User:Richardaedwards/Sandbox

Good points have been raised and I've been thinking about the issues and discussing it with other librarians. I'd be glad to participate in any working group that might be formed.

Let me ask your opinion about some potential options.

As one example, my original citation was:
 * Available online through the Washington State Library's Classics in Washington History collection

I wanted to use a template to try and abide by Wikipedia's standards. I used the fields in the {cite book} template that seemed most appropriate to share information researchers need to make informed decisions about the value of the resource, including author, title, publisher and date. And of course a link to the actual digital edition (not to the library home page, but the actual document being cited). In adding that link, it made sense to me at the time to add our library name and collection as the source of that digital edition.

The changes made to remove the "spam" from the Oregon article resulted in this citation:
 * Accompaniment to Mitchell's New map of Texas, Oregon, and California, with the regions adjoining by Samuel Augustus Mitchell

As a librarian and educator, I think it's important to include further citation information, both so that the work can be correctly attributed and so that a researcher looking at the entry can decide whether the link is worth pursuing. The date can imply primary or secondary sources, and even the publisher information can show a point of view (our example book is self-published, for example).

Adding an entry for the library is a way of showing the authenticity and value of the selected source as the publisher of the digital version. If the Washington State Library includes a title in its Classics in Washington History Collection, then a researcher might assume that the work is indeed recognized as important and respected material on topics related to the Pacific Northwest.

The use of the Library name also appear in OCLC cataloging records which are created according to professional library standards. The catalog entry for our digitial version of this book includes a MARC 710 field (Added Entry–Corporate Name) due to the Washington State Library's creation and publication of this digitized edition.

If you search OCLC's Worldcat you will see the Library mentioned in several Notes, and "Washington State Library. Classics in Washington History" appears at the top next to the author as a link. Clicking on that link brings up the entire list of books digitized by our library for that collection.

The Library's name is not just "advertising" but rather is part of the information about this particular edition. That's why it's been included in the catalog record and why I think it should be included in the citation in Wikipedia.

I think it's also important to use a citation template to try and standardize the information and formatting used for Wikipedia entries. So I've taken a deeper look at the cite book template and how the fields from the MARC records might best be matched.

So how about this option where the library, as creator and publisher of the digital version, is listed in the template's OTHERS field:

Does this make sense? Other suggestions?

Richardaedwards 15:41, 14 August 2007 (UTC)