ideoplast.org

milling ideas since 1968

Multiuser Bibliography Project Proposal

This proposal was originally posted to the Angel site for WRA 410, in the "Module 2 project descriptions" discussion, 2008-02-03.

To assist with some collaborative work I'm doing on another project, I'd like to build a multiuser bibliography application.

The application would let users add, update, browse, search, and eventually export bibliography entries. Entries would include the standard bibliographic fields (title, author, etc), fields for location information (URLs for online resources, physical locations for physical resources), and additional fields for unusual resources that require additional documentation. They'd also have a field for the entry's editing history - probably just a timestamp and username for creation and each subsequent edit.

Anonymous read-only access would be provided, but update access would be restricted to user accounts maintained in a user table in the database.

After the initial functionality is implemented, I intend to add:

• Administrative access to the user table. (In the initial version, I'll just update it with SQL commands directly.)
• An export facility, which will export selected or all entries in various forms, eg BibTeX.
• A commenting facility, which will let users annotate entries.