group power

[Rosemary Mountain <mountain@xxxxx>]

-- Dear List,

        Jont Allen's idea of a bibliographic data base seems to me a
good one,despite the practical objections raised by Greg Sandell:

> 1. Who sinks all the hours into collecting and typing in data the first
> time
        -- all of us who contribute data, I would guess...Given that
some of
the list members are authors, I would imagine that they might have first
go at
providing summaries...

> 2. Who makes periodic updates
> 3. Who writes the scripts/cgi programs, and who is willing to update
> them with changes in technology, and new bibliograhic format requests
> 4. Who can maintain the site for a long time

Although these are relevant questions, it should be remembered that even
out-of-date "one-off" bibliographies can have considerable value (see
for ex. the Kramer bibliography published in MTS (1985) "Studies in time
& music") and in fact are rather useful pictures of historical
development of a field....

> 5. ...and who is at a company/university that can supply the web server
Is this so unlikely?

> 6. If all the above effort is worthwhile since perhaps something better
> will be available in a few years (e.g. if all journals go online and
> provide helpful subject keys)

There would be a (big) difference between an annotated bibliography
submitted by experts in the field and computer subject searches, which
can give a terrible signal-to-noise ratio.

I'm in favour/favor, and would even do some inputting....

        rosemary
---------------------------------------
Dr. Rosemary Mountain
Communication & Art
Universidade de Aveiro
3810 Aveiro - Portugal

e-mail: mountain@ua.pt

Fax:    +351-34-370868