[openbiblio-dev] BibSoup in AnimalGarden

Mon Dec 19 19:35:57 UTC 2011

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Jim Pitman <pitman at stat.berkeley.edu>wrote:

> Very nice Peter!
>
> A question raised by this presentation is whether we expect bib data
> creators
> to be making JSON entries by hand, e.g. in a general purpose text editor
> (from my experience,
> a bad idea: too easy to make data invalid by a single keystroke) and if
> not in a general
> text editor, with what editing tool?
>

Is there a tool that does this? If so I will portray it. I completely
accept your points and this is an alpha version. I wanted to edit some
myself last night - tried to get a JSON plugin for Eclipse and after 3-4
hours gave up.

>
> I think we will make the most progress in getting people to accept BibJSON
> if
> we demonstrate that just about however they enter their data, be it in a
> spreadsheet or
> a structured text file format of their own choosing, as long as it is
> decently structured we can
> map the data by machine to BibJSON, and the value of this can be
> demonstrated by various interoperable
> and aggregatable BibJSON based web services.
>

Completely agreed. I am happy to claim almost infinite magic for the
BibSoup in the video, but we need some reality. I want to suggest that
BibSoup and BibServer can:
* look up books and articles in existing compilations. (We should be able
to do this with British National Bibliography - I assume most Penguin books
will be in it?)
* resolve ISBNs against a Bibliography (again I would use the BNB)
* allow us to annotate the BibSoup with local details (e.g. where the book
is)
* allow us to map local identifiers (i.e. OWL's id vs Penguin's id)
* look up books by publisher, date, author (e.g. all Penguins published in
1991). I had a friend who used to collect first editions of Penguin crime
(green covers).

This is likely to British to start with as we have the BNB and I can use
simple examples. That's then an incentive for people to get other
bibliographies into this.

>
> So I wonder how to express this idea your creative medium?
>

I'll talk with Mark this evening about the technology

>
> --Jim
>
> > The animals have made a brief slide/video explaining the basic principles
> > of BibSoup: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6280676/bibsoup1.wmv
> > It's a bit of fun but also an attempt to get across the basic idea (The
> > TeXBook and LaTeX made considerable use of animals).
> > I have also made a short movie explaining how to create BibJSON and I
> would
> > see future snippets about how to create entries, translate from legacy,
> > deal with disambiguation, etc.
> >
> > There are bugs (a missing comma, and a spelling mistake). Please point
> out
> > others
> >
> > --
> > Peter Murray-Rust
> > Reader in Molecular Informatics
> > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> > University of Cambridge
> > CB2 1EW, UK
> > +44-1223-763069
>

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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