[open-bibliography] BibSoup/BibServer collaboration model?

Thu Feb 2 16:26:15 UTC 2012

I'm trying to wrap my head around how BibSoup/BibServer works in the
greater ecosystem of bibliographic data.

In my perfect world, I'd never have to enter any information which is
not unique to me.  Books, authors, journals, articles, author
affiliations would all be magically known to the system and all I'd
need to add would be my own special value.  Reading list?  Just pick
the books to be included on the list.  Annotated bibliography?  Pick
the journal articles and add my comments or category tags of whatever
other type of annotation I like.  Reference list? Pick any CSL
template and book list and get my reference list generated in the
appropriate format to include in my publication.

Recognizing that this nirvana is a long way off and being willing to
help get there, I realize that I'm going to have to enter the data if
someone else hasn't already, but I'd like others to benefit from that
work and, conversely, be able to reuse the work that they've done to
save myself effort.  I know that some of my "data entry" will actually
be converting existing resources that I have into a usable form rather
than sitting down at the keyboard and retyping things.

Control of my work is important, so I'd like to be able to choose how
much, if any, of my annotations, lists, data entry, etc gets shared
(or is visible) to others.

What space, if any, does BibSoup/BibServer occupy in this world?  If
Jim Pitman has a public reading list and I have a reading list, can I
easily create a merged reading list with the books from both?  If
Jim's bibliography and my bibliography have a different list of
authors for a journal article, is there a collaboration mechanism
other than email for coming to agreement, if we both desire, on the
correct set of authors and updating the bibliographic database with
the results of that agreement?

Perhaps it would be illustrative to compare and contrast with other
existing widely known services and tools such as Zotero, Mendeley,
CiteUlike, and the venerable emacs/Bibtex/LaTex.  What is better,
worse, or just different?  Which sets of things are alternatives to
each other and which complement each other?  What are the things which
make BibSoup/BibServer unique?

Of course, if this is already laid out in detail somewhere on a web
page, just point me there.

Tom