[Web4lib] Citation in blogs

[D.H. Mattison]

If you wanted to use WordPress as a citation manager you could, though it's
not really designed for that purpose. Current blogging systems are already
designed for referencing Web sites and other kinds of resources through
protocols such as trackback, pingback, and tags. I use a plugin on my site
called Jerome's Keywords Plugin (http://vapourtrails.ca/wp-keywords) to tag
my posts. So far as I know, no blogging software yet supports OAI-PMH, but
then again I don't think Connotea or CiteULike do either.

Since hyperlinks are the currency of Web exchange, I'm not sure I agree that
there's a "lack of proper citation within blogs". What would constitute
proper citation? So far as I can see Connotea doesn't enforce any kind of
bibliographic standard, it's basically, in its beta version, not much more
than another social bookmarking service. CiteULike doesn't seem to be much
better, but I haven't looked at both in great depth. Both services also
appear to be geared to online content rather than to print content, which,
to my mind, only reinforces the mistaken notion that everything's on the
Internet. Even if everything is on the Internet one day, a lot of that
content will be restricted by commercial licenses or other considerations.

I think a more appropriate model for bibliographic work that can encompass
both online and print citations is one based on wiki technology. There are a
few applications already out there such as Wikindx and refbase. More are
described or linked to on the Bibliophile: Web Literature Database
Initiative (http://bibliophile.sourceforge.net/). There are also more
traditional citation databases such as GetCITED (http://www.getcited.org/),
which work on a similar principle to wiki technology.

All that being said, some kind of citation plugin for WordPress would be an
interesting tool.

David Mattison
Victoria, BC, Canada
dmattison at shaw.ca
Tiki Wiki Hut: http://www.davidmattison.ca/tiki
Ten Thousand Year Blog: http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of fiona bradley
Sent: May 23, 2005 6:35 PM
To: Web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Web4lib] Citation in blogs


web4lib,

At the Blogtalk Downunder conference that I attended on the weekend,
one of the topics raised several times is the lack of proper citation
within blogs to other websites, images, or documents.

With the growth of Connotea, citeseer and citeulike, is there a
citation plugin for WordPress etc? Something like Endnote for the web?

thanks,
Fiona
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