Instant, clickable bibliography
I don't know if you blog. But maybe you know someone who does. Other than me, that is. Or somebody who manages Web pages of some kind. Or somebody who likes to send links in email.
Part of the fun of blogging for me is sharing stuff that I like with people I know. And on the Web, "sharing" means "sending you a link." And if you've gone to the trouble of creating a list in WorldCat, it's almost freakishly easy to turn that list into a set of click-able links for your blog, Web site or email.
- Get an account and create a list in WorldCat.
- Go to the "Citations View" tab of the list.
- Pick the citation style you like (I prefer MLA for this kind of list)
- Choose to "Export selected references as:" HTML
- And click on "Export."
Now... Take that new HTML page of text+hyperlinks, select everything, and paste it into your blog engine, Web page or email. Depending on what software you're using, it might go in just as a copy/paste, or you may have to play with your tags a bit. It worked for me that easily in Gmail and in WordPress. Let me know how it goes elsewhere.
On April 21, 2008 at 6:57 PM K.G. Schneider said:
On the negative, the export-to-a-file thingy is still a bit clunky. There's about three steps too many and I'd like to either email that list to myself or have it export to a page I can scrape it from.
On the positive, a) it works and b) because you're now indexing a lot of articles I am finally able to build a bibliography that includes both books and journal articles. That's an "ooooooooooooh." You weren't looking for feedback on that, but it matters.
For citation lists... do most people want them in date order by default?