Subject: group power From: Rosemary Mountain <mountain(at)ua.pt> Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 16:44:05 +0100-- 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 Who can maintain the site for a long time Although these are relevant questions, it should be remembered that even out-of-date "one-off" bibliographies can have considerable value (see for ex.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(at)ua.pt Fax: +351-34-370868