Feature Request - Improved Author Metadata

[TimDiam0nd]

Hi

I have recently started using this to store my classical arabic book collection.

One thing that i would like is to be able to able to add some important "metadata" for authors.

Some examples:

• Place of birth
• Place of death
• Date of birth
• Date of death
• Interest/specialisation/what the author wrote about (possibly allow this to be the same as the categories assigned to books, and allow multiple?)
• List of titles/honorifics
• Either multiple pen names, or (preferably) allow multiple "known as" (where the distinction being made is a pen name is a name chosen by the author, and a "known as" is a name not chosen by the author, but chosen by e.g. those around him, his students, or otherwise.

As a not so important but definitely useful second part to this, I would also like for it to be possible to fetch the author’s metadata from Wikipedia (generally all of the above fields are within Wikipedia).

Thanks

[tfonteyn]

Hello,

At least some of those fields have been on my own wish-list as well. What stopped me until now was (firstly 'time', I have books to read ..) that the sites I used at the time for metadata were not satisfactory to get that info (aside of ISFDB).
But as I added multiple sites over the last couple of years, this has become feasible now I think.

I've been working hard on a new major version (7.0) which, among other things, will bring:

• a full fledged support for adding tags to Books as a replacement for the single-entry 'genre'. Fetching tags/categories/genres from most of the sites is of course included.
• Goodreads as a meta-source (yes, I said I wasn't going to do it... well, I changed my mind) and they have extensive author info that could be used.

So back to your request: it won't happen until after 7.0 is ready and published.
But in subsequent version I think it's at least partially possible to:

• birth/death date & place: if available, sure. These are the ones on my own list
• a "Notes" field.
• Interest/specialisation: using the same tags (7.0!) as for the books should work just fine. From sites: not sure, depends on availability of course.
• List of titles/honorifics: a bit beyond the scope I fear. Firstly, I can only deal with structured data from the internet (ISFDB being perfect, but obviously only one particular genre so not suited for all). I think this won't/can't be done. But I can put it on my "to look at later" list.
• multiple pen names: already possible. You can define a "Real author"(i.e. actual name) for any author defined as a pen-name.
  Let me know if you have questions on this. I can/should probably document this better.
  Getting this as metadata is difficult, as sites most often do not provide this (at least not in a structured way).
  The one exception being franco/belgian comics using bedetheque.
• multiple "known as": would need to done as pen-name, no special distinction. Aside of which... no sites offer this I think. Using a notes field for this is probably better.

All this will require some planning obviously so please don't expect it any time soon. but I'll see what I can do.