Xref: utzoo rec.arts.books:15010 comp.edu:3775 Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!pdxgate!qiclab!techbook!jamesd From: jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) Newsgroups: alt.book.technical,rec.arts.books,comp.edu,fidonet.library Subject: Re: Why city and state in bibliographies? Message-ID: <1990Nov7.231924.4807@techbook.com> Date: 7 Nov 90 23:19:24 GMT References: <1990Nov2.024548.7207@techbook.com> Organization: TECHbooks of Beaverton Oregon - Public Access Unix Lines: 60 In article 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 "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