On Jan 7, 2005, at 4:37 AM, Giuseppe DAngelo wrote:
For a babe in the woods, Caroline makes a lot of sense. A huge percentage of articles currently lack references, and we're worried about whether someone leaves out the middle name on an otherwise reasonable reference? The chances of ambiguities arising are one in a million. Referencing is the preferred practice, and whether it is done has less to do with the availability of a bells-and-whistles add-on, and more to do with the character of the scribe. This mother-of-all-bibliographies might have Adam Smith, but will it have Giuseppe Pitre or Santi Correnti or the Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia or the New Junior Encyclopedia (which is now extremely old) or the Hansard? Salutamu pippu d'angelo, canberra
One lesson of the internet is that people time is expensive, and computer time ultimately gets cheaper. Technical fixes, while they sink development time, scale.
Another lesson of the internet is that lowering the barrier to doing the right thing makes many more people do the right thing.
A third lesson of the internet is that linked "live" information is more trustworthy, and better updated.
A fourth lesson of the internet is that people will work for free, but not for nothing.
Thus, providing tools for fast, linked, and generally useful annotation will dramatically increase the level and utility of references. Since the cost of annotating the existing base is the same either way, it is better to develop tools and then annotate, rather than annotate once dead, and then do it again live.
As for the content of this bibliography, that's why we would have to get the MARC records (write our own Z39.50 or subscribe to a service, since most of the data is available for free, just in many separate places, there are commercially available tools, not even expensive, for searching for citation data.
A wiki version of Endnote is out of reach at this time, but is, eventually where we should be able to get to.