Re: [BULK?] Open Source OPAC - VUFind Beta Released

From: Andrew Nagy <andrew.nagy_at_nyob>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:31:55 -0400
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Thomas Arendall-Salvetti
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 1:39 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] [BULK?] [NGC4LIB] Open Source OPAC - VUFind Beta
> Released
>
> Andrew,
>
> I've been playing around with the VuFind demo for a few minutes, and it
> looks great.  This sort of project will fill a valuable niche, freeing
> libraries to experiment with an OPAC that doesn't suck without taking
> on
> all of the risks of adopting a new ILS.

Thanks, That's the point! :)

>
> I realize that this is still a beta (alpha?), but I wanted to point out
> a couple of bugs:
>
> 1.  The APA citation of books is incorrect, missing some periods and
> failing to abbreviate the first names of authors. Here's an example:
>
> Robinson, Paul H.,Darley, John M. (1995) Justice, liability, and blame
> :community views and the criminal law Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press,
>
> 2. The "Similar Items" book recommendation feature always seems to
> recommend computer science books, regardless of the subject matter of
> the book I'm looking at.  Here are some of the recommendations for the
> criminal justice book above:
>
> #  Book  A general purpose systolic array architecture using field
> programmable gate arrays /
> # Book Bilinear signal synthesis in array processing /
> # Book 1996 IEEE International Symposium on Phased Array Systems and
> Technology : revolutionary developments in phased arrays : 15-18
> October
> 1996, Boston, Massachusetts /
>

Well computer science books are after all the most important, right? :)

This is tricky, but we can easily try to fine tune the algorithm a bit.  It might also be somewhat related to what books are currently loaded into the repository.  We have about 500K records from the Villanova catalog which is about 90% of the books.

Thanks for the great comments and the bug testing!

Enjoy
Andrew
Received on Thu Jul 19 2007 - 12:28:23 EDT