Wikipedia:Notability (books)

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This page documents an English Wikipedia notability guideline.

Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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This page in a nutshell: A book is generally notable if it verifiably meets through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria:

The book has been the subject ^[1] of multiple, non-trivial^[2] published works whose sources are independent of the book itself,^[3] with at least some of these works serving a general audience. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews. Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary.
- The immediately preceding criterion excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.^[4]
The book has won a major literary award.
The book has been made or adapted with attribution into a motion picture that was released into multiple commercial theaters, or was aired on a nationally televised network or cable station in any country.
The book is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country.^[5]
The book's author is so historically significant that any of his or her written works may be considered notable.^[6]

This page gives some rough guidelines intended to be used by Wikipedia editors to decide whether a book should or should not have an article on Wikipedia. While satisfying these notability guidelines generally indicates a book warrants an article, failing to satisfy them is not a criterion for speedy deletion.

These guidelines may be considered a specialized version of Wikipedia:Notability, applied to books, reflecting the core Wikipedia policies, including the following:

Claims of notability must adhere to Wikipedia's policy on verifiability; it is not enough to simply assert that a book meets a criterion without substantiating that claim with reliable sources.

"Notability" as used herein is not a reflection of a book's worth. A book may be brilliantly written, fascinating and topical, while still not being notable enough to ensure sufficient verifiable source material exists to create an article in an encyclopedia.

Coverage notes

The concept of "book" is widely defined, this guideline does not presently provide specific notability criteria for the following types of publications: comic books; graphic novels; magazines; reference works such as dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, atlases and almanacs; music-specific publications such as instruction and notation books and librettos; instruction manuals, and exam prep books. Specific guidelines may be developed in the future. Until then, this guideline may be instructive by analogy.

The criteria set forth below applies to books in electronic form (or e-books). However, the notability of e-books should also be evaluated using the notability criteria for web-specific content, as well as a determination of whether the book is covered by Project Gutenberg or an analogous project.

Criteria

A book is generally notable if it verifiably meets through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria:

The book has been the subject ^[1] of multiple, non-trivial^[2] published works whose sources are independent of the book itself,^[3] with at least some of these works serving a general audience. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries and reviews. Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary.
- The immediately preceding criterion excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.^[4]
The book has won a major literary award.
The book has been made or adapted with attribution into a motion picture that was released into multiple commercial theaters, or was aired on a nationally televised network or cable station in any country.
The book is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country.^[5]
The book's author is so historically significant that any of his or her written works may be considered notable. This does not simply mean that the book's author is him/herself notable by Wikipedia's standards, rather that the book's author is of exceptional significance and the author's life and body of work would be a common study subject in literature classes.^[6]

Other considerations

Threshold standards

Books should have at a minimum an ISBN number (for books published after 1966), be available at a dozen or more libraries and be catalogued by its country of origin's official or de facto national library. For example, in the United States books are catalogued by the Library of Congress; United Kingdom at the British Library; Australia at the National Library of Australia; Canada at the Library and Archives Canada; France at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, China at the National Library Board; in Brazil by the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional; Argentina at Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina; and in India at the National Library of India. For a complete list, see List of national libraries.

However, these are exclusionary criteria rather than inclusionary; meeting these threshold standards does not imply that a book is notable, whereas a book which does not meet them, most likely is not.

Self-publication

In this regard, it should be especially noted that self-publication and/or publication by a vanity press is indicative, but not determinative of non-notability. Exceptions do exist such as Robert Gunther's Early Science in Oxford or Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane. Note however that both of these books would be considered notable by virtue (for instance) of criterion 1.

Taking the preceding threshold section into account, it should be noted that many vanity press books are both assigned ISBN numbers and may be listed in a national library, as well as are amenable to being found through a Google Book Search.

By the same token, it should always weigh against an article's inclusion if the author or other interested party is the creator of the Wikipedia article. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Autobiography for more information.

Online bookstores

A book's listing at online bookstores such as Barnes & Noble.com or Amazon.com is not by itself an indication of notability as both websites are non-exclusionary, including large numbers of vanity press publications. There is no present agreement on how high a book must fall on Amazon's sales rank listing (in the "product details" section for a book's listing) in order to provide evidence of its notability or non-notability.

