I
almost never link to new blogs with less than a few weeks of posts in
them, but Glenn Fleishman [you may know him from such hits as isbn.nu] has a proven track record and is a delight to read. His new blog ISBlogN
which tracks the “authority problem” with the ISBN system for most
people's real-world search needs. He's got big plans, it will be fun to
watch them unfold.
Authority doesn't mean that
the information is correct. Rather, it means that you have
authoritatively settled on a single form of a category of information
that might be represented in several ways. It's a way to collapse lots
of individual information that is fundamentally about the same think
into a single set of information that is mapped to the same thing. This
is closer to how people conceive of what they want from a book search
than any of the tools I've seen….. I believe that with a little
effort and some coordination, along with the tenets of Feist v. Rural,
the Internet community could develop a WikiBook-a-pedia, or a
compendium of updatable bibliographic information along with authority
and chunky linkages that could be distributed freely. [librarian.net : a library weblog]
the information is correct. Rather, it means that you have
authoritatively settled on a single form of a category of information
that might be represented in several ways. It's a way to collapse lots
of individual information that is fundamentally about the same think
into a single set of information that is mapped to the same thing. This
is closer to how people conceive of what they want from a book search
than any of the tools I've seen….. I believe that with a little
effort and some coordination, along with the tenets of Feist v. Rural,
the Internet community could develop a WikiBook-a-pedia, or a
compendium of updatable bibliographic information along with authority
and chunky linkages that could be distributed freely. [librarian.net : a library weblog]