no space between the initials, the results don't include the two works in that library by A. E. Housman. Searching for "Housman" does work.

Also, more worryingly, if an author has a middle name, the search also fails. Searching for "Hunter" in that library will bring up a work by Irene Louise Hunter, but searching for "Irene Hunter" won't.

These searches do work in the FF client Title, Creator, Year search. (Though you have to match the spacing in "A. E. Housman" to the way it's spaced in the record.) But not being able to find an author by their first and last name in the library at zotero.org isn't good.
  • dstillman
    edited February 22, 2012
    Search support on zotero.org (or from the API, technically) right now is still fairly unsophisticated. For names, it's just comparing the entered string to the concatenated first + last names in the database, and in your records you have "A. E. [Alfred Edward]" + "Housman". You'll see that searching for "a. e. [alfred edward] housman" does actually work.

    I'll try to fix this up in the near future to match the client behavior of finding the entered strings anywhere in the name.
  • amandafrench
    That's about what I figured. Thanks, Dan.
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