On 04/10/05, Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
But there is a practical limit of about thirty volumes for a print publication, isn't there? No, there isn't. The existence proof is any journal. Journals can and do grow linearly, year after year, into long rows of bound volumes which libraries, if not homes, manage to find room for on their shelves. I am sure that some homes have more than 30 bound-volumes-worth of the National Geographic neatly stacked up in attics or basements.
Newspapers (not that many places still keep bound copies) are an even worse case.
Or bibliographies. The British Museum "Catalogue of Printed Books" to 1900 was 95 volumes; to 1905 was another 13-volume supplement. (Four million books, if you're wondering). The Library of Congress /Catalog/ was 167 volumes for 1899-1942 (covering two million books; it was far less because it reproduced the actual catalog cards) - and 1942-7 was another forty. The Bibliotheque Nationale "Catalogue général" ran to 172 volumes as of 1948, and had only got up to 'Sim-' in the alphabet!
"Wikipedia is not paper" is a very good principle for some things - for stylistic issues, for the wonderful ability to massively crosslink, for categorisation and backlinks and the ability to scrawl marginal notes everywhere - but I concur, it's not that meaningful a guideline for inclusion issues.
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk