On Jul 16, 2007, at 11:25 AM, K.G. Schneider wrote:

> I see some work is done in metadata that can express the
> relationship between articles in a journal. But I'm curious how
> much we (librarians) care about this business of fidelity or
> whether it's just another silent victim of change. I worry that
> without intending to we could hasten the death of an entire area of
> literature.

Why does it matter what librarians think about the change in formats?
The readers are the people who need to have a voice in how their
publications work -- what makes them useful and what would make them
better. In this case, it's researchers, not librarians[1], who should
make the call. As someone who doesn't read and use Cell on a daily
basis, I can't say whether its representation in a database is well-
suited to its use in research or not.

In other words... I think you're taking this question to the wrong
audience. You'll probably get more relevant answers if you ask people
who do research in a particular field.

 From our initial discussions with faculty on the Bibapp, I
hypothesize that you'd see very different kinds of answers from
researchers in different areas -- definitely between humanities,
social sciences, and physical sciences, and very likely at a more
fine-grained level, too.

In some cases, 'journal-ness' is probably important. In others, the
traditional model is probably inferior to other options.

[1] - Except, of course, for library-related journals.

-Nate
Wendt Library
UW - Madison