The project's been chugging along nicely, and I've nearly finished documenting the dispensary and the back shop - we originally thought that there would be around 4000 items in total, but I've already documented around three and a half thousand, and there's still the shop to do.
Recently, one of the groups of items documented was a set of reference books - pharmocopaeias mainly, the earliest from 1914, the latest from 1963.
Too early to have ISBN's, and some different editions of the same pharmacopaeia.
So, how to document them and provide a unique reference, and preferably one that was machine readable?
BibTex!
All the books, and the correct editions, were on the National Library of Australia's catalogue which provdes a handy download of the BibTex reference, which gives us a professionally compiled description of the item, plus a catalogue reference to the NLA's catalogue to allow someone in the future to do a simple double check.
The one exception was a book which I couldn't find in the NLA, or any of the state libraries in Australia, but did find in the British Library, which unfortunately doesn't provide a handy citation export in BibTex format.
I could, I suppose, have downloaded the citation in the BL's preferred format and run it through one of the Endnote to BibTex, or Marc to BibTex conversion tools. but as it was only one entry, downloading, installling, and then checking the output seemed almost as much work as creating an entry by hand, so I ended up hand creating an entry based on the BL's RIS output.
And why BibTex?
Two reasons: (1) it's a common well documented format and (2) as well as being machine readable, its also human readable - more or less - which makes it easy for any future researcher or archivist using the data I've created to be sure that it was this edition and not that edition ...
Recently, one of the groups of items documented was a set of reference books - pharmocopaeias mainly, the earliest from 1914, the latest from 1963.
Too early to have ISBN's, and some different editions of the same pharmacopaeia.
So, how to document them and provide a unique reference, and preferably one that was machine readable?
BibTex!
All the books, and the correct editions, were on the National Library of Australia's catalogue which provdes a handy download of the BibTex reference, which gives us a professionally compiled description of the item, plus a catalogue reference to the NLA's catalogue to allow someone in the future to do a simple double check.
The one exception was a book which I couldn't find in the NLA, or any of the state libraries in Australia, but did find in the British Library, which unfortunately doesn't provide a handy citation export in BibTex format.
I could, I suppose, have downloaded the citation in the BL's preferred format and run it through one of the Endnote to BibTex, or Marc to BibTex conversion tools. but as it was only one entry, downloading, installling, and then checking the output seemed almost as much work as creating an entry by hand, so I ended up hand creating an entry based on the BL's RIS output.
And why BibTex?
Two reasons: (1) it's a common well documented format and (2) as well as being machine readable, its also human readable - more or less - which makes it easy for any future researcher or archivist using the data I've created to be sure that it was this edition and not that edition ...
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