[Foundation-l] Project Proposal: Wikicat

Sun Jul 30 04:25:34 UTC 2006

Jonathan Leybovich wrote:

>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