jamesd@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. -----------------------