Script Summary: Create a Wikipedia {{citation}} entry while browsing a book overview on Google Books.
Adds discrete buttons to the top of a Google Books listing to optionally trim the listing and insert an edit text box with a completed Wikipedia citation template based on the Google listing. As the text box is editable you can correct, trim or add sections while browsing the page. Some handy format buttons are shown with the embedded text box.
It 'intelligently' guesses first/last name for all listed authors so the citation will be in a more standard [surname, first name] format. As well as good academic citation style, this is particularly useful for longer book listings where the references or footnotes section may cross-refer in Chicago or Harvard standard style (e.g. (Smith, 1990)). See Citing sources for further guidance on reference styles.
Interesting extra features include creating a Harvard style reference (see harv template on Wikipedia) and extracting the first paragraph in the Google Books overview section to add as a quote.
If you are looking up a journal article, magazine or other non-book format, I suggest you try WorldCat with this similar script to create a detailed article citation.
Latest release 12 October 2010: Fixed (fatal) bug after Google introduced Export Citation with unexpected metadata formats.
Example output:
<ref name=DiBona2005 >{{citation
| last1 = DiBona
| first1 = Chris
| year = 2005
| title = Open Sources 2.0: the continuing evolution
| first2 = Danese
| last2 = Cooper
| first3 = Mark
| last3 = Stone
| publisher = O'Reilly Media, Inc.
| isbn = 9780596008024
| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=Thgzo8q3GJUC
| page = 322
}}</ref>
