Talk:Bibliography of Ayn Rand and Objectivism

comments
Good idea -- and nice job merging the criticisms section of the Objectivism page.

I think I can probably pull some additional titles out of my literature review and add them here. Alternatively, if somebody else wants to see my review, I'll send it to you on rquest.

Scottryan 22:30, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Some descriptions of the critiques describe their utility, which is very subjective unless one has an agenda to refute Ayn Rand, in which case it's POV. I'm considering removing the judgments of the quality of the articles, unless someone can tell me why they belong there. --24.118.77.253 00:01, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Works by Objectivists vs. Works on Objectivism
Looking at the list of of "Works by other Objectivist writers," there appear to be a number of items that are by authors who may happen to be Objectivists, but which are not about Rand or Objectivism. For example, the first work listed, Martin Anderson's The Federal Bulldozer does not contain the word 'Rand' or the word 'Objectivism' according to Google book search, nor have I ever seen it included on a list of works about Objectivism anywhere except here. Perhaps I'm missing the point of this article, but it is titled "Bibliography of work on Objectivism." I think including works by "Objectivist writers" is only appropriate if the work itself discusses Rand and/or Objectivism. Does anyone disagree? --RL0919 (talk) 19:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we need a new title, one that suggests the inclusion of Peikoff's Ominous Parallels and excludes Anderson's The Federal Bulldozer. --Karbinski (talk) 21:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The Ominous Parallels does discuss Objectivism and has an introduction by Rand, so I think it would be included in any list of books by/about Rand/Objectivism. Anderson's book (and some others) seems out of place, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything about the intention of the list. --RL0919 (talk) 22:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Article Divisions
I'd like to solicit input on the current division of the non-Rand works between "Objectivist" and "Critiques." There are POV issues with this arrangement. Some Objectivists would object to (for example) David Kelley's later works being included as the work of an Objectivist. Others might not consider some of the "critiques" to be particularly critical (e.g., Scibarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical). There also doesn't seem to be a place for works by non-Objectivists that are not critiques, such as Mimi Reisel Gladstein's The Ayn Rand Companion (which isn't listed but should be). So my thought is to scrap the division and just list every book except Rand's in an "Other Books about Objectivism" section. Then have separate sections or subsections for other media (periodicals, articles, films, etc.). Thoughts? (I know, I'm not very bold.) --RL0919 (talk) 00:57, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I decided to take the plunge and reorganize along the lines I discussed above. Because the different lists weren't formatted the same way, the current list is transitional. Stuff to do:
 * Switch the entries originally on the "critiques" list to use the same citation format as the other entries. done
 * Add missing entries. done for books; more articles/book chapters/pamphlets/etc. could be added if desired
 * Add details (ISBN numbers, etc.) for individual entries. done

--RL0919 (talk) 15:43, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Updated above. --RL0919 (talk) 23:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria
Per discussion on the cross-talk page, this article needs more clarity around the criteria for what works should or should not be included. So here are some thoughts.

General:
 * Since this is the English Wikipedia, only works in English.
 * No duplications. For books, this means that books with two differently-named versions (such as Nathaniel Branden's memoirs or the Ellis book) should only have one version appear on the list. I'd say the most recent would be appropriate. For other works, this means no items included in other sources, such as anthology books or periodicals, that are mentioned elsewhere in the article.

Books about Ayn Rand or Objectivism:
 * Only books from academic or commercial publishers; no vanity/self-published works.

Other works about Ayn Rand or Objectivism - This is the section that I personally think needs the most consideration and change from what it has currently:
 * Only items explicitly about Rand or Objectivism. That means no articles related only by being written by someone who is/was an Objectivist, citing Rand without making her the specific topic of discussion, or expressing "Objectivist" ideas without identifying them openly as such.
 * I think we should consider restricting the inclusion of essays/articles to only be items published in academic journals or books. The number of articles appearing in non-academic sources is too great to track and many would be of dubious usefulness for readers.