Not yet published books

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Articles about books that are not yet published are strongly discouraged and such articles are only accepted under criterial other than WP:Notability (books), typically because the anticipation of the book is notable in its own right. Such cases should still have multiple independent sources providing strong evidence that the book will be published, including the title of the book and an approximate date of publication.

Non-contemporary books

From a pragmatic standpoint, the vast majority of books upon which articles are written which invite a notability judgment call and which find their way to articles for deletion, are from the modern era. Nevertheless, the notability of books written or published much earlier may occasionally be disputed and the criteria proposed above intended primarily for modern books may not be as suitable. We suggest instead a more common sense approach which considers whether the book has been widely cited or written about, whether it has been recently reprinted, the fame that the book enjoyed in the past and its place in the history of literature.

Academic books

Academic books serve a very different function and come to be published through very different processes than do books intended for the general public. They are often highly specialized, have small printing runs, and may only be available in specialized libraries and bookstores. For these reasons, the bulk of standards delineated previously for mainstream books are incompatible in the academic bailiwick. Again, common sense should prevail. In that case, notability should rely on whether it is published by an academic press,^[7] how widely the book is cited by other academic publications or in the media,^[8] how influential the book is considered to be in its specialty area, or adjunct disciplines, and whether it is taught or required reading in a number of reputable educational institutions.

Derivative articles

It is a general consensus on Wikipedia that articles should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of notability. What this means is that while a book may be notable, it is not normally advisable to have a separate article on a character or thing from the book, and it is often the case that despite the book being manifestly notable, a derivative article from it is not. Exceptions do, of course, exist—see Wikipedia:Notability (fiction).

In some situations, where the book itself does not fit the established criteria for notability, or if the book is notable but the author has an article in Wikipedia, it may be better to feature material about the book in the author's article, rather than creating a separate article for that book.

Resources

Clicking on any linked ISBN number on Wikipedia takes you to Special:Booksources where preformatted links for the specific book are provided, allowing access to multiple library catalogues, bookseller databases and other book resources.
Library of Congress Online Catalog: A searchable database useful in identifying publisher, edition, etc.
The British Library's online catalogue.
The Literary Encyclopedia: 3300 profiles of authors, works and literary and historical topics and references of 18,000 works.
Norton anthology of world literature: Useful in the exploration of world literature.
Worldcat: search for a book in library catalogues. Contains 1.8 billion items in 18,000 libraries worldwide.
Questia Online Library , allows full-text search, and paid subscription reading access to 64,000+ books and 1,000,000+ journal, magazine, and newspaper articles in their collection. Their strength is full text of recent academic books by major publishers such as Oxford University Press, University of North Carolina Press, and Greenwood Press, along with thousands of older academic books that are available only in larger university libraries.

Notes

^ ^a ^b The "subject" of a work means non-trivial treatment and excludes mere mention of the book, its author or of its publication, price listings and other nonsubstantive detail treatment.
^ ^a ^b "Non-trivial" excludes personal websites, blogs, bulletin boards, Usenet posts, wikis and other media that are not themselves reliable. An analysis of the manner of treatment is crucial as well; Slashdot.org for example is reliable, but postings to that site by members of the public on a subject do not share the site's imprimatur. Be careful to check that the author, publisher, agent, vendor. etc. of a particular book are in no way interested in any third party source.
^ ^a ^b Independent does not mean independent of the publishing industry, but only refers to those actually involved with the particular book.
^ ^a ^b Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the book. (See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material). The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or of its author, publisher, vendor or agent) have actually considered the book notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it.
^ ^a ^b This criterion does not include textbooks or reference books written specifically for study in educational programs, but only independent works deemed sufficiently significant to be the subject of study themselves, such as major works in philosophy, literature, or science.
^ ^a ^b For example, a person whose life or works is a subject of common classroom study.
^ Publication by a prominent academic press should be accorded far more weight than the analogous benchmark defined for publication of mainstream book by well known commercial publishers, by virtue of the non-commercial nature of such presses, and the peer review process that must be passed before publication is allowed to go forward. See university book publishers for a partial list of such presses. Note that because a large portion of (en.)Wikipedia articles are written by English speaking people from English speaking nations, this list currently has an English speaking bias.
^ A book's subject may be so specialized, such as in the esoteric math or physics spheres, that only a few hundred (or less) people in the world are situated to understand and comment on the material.