The opportunity for a flexible bibliographic format.
Designing a bibliographic format for highly varied levels of effort.
It should be possible to create a bibliographic format which permits
people to use exactly the level of detail they wish, rather than
requiring or preventing less or more. This would reduce the current
undesirable proliferation in bibliographic formats.
The problem:
People create bibliographic records with enormously varying levels of
effort. Further, the distribution of effort across different aspects
of bibliographic information also varies. Current bibliographic
formats tend to be useful only over a relatively narrow range. They
establish minimums by requirements on information and its form. They
establish maximums by limitations in the expressiveness of the format.
They do not gracefully handle attempts to get by with less work, or to
add more work to further refine the record. This is approximated by
optional fields, but the format and meaning of a fields content is
usually inflexible. Thus there is an undesirable proliferation of
formats, a new one created whenever someone wants a new tradeoff in
ease vs precision. The new format is generally as inflexible as those
which preceded it, and the problem thus continues.
[Critique of existing alternatives is needed...especially of MARC]
[About MARC - Along the lines of its having been intentionally designed
to require/coerce a particular (rather intensive) "professional" level
of cataloging. `That it not be said, let it be inexpressible.']
The opportunity:
Create a bibliographic format which can gracefully handle a wide range
of cataloging intensity. One which could handle the complete spectrum
from Bib/Refer to MARC. And do it in a way which permits work to be
spent only and exactly where one wishes. Such a format would be a
`lingua franca', as any other bibliographic format could be converted
into it without losing, or requiring additional, information.
A rough exploratory illustration:
Book
Author "Maxwell"
Title "Theory of heat"
Book
Author "Maxwell, James Clerk"(last,rest) 1831-1879
Title "Theory of heat"(full)
Date 1871(original publication)
Ids 830318(lccn) 830120(lccn) ocm09148398(oclc)
Publication original(name(Longmans), city(London), date(1871),
pages(312))
Author "Maxwell"
Author "J. Maxwell" 1831-1879
Author "James Maxwell"
Author FullName "James Clerk Maxwell"
Author LastNameFirst "Maxwell, James"
Author FullName,LastFirst: "Maxwell, James Clerk"
Author FullName,Taged: first-"James" middle-"Clerk" last-"Maxwell"
1831-1879 Type=Person OCLC-authority-record-id:OC00000000
A draft illustration:
[Needs work.]
----------
What you might tell a friend...
"1980 Annual wildlife and fisheries report"
----------
What a unix Bib/Refer record might contain...
Title "Annual wildlife and fisheries report"
Publication
Date 1980
Publisher
Name "US Forest Service"
Place "DC"
----------
What a BibTeX record might contain...
----------
What a record concerned with machine-oriented identification might contain...
Volume-In-Series 1980
Series
Identifiers
Dewey-Call-Number 639.9/2/0973, assigned-by LC, edition full number=19
LC-Call-Number (classification SK361, unit .U63a),
in-LC-collection no, assigned-by LC
LC-Control-Number " 85649389 "
NUCMC-Control-Number "sc 80000109 "
ISSN 0271-1967, full registration
System-Control-Number (originator NUC/OCoLC, number 5629434)
----------
What a librarians record might contain...
Volume-In-Series 1980
Series
Record
Version/Date 19860716101553.0
Creation-Date 791031
Cataloging-Source
Originator NUC/CtY
Transcriber NUC/CtY
Modifiers NUC/DLC NUC/NSDP NUC/DLC NUC/NST
Authentication-Code lc nsdp
Serial-Entry-Convetion Successive
Identifiers
Dewey-Call-Number 639.9/2/0973, assigned-by LC, edition full number=19
LC-Call-Number (classification SK361, unit .U63a),
in-LC-collection no, assigned-by LC
LC-Control-Number " 85649389 "
NUCMC-Control-Number "sc 80000109 "
ISSN 0271-1967, full registration
System-Control-Number (originator NUC/OCoLC, number 5629434)
Serial
Title
Cover "Wildlife and fish habitat management in the
Forest Service"
Key "Annual wildlife and fisheries report"
Key-Indexing Number-of-nonfiling-characters 0
Abbreviated "Annu. wildl. fish. rep."
Remainder Responsibility "United States Department of Agriculture,
Forest Service, Wildlife and Fisheries"
Publication
Dates-of-Publication Unformatted "Began with vol. for 1978."
Date-Began 1978
Current-Frequency Annual
Geographic-Area-Code n-us---
Publisher
Name "Wildlife and Fisheries"
Place "Washington, D.C."
Jurisdiction
"United States"/"Forest Service"/"Wildlife and Fisheries Staff"
Conference-publication False
Government-publication True
Language
"English"
eng `LC USMARC Code List for Languages'
Original-Alphabet Basic-Roman
Physical-Description
Single-Volume
Dimension 28cm
Illustrated
Content-Description
USMARC-nature-of-contents Abstracts/summaries Directories
LC-Subject
Topic ("Wildlife management","Wildlife habitat improvements")
Geographical "United States"
Subdivisions ("Statistics"x"Periodicals", "Periodicals")
Related-Things
Relation Predicessor
Transition Contined-fully
Thing
Serial
Title "Annual wildlife report"
Note "United States. Forest Services. Division of Wildlife
Management"
Identifiers
ISSN 0099-068X
System-Control-Number (originator OCoLC, number 2242070),
(originator DLC, number " 75644790")
Held-By DLC ICarbS OrCS WaU
----------
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Comments encouraged. - mcharity@lcs.mit.edu.
[Musings][Top]
History:
1996.Dec.18 Htmlified. Added [About MARC] note.
1995 Aug 02 Changed "Criticism" to "Critique". -mcharity
1995 Feb 17 Created. Idea from conversation with Jeremy. -mcharity