Author: robburns1
Description:
A system to help novice users enter bibliographic data. For types of sources
where unique identifiers exist (such as books:ISBN, periodicals:ISSN and
webpages:URL), a user would simply enter this unique identifier into a HTML form
element. WikiMedia (or an extension) would lookup the relevant metadata within a
local WikiMedia database. If the bibliographic source is not already in the
local database, a lookup would be conducted through the various web services
available (Library of Congress, Amazon, extracted from the URL page's head
metadata, etc) and add the bibliographic source to WikiMedia bibliographic
source database. For other source types (e.g., newspaper articles), the user
would be presented with a more complex form to entere structured data into the
database.
Whether automatically retrieved successfully or manually entered, this database
would entry would result in a unique ID for the bibliographic reference: a
WikiMedia Catalog Number (or WMCN). Attaching this WMCN to a reference element
would allow the automatic generation of a cited source list from the structrued
bibliographic data record. Something like:
<ref wmcn="ISBN:0691002606">See pp24-47</ref>
<ref wmcn="ISBN:0691002606">See pp24-47</ref>
Combined with:
Notes Heading:
<references />
<references />
Sources Heading:
<sources&/gt;
<sources />
would generate not only the list of notes, but also the bibliographic referenced
source from the database:
Sources Heading:
Ptolemy, Claudius (1998). The Almagest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
This scheme would extend the benefits of the existing ref and references
elements to provide better support for bibliographic source lists, while
leveraging the advnatages of those elements. It would also: 1) help ensure
sources were consistently documented; 2) allow a further separation between
content and presentation (user preferences could even specify how bibliographic
data is presented); 3) allow easier extraction of bibliographic records
according to a preferred scheme (such as BIBTex).
(descriptive words: structure bibliography record reference citation cite note)
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement