In addition to making the OPAC available as a generally spiderable source,
it might be possible to refine the process through a sitemap in
combination with a custom search engine using Google Co-op[1]. The XML
options for Google's sitemap and custom search engine seem somewhat open
to manipulation, including some options for setting boost factors and
displaying custom results. I think it was Marshall Breeding who posted
somewhere recently that they use a sitemap to get Google to index 850K
film descriptions, and a custom search engine could still give access to
Google's interface with an opportunity to place the experience in context,
i.e., that the access is to a collection that may be largely non-digital.
Ross Singer and I put an entry into the Talis mashup contest which indexed
a library collection using Google Desktop [2] . It didn't win (darn!) and
I am under no illusions that very many people would install the plugin
required to make this work (double darn!), but one tantilizing aspect of
Google Desktop is that it displays portions of its own results for general
Google searches on the same machine. This might be useful for a public
bank of computers within the library for providing some library conduit
within general web searches. The recently released Google Desktop for OS/X
does not seem to have the same plugin support though I am told that you
can use a Spotlight plugin and that Google Desktop, in turn, imports
Spotlight content.
There was at least one library that exported records in HTML back in the
days of Alta Vista to increase visibility in general web searches. It
would be interesting to bring together library titles with Google Books in
this kind of arrangement, I don't know if it is possible to specify in a
sitemap that specific titles in Google Books be included. It might be one
way to take advantage of the work that has been done with some of the mass
digitization projects carried out by Google that can't be handed to other
indexers.
art
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1. http://www.google.com/coop/docs/cse
2. http://librarycog.uwindsor.ca/indexcat
Received on Mon Apr 23 2007 - 15:13:07 EDT