Bibliography: Questions for future development of the Bibliography of Tolkien Studies

[Omikhleia]

Topics for the future development of the Bibliography of Tolkien Studies
(Extracted from a discussion on the Dragon de Brume Discord server, private section)

• Coverage
  • Keeping up to date with the latest publications from the publishers and journals already indexed. It's a difficult task as the number of key publishers and journals increases...
    • Contacting some of them to get hep with updates (at least being informed of new issues) would be helpful.
    • Engaging a community of volunteers to help with indexing would also be useful, but requires some technical knowledge to be effective.
  • Indexing some additional journals and publishers...
    • For instance, Hither Shore... (contacts were taken, but not followed up yet)
    • Other sources to identify...
• Content categorization and analysis
  • Making the bibliography more analytical by adding keywords to each entry (3 to 7 keywords per entry).
    • Significant work... How to proceed incrementally in practice?
    • Which categories of keywords to use, under which controlled vocabulary?
  • Going further with the index of names (people). It's a heavy task as well (with lots of cross-checks to be safe), how to better proceed?
  • Deeper indexing of references (within articles, via people's authority files, etc.)? Very heavy task...
• Language coverage
  • Opening the bibliography to other languages beyond English and French?
  • Marking language of each entry?
• Consistency of editorial choices
  • Primary (Tolkien's own texts) vs. secondary literature: the bibliography currently includes a few primary references (notably for Tolkien's published in some of the indexed journals), but not the major primary texts.
  • Other editorial choices to be made consistent?