From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example, let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be offline but it was available a few years ago).
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.
More precisely you can say that you could not find the book listed in the Cornell University Library Catalog. It's not the same even though the correlation between the two statements will be strong.
Yes, I stand corrected. Quite right. Or even "the book was not found in an online search of the Cornell University Library Catalog." If the citation gives the details of the search, that gives the opportunity for someone else to check and point out that the search succeeds if you spell the title differently. Not at all impossible.
(Of course we get back into murky territory if someone asserts that the book is not in the online catalog, but nevertheless can be found on the the shelves, third floor of the stacks, two rows from the back, sixth set of stacks, fourth shelf, sixteenth from the left in a dull red binding, catalog number QQXXZZ-12345).
On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:52:45 -0500, "Daniel P. B. Smith" wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Or even "the book was not found in an online search of the Cornell University Library Catalog." If the citation gives the details of the search, that gives the opportunity for someone else to check and point out that the search succeeds if you spell the title differently. Not at all impossible.
Another issue: a particular promoter of a particular POV cites a book in support of his argument. It is not a widely-circulated book. Others are unable to find the book, or, having found the book, unable to find the specific text supposedly quoted. At some point we have to apply the "yeah, right" rule and remove it.
Guy (JzG)
On 12/22/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Another issue: a particular promoter of a particular POV cites a book in support of his argument. It is not a widely-circulated book. Others are unable to find the book, or, having found the book, unable to find the specific text supposedly quoted. At some point we have to apply the "yeah, right" rule and remove it.
If the british libiary does not have a copy I'm going to want to hear a pretty good explantion.
On 22/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/22/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Another issue: a particular promoter of a particular POV cites a book in support of his argument. It is not a widely-circulated book. Others are unable to find the book, or, having found the book, unable to find the specific text supposedly quoted. At some point we have to apply the "yeah, right" rule and remove it.
If the british libiary does not have a copy I'm going to want to hear a pretty good explantion.
Because deposit libraries don't actually expend a lot of effort tracking down small publishers who don't send them a copy, beyond perhaps a letter if they find out they exist (perhaps years after the fact). Because deposit libraries don't have money either.
- d.
On 12/22/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Because deposit libraries don't actually expend a lot of effort tracking down small publishers who don't send them a copy, beyond perhaps a letter if they find out they exist (perhaps years after the fact). Because deposit libraries don't have money either.
- d.
At one point I ran across some refences on scams involveing vanity publishers. One of the things even these "publishers" did was send a copy to the british libiary (the scams were UK based) since they could claim it as marketing and I supose to a degree made them appear more legit. With the exception of print on demarnd people I can't see a reason why legit publishers should be much different.
On 22/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/22/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Because deposit libraries don't actually expend a lot of effort tracking down small publishers who don't send them a copy, beyond perhaps a letter if they find out they exist (perhaps years after the fact). Because deposit libraries don't have money either.
At one point I ran across some refences on scams involveing vanity publishers. One of the things even these "publishers" did was send a copy to the british libiary (the scams were UK based) since they could claim it as marketing and I supose to a degree made them appear more legit. With the exception of print on demarnd people I can't see a reason why legit publishers should be much different.
I'm speaking from my own experience in Australia. An individual in Australia can apply for an ISBN from the National Library of Australia, which is per the name a deposit library, so they generally would remember to send a copy in. But "publishing" for deposit library purposes was defined as "distributing three or more copies of something" - which means a lot of stuff that should be deposited won't be. So the deposit libraries would write a letter asking nicely when they found out. And welcome contributions of specialist collections, e.g. I donated my Australian indie rock fanzine collection to the West Australian state library when I left Australia, and they were most pleased.
In the general case, you're right, *almost* everything will be in a national deposit library; but stuff can and will be missed, and not necessarily from a lack of significance.
- d.
On 12/22/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:52:45 -0500, "Daniel P. B. Smith" wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Or even "the book was not found in an online search of the Cornell University Library Catalog." If the citation gives the details of the search, that gives the opportunity for someone else to check and point out that the search succeeds if you spell the title differently. Not at all impossible.
Another issue: a particular promoter of a particular POV cites a book in support of his argument. It is not a widely-circulated book. Others are unable to find the book, or, having found the book, unable to find the specific text supposedly quoted. At some point we have to apply the "yeah, right" rule and remove it.
If the book hasn't been published or circulated widely enough, at some point it falls into the non-notable/vanity publication/extreme minority opinion category.
Jay.
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
"Daniel P. B. Smith" wrote:
Or even "the book was not found in an online search of the Cornell University Library Catalog." If the citation gives the details of the search, that gives the opportunity for someone else to check and point out that the search succeeds if you spell the title differently. Not at all impossible.
Another issue: a particular promoter of a particular POV cites a book in support of his argument. It is not a widely-circulated book. Others are unable to find the book, or, having found the book, unable to find the specific text supposedly quoted. At some point we have to apply the "yeah, right" rule and remove it.