The current lists follow some, but not all, of these criteria to varying degrees, but not consistently or explicitly. Other ideas for inclusion/exclusion would be greatly appreciated. --RL0919 (talk) 00:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like a good starter set to me.-RLCampbell (talk) 00:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Another criterion: Only serious, non-fiction works. That means no satires or books where Rand is a fictional character. The list currently doesn't have any of these (there are a few), but it should be an explicit criterion. --RL0919 (talk) 01:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * FAQ-ified. (See top of talk). --Cyber cobra (talk) 04:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I made a first pass at weeding the books and "other works" lists based on the criteria above. I think the books list is pretty much in line now. I'm less sure on the other works because a few of the criteria are content-based and I don't have every item readily at hand to confirm them. --RL0919 (talk) 04:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Good work on the criteria, all. I would question whether the "only academic" criterion (in the FAQ) is too high – given the historical antipathy between Oism and academia this might exclude some of the more important works on the topic. Skomorokh  15:00, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My concern is that the number of non-academic essays and articles could be unworkably large, so the "Other works" section needs a stricter standard than what we have for books. (The "academic-only" standard is only supposed to apply to the "Other works," although that might not be clear enough in the FAQ.) But the standard doesn't have to be that one in particular. I was just shooting for something objective that would limit the numbers. Alternative suggestions would be welcomed. --RL0919 (talk) 16:22, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Its not clear to me. If someone collected essays explicitly on Objectivism and published them in a book via a university press, would they make it onto the list as the criteria stands right now? --Karbinski (talk) 16:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * In that case the book should appear on the list of books, but the individual essays should not appear in the list of other works, because of the "no redundancy" criterion. --RL0919 (talk) 16:37, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, that makes sense. How about for standalone articles/essays we require that they be notable, that is - discussed in a secondary source? --Karbinski (talk) 17:15, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a possibility, depending on what "discussed in" means. Gladstein's Companion book contains lengthy lists of articles, but doesn't subject most of them to any significant discussion (that is, talking about them beyond including them on a list). So if the standard is discussion, not just listing or citation, that should be relatively limiting. --RL0919 (talk) 17:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Another possible criterion occurs to me: Should explicitly exclude items that are reviews of Rand's books? There are hundreds of those, and most would not be particularly illuminating with regard to her life or ideas. --RL0919 (talk) 17:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Self-published works
The exclusion of self-published/vanity-published works from this bibliography has had unanimous support in the past, so I've continued that exclusion by removing the self-published entries recently added by. There was a question raised about Enclair Publishing, listed by Redthoreau as the publisher of Reconsidering Ayn Rand by Michael Yang. After a bit of checking I discovered that the original publisher of this book was Winepress Publishing, a known vanity publisher. It was switched to Enclair Publishing subsequently. A check on Enclair's barely-working website shows Reconsidering Ayn Rand to be their only publication, and a whois on the domain shows that Michael Yang is its admin. It seems likely that Enclair is just a self-publishing brand adopted as an alternative to the previous vanity publisher. So I've removed it as well. --RL0919 (talk) 22:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * RL0919, ironically I initially got the titles from --> your own site. I don't see why you would want a Wikipedia bibliography to be less inclusive than your own personal "Objectivism Reference Center"? Additionally, I understand the rationale behind staying away from self-published works as references in articles (if possible), but what would be the rationale of not even including them in a bibliography, even under the sub-title of "self published works"? Certainly Wiki readers can decide the level of credibility to lend to such texts.   Red thoreau  -- (talk) 23:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There is often more detail on specialty sites than there is in a Wikipedia article, but really it makes little difference to me personally whether self-published works are included or not. When I first started revamping this page last year, I left them in, but another editor removed them and there seemed to be agreement from everyone else who commented that removing them was the right way to go. I'm just maintaining that prior consensus. If a new consensus forms to include them, I'll follow it instead. However, if self-published works are to be included, then there are a bunch more than the ones you added. We should at least be consistent: exclude them all or include them all. --RL0919 (talk) 23:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * RL0919, certainly I would want all of the SP's to be included to be consistent. My vote would be for inclusion (as I believe a bibliography should be as inclusive as possible), but I'll let that be a matter of WP:Consensus if you would rather wait.   Red thoreau  -- (talk) 23:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)