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I very much like the essential approach suggested here - and the reminder that a citation is about finding stuff - rather than crediting it. In some respects, however, this simply moves the issue to somewhere else. Films (an interesting partial parallel) have had 100 years of internal industrial development resulting in one model of how 'credit' might be allocated (an ever longer list of 'first grips' and 'make up' artists scrolling past while the rest of us leave the theatre or change the channel). The important aspect of this is that the industry recognises the process and makes it work to allocate future employment. This system was created for the industry's own purposes, with little or no regard for good libarianship. The problem is that our industry (the academy) does not seem to want to recognise where 'credit' might lie (and actually takes librarianship much more seriously than does the film industry), and as a result relies on what I consider an enitrely spurious notion of 'authorship' founded in an equally spurious Enlightenment notion of creativity and genius. This is why big science projects haven't adopted a 'credits' list to suprecede their bloated referencing system - they are as much caught up in the lagnuage of 'authority' as we are. As suggested, life is far too short. So the question becomes - are we film or science? This is not a philosophical question, but a practical one - as we need to ensure that how we credit work is recongised by the promotion panels and the Kafkaesque tenure system in N. America; while at the same time remaining an effective means of finding stuff. Professor of Eighteenth-century History Co-Director: Old Bailey Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org<http://www.oldbaileyonline.org>) London Lives, 1690-1800 (www.londonlives.org<http://www.londonlives.org>) Connected Histories (www.connectedhistories.org<http://www.connectedhistories.org>) Locating London's Past (www.locatinglondon.org<http://www.locatinglondon.org>) Winner (with Robert Shoemaker) of the History Today, Trustees' Award for 2010 Twitter: @TimHitchcock Blog: Historyonics - http://historyonics.blogspot.com >>Dare I suggest, as a (long) retired librarian, that the purpose of a citation added to an author's work is to identify a 'publication' which has been quoted from, or otherwise used, in the course of preparing the author's work. It is not and, so far as I know, never has been the purpose of a citation to assign credit for any part of a work or its whole. This can be found on the (now) identified item, where properly it should be sought. This is no new problem. Films, for example, have been cited for many decades without the necessity of duplicating the numerous credits which appear on the film itself. Even the 1967 Anglo-American catalog(u)ing Rules did not attempt to include every film credit. If a person's name is on an item, that should be sufficient for it to be included in a CV. Taken to its logical extreme, should not one in citing, for example, a website, also include its own citations of people who have influenced its content?Life is too short.<<
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