Wikipedia:WikiProject Books
| Main | Discussion | Structure (for non-fiction) | Featured and good content | Deletion talks | Article alerts |
 | This is WikiProject Books, a collaboration area for Wikipedians interested in improving coverage of Books. New participants are welcome; please feel free to participate!
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Scope |
WikiProject Books was formed to organize and promote quality coverage of non-fiction books on Wikipedia.
- Articles concerning fiction should be directed to WikiProject Novels, WikiProject Children's literature and WikiProject Fictional characters.
- Articles concerning people, such as authors, should be directed to WikiProject Biography.
- Articles concerning literary concepts should be directed to WikiProject Literature.
- Articles on poems should be directed to WikiProject Poetry.
- Articles on magazines and journals should be directed to WikiProject Magazines and WikiProject Academic Journals.
- Articles concerning reference works (e.g. encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri), are in scope and apply to the project's Reference works task force.
As of 28 December 2024, there are 31,058 articles and 1379 lists within the scope of WikiProject Books, of which 117 are featured and 467 are good articles. These articles have the {{WikiProject Books}} template on their talk page.
Project organization |
- To join WikiProject Books, simply list your name under the member page.
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- See also: Outline of books
Article structure |
All articles should begin with a lead section that is in compliance with Wikipedia:Lead section, including a lead sentence that provides the full title of the book (and any alternative titles) in bold and italics. The lead should provide a stand-alone summary of the article's body. The content of the body should be guided by the information the references provide. There are no required specific sections; it is left to individual editors to decide how to best organize the content. However, the content should contain the following topics:
Background — provide the context. Who wrote the book, when, where, etc. For example, is this the author's first book or tenth? Is the author an academic, ideologue, or otherwise experienced with the subject? Context can also be provided for the book's subject. For example, is it a book about the war one year after the war ended or fifty years after? If it is a biography of the last 25 years of a person's life, then provide the context about what happened during the first part of that person's life that led to the events covered by the book.
Summary/Content — report on the content of the book and how it is organized. This can include any thesis and major illustrative examples. Do not try to re-organize the content, just summarize and report it.
Style/Genre — describe how the book is written. This can include comments regarding the tone, target audience (academic work, popular science, etc.), organization (chronological, thematic, etc.), style comparisons with other authors/works, comparison to past work by the same author (expansion of previous ideas), or other aspects.
Analysis — bolster or refute the arguments made in the book. Did any reviewers expand on the book's ideas or, alternatively, refute the ideas? Did the reviewers find the thesis was supported by the evidence presented in the book? This can compare or contrast approaches used by other authors/works. This should not be an opinionated section; this should be neutral reporting and analysis.
Publication — detail the book's publication. This can include information regarding the publisher or imprint, when it was released, how the book was promoted (book tour, speaking engagements, published excerpts, etc.), formats (hardcover, paperback, audiobook, ebook, etc.), cover art, translations into other languages, or other details.
Reception — summarize the opinions of book reviewers. This section should contain a balanced reflection of the reviews. Providing balance is sometimes difficult because some reviews are more critical than others; some reviews may simply state "this book is great" while others may provide detailed analysis about what made the book good/bad.
- Other article templates
- Bibliographies: WikiProject Bibliographies
- Novels: WikiProject Novels/ArticleTemplate
- Comics: WikiProject Comics/exemplars
- Libraries: WikiProject Books/Library article and Wikipedia:WikiProject Libraries
- Biographies (e.g. authors): {{subst:Biography}} and WikiProject Biography
- Fictional characters: WikiProject Fictional characters/Style guide or WikiProject Novels/CharacterArticleTemplate
Assessment |
Articles are assessed according to the standard Wikipedia Grading scheme.
One of the most common methods used by WikiProjects to monitor and prioritize their work is that of assessing the articles within their scope. Assessments can be done by anyone, in accordance with the grading scheme, but to request an independent review (or re-assessment) ask one of the project members or list it at the Assessment page.
 FA |  A |  GA | B | C | Start | Stub | FL | List | Category | Disambig | Draft | File | Portal | Project | Template | NA | ??? |
| 80 | 0 | 467 | 1,130 | 3,962 | 12,697 | 12,679 | 37 | 1,379 | 9,580 | 52 | 106 | 23,343 | 9 | 26 | 465 | 1,185 | 6 |
Naming articles |
Per Wikipedia:Article titles, the title of the article should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in English-language sources. For books, the article name should be the short title of the book, for example the book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating has the article name The 100-Mile Diet. If the article name is already taken, there are two options: either use the long title (such as Power: A New Social Analysis) or the disambiguation "book" (such as Outliers (book)). If a second disambiguation is required, use the author's surname (such as My Story (Kray book) and My Story (Couillard book)). For books not written in a Latin alphabet, the title should be transliterated (such as 孫子兵法 → The Art of War). For other non-English books, use the title that the English language references use. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books) provides more detailed guidelines and examples.
Infobox |
Per Wikipedia:Infobox, the purpose of the infobox is to summarize key facts in the article in which it appears. The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any particular article. Because books share many common characteristics, the common {{Infobox Book}} is used. Alternatively, there is {{Infobox book series}} which is very similar but with the added parameters |number_of_books= and |list_books=. If a parameter is blank or missing then that parameter will not appear (but the infobox will still work) — do this if the parameter is irrelevant or unknown.
