So(I notice I start a lot of posts with this word), since everyone is blowing this whole plagiarism up to the size of the Goodyear blimp, I'm going to ask a question, and feel free to throw rotten tomatoes- or stones- if you wish to.
When I wrote my book, I had to do some research on the state of Wyoming. I needed information on trees, wildlife, and I used a map. NOW, since I used said map and I copied the names of cities, towns, or villages and used them in my book, that is a form of plagiarism, is it not since I didn't credit the map maker or websites?
It was all getting rather nit-picky over at DA and SB so I figure I better double check to see if I'm also guilty of plagiarism.
What say ye?
Friday, January 18, 2008
Plagiarism?
Labels: Annoyed, opinions, Plagiarism
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6 People Gabbed:
Nope, that's common knowledge -- like looking up the date of a war and putting it into a book. I use maps all the time in my work, too (especially historical maps) and they're a valuable resource, and someone definitely put a lot of time into making them. But I'd argue that not only are the town names and relative locations common knowledge, but putting that information into a book/article completely transforms the information.
Like, if you looked at a painting and described it, you aren't plagiarizing the artist's work.
On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to credit/acknowledge the source of information, especially if you relied very heavily on it. But if it was a simple matter of throwing out a name in dialogue ("My husband went to Casper for the weekend, so we're here all alone.") even that wouldn't be necessary, IMO.
holy smokes! Meljean Brook! You stopped by my blog! *waving* Thanks for the input. I admit, I put the post up mostly to be a brat, but then I thought about it and was like, "Holy crap! I could be plagiarizing!" But, alas, from your words, I've not plagiarized. I made up the town in my book, I just had to figure out where to place it in conjunction with other bigger towns/cities.
Again, thanks!
I lurk. (Maybe I should attribute that to Angel from Buffy? That's another weird one -- because I've said "I lurk" before I watched Buffy, but because it's become kind of *his* line, I always feel weird about using it now. Sigh.)
This popped up on my Google reader, and I've been thinking about little things like this too lately, so I thought I'd delurk. Mostly, I'm just glad I really did have an answer for this one.
I'm a fan of bratty :-D
*goes back into hiding*
What Meljean said. No you're not plagiarizing when you name a place. If you had copied a description of a place straight out of a copywrited book, THAT would have been plagiarizing.
Personally I'm glad to see Romanceland take this so seriously. Otherwise it looks like we're uneducated pretenders to literature. I know better. Maybe that wasn't worded very well, but you know what I mean.
Geez, if we had to credit maps, I'd be in trouble.
I never rely on one for much more than getting a distance between two towns or maybe finding a local park or something like that, but I do that with a ton of books.
i love maps. I collect them by the dozens when we go on trips and they get used a lot.
Everything with the plagiarism debate seems so complicated, but I'm not so sure it is.
If you're taking verbatim from a source, there needs to be acknowledgments.
If you're just lightly paraphrasing... acknowledgments.
If you research, learn the subject and then discuss it or add it into your story in your own words...I think you're in the clear.
Now if you rely heavily on one or two resources, acknowledgments may not be a necessity but might be a nice courtesy.
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