User:SnowyCinema/Uses of Wikisource

Wikisource could be used as a	With its	Usefulness in theory	Usefulness now	Competition
Academic resource	Academic papers, journals, studies, etc.	Fairly useful for at least academic papers older than 1989. Most academic papers did not contain copyright notices, and did not have much reason to be copyrighted.	We are lacking in many respects in this area. Our periodical coverage in general is extremely lacking due to complexity and vastness of material, and other academic materials mentioned are generally not focused on.	JSTOR
Bibliography	Author pages and bibliographies as works	Extremely useful. Author pages can literally cover any individual who ever worked on anything here, even the most obscure people. The only limitation is that only older works will be listed, and more modern authors will generally not be listed at all. In terms of bibliographies as works though, there aren't as many and so their usefulness will be a lot more limited.	We have a lot of author pages currently. There's a good chance you'll find the specific author you're looking for here. Almost no bibliographies as works are done. DNB00 is a significant resource for contributors in this respect.	Wikipedia (bibliography sections)
Cookbook	Recipe books, individual recipes	Pretty useful, but given the age of most of the recipes that could be included, more modern cuisine and the taste of a modern audience may not be as easily accommodated.	Not many cookbooks on Wikisource.	Wikibooks, many recipe sites online
Dictionary	Dictionaries	Pretty useful and very comprehensive, but because of the old age of most dictionaries that can be hosted, definitions may be out of date with any more recent senses missing.	Barely any dictionaries, if any at all, are done.	Wiktionary, traditional dictionaries
Encyclopedia	Encyclopedias	Pretty useful and comprehensive, but because of the old age of most dictionaries that can be hosted, definitions may be out of date with any more recent senses missing.	Few available encyclopedias are complete, with many not started, but on the other hand EB1911 is one of Wikisource's most famous transcription projects, having been used by Wikipedia editors for almost two decades.	Wikipedia, traditional encyclopedias
Film transcript site	Films	Pretty useful and comprehensive for older films, except the multitude of those that have been lost to time	We have a good chunk of the important public-domain films, but we have a long way to go in the way of comprehensiveness.	scripts.com
Genealogical resource	Genealogies, phone books, census records, obituaries, and a plethora of other types of personal records and lists	Extremely useful, since most of the family history someone would want to dig up is older than 95 years.	Not very useful. Most historical records such as these are extremely difficult to transcribe (1000 pages of boring and complicated lists at a time), so most contributors don't bother.	Ancestry.com
Legal resource	Laws, court cases, and other edicts of governments	Extremely useful. Virtually all legal materials in English worldwide are in the US public domain or are otherwise freely licensed, so Wikisource could be an extremely comprehensive legal resource.	Our legal material is obviously extremely lacking compared to the vastness of what it could be, but we have quite a lot of the interesting and notable legal materials in some form (although most not scan-backed).
News/current events resource	Newspapers, magazines	Very useful for interesting older articles from various time periods, and can give direct accounts of historical events and the lives of everyday people. But actual news (that is to say, modern news), would be few and far between. Those would include whatever modern newspapers that exist and could be hosted, that also happen to be somehow freely licensed. I think there's a federal government-owned news outlet, so that could count.	Periodicals and especially newspapers are extremely lacking in coverage due to the difficulty in transcribing them.	Wikinews, Newspapers.com, traditional newspapers and news sites
Poetry aggregator	Poems	Extremely useful to those interested in poetry. Poetry as an art form isn't nearly as popular as it used to be, so most of the poetry people know about is old enough to be in the public domain. With our respect for scans, it makes it easier to see where some of these poems came from, and what they were alongside with.	Extremely useful. Lots of poetry has been worked on (but we still have a long way to go), including the works of many important poets.	Traditional poetry collection sites
Religious text aggregation	Bibles, Qu'rans, etc.	Extremely useful for most religious texts (because most are old enough to be in the public domain).	Extremely behind. Most religious texts not scan-backed, and the ones that are have just begun. They tend to be complex tasks in formatting as well, making them difficult to fully actualize.	Various websites that have hosted free Bible translations (etc.) for basically all of Internet history.
Review aggregator	Reviews of various pieces of older media, usually found in transcribed magazines	Pretty useful for older books, movies, plays, etc. for a contemporary opinion on those.	Not many reviews are transcribed.	Rotten Tomatoes
Songbook	Lyrics to music, and music sheets, transcribed in various forms	Pretty useful, but the classical music that would encompass most of Wikisource's collection is now obscure and most modern audiences don't listen to or like this music.	Very useful for older songs.	Lyrics.com, Genius.com, Azlyrics.com, etc.
Textbook (educational resource)	Various schoolbook materials	Could be extremely useful, if the fact that free lessons for teachers or students to use for any purpose were considered by the general public.	Lacking in this area, due to formatting complexity and vastness of material.	Wikiversity