[Foundation-l] Ensuring veracity of articles based on print sources

[Andrew Gray]

On 03/10/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> For those books not mentioned in Google, we would of course do our best to
> compile a list. Then once the list is made, knowing Google, it would only be
> a matter of time that the list of old books would be listed on Google,
> therefore making my testing mechanism work.

It would be simpler just to toss the name into copac.ac.uk or
catalog.loc.gov and see if it appears! But this still doesn't tell us
anything beyond "I am claiming this book supports me".

It still doesn't get past the fact that I belive David when he says
"This band does indeed appear on page seventeen of Australian Indie
Rock Monthly, August 1979", but am slightly less inclined to believe
the unknown chap claiming he's found something earthshattering in a
1937 issue of a Russian underground newspaper...

Fundamentally, use of an offline (or subscription, etc) source is a
good and sensible thing, but it requires a modicum of trust that we're
getting a reliable link between the page and the information quoted;
we can't get around this by preparing lists of reliable and unreliable
texts, we can only get around this by someone "trusted" saying yes,
I've looked at that, it's there.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk