The opportunity for a flexible bibliographic format.

  Designing a bibliographic format for highly varied levels of effort.


It should be possible to create a bibliographic format which permits
people to use exactly the level of detail they wish, rather than
requiring or preventing less or more.  This would reduce the current
undesirable proliferation in bibliographic formats.

The problem:

People create bibliographic records with enormously varying levels of
effort.  Further, the distribution of effort across different aspects
of bibliographic information also varies.  Current bibliographic
formats tend to be useful only over a relatively narrow range.  They
establish minimums by requirements on information and its form.  They
establish maximums by limitations in the expressiveness of the format.
They do not gracefully handle attempts to get by with less work, or to
add more work to further refine the record.  This is approximated by
optional fields, but the format and meaning of a fields content is
usually inflexible.  Thus there is an undesirable proliferation of
formats, a new one created whenever someone wants a new tradeoff in
ease vs precision.  The new format is generally as inflexible as those
which preceded it, and the problem thus continues.

[Critique of existing alternatives is needed...especially of MARC]

The opportunity:

Create a bibliographic format which can gracefully handle a wide range
of cataloging intensity.  One which could handle the complete spectrum
from Bib/Refer to MARC.  And do it in a way which permits work to be
spent only and exactly where one wishes.  Such a format would be a
`lingua franca', as any other bibliographic format could be converted
into it without losing, or requiring additional, information.

A rough exploratory illustration:

 Book
   Author "Maxwell"
   Title "Theory of heat"

 Book
   Author "Maxwell, James Clerk"(last,rest) 1831-1879
   Title  "Theory of heat"(full)
   Date   1871(original publication)
   Ids    830318(lccn) 830120(lccn) ocm09148398(oclc)
   Publication original(name(Longmans), city(London), date(1871),
                        pages(312))

  Author "Maxwell"
  Author "J. Maxwell"  1831-1879
  Author "James Maxwell"
  Author FullName "James Clerk Maxwell"
  Author LastNameFirst "Maxwell, James"
  Author FullName,LastFirst: "Maxwell, James Clerk"
  Author FullName,Taged: first-"James" middle-"Clerk" last-"Maxwell"
         1831-1879 Type=Person OCLC-authority-record-id:OC00000000


A draft illustration:
[Needs work.]

----------
What you might tell a friend...

 "1980 Annual wildlife and fisheries report"

----------
What a unix Bib/Refer record might contain...

   Title "Annual wildlife and fisheries report"
   Publication
      Date  1980
      Publisher   
        Name  "US Forest Service"
        Place "DC"

----------
What a BibTeX record might contain...

----------
What a record concerned with machine-oriented identification might contain...

  Volume-In-Series 1980
  Series
   Identifiers
     Dewey-Call-Number    639.9/2/0973, assigned-by LC, edition full number=19
     LC-Call-Number       (classification SK361, unit .U63a),
                          in-LC-collection no, assigned-by LC
     LC-Control-Number    "   85649389 "
     NUCMC-Control-Number "sc 80000109 "
     ISSN                 0271-1967, full registration
     System-Control-Number (originator NUC/OCoLC, number 5629434)

----------
What a librarians record might contain...

  Volume-In-Series 1980
  Series
   Record
     Version/Date   19860716101553.0
     Creation-Date  791031
     Cataloging-Source
        Originator  NUC/CtY
        Transcriber NUC/CtY
        Modifiers   NUC/DLC NUC/NSDP NUC/DLC NUC/NST
     Authentication-Code  lc nsdp
     Serial-Entry-Convetion Successive
   Identifiers
     Dewey-Call-Number    639.9/2/0973, assigned-by LC, edition full number=19
     LC-Call-Number       (classification SK361, unit .U63a),
                          in-LC-collection no, assigned-by LC
     LC-Control-Number    "   85649389 "
     NUCMC-Control-Number "sc 80000109 "
     ISSN                 0271-1967, full registration
     System-Control-Number (originator NUC/OCoLC, number 5629434)
   Serial
   Title
     Cover          "Wildlife and fish habitat management in the
                     Forest Service"
     Key            "Annual wildlife and fisheries report"
     Key-Indexing   Number-of-nonfiling-characters 0
     Abbreviated    "Annu. wildl. fish. rep."
     Remainder      Responsibility "United States Department of Agriculture,
                                    Forest Service, Wildlife and Fisheries"
   Publication
     Dates-of-Publication Unformatted "Began with vol. for 1978."
     Date-Began           1978
     Current-Frequency    Annual
     Geographic-Area-Code n-us---
     Publisher
       Name  "Wildlife and Fisheries"
       Place "Washington, D.C."
       Jurisdiction
         "United States"/"Forest Service"/"Wildlife and Fisheries Staff"
     Conference-publication False
     Government-publication True
   Language
     "English"
     eng `LC USMARC Code List for Languages'
     Original-Alphabet Basic-Roman
   Physical-Description
     Single-Volume
     Dimension 28cm
     Illustrated
   Content-Description
     USMARC-nature-of-contents  Abstracts/summaries Directories
     LC-Subject
       Topic ("Wildlife management","Wildlife habitat improvements")
       Geographical "United States"
       Subdivisions ("Statistics"x"Periodicals", "Periodicals")
   Related-Things
     Relation   Predicessor
     Transition Contined-fully
     Thing
       Serial
       Title "Annual wildlife report"
       Note  "United States.  Forest Services.  Division of Wildlife
              Management"
       Identifiers
         ISSN  0099-068X
         System-Control-Number (originator OCoLC, number 2242070),
                               (originator DLC,   number "   75644790")
   Held-By DLC ICarbS OrCS WaU
----------

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History:
1995 Aug 02  Changed "Criticism" to "Critique". -mcharity
1995 Feb 17  Created.  Idea from conversation with Jeremy.  -mcharity