Re: Ungava project: Search, browse, visualize catalog and article-level collections

Eric,

Thank-you for your very kind words! And yes, Open Source software is
giving us some very excellent, rich and stable choices these days.

APIs: The plan is to get OpenSearch working on top of this index, to
make it usable for others...

I thought I should point out one thing that might not be obvious to
someone casually taking a look at Ungava: in the NRC Research Press
article collection, there is a (spartan) table of contents navigator
implemented[0]. At each level (title[1], volume[2]) the user
can generate the keyword or author cloud of all articles contained by
that level in the hierarchy. So the user can get a bird's eye view of
the journal as defined by its keywords or authors, across the entire
journal[3] [4] or for a particular volume[5][6].

I didn't necessarily have a plan to build many of these interesting
and useful tools, but since it was so relatively easy and pain-free to
build the underlying indexing infrastructure, it allows me to focus
on creative ways of using the content and the indexing.

Thanks,

Glen

[0]http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ungava/Browse
[1]http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ungava/Browse?calyHandler=showVolumes&journal=1253
[2]http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ungava/Browse?calyHandler=showIssues&collection=jos&journal=1253&volume=23381
[3]http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ungava/Search?tagCloud=true&collection=jos&tagField=keyword&journal=%22Canadian%20Journal%20of%20Botany%22&numCloudDocs=718&numCloudTags=100
[4]http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ungava/Search?tagCloud=true&collection=jos&tagField=dauthor&journal=%22Canadian%20Journal%20of%20Botany%22&numCloudDocs=800&numCloudTags=70
[5]http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ungava/Search?tagCloud=true&collection=jos&tagField=keyword&syear=2004&eyear=2004&journal=%22Canadian%20Journal%20of%20Botany%22&numCloudDocs=173&numCloudTags=100
[6]http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ungava/Search?tagCloud=true&collection=jos&tagField=dauthor&syear=2004&eyear=2004&journal=%22Canadian%20Journal%20of%20Botany%22&numCloudDocs=173&numCloudTags=60

--
Glen Newton | glen.newton_at_nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Researcher, Information Science, CISTI Research
& NRC W3C Advisory Committee Representative
http://tinyurl.com/yvchmu
tel/tél: 613-990-9163 | facsimile/télécopieur 613-952-8246
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI)
National Research Council Canada (NRC)| M-55, 1200 Montreal Road
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/
Institut canadien de l'information scientifique et technique (ICIST)
Conseil national de recherches Canada | M-55, 1200 chemin Montréal
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6
Government of Canada | Gouvernement du Canada
--

> From:    Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Ungava project: Search, browse, visualize catalog and article-level collections
>
> On Oct 16, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Glen Newton - NRC/CNRC CISTI/ICIST
> Research wrote:
>
> > Ungava [1] is a Lucene-based test-bed for experimental, scalable
> > search, browse and results visualization of library catalogs and
> > article-level collections. The first release also includes an
> > implementation of drill clouds [2] for search refinement, as well
> > as using Simile's [3] Timeline for temporal visualization of
> > search results and Exhibit for faceted interactions.
> >
> > Forthcoming collection instances:
> >
> >   - DOAJ: ~2900 journals, ~900 full-text, ~160k article
> >   - BioMed Central: ~180 journals
> >   - arxiv.org: 443,988 e-prints, metadata & full-text
> >   - University of Denver Catalogue
> >   - CERN Document Server: ~900k articles, ~360k fulltext
> >
> > [1] http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/cistilabswiki/index.php/
> > Ungava
> > [2] http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/2007/10/drill-clouds-for-search-
> > refinement-id.html
> > [3] http://simile.mit.edu/
>
>
> Thank you for bringing this the list's attention, and there are to
> things about the work I would like to highlight for subscribers.
>
> First, the system seems to be built using existing tools "freely"
> available on the Web. An individual was able to identify a technical
> problem needing to be solved and then constructed a possible
> solution. Open source software combined with the availability of
> globally networked computers make such a process feasible. Such a
> combination fosters innovation.
>
> Second, and just as important in my mind, is the content of the
> "catalog". It does (or will) include books as well as journal
> articles. In the long run, I sincerely believe users will find such
> an index to be more useful since it aggregates content into a single
> place. Fewer bibliographic silos.
>
> Kudos, and good luck.
>
> P.S. Consider implementing an API against the index. For example,
> consider the use of OpenSearch [1] and/or SRU [2]. Given an API: 1)
> others could re-use your index in other venues, and 2) you would not
> be married to any particular indexer/search engine.
>
> [1] http://www.opensearch.org/
> [2] http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> University Libraries of Notre Dame