[Foundation-l] Project Proposal: Wikicat

Fri Jul 28 06:33:42 UTC 2006

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.

Jonathan Leybovich

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