Talk:Liner notes

Factual clarification of liner notes

Previously an author asserted, incorrectly, that liner notes descended from notes written on sleeves. This is an inaccurate claim. While there were some occasions when such notes appeared on the sleeve of the grammophone / LP record inner sleeve, in the overwhelming majority of cases, liner notes appeared on the rear of the jacket cover. I own several hundred LPs, from the 50s onwards, of jazz, classical, rock and world music genres. Only a handful have notes on the inner sleeve. The practice of putting notes on the sleeve was a relatively recent tradition, in the mid-1970s to the demise of the LP in the late 1980s. Perhaps the writer making the inner sleeve assertion was mainly familiar with that trend. Furthermore, one writer claimed that liner notes essays were often pretentious. That is clearly a violation of the NPOV ethos. Dogru144 03:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Change to final paragraph

I rewrote the final paragraph and eliminated some of it, specifically the following passage:

There is a special version of the ISBD which addresses the issues involved in trusting the information placed in the liner notes, when the time comes to describe a sound recording in the catalogue of a library. The information found on these recordings approved by the artist and/or the label issuing the recording, introducing a biased point of view. As such, these notes are far less historically accurate than the records kept by recording studios and the freely expressed criticism of the recordings from the press at large (assuming such criticism is reviewed en masse).

I checked the ISBD (a set of guidelines for libraries to use when cataloguing their collections) and couldn't find anything resembling a "special version ... which addresses the issues involved in trusting the information placed in the liner notes." If such a document exists, it needs to be referenced specifically by name.

The subsequent two paragraphs make a judgment about whether liner notes are more or less accurate than other commentaries about the records. Some liner notes are indeed less accurate than other sources, but sometimes the liner notes to recordings are written by musical scholars and meet high standards for accuracy. I think it goes without saying that information in liner notes is approved by the publisher, but it is POV and rather inaccurate to suggest that this automatically means all liner notes are less reliable than information published elsewhere. --Sheldon Rampton 19:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)