On Jul 16, 2007, at 11:25 AM, K.G. Schneider wrote:
I see some work is done in metadata that can express the relationship between articles in a journal. But I'm curious how much we (librarians) care about this business of fidelity or whether it's just another silent victim of change. I worry that without intending to we could hasten the death of an entire area of literature.
Why does it matter what librarians think about the change in formats? The readers are the people who need to have a voice in how their publications work -- what makes them useful and what would make them better. In this case, it's researchers, not librarians[1], who should make the call. As someone who doesn't read and use Cell on a daily basis, I can't say whether its representation in a database is well- suited to its use in research or not. In other words... I think you're taking this question to the wrong audience. You'll probably get more relevant answers if you ask people who do research in a particular field. From our initial discussions with faculty on the Bibapp, I hypothesize that you'd see very different kinds of answers from researchers in different areas -- definitely between humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, and very likely at a more fine-grained level, too. In some cases, 'journal-ness' is probably important. In others, the traditional model is probably inferior to other options. [1] - Except, of course, for library-related journals. -Nate Wendt Library UW - Madison
