jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) (11/02/90)
I've been looking through some bibliographies, and I notice that many of the books have bibliographies that cite the title, author(s), copyright date, and the place of publication (normally city and state). Some others list the name of the publisher. Why is it that the place of publication is listed? Knowing that a book was published in New York, New York is not going to do you a whole lot of good if you want to find the publisher. I realize that there's some chance of duplication in the names of publishers, and some publishers no longer exist (having gone out of business or merged with another publisher), but still, that seems a much more useful piece of information. When I was writing papers, the guidelines were to do bibliographies with the place, not the publisher. Is this changing? And is there hope that the books will someday include ISBN numbers as well?
manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) (11/02/90)
When I was first taught how to make a bibliography (high school, I
think, which would put it in the mid-sixties), we learned to put
references in the form:
Bloggins, Wilma. \ital{Hermeneutics, Reductionism, and Bart
Simpson}. Somerville, MA: The Paronomastic Press, 1942.
(Actually, I don't remember being told to use TeX control sequences:-) I
suspect that this is a holdover from the days when documents such as
`Books in Print' were not available, Interlibrary Loan was scanty, and
the best way to get less widely available materials was to go to the
city where they were published, and scour libraries looking for them.
It's probably obsolete, but there may be a number of bibliography styles
which still require it.
--
\ Vincent Manis <manis@cs.ubc.ca> "There is no law that vulgarity and
\ Department of Computer Science literary excellence cannot coexist."
/\ University of British Columbia -- A. Trevor Hodge
/ \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394jon@lindy.stanford.edu (Jon Corelis) (11/03/90)
A proper bibliographical citation should identify exactly what
edition of a given title is being referred to. Editions published in
different places are potentially different in pagination, physical
appearance, price, and even content. This may not be so true of major
modern publishers in developed countries, where publishing practices
are fairly standardized, but it can be important in regard to small
presses, older titles, and titles published in countries where the
publishing industry is not so highly organized. And even in the case
of current books of big publishers, it's still useful to have as much
information about the book as possible in order to track it down.
I've noticed that some people on the net give the ISBN as a
reference. The intention of giving precise information is commendable,
but the ISBN really isn't one of the most important pieces of
information. (It can be useful if you want a bookstore to order the
book, but if you have a proper citation, it's easy to look up the ISBN.
On the other hand, if you have an insufficiently detailed citation, it
can be difficult to find the book even if you have the ISBN.) The most
important bibliographical information is the author's full name, book
title, publisher, year, and edition if relevant; other information is
useful but optional.
So this might be a good place to make a plea for better book citations
on the net. As an example, here is a bad citation:
I read about this theory that flying saucers really come from
Tibet in this book called I think Himalian (sp?) Aliens by a
guy named Smith or something like that.
And here is a good citation:
I read about this theory that flying saucers really come from
Tibet in the book Aliens of the Himalayas: The Tibetan UFO
Connection, by Geoffrey Quackenbush Smythe (Crackpot Pub.
2nd ed. 1987.)
--
Jon Corelis jon@lindy.stanford.edu
Stanford University BITNET: GF.JXC@FORSYTHE.STANFORD.EDUjamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) (11/04/90)
In article <10314@ubc-cs.UUCP> manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) writes: >When I was first taught how to make a bibliography (high school, I >think, which would put it in the mid-sixties), we learned to put >references in the form: > > Bloggins, Wilma. \ital{Hermeneutics, Reductionism, and Bart > Simpson}. Somerville, MA: The Paronomastic Press, 1942. > >(Actually, I don't remember being told to use TeX control sequences:-) I >suspect that this is a holdover from the days when documents such as >`Books in Print' were not available, Interlibrary Loan was scanty, and >the best way to get less widely available materials was to go to the >city where they were published, and scour libraries looking for them. > >It's probably obsolete, but there may be a number of bibliography styles >which still require it. Right. "Books in Print", even on CD-ROM, is not anywhere near as authoritative as I would like. It certainly is better than nothing. But I still remember the first disk that I got, which was missing "The C++ Programming Language" and "Internetworking with TCP/IP" as well as several other titles. There are books definitely in-print that are missing, publishers that have been around for years that are missing, and books that have been out-of-print for a long time listed as being available. Don't know if that's the publisher's fault, or Bowker's (who makes Books in Print). It seems like technology has rapidly invaded the library --- locally we have several college and university catalogs available on-line. Most of them are searchable by author and title to some degree. Books in Print on CD-ROM has a keyword search that's pretty useful, but I don't know if that's in the version that can be accessed on Dialog (and probably other places). The problem with the library catalogs is that they seem to only have information on books that they have (or maybe that have passed through the system on loan). It would be nice to feel that with a given bibliographic reference, you could look up the complete information on the book. Some of the libraries that are on the Internet are large enough that they probably actually do a good job of this. Most bibliographies are probably written to a standard specification (I think that we were required to use the MLA standard). I wonder how fast these standards are going to be updated to reflect the increased use of technology? PS: I get a chill at the thought of combing a large university town for a book that was published in that city, although I suppose it could actually be done fairly quickly. -- Public Access UNIX (503) 644-8135 --- Be a lert - read alt.books.technical
