jayjg wrote:
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't seem very different to me from a citation.
No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library is a novel conclusion based on your own original research;
I would disagree, and say that it is a claim made by the library catalogue, and thus properly sourced to them. The claim may be one made by omission, but, insofar as the catalogue claims to be comprehensive, it is nonetheless an unambiguous claim.
If the catalogue does not claim to be comprehensive, or if there is doubt about its accuracy, it may be better to phrase the statement explicitly as "his book is not listed in the Cornell University Library catalogue."
None of the problems previously mentioned with legal databases apply to library catalogues, which I would rather compare to other common catalogue works such as phone books and dictionaries. In fact, ten or twenty years ago, one could even have pointed to the filing cabinets full of index cards and said "here's your printed source". :-)
Or would you also consider the statement "IttyBittySoft was not listed in the Fortune 500 list for 2006" to be OR?