If he's promoting the POV he's at least hanging around long enough to be asked questions. We can at least ask him to be more specific in his citations: the ISBN or publisher in the first case, the page number in the second case. If nothing happens the whole issue can be moved to the talk page until we receive verification. Being unable to track down a stated source is a somewhat different from a negative assertion that something doesn't exist.
Ec
On 12/22/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example, let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be offline but it was available a few years ago).
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.
More precisely you can say that you could not find the book listed in the Cornell University Library Catalog. It's not the same even though the correlation between the two statements will be strong.
Yes, I stand corrected. Quite right. Or even "the book was not found in an online search of the Cornell University Library Catalog." If the citation gives the details of the search, that gives the opportunity for someone else to check and point out that the search succeeds if you spell the title differently. Not at all impossible.
No, the accurate statement is "This specific online search by Daniel P.B. Smith on this specific date did not return any results". And, of course, there's no guarantee that 1 minute after Daniel P.B. Smith does his search, the book will not be acquired, or entered into the catalog, or re-indexed properly because it had been improperly entered before, or...
Once one is forced to make an *accurate* (non original research) statement, it starts looking ridiculous, and rightly so.
Jay.
Jay.
jayjg wrote:
No, the accurate statement is "This specific online search by Daniel P.B. Smith on this specific date did not return any results".
I highly doubt the identity of the person who looked in the catalog is relevant. I suppose it would be technically possible for an online catalog to deliberately return different results to different users, but I would not really call any site that did that a "catalog", much less a reliable source.
So we're down to "as of this date, no books by this author were listed in the official online catalog of this library." Doesn't sound all that ridiculous to me.
(Elsewhere you've complained about the supposed difficulty of repeating the search. You do realize that most, if not all, library catalogues allow you to link directly to search results?)
And, of course, there's no guarantee that 1 minute after Daniel P.B. Smith does his search, the book will not be acquired, or entered into the catalog, or re-indexed properly because it had been improperly entered before, or...
If it indeed happens one minute later, what will happen is that Daniel P.B. Smith will look foolish -- or would, if the catalog did not show when the record was added.
If it happens later, there are two possibilities. One is that no-one will notice, in which case we will continue to cite an old version of the source until someone does. Assuming the original citation included the date of access, as our guidelines recommend for all ephemeral sources, this is not a problem: we do not pretend out information is always up to date.
The other possibility, of course, is that someone (perhaps even Daniel P.B. Smith himself) does check the source and finds that it no longer matches the claim in the article. The reasonable thing to do in that case is to change the article. The only problem occurs if the person who notices the mismatch fails to assume good faith and, mistakenly, accuses Daniel of deliberately lying -- but hopefully, even if no objective record of the change remains, other neutral editors will have previously verified the source and can confirm that Daniel's claim in fact used to match the source.
If not, the outcome is the same as in the one-minute scenario: Daniel may suffer a blow to his credibility. Note that, in any case, the risk is _only_ to Daniel's personal reputation, provided that the article is corrected as soon as the nmismatch is noticed; if Wikipedia's reputation were in any significant way harmed by mistakes that were corrected when found, we wouldn't have any reputation left to harm anyway. (Some may, of course, argue that this is in fact the case.)
jayjg wrote:
On 12/22/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example, let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be offline but it was available a few years ago).
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.
More precisely you can say that you could not find the book listed in the Cornell University Library Catalog. It's not the same even though the correlation between the two statements will be strong.
Yes, I stand corrected. Quite right. Or even "the book was not found in an online search of the Cornell University Library Catalog." If the citation gives the details of the search, that gives the opportunity for someone else to check and point out that the search succeeds if you spell the title differently. Not at all impossible.
No, the accurate statement is "This specific online search by Daniel P.B. Smith on this specific date did not return any results". And, of course, there's no guarantee that 1 minute after Daniel P.B. Smith does his search, the book will not be acquired, or entered into the catalog, or re-indexed properly because it had been improperly entered before, or...
Such tortuous prose is unnecesarry. The library search results are still secondary information with only indirect bearing on the subject of the article. If the work is added to the catalog one minute later, and someone's verification efforts reveals this we will all be happy. This still doesn't help us if two minutes later the book is ripped off. The information is verifiable to the extent that someone else can run the search independently.
Once one is forced to make an *accurate* (non original research) statement, it starts looking ridiculous, and rightly so.
No original research is about being verifiable, not about being accurate.
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
(Of course we get back into murky territory if someone asserts that the book is not in the online catalog, but nevertheless can be found on the the shelves, third floor of the stacks, two rows from the back, sixth set of stacks, fourth shelf, sixteenth from the left in a dull red binding, catalog number QQXXZZ-12345).
Yes. The catalog number should be relatively constant, and be the basis for further searches. The described position will remain the same until someone moves it to the next shelf as a part of a tidying up program. :-)
Ec