All-
I hereby propose for your consideration Wikicat, a
project to create an open, bibliographic catalog. The
purpose of Wikicat is to both lay the groundwork for a
scholarly apparatus to be used within Wikipedia as
well as create a unique and valuable information
resource in its own right. In particular, Wikicat
will:
* facilitate the process of citation by automatically
fetching bibliographic data based upon unique keys
such as ISBN, ISSN, and LCCN
* allow users to more easily navigate between
information resources by grouping them in a
functionally significant manner (in particular,
according to the principles of [[w:FRBR]]) so that,
for example, different editions, translations, etc.
are all joined together
* apply Wikipedia's collaborative content creation
model to bibliographic data, resulting in a catalog of
unprecedented detail
In terms of implementation, Wikicat will be defined
like any other [[m:Wikidata]] dataset and will
integrate with other datasets such as WiktionaryZ to
share common entities and perhaps someday support
something along the lines of a Semantic Mediawiki. As
Wikidata is currently not code complete, though,
Wikicat will be deployed in stages, during the first
of which it will exist as a read-only database that
populates itself on an as-needed/"as-cited" basis by
importing data from the open catalog servers of such
institutions as the Library of Congress, the
University of California library system, the U.S.
National Library of Medicine, etc.
Details about the project, in increasing technical
detail, are available on the following pages:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikicat
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicat
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicat_Technical_Design
Coding of the first stage of the project is nearly
complete and a list of its operational requirements
will soon be forthcoming. Here is a demo of Wikicat
integration with the Cite/<ref> extension:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikicat_Cite_screenshoot.png
Thank you for your time and I look forward to your
comments.
While I have deep sympathy for the intentions of this proposals, I also
find that the kind of theoretical discussions that are linked to the
proposal offer very little encouragement to the average contributor.
Citations and verifiability are absolutely essential to the credibility
of Wikipedia and its sister projects. Nevertheless, a person
undertaking to substantiate his contributions should not need a
professional librarianship background to do so. Any manner of clearly
identifying the source should be acceptable. If someone else considers
it important to bring the format of citations up to modern library
standards he should feel to do that without blame being attributable to
the original contributor.
There is also a need to begin referencing the material that is
relatively easy to access on line or in other relatively inexpensive
sources of public domain material, like CDs sold for $5.00 each that can
each easily contain 100 books or more. In the last few years this
material has been produced at a phenomenal rate. These are available in
image, ASCII plain Jane or more scholarly annotatable formats. We could
begin by including our own Wikisource material in the catalogue.
Ec