Talk:List of Great Books

Why is the list of required reading at one particular college, out of thousands of colleges in the world, worthy of an article? Note that Great Books of the Western World already exists - that is a "list of great books" which had widespread influence, not just on a single campus, and it covers most of the works on this list.

Should there be a "list of great books" article for every university that compiles one? Should there be a "list of great mathematical problems" article and a "list of great chemical experiments" article required at this particular school? If not, why not?

In other words, I think this article should be deleted, but I wondered what kind of response that would get from people who are watching the page. - DavidWBrooks 01:45, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I must strongly disagree. The St. John's Program is unique among all lists of great books in that it is the only one that has consistently refused to bow to any revision whatsoever. The "Great Books of the Western World," by contrast, added Waiting for Godot, even though 52 years isn't nearly enough time to determine whether or not any work is significant (when was the last time anyone read The Magnificent Ambersons, for instance?)

I don't know when the last time anyone read it was, but I read it about five years ago and I enjoyed it. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:20, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

By contrast, the St. John's list really provides a feel for the best works of the western world. It and Harold Bloom's canon are the only ones that have been resolute in pursuit of this noble goal. I didn't/don't even go to St. John's, by the way, but I have enormous respect for this program.) --zenohockey 01:34, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Then, at the very least, this article needs to be renamed: "List of great books" is far too sweeping. (Chinese scholars, for example, might disagree!) How about "Great Books Program (St. John's College)"? (I'm a sysops and so I can Move it to a new name when/if we agree on one)

P.S. I read "The Magnificent Ambersons" about five years ago. Haven't seen the movie yet, though. - DavidWBrooks 15:58, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Annapolis vs. Santa Fe?

It's a great shame that this list isn't sourced. I can't figure out whether the lists used at Annapolis and Santa Fe are actually slightly different or not. The Santa Fe list has been merged into St. John's College, U. S.. I'm not sure what to do with this one, yet. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:18, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I hope that at some point we start using normal orthography (upper and lower case) for the authors of these books....some of which aren't books. - Nunh-huh 01:34, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Recent history is that an article entitled List of Great Books, Santa Fe came up for VfD. It survived. That article was created with "normal orthography" for the authors, but in most cases only the last names were used ("Freud", "Dubois" for W. E. B. Dubois, etc.). There was quite a bit of work done by various editors in Wikifying and eliminating double redirects, so that "Dubois" was still displayed as "Dubois" but linked as "W. E. B. Dubois." I came in at the VfD discussion, arguing that the list itself was valuable but should be part of the St. John's College article, not an article by itself. Among other things that puts it into context with the college's history and curriculum, etc.

After it survived VfD I decided to merge it. And started to unscramble a small can of worms. To begin with, there were almost identical articles for St. John's University, Annapolis and St. John's University, Santa Fe. Since the college presents itself as a "single college with two campuses" and since much of the information, particularly on the educational philosophy and description, is common to both, as is much of the history, I thought the two articles should be merged, which I've done, and have removed most of the important double-redirects thereby created.

Now, this article, whose existence I hadn't discovered, needs to be dealt with.

The funny orthography is almost certainly the result of its being copied from this web page.

Now, that in itself raises the question of whether it's a copyvio. In the case of the Santa Fe list, since I wanted to keep the list, I did what I thought was appropriate: I raised the question in the VfD discussion, and I also posed it as a question on the Copyright Problems page, but did not put a copyvio tag on the page itself. When several days elapsed with no reply in the Copyright Problems page and a noncommittal comment in the VfD discussion, I decided not to pursue that actively, but the question remains in my mind. My feeling is that whether or not a such a list is copyrightable, it's almost inconceivable that anyone would make a fuss about it.

Now, as for this list. My belief is that both campuses use the same book list and that the differences between this one and the Santa Fe list are probably not real or are not significant.

I think the right thing to do is to convert this list into a redirect to St. John's College, U. S. as the present title is no good. and random lists of Great Books floating around without context do not appeal to me. Then crosslink all the articles on Great Books, Harvard Classics, Western canon, Great Books of the Western World, St. John's College, U. S., Educational perennialism, etc. etc. so that anyone interested in comparing the various lists can find them.

But I don't want to convert it to a redirect until I can figure out what its relation to the Santa Fe list really is.

My personal guess is that they're both copied from the website but at different times, and there may be minor differences from year to year both in the list itself and the level of detail at which the list is presented. But that's just a guess. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:19, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Annapolis list = Santa Fe list

Ah. Compare [1] and [2] which are "the" reading list according to the Annapolis and Santa Fe websites, respectively. They are identical. Clearly the intention is that the two colleges only use on reading list. I'm going to make sure the St. John's College, U. S. article matches what's currently on the website, describe it as the St. John's list, and make this list redirect to St. John's College, U. S.. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:28, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Mercilessly refactored

OK. This is now a redirect to Western canon. Because the phrase Great Books really refers to the same thing as the Western canon. This article was one particular list of great books = one attempt to define the Western canon, namely the St. John's College reading list. It now redirects to Western canon and that article now contains links to three specific lists of great books near the top, so people who are searching for a List of Great Books should find what they seek. I've verified that St. John's two campuses use the same list, the list at [[ St. John's College, U. S. has now been brought into conformity with the college's website, and the version that I started editing from had the authors' names with the usual (mixed-case) orthography, i.e. Freud rather than FREUD. Dpbsmith (talk) 03:16, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Seems like a good solution: linking to the lists institutions maintain (and change from time to time) is more than reasonable...we don't have to reproduce them within Wikipedia. - Nunh-huh 04:07, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, but that's not quite what I did. There were within WIkipedia four articles that I'm aware of that contain actual canonical lists of Great Books:

Harvard Classics,
Great Books of the Western World
"List of Great Books" (this article), and
List of Great Books, Santa Fe (which had been nominated for Vfd).

List 1 is an out-of-print print publication, hence stable. List 2 is an expensive current print publication whose contents have changed slowly.

Lists 3 and 4 were, essentially, two different copies of the same list from the St. John's College website. Of the two, list 4 was in much better shape as regards Wikification.

What I did was basically to merge-and-redirect both 3 and 4 into St. John's University, U. S. and update the single list to reflect what the St. John's website shows as of 2005.

In the case of St. John's, I think that having the actual list within Wikipedia is reasonable even if it is not kept perfectly up-to-date because: the changes are slow, and appear to be mostly slotting in different 20th-century works and/or fictional works; because St. John's curriculum is almost unique and this level of detail is appropriate; and because it is interesting to display the actual list as one example of what one authoritative source regards as the Western canon.

Sort of like giving the list of Books of the Bible for both the King James and Douay versions...

I think having the actual St. John's list is acceptable because a) it's valuable even if slightly out of date, and b) the organization of their website has changed even within the last year or so and an external link probably won't be stable. That is, in the year 2009, assuming nobody keeps the list updated, it will be perfectly useful anyone but an actual St. John's student to have the list as of 2005. Nobody is going to care that they replaced George Eliot with Jane Austen. On the other hand, a broken link will not be useful. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:59, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)