[game_preservation] Bibliography project

[Andrew Armstrong]

Okay, I've sorted more of the data fields (this might not come up right, 
I hope it does), comments welcome!

I am sure I am missing some useful bits (it's also very simplified - 
apart from the admin side, at the start this might be all the tables - 
so it's not going to be fully normalised, have no related "games" or 
"theory" links, and it is probably going to be a MySQL thing, thus the 
choice of data types is pretty limited - although I'll probably make 
some varchar rather then text later).

Resource Data Table Field Name 	Data Type 	Data Size 	Description
key 	+VE INT 	128bit (Maximum size) 	This identifies the entry. A int is 
used to speed up lookups and so forth, and is never ever shown to 
anyone, even admins. Game names change, and so do URL identifiers (if 
the need arises), so this is the one bastion of "neverchanging" which 
links all the names and URL's to it (as well as all other reference 
tables!)
title 	TEXT 	0 	Title of the resource
local_title 	TEXT 	0 	If set, this will contain the English 
translated/localised title. NB: Multilingual will need to be sorted 
eventually!
author 	TEXT 	0 	Maybe VARCHAR? or allow an ID link? (can be multiple 
authors!) In any case, the person, group of people or organisation who 
authored the resource
date 	DATETIME 	0 	Standard date field. Allow full input (down to the 
millisecond) or just a "day" or "month" or "year"
url 	TEXT 	0 	URL to the resource, if on the web.
page_count 	SMALLINT 	0 	Positive integer - number of pages in the article.
isbn 	VARCHAR 	13 	International Standard Book Number (13 digits long)
issn 	VARCHAR 	8 	International Standard Serial Number
publication_info 	TEXT 	0 	Publication information. Might be the 
publisher, where it was published, who by
abstract 	TEXT 	0 	Fair use abstract from the paper
description 	TEXT 	0 	Description of the paper, if any more is necessary 
over the abstract.
editors_notes 	TEXT 	0 	Editors notes for the entry - hidden from the 
public
keywords 	TEXT 	0 	Keywords for the resource, like tags (so could be a 
phrase) to aid searching for things outside of categorisation, probably 
separated by commas or something similar.
NAMEOFFIELD 	DATATYPE 	0 	DESCRIPTION


Resource Type Category Relational Table Field Name 	Data Type 	Data 
Size 	Description
key_resource 	INT 	128 	Joint PK with key below. This is the resource Id 
the category is for.
key_resource_category 	INT 	128 	Joint PK with key above. This is the 
category that is to be related to the resource.

Resource Category Type Data Table Field Name 	Data Type 	Data Size 
Description
key 	INT 	128 	Primary key - uniquely identified resource category.
name 	TEXT 	0 	Resource category name. "book", "news article", "opinion 
article" etc.
description 	TEXT 	0 	Textual description of the category.


Resource Content Category Relational Table Field Name 	Data Type 	Data 
Size 	Description
key_resource 	INT 	128 	Joint PK with key below. This is the resource Id 
the category is for.
key_resource_category 	INT 	128 	Joint PK with key above. This is the 
category that is to be related to the resource.

Resource Content Category Type Data Table Field Name 	Data Type 	Data 
Size 	Description
key 	INT 	128 	Primary key - uniquely identified resource content category.
name 	TEXT 	0 	Resource category name. "game history", "game culture", 
"legal", "preview", "review", "discussion" - the larger tags.
description 	TEXT 	0 	Textual description of the category.



Andrew

Andrew Armstrong wrote:

> Sounds good, the rating thing was probably going to be for articles 

> highly related to preservation - if we add an article, it implies it 

> is a good source for *something* but not necessarily historical work - 

> the way a game is made is useful for certain types of research into 

> that game for instance, but not generally historical, whereas why a 

> game was made and what went on when it was made in the company might 

> be better.

>

> Will have to think if it it just needs a simple "Yes/No" for "Highly 

> useful" or whatever it is given. Might need to fine tune it more - if 

> it is useful for information and accuracy on "X" but not on "Y".

