walter said:

If I am looking for a book written by a particular author, I want to be able to search for his or her name and not for all books about that particular author.

i agree. but that's not the point at issue. the point here is that an unhealthy focus on metadata usually makes one catatonic.

I really do care whether the 'van' part in my family names is capitalised or not

i'm sure you do, walter, and bully for you, which is why it would be a shame if some o.c.d. cataloger made it uppercase for the simple purpose of fitting their sort method. sorting was very important in the old days where we had a _physical_ card-catalog, but it's silly to get bogged down in it today. the o.c.d. people, however, just love to get bogged down with any subject that they can. -bowerbird