GRBPIlion and Worldcat.org

[Updated thanks to Susan Heath, who caught a substantive error in my description of the inbibrec element.]

Where possible, I have added links to Worldcat.org for books in the bibliography of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troia), the volume I edit with Billur Tekkök.

I probably should have been doing this all along... It was a little boring to play catch-up... But it will now be easy to keep on top of the task as I go forward.

A word on format. Here's the xml I use for Fleischer et al. 2001. Late Antiquity: art in context [worldcat]:

<bibrec id="FleischerJLundJ2001">
 <editor>
  <first>Jens</first>
  <last>Fleischer</last>
 </editor>
 <editor>
  <first>John</first>
  <last>Lund</last>
 </editor>
 <editor>
  <first>Marjetta</first>
  <last>Nielsen</last>
 </editor>
 <title>Late Antiquity: art in context</title>
 <date>2001</date>
 <series>Acta Hyperborea</series>
 <volume>8</volume>
 <city>Aarhus</city>
 <publisher>Museum Tusculanum Press</publisher>
 <link rel="url" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=1uc0DHSHUSYC" />
 <link rel="worldcat" href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45813395" />
</bibrec>

This volume is in the bibliography because it includes the chapter "The stamped decoration on Phocaean red slip ware" by L. Vaag on p. 215. The xml for this chapter is:

<bibrec id="VaagL2001">
 <inbibrec idref="FleischerJLundJ2001"/>
 <author>
  <first>Leil</first>
  <last>Vaag</last>
 </author>
 <title>The stamped decoration on Phocaean red slip ware</title>
 <date>2001</date>
 <pages>215-232</pages>
</bibrec>

The inbibrec element of the chapter record, whose idref attribute equals the value of the id attribute of the volume record, creates the link between the two.

It is very true that this xml adheres to no standard. It's my own creation. When I started encoding bibliographic data in xml, I was unsatisfied with all the options so I made up my own. I'm sure I'll move to a standard when one that is granular, lightweight and easy to encode comes along. But sticking to what's current now, combining the two xml records via an xslt stylesheet leads to html such as this.

My one current concession to somewhat standard markup is the link element by which I instantiate the connection to the Worldcat record and to the Google Books version of this volume. This element originated in html and is now used in the Atom Syndication format. I use it as a lightweight encoding for noting multiple relevant internet resources for the volume's record. You can see those links rendered in html here. Next I'll make those links show up in the chapter's html page.

For those who care, I'm tempted to use Atom as a wrapper for the individual bibliographic records. I could even use georss to make the bibliography mappable. That could be cool.