>

> Must reads is a key part - key texts need to be added for general 

> work, and I've noted down your other fields - I forgot publisher etc.! :)

>

> Andrew

>

> Devin Monnens wrote:

>> Andrew,

>>  

>> Sounds like a good idea. I'd say required fields are the things we 

>> generally use for references:

>>  

>> Author, title of work, title of source, publication information. ISBN 

>> is also useful, as would be a mention of other places the article 

>> appears.

>>  

>> Commentary and rating system can be useful, but I would suggest that 

>> the rating system (say 5 stars) could be out of context - not useful 

>> in what way? The article may be very good, but if the article has 

>> nothing to do with preservation, then why rate it highly?

>>  

>> I also think when possible we should have a collection of essays that 

>> have been written on the site. This might not be possible with some 

>> texts, but we could at least do an external link to them (say through 

>> Google books or the like).

>>  

>> Anyway, this will be a great project. I think we definitely need a 

>> list of 'must reads' because this indicates sort of the canon of 

>> digital media preservation (and preservation in general). We can also 

>> try to organize based on who is workign with what - so for the papers 

>> coming out of Europe, we can indicate which archives or universities 

>> they are working with and perhaps who is connected with that, too.

>>  

>> -Devin Monnens

>>

>> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Andrew Armstrong 

>> <andrew at aarmstrong.org <mailto:andrew at aarmstrong.org>> wrote:

>>

>>     Hey all,

>>

>>     I'll probably get the other projects' ideas more fleshed out in

>>     the coming weeks (people who take over a project can sort their

>>     own parts though of course :) ), but this one is immediately in

>>     my mind and could use some good comments early on.

>>

>>     Basically, me and Devin discussed a Bibliography - a list of

>>     resources, from the normal books to web articles to other media.

>>     It would replace our current "Resources" list, which is a

>>     nightmare to edit and check though!

>>

>>     If anyone has any thoughts on these points, or anything I've

>>     forgotten, would be ace:

>>     * What kind of fields would be useful to have for each entry

>>     (author, name, URL, ISBN/ISSN and keywords are obvious, any others?)

>>     * Categories of resources

>>     ** by type - such as "book", "news article", "opinion article"...?

>>     ** and also content - "game history", "game culture", "legal",

>>     "preview", "review", "discussion"...? not sure...

>>     * Should I add in a way to reference the game(s) the article

>>     might refer to?

>>     * Should there be a facility to either add the entire text of an

>>     article (so it is searchable, ala google books) or at perhaps at

>>     least an extract to the entry?

>>     * Should there be a "importance" field - basically our opinion on

>>     how "useful" some resource is? This might help pick out the "Must

>>     reference" resources perhaps.

>>     * I think there should be a facility to have an editor-added

>>     comment on the content of the article - the description, as it

>>     were. Thoughts?

>>     * Who wants to help add entries? :) it'll be editor run (with, I

>>     hope, publicly hidden histories kinda like a wiki) perhaps with

>>     some facility to have users submit entries. Editing with ease is

>>     going to be the priority.

>>

>>     I was going to build a basic site to accommodate this for the

>>     mean time (it won't be on the IGDA's own server, I'd rather not

>>     fight to get webspace right now with Jason leaving who was the

>>     webmaster ;) ), and just basically get it up and running so

>>     people can add items. So, a simple PHP site, since I know some

>>     basic PHP :) I'd build it "correctly" since I want to expand this

>>     if it is useful, but I hope it'll be quick - so the layout will

>>     start absolutely horribly at first of course, heh.

>>

>>     Andrew

>>     _______________________________________________

>>     game_preservation mailing list

>>     game_preservation at igda.org <mailto:game_preservation at igda.org>

>>     http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> -- 

>> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>>

>> "Until next time..."

>> Captain Commando

>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

>>

>> _______________________________________________

>> game_preservation mailing list

>> game_preservation at igda.org

>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>>   

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

>

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing list

> game_preservation at igda.org

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>   

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20090427/68c7e964/attachment.htm>