Where did I read that before?

February 23, 2006 8:00 AM

Does a meta index of books that reference each other exist?

For some reason, it's always a pleasant surprise when I am reading and it references something I have previously read. But sometimes I have no idea where I read it. Googling it is hit or miss.

posted by MrMulan to writing & language (12 comments total)

Yes, actually, and it was an FPP before. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it either. Palimpsest, I believe, was one of the keywords.
posted by klangklangston at 8:09 AM on February 23, 2006

This isn't what you wanted, but I think it's what the aforementioned FPP discussed:

The Invisible Library
The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.

(see also: Wikipedia's list of fictional books)
posted by themadjuggler at 8:20 AM on February 23, 2006

My searching has only yielded An Index to Ships in Books, sorry!
posted by themadjuggler at 8:29 AM on February 23, 2006

When and if Google Books gets fully loaded, you would be able to go there, enter the name of any book, and get results of all other books in which that name appears. If understand your question, that would do the trick. It's hard to tell at this point how far along they are, but they seem to be loading books from many countries, eras and subjects. The exceptions would be books whose publishers withhold permission for Google to show content, but even those seem to be turning up as meeting search results, except you can't look at the pages themselves.
posted by beagle at 8:49 AM on February 23, 2006

That would be it. I wouldn't even want contect(I'm lying, I would), but just the names of all the other books would be great.
posted by MrMulan at 8:53 AM on February 23, 2006

You might also look into Amazon's Search Inside! function. They have a service called Citations that does pretty much what you're asking about, but it only includes books you can Search Inside! right now. As an example, here are all 139 books cited in Craig Werner's A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race, and the Soul of America.
posted by cgc373 at 9:19 AM on February 23, 2006

This sounds like a good project for a wiki, right? With every book having a page and linking to the pages of all the books listed in it, which in turn have a list of links. And whenever you read a book, note the "citations" and add them to the list.

And then... not sure if this is possible... you could spit out six-degrees-of-separation type data from that. Just for fun.

(Of course, the Google/Amazon method would be ideal... but could be awhile...)
posted by SuperNova at 11:12 AM on February 23, 2006

Not to derail, but why is this a "meta" index - wouldn't an index of books that are mentioned by other books just be an index? You search for a book, it tells you all the other books that cite it?
posted by drobot at 11:35 AM on February 23, 2006

This second-semester library science student thinks the concept is called a citation index and that it's usually restricted to journals.
posted by scratch at 11:37 AM on February 23, 2006

An index of indexes = meta, no?
posted by MrMulan at 11:42 AM on February 23, 2006

I dont think it's an index of indexes, is it? It's just an index of references to books in books? I think it's close to what scratch is suggesting - a citation index, but for books. I would guess this info would be useful for academic works and nonfiction. Maybe less so to fiction, but still interesting.
posted by drobot at 11:59 AM on February 23, 2006

For awhile, if a book I was reading (non-fiction) mentioned another book in passing, I would stop and seak out the other book to add to my reading list. They're not citations so much as passing references. It started when I was reading a book where banned books featured in the plot, and I wanted to read the banned books.

If I were to start this again, I think I'd start with something by Jasper Fforde.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:31 PM on February 23, 2006