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There are a few projects afoot which combined should make for a fine global citations database and card catalog substitute. First, the pilot Wikicite project on the English edition of Wikipedia (see also its abstract specification and growing list of feature requests). Then there are various partial implementations of a simple strutured-data specification called Wikidata; see for instance the similar templates for biographical data on de.wikipedia, and for news-source citations on wikinews.)
And finally, there are projects by the LOC and modern library associations to do away with traditional card catalogs, and provide better interfaces for referencing texts. Sadly, in direct contradiction of the Laws of NatureTM, I know least about the last set of projects, though they have been around the longest now, and have the most proponents/contributors… perhaps we can start a small discussion here about how these projects could interrelate.