Images |
Images are not required but can be used for identification purposes or to illustrate specific parts of the text. Unless the book was published before 1929 the book cover art is likely copyrighted (likely owned by the publisher) and, therefore, a Fair Use rationale must be provided. Upload these copyrighted book covers at Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard using the {{Book cover}} template for the Fair Use rationale. Upload free images (photos you took yourself or public domain images or freely licensed media) at commons:Special:Upload. More detailed guidelines can be found at Wikipedia:Images and Wikipedia:Image use policy.
If using an image of the book cover art, try to select the cover of the book's first edition. If using an image of the author, try to select a photo dated around the time of the book's publication. WikiProject Books/Images provides more detailed guidelines and examples.
Insert images in articles by adding [[File:Example.png|thumb|alt=Example alt text|Example caption]].
The alt= parameter will only display on text-only readers. Per Wikipedia:Captions, the caption should clearly and succinctly identify the subject of the picture, without detailing the obvious, and establish the picture's relevance to the article. The caption only ends with a period if it is a complete sentence.
Categories |
Per Wikipedia:Categorization, articles are sorted into a hierarchy of categories which readers can browse and quickly find sets of pages with similar characteristics. Categorization is based on the defining characteristics of the article. The most common categories for books are Category:Books by year (for example Category:1993 books), Category:Books by genre, Category:Books by topic, and Category:Books by country.
Lists |
- Stand-alone lists
Articles that consist of a stand-alone lists are rated either List-class or Featured List-Class (the other classes, like B-class or GA-class do not apply). Per Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists these articles should have a lead section that provides background information, encyclopedic context, and explicitly state the inclusion criteria. The body provides list (or lists) accompanied with relevant common information (like author or release date for a list of books). They are often organized using tables because they can use the sorting feature. Alternatively, Template:Book list can be used:
| Title | Author | Publisher | Date | Genre | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anne of Green Gables | Lucy Maud Montgomery | L. C. Page & Co. | April 1908 | Children's novel | 429 pp | |
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Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, middle-aged siblings who live together at Green Gables, a farm in Avonlea, on Prince Edward Island, decide to adopt an orphan boy. Through a series of mishaps, what ends up under their roof is a precocious girl of eleven named Anne Shirley. | ||||||
| Anne of Avonlea | Lucy Maud Montgomery | L. C. Page & Co. | 1909 | Children's novel | 429 pp | |
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The second chapter in the life of Anne Shirley. This book follows Anne from the age of 16 to 18, during the two years that she teaches at Avonlea school. | ||||||
Examples of stand-alone list articles include: George Orwell bibliography, List of books about Wikipedia, and National Outdoor Book Award.
- Embedded lists
Lists that form only a small part of an article are called embedded lists. While content should be presented in prose, sometimes information is best presented as a list. Like stand-alone lists, they can use tables. Consult Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists for guidelines on when and how to use these lists.
Stubs |
Per Wikipedia:Stub, stub articles are those that are too short to provide more than rudimentary information about a subject. These articles should include a stub template at the end of the article. You may use the generic {{book-stub}} template or a more specific one, like {{nonfiction-book-stub}}, {{bio-book-stub}}, {{crime-book-stub}}, {{hist-book-stub}}, {{poli-book-stub}}, {{reli-book-stub}}, {{science-book-stub}}, {{travel-book-stub}}, or others listed at WikiProject Stub sorting.
Template |
| Books Unassessed | ||||||
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The general banner for WikiProject Books is {{WikiProject Books}}. You can add it to any articles in the scope of the WikiProject like so:
{{WikiProject Books
|class =
|listas =
}}
class: Options are FA, GA, B, C, Start, Stub, Dab, Template, Cat. If blank, this will default as Unassessed. The criteria for each class is listed at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Grades.
listas: Operates like {{DEFAULTSORT}} (for example, for The Autobiography of Malcolm X, use |listas=Autobiography of Malcolm X, The).
Full template documentation can be found at Template:WikiProject Books.
Additionally, you may show you are a member of this project by adding {{User WikiProject Books}} onto your userpage. Which will show as this:
| This user participates in WikiProject Books. |
Work to be done |
- Write articles by expanding stub-class or start-class articles.
- Create new articles from Wikipedia:Requested articles/Culture and fine arts/Literature and WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable books
- Participate in literature-related deletion discussions
- Add images to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of publications
- Help Push to Wikipedia 1.0 (see also WikiProject Books/Worklist)
- Review articles at Wikipedia:Peer review, Featured article candidates, or new articles:
External links |
- Wikiproject Watchlist - WikiProject Books
- The Norton Anthology of World Literature Study material which provides notes and context.
- Library of Congress Online Catalog Edition information and subject headings.
- The British Library Online catalog.
- The European Library Online catalogs and digital collections of Europe's national libraries.
- the complete review Compilation of book reviews
- The Literary Encyclopedia Profiles of works and authors written by scholars
- The Neglected Books Page - www.NeglectedBooks.com: Where forgotten books are remembered
