This week’s data mob is about authors.

Our data team has a large ISBN database that they want to import, but there’s some difficulty reconciling the data in that database with what’s in Freebase. From what I hear, the current plan is just to load up those ISBN records — which is to say, book editions — which match up with authors that we already know about.

Well, of course Freebase has major authors like Dan Brown and J. K. Rowling, so it shouldn’t be too hard to load up their data, but if you’d like to see us expand our horizons a bit then now is the chance.

This week, we’d like you to make sure your favourite obscure authors are in Freebase. Perhaps you’re a fan of hard SF, self-help books, or erotic poetry. Whatever! Go through your bookshelves and make sure your authors are in Freebase. Then make sure we know about the works they’ve written. Doesn’t have to be a complete bibliography, but anything at all will help us with reconciliation as we go forward with this ISBN load.

So, to clarify the steps:

• Go to the Authors page
• Using the filter tools in the left column, search for your author. If s/he’s there, skip ahead.
• If not, click “Add an Author” and add your author
• Click through to the author’s page, then add the names of your author’s books to the “Books written” property
• If you’re feeling pedantic, you can also fill in “Editions published”, which contains far fiddlier information about specific editions of written works. (It’s the difference between “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and the first paperback US edition of that book.)
• When you’re done, you can mention which authors you contributed to on the data mob page, under “Mobbed Topics”.

Ten points for anyone who can identify the four American authors shown above, without cheating. You’re on the honour system!