Library 2.0
the future of libraries in the digital age
Universal citation resource?
Hi Librarians and other library-interested folk,
Is there a good universal database of published works? There are obviously ISBN numbers, but I'm looking (if it's out there) for something a little more universal; something that consolidates all published versions of the same source work under a single listing. That is, rather than a different ISBN number for all published versions of Romeo & Juliet after the institution of ISBN numbers and none before, I'd like to find something that would just have a listing for "Romeo & Juliet." Any clues?
If you care, this is the root of my question:
I run an educational software company, and I spend a lot of time making sure data people enter into our software is as organized and useful as possible; we create a network of the content users generate, so where possible we eschew plain text in favor of structured content we can link together. Think of how a social bookmarking application takes bookmarks people create individually and aggregates them together into a rating.
Among other functions, our software provides students and teachers with a way to cite or reference works used in their compositions. For example, a student who writes a paper on Romeo & Juliet would naturally include the play in a list of sources; in a text document, the logical way to do this would be in plain text according to whatever the preferred standard.
But we have an opportunity to do better--I want all compositions that cite Romeo & Juliet to be linked together in a sort of tagging system. I could use ISBN numbers, but that would only link compositions where the same version of the book was used. I could use freeform text tags, but then we'd wind up with different tags for "Romeo & Juliet" versus "Romeo and Juliet."
So are there any more universal systems, even if they're just for a specific type of work? Any clues? What about data aside from just titles, i.e. authors? There's got to be something--how does a library know how many copies of Romeo & Juliet it has when they're under different ISBNs?
Thanks!
Is there a good universal database of published works? There are obviously ISBN numbers, but I'm looking (if it's out there) for something a little more universal; something that consolidates all published versions of the same source work under a single listing. That is, rather than a different ISBN number for all published versions of Romeo & Juliet after the institution of ISBN numbers and none before, I'd like to find something that would just have a listing for "Romeo & Juliet." Any clues?
If you care, this is the root of my question:
I run an educational software company, and I spend a lot of time making sure data people enter into our software is as organized and useful as possible; we create a network of the content users generate, so where possible we eschew plain text in favor of structured content we can link together. Think of how a social bookmarking application takes bookmarks people create individually and aggregates them together into a rating.
Among other functions, our software provides students and teachers with a way to cite or reference works used in their compositions. For example, a student who writes a paper on Romeo & Juliet would naturally include the play in a list of sources; in a text document, the logical way to do this would be in plain text according to whatever the preferred standard.
But we have an opportunity to do better--I want all compositions that cite Romeo & Juliet to be linked together in a sort of tagging system. I could use ISBN numbers, but that would only link compositions where the same version of the book was used. I could use freeform text tags, but then we'd wind up with different tags for "Romeo & Juliet" versus "Romeo and Juliet."
So are there any more universal systems, even if they're just for a specific type of work? Any clues? What about data aside from just titles, i.e. authors? There's got to be something--how does a library know how many copies of Romeo & Juliet it has when they're under different ISBNs?
Thanks!
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Steven Harris on -
There is probably not anything in the world that could be described as a universal list of published works. The closest thing would be a utility called WorldCat. This began life as a system called OCLC that libraries used to share cataloging records (and therefore cataloging effort). With thousands of libraries around the world contributing records, it is probably the largest single database of published works. A competitor, RLIN, was bought out and subsumed.
WorldCat is a proprietary and subscription database. They do, however, offer an Open WorldCat version that can be searched from any networked computer. I'm not sure if it would perform the function you need.
Historically, library catalogs have not necessarily associated different versions of a work. The industry standard is that different editions and versions of a work ALWAYS have a separate record. (I capital ALWAYS to stress the strength with which librarians held this conviction.) The way librarians know how many copies and versions of Romeo & Juliet is to do a title search within the catalog, which was not always the best method.
What you describe (something that would associate all versions of a text) is an idea that has been gaining a lot of traction in the profession lately. There are some library catalogs that employ a faceted display that will group versions of a work under one entry. These employ some principles that are commonly referred to as FRBR. (We LOVE abbreviations!) Anyway, that's a long way to say that we haven't yet adopted such an idea throughout the industry.
Somebody who is more technologically savvy than me can probably tell you how to use Open WorldCat to do what you want.
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Permalink Reply by Jack Phelps on
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You guys are speedy and awesome. Thanks! This gives me a great starting ground and is really extremely helpful.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Watkins on
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Since you're interested in the links between works that are citation-based, you should also probably look at Google Scholar where you can search for works that mention Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (link below) and can then follow the "Cited by" links in the results to find more recent works that have cited each one in the results list. It's not comprehensive, but it is a great stepping-off point for finding related works that have cited one that you know about.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22romeo+and+...
--Steve
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Permalink Reply by Jill on
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Have you looked into the DOI and its uses at CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/)? Also, there's the work at OCLC with FRBR and FAST. In conjunction with WorldCat, the resource that is made up of those three might solve a percentage of your difficulties.
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Jill--thanks! CrossRef is cool. I suspect we may wind up writing something that recognizes a variety of standardized tags, like ISBNs, CrossRef tags, etc.
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Permalink Reply by Emily on -
Much less authoritative, but it's quickly becoming pretty big, is the librarything.com website, which does the FRBR thing of linking pages and pages of different editions together under one "work" - now it tends to be based on individual people's libraries, but they've got lots and lots of those on there so the "volume count" is rising all the time.
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Ahh, Emily, you are one smart cookie. It most definitely ties together a lot of information about books that doesn't seem to be tied anywhere else. Very cool.
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