Tim,
I'd vote for adopting the same approach as COinS on the basis it already has
some level of adoption, and we know covers at least some of the stuff
libraries and academic users (as used by both libraries and consumer tools
such as Zotero) might want to do. We are talking Books (from what you've
said), so we don't have to worry about other formats. (although it does mean
we can do journal articles and some other stuff as well for no effort)
Mendeley and Zotero already speak COinS, it is pretty simple, and there are
already several code libraries to deal with it.
It isn't where I hope we end up in the longterm but if we talk about this
happening tomorrow, why not use something that is relatively simple, already
has a good set of implementations, and we know works for several cases of
embedding book metadata in a web environment
Owen
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 7:01 PM, Jakob Voss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Tim,
>
>
> you wrote:
>
>> So this is my recommended framework for proceeding. Tim, I'm afraid
>>> you'll actually have to do the hard work yourself.
>>>
>>
>> No, I don't. Because the work isn't fundamentally that hard. A
>> complex standard might be, but I never for a moment considered
>> anything like that. We have *512 bytes*, and it needs to be usable by
>> anyone. Library technology is usually fatally over-engineered, but
>> this is a case where that approach isn't even possible.
>>
>
> Jonathan did a very well summary - you just have to pick what you main
> focus of embedding bibliographic data is.
>
>
> A) I favour using the CSL-Record format which I summarized at
>
> http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Citation_Style_Language
>
> because I had in mind that people want to have a nice looking citation of
> the publication that someone tweeted about. The drawback is that CSL is less
> adopted and will not always fit in 512 bytes
>
>
> B) If you main focus is to link Tweets about the same publication (and
> other stuff about this publication) than you must embed identifiers.
> LibraryThing is mainly based on two identifiers
>
> 1) ISBN to identify editions
> 2) LT work ids to identify works
>
> I wonder why LT work ids have not picked up more although you thankfully
> provide a full mapping to ISBN at
> http://www.librarything.com/feeds/thingISBN.xml.gz but nevermind. I
> thought that some LT records also contain other identifiers such as OCLC
> number, LOC number etc. but maybe I am wrong. The best way to specify
> identifiers is to use an URI (all relevant identifiers that I know have an
> URI form). For ISBN it is
>
> uri:isbn:{ISBN13}
>
> For LT Work-ID you can use the URL with your .com top level domain:
>
> http://www.librarything.com/work/{LTWORKID}<http://www.librarything.com/work/%7BLTWORKID%7D>
>
> That would fit for tweets about books with an ISBN and for tweets about a
> work which will make 99.9% of tweets from LT about single publications
> anyway.
>
>
> C) If your focus is to let people search for a publication in libraries
> than and to copy bibliographic data in reference management software then
> COinS is a way to go. COinS is based on OpenURL which I and others ranted
> about because it is a crapy library standard like MARC. But unlike other
> metadata formats COinS usually fits in less then 512 bytes. Furthermore you
> may have to deal with it for LibraryThing for libraries anyway.
>
>
> Although I strongly favour CSL as a practising library scientist and
> developer I must admit that for LibraryThing the best way is to embed
> identifiers (ISBN and LT Work-ID) and maybe COinS. As long as LibraryThing
> does not open up to more complex publications like preprints of
> proceeding-articles in series etc. but mainly deals with books and works
> this will make LibraryThing users happy.
>
>
> Then, three years from now, we can all conference-tweet about a CIL talk,
>> about all the cool ways libraries are using Twitter, and how it's such a
>> shame that the annotations standard wasn't designed with libraries in mind.
>>
>
> How about a bet instead of voting. In three years will there be:
>
> a) No relevant Twitter annotations anyway
> b) Twitter annotations but not used much for bibliographic data
> c) A rich variety of incompatible bibliographic annotation standards
> d) Semantic Web will have solved every problem anyway
> ..
>
> Cheers
> Jakob
>
> --
> Jakob Voß <[log in to unmask]>, skype: nichtich
> Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
> Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
> +49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de
>
--
Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
Email: [log in to unmask]
