From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:31:09 +0000

>It's not that I don't want to provide the information, it's
>that I don't think the question has a useful answer.

The problem here, Tony, is that unless you have spent some time building
and managing library collections, you're really not in a position to tell
us what does and doesn't constitute a "useful answer."

>A book being
>based on graduate work is about as relevant to the quality of the work
>as the age of the author. All scholarship is, by nature, based on
>previous work.

The author's age has no bearing on a book's content. But the fact that the
book in question is a revised version of a previous document most
certainly does. (And while it's true that scholarship is never produced in
a vacuum, it is not true that every scholarly book, by its nature, amounts
to a revision of a previously-written book.)

>I am more likely to give you an answer to the question
>about the provenance of the work if you can give me more than just
>Yes, dissertation or No as options. That was my point.

YBP does, in fact, give you more than just "Yes, dissertation or No as
options." They ask you to identify dissertation-based books and then to
distinguish between revised and unrevised ones. That distinction is very
important to librarians -- far more important than the distinction between
dissertation-based and non-dissertation-based books, as the sales
statistics provided by YBP bear out.

---
Rick Anderson
Interim Dean, J. Willard Marriott Library
University of Utah
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