[bibliographica-users] Some ideas for Bibliographica

Wed Dec 1 11:40:54 UTC 2010

Really good suggestions Jonathan -- have forwarded to openbiblio-dev
where I'll respond.

Given overlap between openbiblio-dev and here can I would like to
suggest we, at least temporarily, mothball this list and direct all
discussion to openbiblio-dev.

Rufus

On 27 November 2010 23:20, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> For ages I've been meaning to jot down a few ideas about how we can
> improve Bibliographica, particularly from the point of view of user
> experience / user interface. Below are a few (pretty obvious) things
> off the top of my head to get a thread started...
>
> All the best,
>
> Jonathan
>
> ## Adding items
>
> It would be amazing to have some basic interface for ordinary,
> non-technical users to add items to the system. For example a big
> 'add' section somewhere obvious on the main menu which would take you
> to a 'new item' page (a bit like the 'new package page' on CKAN).
>
> As I understand one of the virtues of the existing system is that it
> does not require a whole bunch of mandatory fields, but users can add
> whatever fields they feel like/have available. Hence it could be
> interesting to experiment with something like the Google Forms
> interface, where you can click '+' to add a new field, and choose what
> field you want to add using a drop-down menu or autocomplete (or both,
> or something else?).
>
> ## Creating lists
>
> I guess this could start with something like the CKAN 'groups', where
> you have a basic interface to create arbitrary lists of items. I'm not
> sure as to the best way to do this, but one could have something like:
>
>  (i) an 'add to list' option for each item
>  (ii) a checkbox and an 'add to list' option for any page where items
> are listed (a bit like the Googlemail interface for labelling
> messages)
>  (iii) an 'add item' option on any list page, where you can either
> search for an existing item or add a new one yourself
>
> The lists would consist of:
>
>  * a number of items
>  * a title
>  * a description
>  * a URL
>  * permissions status: public / private / shared with X, Y, Z
>
> ## Exporting lists / queries
>
> One of the big things I hoped Bibliographica could do would be to
> export a list of publications in a bunch of different ways (from LaTeX
> to plain text/csv to various standard bibliographic data formats). In
> an ideal world the user could even define templates to specify how the
> data was exported, e.g. which fields, how it is formatted, etc.
>
> A few use cases for things that I imagine users could want to do with
> the exported lists:
>
>  * add directly to an print publication (a normal document, from
> .doc, to .odt, to LaTeX, to other fancier print formats)
>  * import to some bibliographic data software (from library catalogue
> software to personal bibliographic records software)
>  * import to some other instance of Bibliographica
>  * import data to other web services (like Library Thing, citation
> sharing services, ...)
>  * publish on personal/institutional website (e.g. list of things
> that I've published, first year undergraduate reading list, list of
> publications on topic X, ...)
>
> ## Importing data
>
> It would be great to have some way of importing data in some standard
> bibliographic data formats. This would include data from other
> instances of Bibliographica.
>
> ## User pages
>
> Ideally one would be able to create a user page with a basic profile
> and links to any (public) lists they had created, and possibly any
> recent edits they had made to any items.
>
> ## Deploying instances of Bibliographica
>
> This is a *big* ask, but it would be *amazing* if eventually one could
> deploy instances of Bibliographica, a bit like one can currently
> deploy instances of Wordpress. E.g. one could request
> [name].bibliographica.org, or one could run a copy of the software at
> some arbitrary URL. So we could easily have things like:
>
> bibliography.jonathangray.org
> folktales.ed.ac.uk
> kant.hu-berlin.de
> etc
>
> Guess this is less a UI/UX thing and more a long term wish! ;-)
>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
> http://identi.ca/jwyg
>
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