Citation Builder: Dynamic display of publication lists on academic webpages

Abstract

The Citation Builder application enables the display of dynamic lists of publications on academic webpages, based on data from a Fedora repository. Developed at the University Library, University of New South Wales in 2008, Citation Builder was funded within the ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) Project. Open access Institutional Repositories (IRs) are storing increasing quantities of publication metadata. By enabling the repurposing of this information, Citation Builder reduces the time and effort involved in data-entry and maintenance of publication lists. Once bibliographic details have been added to the IR, citations can be automatically created and displayed on external websites, such as an academic's personal homepage or a faculty publications webpage. The initial version of Citation Builder software was written using PHP technology. The Java-based Version 2 is Open Source and available via Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/unswlibrary/downloads/list When embedded in an external webpage, Citation Builder uses the latest data in the repository to dynamically generate formatted citations. The application can be readily implemented by web administrators, and does not require any knowledge of programming. At the client side, two files are uploaded and a few lines inserted into the HTML. Editing this HTML enables publications to be selected for display based on specific criteria, for example, all publications by a particular author, or all PhD theses completed within a particular department of the University. There are two display options: the Publications List and the Search Script. The former generates a list of matching publications. The Search Script displays query boxes which enable searches within the specified set of publications, with results displayed as formatted citations. In both display options, publication titles can be hyperlinked to matching objects in the repository. Citation Builder has been designed to be highly configurable. For example, other Fedora repositories could configure the application to fetch the relevant descriptive metadata from Fedora (e.g. Dublin Core; MODS). While Harvard is the default citation style, the XSL could also be modified to display citations in other styles. By integrating an institutionally-managed repository service with school and faculty-based websites, Citation Builder directly supports existing scholarly communication practices of the University research community.