- News sources: Most news outlets will be usable as a reliable source as long as you can verify their editorial process. A quick rule of thumb is that if you aren't sure if they're usable or not, look to see if the site has their staff information published anywhere. Do they have an editor? If they accept user content, do they make any mention about whether or not they edit the articles for accuracy and basic spelling and grammar? If you are looking at the page, is this part of the main news outlet or is it a portion of the site like CNN iReport, where the content is completely written by independent authors and not edited in any way? If you can't find any of this information it's usually better to err on the side of caution and not use it or at the very least, run it through WP:RS/N, the reliable sources noticeboard.
- Book sources: These are usable depending on who wrote and published the book. If the book was written by the author and/or published by someone who has published the author's works then it'd be considered a primary source (more about them below). The only exception to this is when you have an author's books that have fallen into the public domain and the works have been published by almost everyone, although even then you will need to really scrutinize the work. If it isn't in-depth then it may be considered a trivial source (more about them below as well). However if the book is not written by the article subject or someone affiliated with them, isn't released via their publisher, and isn't self-published, then it should generally be usable as a reliable source.
- Websites: These are some of the most frequently challenged sources out there since in many cases the website is self-published or doesn't have a verifiable editorial oversight. They kind of fall under the same criteria and questions when it comes to news outlets since most of the usable websites will be sites that operate as news outlets. For example, Twitch Film is a trusted film news website despite the fact that it's not entirely easy to find information about their editorial process. Adversely, Dread Central may not initially seem like the most trustworthy site but a quick look at the bottom of the page shows an About Us page that lists their staff members, which includes editors. One thing to make sure to be cautious of is whether or not the page is trying to sell something to the author. Some websites may look legit but a look shows that they offer paid reviews and vanity awards for authors. If the website does not disclose this and doesn't clearly mark these reviews, then I wouldn't use them.
- Trade reviews: Since many of you will be writing or otherwise editing articles about books, odds are that you'll run into book reviews from places like Publishers Weekly or the School Library Journal. These publications are considered trade reviews since they're written by people who work within the literary world for people within the literary world. IE, the SLJ has librarians writing reviews oriented towards other librarians to help them decide whether or not the books are right for their libraries. These trades have taken on a lot of popularity to the point where you'll frequently see them listed on merchant sites. Now you will run into some people arguing that these sites are very brief, but these are generally considered to be usable since they do undergo an editorial process and while brief, they are considered to be relatively in-depth. I wouldn't recommend building a page on these alone, but as of the time of this writing they're considered usable. The only thing to be careful of is whether or not the site offers paid reviews, as was mentioned with the bit about websites.
- Journal articles: These are almost always usable and when it comes to writing some articles, these will be your best friends. I highly recommend utilizing your library's journal databases for this since there are a lot of sources that will not show up in a routine Google search. Sometimes even some of the more routine coverage like trade reviews won't show up in a Google search if they've been archived by their respective sites, yet they'll show up in a journal database search. It's fairly rare that a journal article is unusable as a source and in these cases it's usually because the book was only mentioned briefly.
Sources that are unreliable or should be used with caution
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- Self-published sources: (WP:SPS) These sources are ones that are published in outlets like book blogs or private websites where it looks like only one (or very few) people are writing. Self-published books and papers would also fall within this category. The problem with these is that in most cases there is little to no verifiable editorial oversight so we have no true way of being able to know how good their fact-checking may be. This is especially a problem with book blogs since there are so many of them and while there are a great many that are very popular (Cuddlebuggery and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books are two of my favorites), that popularity doesn't automatically mean that they're usable as a reliable source. Now if you see a blog that is routinely listed in the news as a reliable source then that would make the site usable as a RS. Something to be careful of though is that sometimes you'll have a private blog or website by someone who would otherwise be considered a RS if they published elsewhere. Be careful with these because sometimes they can be usable but you have to be able to verify that the site is authentic and that they aren't personally connected to what they're writing about.
- Primary sources: (WP:PRIMARY) Primary sources are anything that is released by the subject or anyone affiliated with them. In the case of books, this would include the publisher, the author, and anyone who worked on the book. This would also extend to the author's friends and relatives. They don't always come up as people who would have an interest in seeing the book/author succeed. Now primary sources can be used to back up basic details so they're not completely verboten. However when it comes to the more major details (large awards, possibly controversial claims) you will want to back this up with an independent and reliable source. Something to also be careful of are things like press releases- these are considered to be primary sources regardless of where they are posted.
- Trivial sources: (WP:TRIVIAL) Trivial sources are basically anything that only mentions the subject briefly. This would include cases where the author/work is mentioned in a one-off sentence in an article about another person's work or cases where you see someone including the topic in a list of no great importance. Sometimes trivial sources can be used to show notability if the brief mention is in relation to something major (like the Newberry or an ALA list mention) but in most cases they can only back up basic, small details. One of the most frequent examples of this will be cases where you are trying to find sources for a book and only find brief mentions of the author having written the work, like in this interview with Laurell K Hamilton where her book Guilty Pleasures is briefly mentioned but never really gone into in depth.
- Merchant sources: There's no specific page for this on Wikipedia, although there probably should be. Merchant sources are basically any website where they're trying to sell you something. This can include places like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, eBay, and so on. You can probably pull some minor, basic details from these sites but they should never be used as a source on the article. This is partially because using the site can be seen as an endorsement of both the website and the product and Wikipedia tries to avoid showing an affiliation or bias for any specific site, especially merchants. However this is also an issue because sometimes the information on these sites can be incomplete or incorrect, which happens very frequently with older books and foreign language titles. In some cases the sites rely on information uploaded by a specific merchant trying to sell their copy, which can be problematic if the merchant gets the information incorrect. Again, this doesn't mean that you can't pull some basic details from the site or look to see if any reliable sources have reviewed the work, but you do need to be able to back this up with a more reliable source. Generally it's better to back up basic details via WorldCat, although you do need to be careful about how they format their titles.
- Search results: This one sounds a little confusing but ultimately I'm referring to things like this where you're showing your search results. The problem with this is that this can't show notability because the amount of search hits doesn't mean that the hits will be usable. There are a lot of junk hits that can come up, especially if you don't put some sort of restriction on the type of hits like putting parentheses around one of the terms. (If the search engine allows for that.) Now while this past example was for search engines, this also applies to places like databases. The problem with this is that you can't guarantee that all of the results are accurate (especially in the case of common names) but you also can't guarantee that the next person that clicks on the link will see the same things that you do. Libraries and databases update relatively frequently so the search may come up as timed out or the facility may cull their listings and remove what you were referring to.
- Social media sites: These should be approached with caution. Some social media sites can be used to back up primary details, but only if they can be verified as an official source. (IE, you could use Neil Patrick Harris's official Twitter account to back up basic details like him confirming a role.) However when it comes to places like Goodreads, LibraryThing, or IMDb, those sites cannot be used as a reliable source because they are edited so heavily by other, average users. It's relatively easy for someone to sway a rating in one direction or another, so the sites' rating for a specific work should not be included in an article unless the rating has routinely been mentioned in a reliable source like in the case of Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas. This would also apply to reviews on merchant websites since they have the same issues. When it comes to an example of how these sort of things can be problematic I always like to point out cases of authors swapping reviews with other authors and most notoriously, Robert Stanek, who has been caught posting hundreds upon hundreds of fake reviews for his own work. (As well as photoshopping an image to make it appear that he was signing books with Brian Jacques.) Those are extreme cases, but they're basically the biggest example of why we can't use social media sites to back up claims or as a source to show notability.
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