The difficulty that I see with adding the contents of the library
catalogs is the page rank. It's kind of the same problem Google is
having with coming up with a ranking for its books database. Since the
data in many library catalogs isn't linkable, there's no data to use to
calculate the rank, just as there are not enough current links to Google
books that would inform ranking. We could use library holdings as a
ranking characteristic -- basically, you query WorldCat to find out how
many libraries own the book. That's pretty crude, requires a good
FRBR-ization of the titles, and is going to give us a very, very long
tail. (a large number of WorldCat records have only one holding library
-- based on data about the Google 5 libraries:
http://dlib.org/dlib/september05/lavoie/09lavoie.html)
Ranking is absolutely key. I gave up using Google desktop search because
what I was looking for never showed up in the first 1-2 screens.
kc
Tim Spalding wrote:
> Does anyone know of examples of a fully-spiderable OPAC?
>
> It's my contention that libraries would do well in Google and even
> Google Local if they were spiderable. I've seen the Lamson Library
> catalog do very well—tops in Google, even without mentioning Plymouth
> State, but it gets a LOT of push from its association with WpOPAC.
>
> But I need some examples. Anyone?
>
> Tim
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Mon Apr 23 2007 - 15:45:47 EDT