I am taking the images in the Wild Animals word book and expanding it to make book called “The Incredible Lives of Wild Animals: learning more about God through His creation.” It will contain quite a bit of information about the animals. Some of this information is common knowledge (what a croc looks like and hunts), but other information is more specific knowledge (that temperature during incubation determines the sex of their young). Most of the more specific information is still widely known. That is, it comes up multiple times in any google search.
I just glanced at Literacy International’s “Mountains” book and see that it doesn’t include citations, even though they had to have researched the information they present in the book. Having done a bit of research writing at university, I feel compelled by habit to cite that type of information
But, I wanted to ask others what you think and what you have done (if you have developed new books). If I should cite these sources, how would I do it in a Bloom book?
Hi Jenny–this is a good question and I hope others will respond. It seems to me the main goal behind citing works is to give credit where credit is due. So as the Bloom Library librarian, I’d like to see citations for things people can’t write off of the top of the head. Maybe that would mean finding a particular source that has all of the details you want to use but need to look up. If you had just one main source, you could acknowledge it on the title page and/or the credits page. If you ended up with multiple citations, you could add a page for them or add a separate text box on the bottom of any page that has one, and put it there. You wouldn’t need to follow any specific standards, like you would for a research paper. You just need to figure out a way to do so that makes sense and fits with what you’re doing.
Although citations would be normal in academic writing or perhaps textbooks, they aren’t expected in most Bloom books. Of course, any images or quotes should be acknowledged, but generally available information doesn’t need to be. If you drew on any particular resource that could serve as a “if you want to know more” item, you could provide the details. As Suzanne mentioned, the Title Page is a good place for such acknowledgements, or in an introduction to the book.
Thanks so much! I think I will have 2 websites (including Wikipedia) and the names of 2 people (who contributed their knowledge). O was thinking of writing something like this on the credits page:
Special thanks to the following people and websites for their expertise and knowledge:
