Help:How to enter duplicate record names
The ISFDB contains with several kinds of records. Each kind can have duplicate names. The record types are:
- titles aka "works"
- publications
- authors/editors/artists
- title series
- publishers
- publication series
- awards
- award types
- award categories
Titles and Publications
Different title records and publication records often have identical titles. For example, "Breathing Space" is a 1955 work of short fiction by Brian W. Aldiss, while "Breathing Space" is a 1956 work of short fiction by E. C. Tubb, and "Breathing Space" is a 2008 work of short fiction by Steve Lockley and Paul Lewis. In cases like this, the different authors are generally sufficient to make the difference clear, so no special measures need be taken.
Often a story is expanded into a novel. For example, "In the Presence of Mine Enemies" is a 1992 novelette, while In the Presence of Mine Enemies is a 2003 novel, both by Turtledove. In these cases the different type of the work makes the difference clear. The same is true when a collection has a title story. The rare cases where quite different stories by the same author have the same title, such as "Interim" (1950) and "Interim" (1947), are generally handled by title notes, parenthetical additions to titles (such as "(revised)" or "(1983 version)") or both.
Other Types of Records
The names of records of all other types (see the list of types above) must be unique in the database. Duplicate names must be disambiguated, typically using a parenthetical qualifier. For example, when two or more people have identical names, they are distinguished by a qualifier such as Adrian Smith (I) vs Adrian Smith or Colin Harvey vs Colin Harvey (1971-). Similarly, the UK publisher "Tandem" is currently recorded in the ISFDB as Tandem while the German publisher "Tandem" is currently recorded as Tandem (Germany).
- See Help:How to separate two authors with the same name for more details on disambiguating author names.
- See Help:How to work with series#Duplicate names for more details on disambiguating series names.