[WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>
> On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of
>>> the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near- 
>>> complete)
>>> absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost
>>> impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much
>>> less a positive result...
>>
>> Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all the
>> same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently no-one  
>> has
>> published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you  
>> happen
>> to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
>
> If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.

A citation is essentially a very simple piece of research that can  
easily be reproduced by anyone without specialist knowledge.

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.