How should I format people list with occasional multiple entries?

[Lauren_Anderson]

Hi, I’m new to Airtable. I have a list of alumnae who have written books, some of which have appeared in our alumnae magazine. I originally created it as a spreadsheet going through the back issues of the magazine and creating a new entry for each new book. This means some authors appeared twice when their books appeared in two separate issues.

What’s the best way to handle this in Airtable? One row per person with columns for Book 1, Book 2, etc (even though the vast majority will have only book 1)? Or a new row each time the author has a new book?

Thanks,
–Lauren

[Kamille_Parks]

You could have a [Alumni] table where each row is an author (each author appears once) and a [Books] table where each row is a book (each book appears once). If you link these together, the books written by an author will appear in one field. It would look like [Book 1], [Book 2]

In the [Books] table you could record information like in what issue that book was featured. In the [Alumni] table you could record information like year the alum graduated, contact info, etc.