[openbiblio-dev] Collections in Bibliographica

[Jim Pitman]

Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:

> A few comments:
>
>1)   * Possible to manage permissions in collections? I want to be able
> to: (i) create 'private' collections which are editable/viewable only
> by me (ii) create collections which are world viewable but only
> editable by me (iii) create collections which are only viewable and
> editable by some pre-defined group (iv) create collections which are
> world viewable but only editable by some pre-defined group (v) created
> collections which are world viewable and world editable.
>2)   * How can I add an item to the database?
>3)   * Are there any plans for being able to reorder/sort items? E.g. by
> title, author, date of publication, etc. The more sophisticated
> browsing options there are the more useful the service is.

I second all of these.  Regarding 3), a well-tested interface for 
searching/browsing a typical collection of modest size (up to about 10K
records) is  provided by BibSever. See e.g. 
http://bibserver.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/bibs7
for a typical installation over a personal bibliography of 83 items.
BibServer provides multi-faceted search/browse by year/type/author/subject 
(or any other facet) which should easily be adapted to the  Bibliographica use case.  Rufus and I have I think agreed to embed this 
BibServer functionality in Bibliographica/openbiblio and to further develop 
BibServer capabilities in this framework.

I recommend that the read only display software for 3) be kept very light and 
not to entrapped in layers of security associated with the write control 
issues 1) and 2).
Currently, BibServer is able to display a .bib file from anywhere on the web. 
(See the Edit Source and [Refresh] button at the bottom of page)
As soon as you provide bulk export of a Bibliographica collection in either
JSON or BibTeX, with adequate structure to recognize facets for browse, 
Bibliographica could easily be plugged in to current BibServer to provide the 
display features 3). BibServer could also be ported into the 
Bibliographica/openbiblio framework, and I would be happy to see that. 

Rufus asked me to come up with requirements for next steps of BibServer 
development under a Bibliographica/openbiblio umbrella. 
The fundamental requirements are 
R1-- to port the current capability BibServer capability of rendering any suitably stuctured biblio file (.bib or suitable .js) from anywhere on the web into the more robust Bibliographica/openbiblio dev framework,
R2 -- ensure by suitable i/o standards that all Bibliographica collections can be handled as inputs.
That done, we could discuss further improvements of the BibServer capabilities.I do think it is important architecturally to keep some separation between the data management layer 1) and 2) above and the display component 3). Having
a clearly defined data serialization like .bib or .js is essential to interfacing between the two.  BibJSON http://www.bibkn.org/bibjson/index.html
is a first attempt at this.

--Jim
----------------------------------------------
Jim Pitman
Director, Bibliographic Knowledge Network Project
http://www.bibkn.org/

Professor of Statistics and Mathematics
University of California
367 Evans Hall # 3860
Berkeley, CA 94720-3860

ph: 510-642-9970  fax: 510-642-7892
e-mail: pitman at stat.berkeley.edu
URL: http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/pitman