Hi Tim,
you wrote:
> Unless someone can come up with a perfect pre-cooked format—one that
> not only covers what we need but is also super easy and
> space-efficient (we have only 1/2k to use!)—Why don't we just decide
> on:
>
> 'simplebib' : {
>
> }
>
> and start filling in fields. I don't think it makes sense to
> externalize the information under another URL, at least in the first
> instance. That at least doubles the calls involved, and makes whatever
> you build dependent on lots of external services that may or may not
> work.
Oh yeah, let's create just another ad-hoc metadata format, because
obviously there are not enough different formats around there!
To be honest: I admire your multitude of good ideas and efforts but this
is one of the rare counterexamples. If you want to put bibliographic
metadata into twitter annotations (good idea) you first need to clarify
the basic purpose of embedding this information. I see two of them:
I. Identification: To identify other tweets and resources that refer to
the same publication
II. Description: To nicely show which publication someone refers to.
The purpose of identification can be served by the following means:
a). standard identifiers
b). standard identifiers
c). standard identifiers
Examples of standard identifiers include ISBN, OCLC Number, ASIN,
LibraryThing Work-ID, well-defined bibliographic hash keys [*] etc.
The purpose of description can best be served by a format that can
easily be displayed for human beeings. You can either use a simple
string or a well-known format. A string can be displayed but people will
put all different citation formats in there. Right now there are only
two established metadata formats that aim at creating a citation:
a) BibTeX
b) The input format of the Citation Style Language (CSL)
I bet that CSL is the easier way to go. See http://citationstyles.org/
for details and examples.
Cheers
Jakob
[*] See http://www.gbv.de/wikis/cls/Bibliographic_Hash_Key for a
description of the mapping mechanism that is also used in BibSonomy to
match BibTeX records.
--
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
