CZ Talk:Direct referencing

References with problematic identifiers

I really do like this idea, but I'm not sure how it might be applied to source material that may not have a consistent identifier system. Pre-ISBN books are one example.

Government documents can be another problem, sometimes because for one reason or another, the document identifier system keeps changing, often for no really good reason. For example, there is a class of formal U.S. presidential rulings, in the national security area, that each recent president seems to want to call something different. Really, National Security Action Memoranda and Presidential Directives and National Security Decision Directives are essentially the same document, but with a different name and sequence system in each Administration. Within an Administration, however,the numbering is consistent.

There's also the challenge of referring to historic documents that were done by authors that had no concept of an identifier system, but now are conveniently available as scans on websites. See the notes on Ho Chi Minh, for example, where there are references to Politburo documents. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)