AlexandriaCore

GregorHagedorn - Mon Nov 15 2004 - Version 1.4
Parent topic: WebHome
The AlexandriaCore (previously also known as "GutenbergCore", originally proposed so in Christchurch 2004) is an attempt to agree on a relatively simple schema to express bibliographic reference information as needed in biodiversity, and probably all of bioscience.

This page needs some updating once a new discussion gets started. Older stuff is under ProxyDataPublication - please take a look at that and tell me what you think is missing or whether approach is valid.

One question from Christchurch: How shall we cite software? I would think it is best represented by an Article - I see little advantage in adding a new category for it.

-- Main.GregorHagedorn - 08 Nov 2004

A new point raised on email between me and Rich Pyle:

• Rich: ... But if there are different authors or date than the parent, it becomes a Subreference unit.
• Gregor: I wonder about date. It is impossible for a thing to have a different date than the independent publication? Perhaps for books delivered in parts? Not sure Alexandria core covers that - I think not! - 9 Nov 2004
• Rich: Yes exactly -- books delivered in parts. There are many cases of this, where a unit traditionally cited as a single "book" (rather than as a Series of books) have different dates for different page ranges. In many cases, these can be handled by "Citable Subunits" -- but in many ther cases, they are not. Sometimes the page ranges break-apart in mid-sentence, with the first half of the sentence published on one date, and the second half published on another date. I think that AC needs to accomodate these things, because they do have "reality" even outside the context of taxonomy (where date can be important for purposes of establishing priority).
• Gregor: I agree although I do not know immediately what the most parsimonious way would be in AC. Privately I tend to think that any occasion of citing a date range ("Raabe 1935-1937") is bad practice, summarizing things that come in volumes, but which the library bound together. So far I found no real publication that came out in two years :-) I consider books that come in installments as bound-together separate publications. Many libraries bind together small Journal volumes as well - nobody sees a problem there. But there may be cases where it is impossible to know. However, I do not want AC to be too prescriptive, so it probably should support date ranges! - 9 Nov 2004

New: AlexandriaCoreExamples

Some rambling: most urgent in my eyes is rethinking the separation of issues of citation (= in the context of cited information), bibliography, and representation of the referenced object. I mostly visualize AC records as being rendered in a bibliography, but I start thinking this may be wrong. In conventional publishing (and mirrored in much digital publishing), the citation reference in the text is a short pointer to the references/bibliography section. However, many issues are overlapping: there may a page number in the citation text context, but a book may also be limited to a chapter or a page-range in the bibliography. Also other citation-specific issues like "[last accessed 6.2.2004]" currently are proposed together with Location in the Citation type - but are most usually found in the bibliography.

Page, figure, table number is currently called "Location" (equivalent to "ReferenceDetail" in many other models).

The type including Location is currently called Citation. It is somewhat equivalent to a "subreference" in Richard Pyle's model, however, it provides no different authorship at the moment.

Should the Citation type be called differently? Subreference? Should Location be called "Fragment" and include chapter titles in addition to page/figure numbers and html bookmarks? Or should "Location" be "Part" and "AC.Part" removed from AC-main type?

Should bibliography be viewed as a combination of AC publication representation and citation with location?