Sherri Saines, a coworker of mine and First-Year Experience librarian at Ohio University, posted yesterday on her ideas for a “anti citation-style movement,” naming the multitude of problems reference and instruction librarians are all too familiar with – style variations, adherence to typewriter-era notions of scholarly communication, students frustrated beyond the point of belief, etc. She suggests that citations should be recorded instead in a “common database format” and hyperlinked whenever possible, thus reducing the anachronistic stress on punctuation and facilitating/modernizing the more salient purpose of citation, namely information accessibility and collaboration. Soon Zotero or other personal knowledge management platforms will hopefully make this easier and increasingly web-based… (pardon my refusal to use the phrase “bibliographic management software” – I think it tends to scare people). Right on, Sherri.
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