The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
KEEP the nominator did not explain why this is "indiscriminate". The list is grouped by state and is a SMALL subsection of the titles in Woodworth, Steven E.; ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature an Research. Greenwood Press, 1996. and Civil War Books; a critical bibliography (2 vol I) by Allan Nevins, Robertson, James I., and Bell Wiley, ( United States. Civil War Centennial Comission) 1970, which list thousands of titles. That means it meets the criterion: “A list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines; notable list topics are appropriate. Rjensen (talk) 21:52, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - this well-structured list has precise inclusion criteria, to which it conforms absolutely. It's the exact opposite of "indiscriminate". It covers a notable topic, with indeed a large literature to guarantee that notability. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:39, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Arcane, perhaps, but let's not overthink this. Bibliographies are part of Wikipedia and they should be as a fundamental part of its educational mission — a starting place for research. This one is substantial and not comfortably mergable, and Wikipedia is better off with this than without it. Carrite (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Rjensen mentions two books as sources for this list. The first, The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature an Research, does not seem useful for establishing notability. I tried searching it for a random selection of several titles from the list, and found only two, one in the chapter "Eastern Theater" and the other with references scattered among multiple chapters. There is no chapter title connected with this subject. The other book, Civil War Books; a critical bibliography does have a chapter entitled "The Confederacy: State and Local Studies", so maybe it establishes notability for the list. However, I can't look inside it. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:50, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
the two books demonstrate that this type of bibliography is a serious pursuit of scholars, and that is the issue. Also demonstrative of the point is John Wright, Compendium of the Confederacy (1989) & Charles Dornbusch, Military Bibliography of the Civil War (4 vol 1970-87), two very detailed bibliographies that lists well over a thousand books on regiments & other units.
Keep due to the fact that the main subject is a clear keep. Splits are a wikipedia recommendation based on ease-of-use and readability, and shouldn't be considered for delete until the notability of the parent is in question. It is also unnecessary to have proof of notability in the split, only in the main article. The Steve 05:10, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.