[WikiEN-l] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model

[wjhonson at aol.com]

Worldcat is the freely available listing of the contents of hundreds 
perhaps thousands of libraries.  If you cannot locate a print item 
there, it's very likely it is fictitious.  A small caveat in that, 
items which are not quite ancient, but not modern (say medieval) may 
have names that are not obvious.

I would submit however, that every print publication over the past 100 
years or perhaps even 200, lives in at least one worldcat repository 
(library) somewhere in the world.

If you don't know the exact name of a book, you can search on partial 
names, author names, and subject too I believe.

In addition to that, we have great extra repositories for checking the 
existence of a purported print source at amazon.com and also at abe.com 
and alibris.com  Amazon tends toward in-print titles, while abe.com 
tends toward out-of-print titles, including very rare titles as well 
since it is, in contract to worldcat, the listings of the repositories 
of hundreds if not thousands of *bookstores*.  That would include rare 
and second-hand bookstores.

Will Johnson



-----Original Message-----
From: Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 4:44 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model










On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 11:30 PM, <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:

> That something is not yet available onl
ine, shouldn't be a factor in
> considering whether or not we should cite it.  Even the library of 
Bora
> Bora *could* (theoretically at least) request a copy of an item for
> you, provided you have the citation and the repository location (see
> worldcat.org).

I think that's somewhat naive.

I found a new article the other day and it was all about this guy who
was described as "the greatest child genius the world has ever seen".

There was a long list of verifications although not enough to cover
most of the points made in the article. I smelled a rat and stuck a
"hoax" banner on it. There was (IIRC) one editor. There were pictures.
The citations were all to books with no online click-thru. The whole
thing just smelled wrong. I wish I could remember the article now...

Just combed back through my last 500 contribs. Can't find it. If an
article had been deleted would it disappear from my contribs?

I guess what I'm saying is: it's quite easy to "make up" a book. But
perhaps I'm wrong in that. You mention "worldcat.org"... it's not
something I'm familiar with: is it your sense that worldcat.org is
comprehensive enough to rumble invented books?

And even if it is... could I not just choose an obscure book at random
and attribute a claim to it?

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