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1. heatherstark
   Member
   Jul 21, 2010, 10:40 AM

   What would you forum people recommend as a cool, friendly but effective online link destination when I want to make an online citation of a paper book? I want to be able to point the reader at something online that will enable them to unambiguously identify the book.

   Amazon? Internet book database? Library of Congress? British Library? Some kind of ISBN index? For most in-press titles linking to the Amazon record for the book will work. But, for all that I like Amazon, it doesn't feel right.

   Any ideas...?

   ta, Heather

   The blog I need help with is insightanalysis.wordpress.com.

2. raincoaster
   Member
   Jul 21, 2010, 11:46 AM

   Google the book and see your options. Plenty of books are up at Project Gutenberg or Google Books nowadays, and I always prefer to link to them. Or link to a blog post about the book; bloggers always appreciate that.

3. maidiebike
   Member
   Jul 21, 2010, 1:51 PM

   I don't know how specialized your book is and if should appear Google Books. As a researcher, you maybe already aware of Google Scholar for specialized books and reports written by researchers.

   If the author has a website featuring their book, it would be a safe route and give some credit /exposure to the author directly.

   If it's just a few books, a link to the database record at Library of Congress or British Library individually. I don't know if those links will work 5-10 years from now because libraries occasionally change database software versions.

   A neutral database that lists many books on the market is Books in Print but it is a fee-based database.

   Presumably you just want to give a nifty database record that will give a thumbnail of the book print cover or lst few pages with the all the necessary bibliographic info.

   For anyone else may have forgotten how to cite a paper book properly, basic format is as follows:

   Author's Last Name, First Name. Title: Subtitle. Edition. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year.

4. heatherstark
   Member
   Jul 22, 2010, 1:46 PM

   Thanks Raincoaster and MaidieBike. I need to take a look at Project Gutenberg, Google Books, and Google Scholar . (It's not impossible that I will be wanting to link-cite articles.) Since I'm looking for a source I can use for a variety of different books, as a 'house style'.... what I should probably do is take a handful of possible citations, and then test to see if I can find them on the different candidates for sources. And then the one with the broadest coverage for my needs is probably the best. The problem with using the Very Big national libraries, I suppose, is that their coverage is different, so I would have to be swapping around a bit. cheers, Heather

5. heatherstark
   Member
   Jul 22, 2010, 1:49 PM

   p.s. linking to a blog post about the book wouldn't necessarily give the citation info I need, and could be a distraction... (but in some cases it could be fun...!)

6. raincoaster
   Member
   Jul 22, 2010, 2:14 PM

   I was thinking in terms of the maximum value for YOUR blog. The big libraries, wikipedia, and the national news organizations rarely if ever track their stats to the individual bloggers linking to them, but virtually all bloggers do. By linking to bloggers with thoughts on the same topics as you, you are basically guaranteeing yourself new readers and supporters.

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