When I think about the library "catalog" I think that it will contain
more than just metadata about library materials but also the
materials themeselves. Think mostly books, journal articles,
encyclopedia articles, definitions, images, data sets, etc. Moreover,
the library "catalog" will enable people to do things with the items
in the collection. It is more than just find and get. For example:
Add to my collection - Once an item is displayed, select it to
add it your "your library" and optionally add it to a sub-section
of your library. This is like bookmarking.
Annotate - As you read a text, the system will allow you to
comment on the text, and associate each comment with a particular
word, sentence, paragraph, section, etc. This would function much
like scholarly annotated version of text like The Annotated
Alice.
Cite - Select a text. Choose an option. Return a citation of the
item in any number of formats. MLA. Chicago. Etc. It would be
nice of each text could be associated with a URI.
Compare & contrast - This is one of the "kewlest" function.
Select any number of texts. Two. Five. Fifty. One hundred. Select
compare. The system reads each text and analyses the words it
finds. It counts the words (much like a concordance) and returns
a report listing things such as: these words appear in 90% of the
documents, these words appear in 45% of the documents, this
document contains most of the words contained in the other
documents, this document contains the most number of unique
words. By going through this process a person would be able to
see which documents were similar to each other and which
documents were dissimilar. Optionally, the user could seed the
compare & contrast documents with word or phrases to focus on a
particular idea.
Create different version of - Given a document in TEI, transform
the document into PDF, something designed for your iPhone, or
XHTML. Given a document created for one ebook reader, convert it
into a version for another reader.
Create flip book - A simple approach it to create an interface
allowing the person to "flip" through the book very quickly
similar to the way a person makes pages turn very quickly in
their hands. Even better, extract all the images from one or more
texts and create slide show of the images. This will allow a
person to scan/browse many texts quickly and select a text
accordingly.
Create tag cloud from - As a graphic illustration of what a text
(or collection of texts) is about, count the number of times
words appear in a document and lay them out according to their
rank, much like Del.icio.us tag clouds, only bigger.
Delete from my collection - This is the inverse of Add To My
Collection.
Do concordance against - A concordance counts words, allows a
person to list the words in alphabetic or numeric order, and then
points you to the location of the words in the text. This is just
about the oldest form of indexing and it was originally applied
to the bible hundreds of years ago.
Do rudimentary morphology - Given a word and a
dictionary/thesaurus, extract from one or more texts the way the
word was used, both forward and backward. The system would take
advantage of alternations in spellings as well as meanings.
Tricky!
Find opposite - Determine the "aboutness" of a document. Use a
thesaurus to find the antonym of the "aboutness" and find new
documents.
Find similar - This is the same as Find Opposite except the
system looks for synonyms.
Hilight - This is similar to Annotate except the annotations are
graphical in nature. This is similar to using a hi-lighter pen on
books or diagraming sentences.
Incorporate into syllabus - Link a given document to another
document and supplement the link with a short blurb such as an
assignment.
Map to controlled vocabulary term - Exploit user tags and/or
statistical analysis to determine the "aboutness" of a document
or the documents' author authority heading, and find the closest
match in a "subject heading" list such as LCSH or Dewey.
Plot on a map - Given a gazetteer, find all the places in a
document and plot them on a map in terms of both time and place.
Associate each point with a passage in the text.
Print - Move the document from the screen to paper. It would be
even cooler if the printed version were printed like books are
"suppose" to print -- odd pages appear on the right, chapter
headers appear on odd pages, title page and verso, "properly"
numbered pages, back-of-the-book indexes, colophon, etc.
Purchase - Own the item in exchange for money.
Rate - Give the text a numeric rating such as 1 - 5.
Review - Write a description of the text and its content. This a
verbose version of Rate.
Save - Copy a version of the text from the remote site to your
local file system.
Search - Enter a term and return/navigate the user to sections of
one or more documents.
Search my collection - Query only the documents you have put on
your "bookshelf".
Share - Create one or more lists of documents and publish the
lists.
Summarize - This is very similar to Review but is not necessarily
intend to include value judgments. This can be done by a human,
but it can also be done by a computer through various extraction
techniques.
Tag - Associate with your own controlled (or not so controlled)
vocabulary term.
Trace author - Determine author(s) of document, and find other
works by or about them.
Trace citation - Extract citations from text's bibliography. See
who else has used those citations, both before the text was
written and/or after the text was written.
Translate - Convert the text(s) or passages into other languages.
What is this thing called the library "catalog" anyway? Maybe it is
more like an index as opposed to a catalog, and maybe it is really a
tool to assist in the work of library constituents.
Food for thought and discussion.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
University Libraries of Notre Dame
(574) 631-8604
Received on Thu Mar 13 2008 - 07:20:12 EDT