I tried to keep the examples abstract in my earlier message, but
probably to the point of obscurity. If you think these URIs or something
like them would help, then convince someone at OCLC to implement them:

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/{oclc#}/citation-apa.txt (text/plain)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/{oclc#}/citation-chicago.txt (text/plain)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/{oclc#}/citation-mla.txt (text/plain)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/{oclc#}/citation-harvard.txt (text/plain)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/{oclc#}/citation-turabian.txt (text/plain)
etc.

OCLC already provides these through their user interface. Maybe they
just don't understand the value of HTTP URIs.

If these representations were coupled with Linked Data through FRBR, the
information would be interoperable with other sources.

Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Jodi Schneider
> Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:13 PM
> To: Karen Coyle
> Cc: public-lld; Code for Libraries; Brian Mingus; Wikimedia Foundation
> Mailing List
> Subject: Re: "universal citation index"
> 
> 
> On 20 Jul 2010, at 18:21, Karen Coyle wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Jodi Schneider <[log in to unmask]>:
> >
> >> There've been some interesting discussions on Wiki-research-l about
> citations lately, including a post today about using a centralized,
> semantic wiki as a repository for all the world's citations, using
> infobox-based citation templates, and expressing "cited by"
> relationships as backlinks.
> >
> >
> > First, I would like to know what folks mean by "citations" -- from
> the posts it seems that they are talking about it in terms of 'Science
> Citation Index' - which resources cite other resources?
> 
> Yes, if bibliographies were listed, a 'science citation index'
> (backwards AND forwards) could emerge -- from the wiki's backlinks.
> 
> One motivation of the project, from what I've gathered, is to have a
> separate namespace for citations to be referred to throughout the web
> (something like OpenLibrary, except for everything).
> 
> One consequence of this, if Wikipedia citations used such identifiers,
> is that we could query for all references in Wikipedia to a source --
> and notice more easily when an unreliable source were used,
propogating
> the "re-referencing needed" upward.
> 
> Creating a metadata commons -- where the bibliographic data is free
for
> use and reuse by all -- seems like another essential feature of the
> proposed project.
> 
> >
> > I always have a hard time figuring out how citation and bibliography
> connect. In libraries we create bibliographic data that has many of
the
> same elements as a citation, but not all (e.g. lacks the page number
of
> the cited text). Citations are mini-bibliographic records and haven't
> yet started to have some key elements such as ISBNs/ISSNs. It seems
> that there should be interlinking between citations and bibliographic
> data created for inventory and discovery, but that is not the case
> today. It would enhance the citations as well as allow for discovery
in
> libraries or online.
> 
> Yes, it seems to me that the vast bibliographic web could become
denser
> in that way.
> 
> The distinguish between abstracting & indexing and full-text databases
> has become harder to recognize -- because these functions start to
> merge in many modern online databases (which are often at least partly
> full-text).
> 
> Citations are for finding and identification; bibliographies are for
> saying what you used and helping others find them later. And these are
> only a few of the *things* that are out there.
> 
> >
> > I would caution against a single repository for 'all the world's
> citations' but look to linking as a better solution. I would also
> caution against limiting citations to academic textual materials. It
> would be good to know where photographs, illustrations, maps, graphs,
> and data have been cited. To include these one would need to have the
> expertise of those communities. This leads me to conclude that we
might
> have many communities of resource description that interact with
> citations.
> 
> I don't think there needs to be one repository (and of course if there
> were one it had ought to be mirrored)! But it needs to *act* like a
> single repository from a user perspective. A transparent linking
> infrastructure might be able to do that -- it would know "this is a
> map, oh, I'll look in the map directory", "this is a book, I'll try
> Open Library, and failing that, Library Thing", "this is a scientific
> article, so I'll try ..." -- would help. Users don't need or want to
> make these distinctions.
> 
> But minting and maintaining identifiers is work.
> 
> -Jodi
> 
> >
> > kc
> >
> > --
> > Karen Coyle
> > [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
> > ph: 1-510-540-7596
> > m: 1-510-435-8234
> > skype: kcoylenet
> >
> >
> 
>