[Foundation-l] Universal Library

Thu Sep 3 20:58:38 UTC 2009

You two seem to be talking past each other.  Might I suggest that perhaps the quality of information on OPL and/or Wikipdia/Wikisource sites is rather different depending on whether you are reading in French or English?  I don't know if this is the case but it could explain the discrepancies between your experiences.

Birgitte SB

--- On Thu, 9/3/09, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Universal Library
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Thursday, September 3, 2009, 2:19 PM
> I have been re-reading their
> documentation, and they have it well in
> hand.  We would do very well to confine ourselves to
> matching up the
> entries in the WMF projects alone. Some of the data in WMF
> is more
> accurate than some of the OL data, but I would not 
> say this to be a
> general rule. Far from it: the proportion of incomplete or
> inaccurate
> entires in enWP is probably well over 50% for books. (for
> journal
> articles it is better, because of a project to link to the
> pubmed
> information)  The accuracy  & adequacy -- let
> alone completeness-- of
> the bibliographic information in WS is close to zero,
> except where
> there is a IA scan of the cover and title page, from which
> full
> bibliographic information might be derived, but cannot
> necessarily be
> taken at face value.
> 
> The unification of editions is non-trivial, as using the
> algorithm you
> suggest, you will also have all works related to Verne,
> and
> additionally a combination of general and partial
> translations,
> children's books, comic adaptation, and whatever.
> Modern library metadata provides for this to a certain
> limited
> extent--unfortunately most of the entries in current online
> catalogs
> do not show full modern data--many catalogs never had more
> than
> minimal records;  Dublin core is probably not
> generally considered to
> be fully up to the problem either, at least in any current
> implementation.
> 
> Those working on the OL side are fully aware of this. They
> have made
> the decision to work towards inclusion of all usable &
> obtainable data
> sets, rather than only the ones that can be immediately
> fully
> harmonized. This was very wise decision, as the way in
> which the
> information is to be combined & related is not fully
> developed, and ,
> if they were to wait for that, nothing would be entered.
> There will
> therefore be the problem of upgrading the records and the
> record
> structure in place--a problem that no large bibliographic
> system has
> ever fully handled properly--not that this incarnation of
> OL is likely
> to either. Bibliographers work for their time, not for all
> time to
> come.
> 
> 
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Yann Forget<yann at forget-me.net>
> wrote:
> > David Goodman wrote:
> >> I have read your proposal. I continue to be of the
> opinion that we are
> >> not competent to do this. Since the proposal
>  says, that "this project
> >> requires as much database management knowledge as
> librarian
> >> knowledge," it confirms my opinion. You will never
> merge the data
> >> properly if you do not understand it.
> >
> > That's all the point that it needs to be join project:
> database gurus
> > with librarians. What I see is that OpenLibrary lacks
> some basic
> > features that Wikimedia projects have since a long
> time (in Internet
> > scale): easy redirects, interwikis, mergings, deletion
> process, etc.
> > Some of these are planned for the next version of
> their software, but I
> > still feel that sometimes they try to reinvent the
> wheel we already have.
> >
> > OL claims to have 23 million book and author entries.
> However many
> > entries are duplicates of the same edition, not to
> mention the same
> > book, so the real number of unique entries is much
> lower. I also see
> > that Wikisource has data which are not included in
> their database (and
> > certainly also Wikipedia, but I didn't really check).
> >
> >> You suggest 3 practical steps
> >> 1. an extension for finding a book in OL is
> certainly doable--and it
> >> has been done, see
> >> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources].
> >> 2. an OL  field,  link to WP -- as you say, this
> is already present.
> >> 3. An OL field, link to Wikisource. A very good
> project. It will be
> >> they who need to do it.
> >
> > Yes, but I think we should fo further than that.
> OpenLibrary has an API
> > which would allow any relevant wiki article to be
> dynamically linked to
> > their data, or that an entry could be created every
> time new relevant
> > data is added to a Wikipedia projects. This is all
> about avoiding
> > duplicate work between Wikimedia and OpenLibrary. It
> could also increase
> > accuracy by double checking facts (dates, name and
> title spelling, etc.)
> > between our projects.
> >
> >> Agreed we need translation information--I think
> this is a very
> >> important priority.   It's not that hard to do a
> list or to add links
> >> that will be helpful, though not  exact enough to
> be relied on in
> >> further work.  That's probably a reasonable
> project, but it is very
> >> far from "a database of all books ever published"
> >>
> >> But some of this is being done--see the frWP page
> for Moby Dick:
> >> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick
> >> (though it omits a number of the translations
> listed in the French Union
> >> Catalog, http://corail.sudoc.abes.fr/xslt/DB=2.1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=8063&SRT=RLV&TRM=Moby+Dick]
> >> I would however not warrant without seeing the
> items in hand, or
> >> reading an authoritative review, that they are all
> complete
> >> translations.
> >> The English page on the novel lists no
> translations;  perhaps we could
> >> in practice assume that the interwiki links are
> sufficient. Perhaps
> >> that could be assumed in Wiksource also?
> >
> > That's another possible benefit: automatic list of
> > works/editions/translations in a Wikipedia article.
> >
> > You could add {{OpenLibrary|author=Jules
> Verne|lang=English}} and you
> > have a list of English translations of Jules Verne's
> works directly
> > imported from their database. The problem is that,
> right now, Wikimedia
> > projects have often more accurate and more detailed
> information than
> > OpenLibrary.
> >
> >> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Yann
> > --
> > http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la
> non-violence
> > http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
> > http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre
> > http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres
> >
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