CCBC-Net Archives

Re: why citations matter

From: Meghan McCarthy <meghanmccarthy007_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:30:27 -0700 (PDT)

Hmm. This is why I'm VERY hesitant to list websites in the back of my books. You can't control the content of websites--they can change daily! It's just too risky to print those in the backs of books, in my opinion. The only exception is government sites. I felt comfortable enough with NASA's site to list that, for example.

meghan mccarthy


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From: Sharron L. McElmeel Cc: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu Sent: Wed, October 20, 2010 2:07:41 PM Subject: Re:
 why citations matter

I really appreciate the time it takes authors to research their books and who do a great job of researching and providing citations for their resources at the end of the book. Books are most always cited correctly but, my pet peeve is that time after time websites used are not cited at all properly. Often it is only the URL that is given. That is not an appropriate citation -- similar to giving one the call number for a book but not giving us the author or title of the book. As an example: I reviewed a wonderful book, about 5 months after it was released -- Reynolds, Jan. (2009) Cycle of Rice- Cycle of Life: A Story of Sustainable Farming. Illustrated with photographs. Lee & Low.

At the end of the book there were three websites provided with already out-of-date URLs - with only the URLs the resources would have been lost to most readers. The pages did still exist but the pages had been moved by the person who controlled the resources. Might be similar to a librarian who decides that a book should be moved to the "E" section rather than being on the fiction shelves. Book is still there just in a different place. So to look up the website page we need to know more than the URL.

So authors if you are going to cite resources, and expect them to be of any )

BTW Deb I always find your books extremely well-researched and enjoy knowing the extent that you go to verify your information.

Sharron McElmeel
Received on Wed 20 Oct 2010 11:30:27 AM CDT