Talk:R. L. Shep

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When Wikipedia editors changed the "References" format for "Charles Marchant Stevenson", it had the beneficial effect of shortening what had been a very long "References" list. There was no down side to having abbreviated references, because all the References were also listed as full bibliographic citations under Print & Web Sources.

I am very grateful to everyone who took the time to make many small fixes, as well as providing big help with the "Charles Marchant Stevenson" references.

In "R.L. Shep" I faced several challenges, including lists of publications, two sorted by date ("R.L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award Winners" & "The Bhutan Articles") and one sorted by title ("List of R.L. Shep Publications"), and much longer lists of "References" and "Print & Web Sources" than in "Charles Marchant Stevenson".

I wanted the reader to have easy access to full bibliographic information about the publications, without loading that information into the lists themselves. Also, I wanted the full bibliographic information for each group of titles to cluster, for related titles to be adjacent to each other (for example, see "List of R.L. Shep Publications"). That wouldn't be possible in an alpha by author list of "Print & Web Sources."

I solved the sorting problem by adding a reference with full bibliographic information to each title on my publication lists. Since references appear on the "References" list each time one is cited, the bibliographic information in References mirrors the publications lists. Instead of opting for brief citations in "References", I chose full information.

Then I created "Other Print & Web Sources", a short list with full bibliographic information, but only listing sources that were not cited in References.

I put most of my lists, including "References", in a 2 column format, in order to physically shorten, and visually "pull together" the essay.

It's not perfect, but it achieves what I needed.

I ask that future editors consciously preserve reader access to full bibliographic information, and the list cluster references. I am open to suggestions for other ways of achieving this.

Thank you again for your thoughtful, careful help in the past. Calogera (talk) 03:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)