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Re: why citations matter
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From: Nancy Thalia Reynolds <ntreynolds_at_comcast.net>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:19:43 +0000 (UTC)
educators and that none of the advisers objected to the textbook's asserti
accurate and unbiased" by a committee of content specialists and teachers. Five Ponds Press has published 14 books that are used in the Virginia publi
This is an interestingВ story on many levels in addition to the issue o f why citations matter. My understanding is that textbook publishing is qui te profitable. Yet this publisher appears not to have sent the author's tex t out for peer review (to be read and reviewedВ by historians or other scholars in this area), before publishing it. It's unclear whether the Virg inia Dept of Education review required any historians or other scholars to В read the book.
My guess is that textbook publishers have ample resources available to prov ide such a review, but don't feel it is necessary. State budgets these days are at best extremely tight.
Another point: Ms. Masoff has evidently written 14 textbooks for this publi sher that are in use by Virginia public schools. Many authors of series non fiction and textbooks borrow from themselves. They maximize their income by recycling past research (this can lead to interesting copyright issues whe n more than one publisher is involved, but that's beside the point here). T his allows the author to produce more text with less effort in less time, b ut where, as here, factually incorrect information is provided in one text, there's a good chance it will turn up elsewhere in the author's work on th e same subject.
And finally: When the factual error is politically volatile, as here, and n ot widely available in other texts, the chance that such works will get cit ed elsewhere may go up. If an author wishes to establish the existence of b lack Confederate soldiers and only one "vetted" text contains that assertio n, this text is likely to become a prominent "source" for that claim.
Nancy Thalia Reynolds
MIXED HERITAGE IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE (Scarecrow Press, 2009)
----- Original Message -----
From: bookmarch_at_aol.com To: ebattzedek@americanreading.com, ccbc-net@lists.wisc.edu Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:41:06 AM Subject: Re:
why citations matter
Anyone who doubts that citations matter, or thinks that in books for young people they are not necessary, should look up this article in today's Washi ngton Post
7974.html?hpid=topnews
"Virginia 4th-grade textbook criticized over claims on black Confederate soldiers"
By Kevin Sieff В В A 4th grade textbook supposedly vetted and completely approved for us e in the state of Virginia claims that thousands of blacks fought for the S outh during the war -- yet when scholars checked the author's sources it tu rned out she had merely used websites created by Sons of the Confederacy wh o are determined to show that the slavery was not a central issue in the wa r.
Sources and citations matter. And I have to admit in some of my books I've used net sources only to have an expert reader show me that those were date d or inaccurate views -- so the very fact that it is so easy for us to find information makes it all the more important that we get real experts to re view our work before we share it.
Marc Aronson
Received on Wed 20 Oct 2010 02:19:43 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:19:43 +0000 (UTC)
educators and that none of the advisers objected to the textbook's asserti
accurate and unbiased" by a committee of content specialists and teachers. Five Ponds Press has published 14 books that are used in the Virginia publi
This is an interestingВ story on many levels in addition to the issue o f why citations matter. My understanding is that textbook publishing is qui te profitable. Yet this publisher appears not to have sent the author's tex t out for peer review (to be read and reviewedВ by historians or other scholars in this area), before publishing it. It's unclear whether the Virg inia Dept of Education review required any historians or other scholars to В read the book.
My guess is that textbook publishers have ample resources available to prov ide such a review, but don't feel it is necessary. State budgets these days are at best extremely tight.
Another point: Ms. Masoff has evidently written 14 textbooks for this publi sher that are in use by Virginia public schools. Many authors of series non fiction and textbooks borrow from themselves. They maximize their income by recycling past research (this can lead to interesting copyright issues whe n more than one publisher is involved, but that's beside the point here). T his allows the author to produce more text with less effort in less time, b ut where, as here, factually incorrect information is provided in one text, there's a good chance it will turn up elsewhere in the author's work on th e same subject.
And finally: When the factual error is politically volatile, as here, and n ot widely available in other texts, the chance that such works will get cit ed elsewhere may go up. If an author wishes to establish the existence of b lack Confederate soldiers and only one "vetted" text contains that assertio n, this text is likely to become a prominent "source" for that claim.
Nancy Thalia Reynolds
MIXED HERITAGE IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE (Scarecrow Press, 2009)
----- Original Message -----
From: bookmarch_at_aol.com To: ebattzedek@americanreading.com, ccbc-net@lists.wisc.edu Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:41:06 AM Subject: Re:
why citations matter
Anyone who doubts that citations matter, or thinks that in books for young people they are not necessary, should look up this article in today's Washi ngton Post
7974.html?hpid=topnews
"Virginia 4th-grade textbook criticized over claims on black Confederate soldiers"
By Kevin Sieff В В A 4th grade textbook supposedly vetted and completely approved for us e in the state of Virginia claims that thousands of blacks fought for the S outh during the war -- yet when scholars checked the author's sources it tu rned out she had merely used websites created by Sons of the Confederacy wh o are determined to show that the slavery was not a central issue in the wa r.
Sources and citations matter. And I have to admit in some of my books I've used net sources only to have an expert reader show me that those were date d or inaccurate views -- so the very fact that it is so easy for us to find information makes it all the more important that we get real experts to re view our work before we share it.
Marc Aronson
Received on Wed 20 Oct 2010 02:19:43 PM CDT
