# Authors are People too **URL:** \ **Category:** Ideas\ **Created:** [July 4, 2021, 12:55pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613 "2021-07-04T12:55:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![emyoulation](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/emyoulation/32/67_2.png) [@emyoulation](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/emyoulation)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2021, 12:55pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/1 "2021-07-04T12:55:08Z")
This seem to wander outside the scope for purist genealogists but… I’d like to see the Author field of Sources expand to recognize a Person (or even a Family, a group of Persons) object. I regularly add authors of my reference materials to my Gramps tree. My standard author entry is: main author/editor with contributors separated by semicolons; where each author is listed last name comma, given name(s) birth year dash death year. And this generally means finding a death year. (But I also find it illuminating to research how they are related to the materials about which they wrote.) Given the scholarly prejudices of the past, it may include a bit of detective work for female author writing under a penname or just initials. But using a Person(s) for the Author instead of using a freeform text opens a host of opportunities. It would allow compiling Author subsections in bibliographies. It could add publication of a book to be inserted on the person’s timeline. It would allow a relationship chart to be generated between the author(s) and the focal person/family of the genealogy. ---
**Author:** ![PLegoux](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/plegoux/32/413_2.png) [@PLegoux](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/PLegoux)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2021, 4:23pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/2 "2021-07-04T16:23:41Z")
As a palliative solution you could add a citation to that book source citing its author and add that citation to the author person record. It’ll link both. ---
**Author:** ![emyoulation](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/emyoulation/32/67_2.png) [@emyoulation](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/emyoulation)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2021, 4:58pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/3 "2021-07-04T16:58:27Z")
That is my current workaround. It would be better to have something more directly supported & structured. Otherwise, that data will never become an aspect of reports or analysis. ---
**Author:** ![DaveSch](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/davesch/32/40_2.png) [@DaveSch](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/DaveSch)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2021, 5:21pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/4 "2021-07-04T17:21:12Z")
I add a note to the source with a [link](https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Entering_and_editing_data%3A_detailed_-_part_2#Link_Editor) to the person’s record and a note on the person linking to the source. As I most often use the [Narrated Web](https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Reports_-_part_7#Narrated_Web_Site) this seems to work. I now have to double-check all my existing sources. ---
**Author:** ![Mihle](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/mihle/32/612_2.png) [@Mihle](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/Mihle)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 6:20pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/5 "2021-07-05T18:20:26Z")
Yeah, I have documents written by a person in the tree, would be nice if I could actually choose that person in the Author field. Maybe someone should ad it as a feature request on the bug tracker thingy. ---
**Author:** ![emyoulation](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/emyoulation/32/67_2.png) [@emyoulation](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/emyoulation)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 7:55pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/6 "2021-07-05T19:55:10Z")
It the discussion here > [@Mihle](#): > > Maybe someone should add it as a feature request on the bug tracker thingy. Probably will. But I want to see how others felt about the idea. And to discover if they saw implications / opportunities that I had missed. I know some people react defensively where their ideas are questioned. (I have to fight that urge myself.) But we create better suggestion when ideas are batted around. So… Batter up and swing away! ---
**Author:** ![emyoulation](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/emyoulation/32/67_2.png) [@emyoulation](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/emyoulation)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 8:08pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/7 "2021-07-05T20:08:55Z")
One unpleasant implication just occurred to me… If the author was ‘living’ or ‘Private’ then their information might be incorrectly filtered out of the bibliography and/or sources list. There isn’t a ‘public figure’ flag to offset the ‘Private’ flag in Gramps. ---
**Author:** ![DaveSch](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/davesch/32/40_2.png) [@DaveSch](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/DaveSch)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 9:17pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/8 "2021-07-05T21:17:37Z")
> [@emyoulation](#): > > If the author was ‘living’ or ‘Private’ then their information might be incorrectly filtered out of the bibliography and/or sources list. There isn’t a ‘public figure’ flag to offset the ‘Private’ flag in Gramps. What happens to the “living” settings when the Birth event is locked Private? ---
**Author:** ![emyoulation](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/emyoulation/32/67_2.png) [@emyoulation](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/emyoulation)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 11:22pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/9 "2021-07-05T23:22:15Z")
Gramps doesn’t appear to pay any attention to ‘Private’ flags for its internal use & calculation. It only respects it when filtering output. But if the Tree were exported or a report was generated (with the option selected to filter living & private data), I would expect that the Birth data would be gone. (The entire Person might be omitted if there wasn’t a death event or if the private birth data suggested they were ‘probably alive’.) Then Gramps would have to fallback to its “probably alive” routine. If Gramps allowed People objects to be used for authors, the Source would probably become ‘unknown author’. Ugly possibility. ---
**Author:** ![StoltHD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/db5fbb/32.png) [@StoltHD](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/StoltHD)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2021, 10:42am UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/10 "2021-07-09T10:42:44Z")
IT should have been a feature, for me it is a norm to add Authors to ALL sources where that information is available, that’s one of the reasons I use Zotero, and test Jabref and Citava. Did I mention support for CSL. ---
**Author:** ![PLegoux](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/plegoux/32/413_2.png) [@PLegoux](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/PLegoux)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2022, 7:38pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/11 "2022-10-10T19:38:04Z")
[Notion](https://notion.so) (which is a kind of advanced markdown editor) allows you, while you’re typing a page, to reference any other page using an @ sign to select it. As an example, in that screnshot Notion detected my typing of the @ sign which it replaced by this selection menu. After typing the @ sign: ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/gramps/original/2X/3/3754083d321c0394b2aa19fec3e50b1120c51d7e.png) After selecting an entry: ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/gramps/original/2X/e/ea72a66b875562376bb2ee4dabae4f44fd0c6e02.png) In Gramps, one could by this means imagine entering in the source author field either a simple text representing the name of an external author of the source or @ThePersonName which would bring back the clickable name of the author from Persons records in the database. On the person side, this mention would then be seen in its references ---
**Author:** ![emyoulation](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/emyoulation/32/67_2.png) [@emyoulation](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/emyoulation)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2026, 2:35pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/authors-are-people-too/1613/12 "2026-01-29T14:35:30Z")
> [@Mihle](#): > > Maybe someone should ad it as a feature request on the bug tracker thingy There seemed to be limited interest. So I opted not to file a feature request. Particularly since a similar set of requests (for using People objects and editors for the Owner and Researcher data) has not caught enough interest for the last dozen years. And doing using People for those would have eliminated some “single use” dialogs. - [0006365](https://gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=0006365): ability to select person for Researcher from existing person in Family Tree. 2013 - [0012430](https://gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=12430): Make “Database owner” and Researcher information more useful. 2021