Try worldcat.org -- a free version of the WorldCat database (OCLC's product) called Open WorldCat. We can't import the data per se, but I would happily link to WorldCat record for an item at the end of a reference, as a happy alternative to linking to individual libraries or commercial sites. You can also search worldcat.org with an ISBN, via the special:booksources tool in WP. Worldcat makes an effort to link to various and sundry editions of works, etc., so it's probably the best and most global solution right now for answering the questions: "when and in what editions was this printed"? and "where can I get it"?
Also, the open library project (with a demo at demo.openlibrary.org) is working on the problem of providing free catalog data for all the works in the world; they are very much in line with our mission, but are just getting started.
Regarding JSTOR: PLEASE provide the full citation of any journal article or book used, no matter what else you do (author, title, date of publication, full journal title, etc). That information is needed for someone else somewhere else in the world to get the article, and a standardized citation link that is the best thing we have to a historical record for the article. In addition to that, I have no problem adding a small link to JSTOR at the end of the record -- it is a standard archive, even if not everyone has access to it. Just don't rely *solely* on the JSTOR link as being a good reference, especially since it's not free (as in beer or speech). The same goes for a link to any other online version -- the vast majority of academic magazines and journals (and even now popular press) that have online archives do not provide those archives freely -- instead, libraries pay for them for their subscribers. Many of the journals in JSTOR, however, have no other online version.
Regarding "free" sources versus not-free sources -- the open access movement is growing, but is still small compared to the wealth of academic research printed up over the last decades. I would say it's a false dichotomy -- yes, we should link to free (as in speech or beer) resources whenever we can, but we should also link to the best possible non-free academic research we can. There's room for both, and as Wikipedia grows to become a truly valuable researching tool I hope that good bibliographies will become a strength.
-- phoebe (another librarian)
On 9/20/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
OCLC will link together different printings, and in many cases even
editions.
[...] There is no need for WP to figure this all out internally.
To my knowledge, though, the OCLC database itself is proprietary and available only to subscribing institutions, which somewhat complicates using it for our purposes, especially if Wikimedia's sites and their dependencies are to remain free-software/open-content. Is there some reasonable way around that?
-Mark
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