{"id":490,"date":"2009-06-13T14:49:51","date_gmt":"2009-06-13T13:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=490"},"modified":"2009-06-17T21:16:35","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T20:16:35","slug":"quick-reference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2009\/06\/quick-reference\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Reference"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Telstar Project<\/a> is looking at how to integrate references to resources into a VLE, making it as easy as possible for students to access the referenced resources, while encouraging students (and teachers?) to adopt good practice in referencing and citations – e.g. Using an appropriate reference\/citation style)<\/p>\n

If you are immersed in the world of Higher education, and especially HE libraries, the above probably makes some kind of sense to you. However, as I have started to look at the problem I’ve realised that I’m not particularly consistent in the way I talk about references and resources, and that I sometimes want to make subtle distinctions between (what I see as) different types of references\/resources. I want to try to establish some definitions, and air some of the distinctions I make in my own mind to see if they are really important, or whether I’m guilty of over complicating things. <\/p>\n

To start with some definitions:<\/p>\n

Resource<\/h3>\n

I started with a rather narrow view of a resource, but after discussion on Twitter I was easily persuaded that a ‘resource’ was essentially anything. The only caveat I’d add in this context is that you must be able to reference it – although I’m not sure if this is a necessary caveat (is there anything that can’t be referenced?). So my definition is this:<\/p>\n

A resource is something that can be referenced.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the context of teaching and learning materials common resources will be:<\/p>\n

Books (print or electronic)
\nJournal articles (print or electronic)
\nBook Chapters (print or electronic)
\nWebsites
\nDatabases<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h3>\n

I think my definition of a reference is relatively straightforward.<\/p>\n

A Reference is a description of a resource to the extent that the resource could be discovered on the basis of the description.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Essentially a reference has to be enough for ‘the reader’ to be able to go and find the relevant resource.<\/p>\n

Citation<\/h3>\n

I struggled a bit more with the definition of a citation. This was because I was actually trying to find a word for a different concept – something I’ll expand on below. This was clearly using the term citation in a way that wasn’t consistent with the common use. So, my current definition of a citation is:<\/p>\n

A citation is an in-context pointer to a reference.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A citation would usually appear in a body of text where you might put a reference, but for the purposes of readability you simply put a pointer to a reference usually in a footnote or endnote to the text.<\/p>\n

Other concepts<\/h3>\n

There is another distinction I find myself wanting to make, but I’m not sure if making these fine grained distinctions is useful or necessary – I’d be interested in comments on this concept:<\/p>\n

Something that refers to a specific part (or aspect) of the thing that is referenced. A reference would tend to point at say a book or a chapter – would it be useful to have a term for when you refer to a specific part of a resource, when the reference points only at the general resource? If I directly quote from a resource, then I’m not just citing that resource, but a very specific bit of that resource. Does this make a difference?<\/p>\n

A similar but slightly different thing is that there is a difference between wanting to point to a website as a general resource, and pointing to a website for the purposes of citation – in the latter case you would want to include the date that the website was accessed for the particular piece of information you are using.<\/p>\n

Comments on the definitions, and any discussion of the latter points welcomed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telstar Project is looking at how to integrate references to resources into a VLE, making it as easy as possible for students to access the referenced resources, while encouraging students (and teachers?) to adopt good practice in referencing and citations – e.g. Using an appropriate reference\/citation style) If you are immersed in the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-telstar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}