What such a data base should be able to do:
- Everything a data base such as the ESTC can do.[1]
- It should be possible to correct entries – as in Wikipedia.
- One should be able to set footnotes (it is of no use if I can state that the Queen Zarah (1705) was not written by Delarivier Manley if I do not have to state how I happen to know this.)
- One should be able to give the publishing histories of titles: What was the first edition, the sequence of succeeding editions, imitations etc.? [2]
- One should be able to handle different sorts of materials – i.e. bibliographical and archival materials: I know of a person appearing in the book, know archival materials about this person and can set links between pages.
- One should be able to set links to outside pages – e.g. digitalisations.
- If you change something within the data base Wikipedia-articles should receive the new information automatically.
- The Google Books “review this book” option – we should be able to do this better and perhaps offer our service to Google Books
- ..the same offer could be an improved “advanced search” for Google.
- It would be desirable if the tool could be accessed easily to create statistics.[3] [4]
- There should be a special name space for research projects
- ^ http://estc.bl.uk/F/?func=file&file_name=login-bl-estc
- ^ see: http://www.pierre-marteau.com/library/e-1709-0004.html
- ^ The Stanford tool at http://vimeo.com/25796059 does this
- ^ See: de:Benutzer:Olaf Simons/Buchhandelsstatistiken for some statistics.