Wikipedia talk:Library

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I think we should agree on some categories and then split the list into subpages (if and when it gets big enough). I think that for now the subpage levels should be quite high up the heirachy, e.g. /Science rather than /Biology etc. I'll start a proposed structure below. Joe D (t) 21:32, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't the librarians out there be able to suggest something? We're spoilt, in WP, by having a great deal of freedom in our categorisation structure. One article (or subcategory) can appear in many categories. Not so for a text in a classification scheme such as is being proposed here. Why reinvent the wheel? Couldn't we find some librarians at a talk page of some likely site to provide some advice? --SilasM 03:29, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, perhaps we could think about co-ordinating this with a reform of the peer review which I suggested (splitting by discipline so that we can watch the subjects we're interested/qualified in). Joe D (t) 21:34, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

Key:

• Subpage

- Page section

Main Page

- Non-fiction

• Biographies
• History
• Places

-Sections or subpages by country

• Science

-Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science

• Technology + Computers

- Fiction

Literature

Poetry

Novels

[edit] Expanding the scope

Hey! You guys beat me to it with this idea :( Anyway, here's what I was thinking: can we widen the scope a little bit? I was thinking we could use templates or transclude pages. Here's an idea I came up with:

Church History in Plain Language
Shelly, Bruce L. (1995). Nashville:Thomas Nelson Publishers. ISBN 0-8499-3861-9.
Owners Ta bu shi da yu	Notes Ta bu shi da yu: Originally written by Bruce Shelley for his Bible College students, this book is a review of Church history from the book of Acts to the present day. I tend to find that the end bit focuses too much on American Christian history too much, and it skims over certain things (like the Anabaptists) but overall it's a really solid book if you are just looking for the main story of the history of the church.

My idea is to make this more participatory. People get a chance to give their opinion of the reference material and fiction books they have at hand. This will help kick off the Library! After all, if one gets to hold forth on their opinion of something and we suspend NPOV on that bit, then I'm sure we'll all of a sudden get more people adding there books. However, I would suggest that we enforce a rule that says that all criticism/praise must have details why they have come to their conclusion. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:28, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the layout, should we be bold and start implementing both? Joe D (t) 12:44, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As I said to Tabu on IRC, I don't like this idea much in this form. The ideas for some sort of Wikicite would be excellent - they cover this sort of thing. However, merging this with the library it would create massive page lag on the library page and hijack its intended use (i.e. it would become more about writing about sources than finding people with the appropriate book). Ambi 13:25, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Are you aware the [[Category:Sources]] has 6155 entries (Thanks Eric Zachte for the database query) in it already? And there are probably other books, journal articles etc that haven't been appropriately tagged. By all means create a list of books in the Wikipedia:Library; but it would be nice if each book is created as a wikipedia link, because that will encourage the creation of a stub. If you feel like commenting on the book then create a stub.

Creating a library of reference material is a great idea; because we can check facts easier. But I think we will benefit the most from actually creating articles about these references. :ChrisG 13:32, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think having stubs about books in the main Wikipedia is not necessarily such a good idea. Some of our sources may be seen as non-notable and therefore not encyclopedic. The reason the notes section is good is because it gives people the ability to note what they think about a particular source. This will help people verify whether the source is being used incorrectly or being used in a POV manner. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:31, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe that virtually any published book from a reputable publisher is notable enough. Wiki is not paper. Obviously, there are degrees of significance; and we only really need articles on significant books and journal articles; but if someone wants to write an article on a fairly insignificant book then I would be more than happy for them to do it. :ChrisG 16:38, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Include ISBN number - that way it will be easier to check out publisher and reader reviews on Amazon or Barnes and Noble for further book info and viewpoints.
I think each should be a link to an article about the book, a stub with basic info would be great. Basically any book used as a reference should have a Wiki article. POV critique should be on this list rather than on the book article.
Also - if you don't add your username to your book listings, the list is not useful for the stated purpose. Vsmith 17:09, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Combining ideas

Maybe the way to get the best of both worlds is to indicate ownership on the talk page of the source article. Maurreen 17:43, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)