Translator Request: Wikisource

Hello,

Wikisource which is a repository of public domain documents and includes a large number of books publishes meta-data in an unconventional way. However, it might be fairly easy for a trained translator developper to grab the available meta data and feed it to Zotero. They use SPANs with IDs to markup author, title and notes. Everything is described at the bottom of http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Template:Header/doc

I also try to talk about more standard-compliant meta data formats on the IRC channels of the various projects, however because they are wikis implementing these proves difficult.

Making Zotero more friendly to Wikimedia projects and vice-versa will bring many benefits to both open culture projects. On the one hand, core contributors to the Wikimedia Foundation's projects such as Wikipedia and Wikisource are tech-saavy and enthusiastic people who may become advocates of Zotero. On the other, Zotero users who are experts in their field might become contributors to Wikimedia's projects.

Best Wishes,

Evren Kiefer
  • Hello from Wikisource ;-)

    The main problem with parsing the "header" values is that there is no conformity between English Wikisource and the Wikisource projects in other languages, such as the equivalent template on French Wikisource.

    I have started a parallel discussion over on English Wikisource.
  • Building a translator is one option, another would be to Shepard the projects into using something like COinS (Which the Wikipedia uses for references). Zotero auto-detects COinS, and it has the added benefit of using an existing open stranded for any other tool to harvest.
  • I'd like to add my voice to the request for a Wikimedia Commons translator. I'd find it helpful, even if I don't use Commons as a primary source. (=
  • there is a Wikimedia Commons translator. I don't know if it works on all pages and you can make suggestsion, but it should work for most photos and paintings such as
    http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boy_with_a_Basket_of_Fruit-Caravaggio_%281593%29.jpg
  • Whoops. I meant that I would like to request a Wikisource translator. Sorry about that.
  • Some sample pages and an idea of what type of data should be imported would be useful. No promises, but generally I like supporting wikimedia stuff.
  • Well, here's what I was wanting to import yesterday: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace

    It's not in my general area, but I wanted to capture a reference to it because I was reading something that was tangentially related to it and wanted to capture it and mark it "related" (this situation is is my primary driver for wanting to capture from Wikisource: outside my area, but I want it in my knowledge base, and accessible quickly, anyway).

    For me, the absolute minimum data to be scraped would be title, author(s), and URL, plus a snapshot of the page itself. For me, this information makes Wikisource a useful source for my situation, which is texts outside my main areas. I'm perfectly content if Wikisource is just captured automatically as "document."

    It would also be nice to capture the description beneath the title, in the light-blue bar, perhaps as an abstract. In this case, that is, I think that the closest thing to an abstract is ""Amazing Grace" (c. 1772) is one of the most well-known Christian hymns. The words thereof are part of the Olney Hymns that the author had worked on, with William Cowper and other hymnodists. The text was first set to the tune NEW BRITAIN in William Walker's Southern Harmony, 1835." I would certainly not be unhappy of the abstract happened to include the "listen to this text" verbiage next to the audio player.

    It might also be worthwhile to capture the categories from the bottom of the page as tags.

    Thanks for your interest! I, for one, would find it helpful.
  • OK, we now have a Wikisource translator
    Your version of Zotero will automatically update within 24hs, or you can update manually using the "Update Now" button in the "General" tab of the Zotero preferences.

    I've included everything exactly as you suggest (title, author, tags, abstract), though I'm using "Manuscript" rather than "Document" as the category - this is generally preferred in Zotero, we discourage using Document, which doesn't work well with citation styles.

    If you find anything else that you think would be useful to add let us know - most things that are typically on the page are easy enough to add.
  • Just got back from my spring break travels to find excellent news! Thank you so much. I'm going to roll Firefox back to 19.0 when I get home tonight and give it a whirl.

    Again, it's much appreciated. Thank you.
  • it's not worth rolling FF back.
    Just install the Zotero beta:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/4.0
    it's going to go out in a day anyway, so it's quite stable.
  • Excellent, and thanks again. Do I need to uninstall 3.0.14 from the Firefox addons page first, or can I just click the link to install 4.0b2? The download page doesn't say either way.
  • 4.0.1 is now official. your copy of zotero should update automatically
  • And it seems like the Wikisource translator works! Thank you again.
Sign In or Register to comment.