I have created an auto-type for the author field when you are creating a new tab. This will hopefully allow us to have more uniform authors. To use it all you need to do is create a new tab and start typing the authors name and the authors currently on the website will be searched and the results given in a drop down.
The next thing I would like to do which has been shot down in the past is to fix the way people have authors so they are all uniform... like "The Beatles" and "Beatles" are the same author but different ways it is written.
I think doing that will make searching a lot easier since things will be more uniform.