Looking for feature to reference co-autor alphabetically in item list

Wilfried
Not sure if I'm missing something (or someting is indeed missing that I'd prefer to have):

More often than not I only remember ONE of two joint authors of a book. And as you would expect, more often than not the one I do remember is not the main but the co-autor.

Now, short of duplicating the entry (which is a mess, as changes to the main item would not propagate to the copy) - how do I achieve that the item will also show up in the alphabetical author list with the co-autor?

Please take this as a feature request - otherwise any hint as how to achieve this would be greatly appreaciated.

Note that I did think about using links - however in the case discussed (where I remember the main autor incorrectly) I would not know where to link from (as I usually don't find the item).

Many thanks and greetings from Germany
  • Tjowens
    Is there any reason that you don't want to use a basic search to find these articles? If you know one author's name it would seem to be the quickest possible way to find the article.
  • Wilfried
    edited April 21, 2008
    Thanks for you comment, Tjowens. I realize that I probably did not express myself clear enough (English is not my native language): while 'basic search' is a powerful tool indeed, the use case I'm after is quite different, though:

    What I'm looking for is to be able to see all items neatly together in a list where the person I'm looking for is author (be it main or co-autor). To that end I simply do an incremental search (typing the first letters) in the main list ordered alphabetically by author.

    This gives me all items by this author next to each other; except of course, the items where my autor is co-autor only are missing - hence my request.

    Basic search is a quite different use case after all: as it give me ALL references which have the authors name on them - that is, a LOT of hit's im not after. (And of course the screen gets cluttered heavily.)

    What I'm looking for is simply a means to have items (where the specific person is co-autor) show up neatly together with the other items of this person (where he/she is main autor) in the main alphabetical list.

    Any idea?

    Thanks for considering.
  • dstillman
    There are plans for an author-based view, which sounds like it might be what you're looking for. I don't think what you're suggesting really works for the main items list, since items would basically have to show up multiple times, once for each author.

    In the meantime, you could perhaps create a saved search with a condition for creator, and then when you want to see everything by a specific author, double-click it, type in the creator you want, and click OK.
  • Wilfried
    >>> since items would basically have to show up multiple times, once for each author

    Yes - that's indeed what I am looking for - initially I expected to simply find a switch which would toggle if an item is shown multiple times in the library list - each position reflecting the different authors.

    As a [a more cumbersome] alternative it would probably also suffice to have kind of a placeholder link with author and title which reminds me that there is another item of that autor (as co-author) and then link me (internally) to that item upon clicking.

    Come to think of it - I now amend my feature request and simply suggest if perhaps it makes sense to just provide another [stripped down] item type - sort of a 'jump to related item' item - as what I'm doing now (to achieve something like I need) is to duplicate the item (delete all but autor, title and date) and add a related link there to be able to jump from that placeholder (listed with the main autor items) to the item with this person as co-autor.

    That's basically what you would to in the old card catalogs to - enter a card with a reference to the main entry. (The first solution I mentioned - show the SAME item repeatedly for each of the authors - looks much cleaner to me, though.)

    But then - perhaps it's just me looking to group all items of an author together.

    Of course 'author-based view' also sounds interesting. Thanks also for suggesting the 'saved search' approach to currently make the author lookup somewhat easier.

    Great product, great community - thanks!

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