References

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:26:47 PST
Dear All,

I'm finally having a moment to respond to Jane's post. I think if she is 
willing to do a Reference page for us it would be a good addition to the 
wiki. I'd link it to the home page. I think we could do it in stages. First 
would be to have a list of references. Later we could link them to the wiki 
pages. And I agree with Arnold that when we add the links that having 
volunteers to help would make the process go a lot faster. If no volunteers 
come forward, then I anticipate genus pages would get linked to references 
only if someone was especially interested in that genus. That is the nature 
of the wiki and why some pages have more information and pictures on them 
than others.

For now please send the information about your best reference books to 
Jane: janemcgary at earthlink.net. I include below the information she has 
suggested. A lot of us have many bulb books. I certainly do. But I find 
that some I refer to often and others rarely. Let's start with those books 
we really use. For the most part I agree with her recommendations to stick 
to books, but it seems useful to include current revisions of a genus even 
if it is a journal article. I am thinking of the revision of Ferraria and 
Romulea for example that were done within the last few years. Could there 
be an exception for those? This is where you probably will find the latest 
information about names.

>If we limit the references to books (no journal articles) the size should 
>remain manageable. The basic information needed is author(s) with FULL 
>NAMES, please (not just initials, you scientists), date of publication, 
>and full title (including subtitle). It also helps to have the publisher's 
>name, because some books are published by different presses in different 
>countries (known as copublication; typical example is Timber Press in the 
>USA and Batsford in the UK) and the ISBN number, which is a quick way to 
>order a book. All this information can normally be found on the reverse of 
>the title page.

Once references start to come in I think Jane could start to add them to 
the wiki which would save a lot of us having to send information for the 
same book. If she already had it listed, then you wouldn't have to send it 
again.

And although I really like the brief annotation idea, since this will be in 
the public domain should we be careful about what we write? For example 
might it be better just to say "Useful for color photos" instead of 
"Riddled with errors, but useful for color photos." I know we are eager to 
expose some of the books that drive us crazy, but would there be a 
liability issue?

I see what Boyce means when he says we could use whatever words we wanted 
to in a link, but if our page of references got to be long, it would seem 
that the easiest way to find the reference on the page would be searching 
for whatever first word Jane uses. If she makes it alphabetical by author 
then you'd want to list the author in the link. If she arranges it by 
title, then a title. Otherwise you'd have to scan the whole page. But you 
could solve the dilemma of which reference of an author by referring to the 
book in the link as well.
eg. (Manning, Goldlatt, and Snijman's Color Encyclopedia)

Mary Sue




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