jdege@ (Jeff Dege) (11/05/90)
In article <1990Nov4.093319.16659@techbook.com> jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) writes: >In article <10314@ubc-cs.UUCP> manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) writes: >>When I was first taught how to make a bibliography (high school, I >>think, which would put it in the mid-sixties), we learned to put >>references in the form: >> >> Bloggins, Wilma. \ital{Hermeneutics, Reductionism, and Bart >> Simpson}. Somerville, MA: The Paronomastic Press, 1942. >> >>(Actually, I don't remember being told to use TeX control sequences:-) I >>suspect that this is a holdover from the days when documents such as >>`Books in Print' were not available, Interlibrary Loan was scanty, and >>the best way to get less widely available materials was to go to the >>city where they were published, and scour libraries looking for them. >> >>It's probably obsolete, but there may be a number of bibliography styles >>which still require it. > >PS: I get a chill at the thought of combing a large university town for a >book that was published in that city, although I suppose it could actually >be done fairly quickly. > And here I though that the city and state were listed so you could write to the publisher. A letter addressed "Addison Wesley, NY, NY" would probably get delivered (though with the increasing reliance of the UPS on automation, if you can't draw a legible UPC, your letter could go anywhere ;) while a letter addressed "Addison Wesly" would be circular-filed. -----------------------
jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) (11/08/90)
In article <jon.657598485@lindy> jon@lindy.stanford.edu (Jon Corelis) writes: > A proper bibliographical citation should identify exactly what >edition of a given title is being referred to. Editions published in >different places are potentially different in pagination, physical >appearance, price, and even content. This may not be so true of major >modern publishers in developed countries, where publishing practices >are fairly standardized, but it can be important in regard to small >presses, older titles, and titles published in countries where the >publishing industry is not so highly organized. And even in the case >of current books of big publishers, it's still useful to have as much >information about the book as possible in order to track it down. Actually, one of the interesting things that some of the publishers are doing (or maybe thinking of doing) is to publish books on demand --- if you're teaching an introductory CS course and you want to use certain chapters in a book, the publishers will put the chapters in the order that you specify. So chapter 3 can be chapter 1, chapter 2 can stay where it is, and chapter 1 gets tossed. I believe that McGraw-Hill is the furthest along this path. It's kind of similar to what Kinko's and other copy places located around universities do, only with the concurrence of the publisher, if not the author. (My classes used to use lots of chapters from different texts, photocopied at the local copy shop. Not sure if they still do this). > I've noticed that some people on the net give the ISBN as a >reference. The intention of giving precise information is commendable, >but the ISBN really isn't one of the most important pieces of >information. (It can be useful if you want a bookstore to order the >book, but if you have a proper citation, it's easy to look up the ISBN. >On the other hand, if you have an insufficiently detailed citation, it >can be difficult to find the book even if you have the ISBN.) The most >important bibliographical information is the author's full name, book >title, publisher, year, and edition if relevant; other information is >useful but optional. I think it depends on what you're planning to use for searching. As you say, the ISBN can worthless under certain circumstances. On the other hand, I find that it's the quickest search to make, which can be important. It's also got it's own built-in error-checking (even if it's not terribly robust), so if the person has it right, it can be assumed to be a valid ISBN. But giving (or getting) all the information you can definitely makes the search easier. > I read about this theory that flying saucers really come from > Tibet in this book called I think Himalian (sp?) Aliens by a > guy named Smith or something like that. Well, this is where "Books in Print" comes through (assuming that the desired book is <IN> "Books in Print", but that's another story ...) very handily. It lets you do a nice Boolean search for books. "pu = McGraw and au = smith and kw = him$" will find all books published by McGraw something, then all books written by someone named Smith, then all books with a word that starts out with "him" in it. The odds of finding the actual books you want are pretty good, although it's more usual to have only two pieces of information on a book. Some of the magazines for booksellers or librarians run articles on the books that people are looking for, what the book is actually called and what the person thought the title was. Some of them really get hilarious. -- Public Access UNIX at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400) Voice: +1 503 646-8257