User:Revent/Biography/sources

<!--

Copyright
This is a complied bibliography. It includes exact quotations, some from copyrighted sources, to an extent that would normally not be allowed, even in userspace, specifically of bibliography entries. Please note, however: So, please don't decide this is a violation of the rules and delete it. Arranging this and it's 'parent' page was a pain, but I plan of dumping a lot of data into it.
 * A bibliography is a listing of 'objective facts', specifically that "this book talks about that". Such listings are not subject to copyright protection. Please see Feist v. Rural for the US Supreme Court precedent that established this, specifically the sentence, " If Feist were to take the directory and rearrange (the listings) it would destroy the copyright owned in the data. ".
 * The formatting of the actual entries is a matter of the style manual that was used for the publication. It is therefore the intellectual property of the publisher of the style manual, and 'licensing' such property for public use is the entire point of writing one. The copyright holder of the source I am actually quoting does not hold copyright over the included bibliography, but only their layout and 'method of logical arrangement', if it is something creative instead of obvious. Alphabetical is obvious.
 * The method I am using to move the text is by cutting-and-pasting through an ascii edit window, which is a method that destroys any possible 'Typographical Copyright'. The visual presentation here is completely different.
 * The bibliographic entries quoted are specifically and explicitly attributed, though it make require following links within the page. This is both for indexing purposes, and to preserve the 'tracability' of "who said this is a source".
 * Thanks. Revent (talk) 21:42, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of included information

 * This is a listing of bibliographic references, taken from 'biographical dictionaries' found at various locations on the Internet. Most of these dictionaries are in the public domain, while others are located behind paywalls. Some of these paywalls sometimes provide free access to random articles, as a 'teaser', making it legally possible to freely compile a list of what 'scholarly works' consider to be good sources, and these referenced works are mostly in the public domain. I am also myself saving personal copies of these entries, and am noting this in the sub-headers. It is entirely legal and allowable for me to email the text to editors who wish to use the entry itself as a source, and I myself am providing the attribution. I'm even writing the cites. :)
 * Note that WP:VERIFIABILITY explicitly says that information must be correct, attributed, and verifiable. It also specifically says that it does not have to be 'easy'. Doing this will help improve these articles by 'masking' the randomness the publishers provide, but only for the editors, not the readers.
 * The "Oxford Reference" dictionaries, such as the ODNB, are actually visible to anyone with a British library card, therefore the 'missing' bibliographies are essentially a checklist of requests for someone to retrieve and email me the entire entry so I can improve this list. I specifically say email because the actual prose of the entries themselves cannot legally be anywhere on Wikipedia.
 * It is my intent that it become 'comprehensive', at least for the smaller dictionaries, some of which only run to a few hundred entries, and include notable historic people that WP covers mostly covers poorly or not at all.
 * These dictionaries are 'scholarly works', published under peer review, similar to an encyclopedia. The sources listed have already been chosen by topical experts as reliable sources.
 * A lot of these citations are written in ways that most people will probably find esoteric, since they are to very old sources and include details about how the book was actually printed. '8vo', etc.
 * It is actually my intention to eventually 'wikify' and template these cites over time, and provide 'standardized' citations for people to actually use, especially of sources that can be cited in different places, and for the encyclopedias and such I am using. These really old British sources don't have 'modern' unique identifiers such as ISBNs, but they are listed places such as the English Short Title Catalog. They are also the subject of large-scale digitization projects like Google Books and Hathi Trust, and having a list of 'desired' source references will be useful.

-->