word tools

If any number of word tools (dictionaries, thesauri, gazetteers,
authority lists, encyclopedias, etc.) were at your disposal, then how
would you employ them in the implementation of a "next generation"
library catalog?

As you know, the data for many of these word tools are freely
available on the 'Net. True, much of the content is dated, but that
does not make it 100% useless, just less useful as it could be.
Moreover, some of this data is formatted in such a way that it can be
retrieved programatically. One example is through the DICT protocol. [1]

If you had programatic access to this word tool data, then how would
you incorporate it into your library "catalog"? If I had such data I
would use the dictionary function to confirm what I was looking for
was what I had searched. I would use a thesaurus to suggest other
search terms. I would use an authority list to provide See Also and
See From references. I would use an encyclopedia to get an overview
of the topic and then move on to the cited books and articles.

For a good time, I toyed with this idea ever so briefly. I first
installed a DICT server, downloaded subject authorities from FRED
[2], and created a simple "dictionary" whose words were authority
terms and "definitions" where the See From and See Also references.
You folks who use Linux may be able to try this:

   dict -h 208.81.177.118 -d subjects -s substring blues

Which returns something like this:

   From Subject authority list [subjects]:

   Blues festivals
         See from: Blues music festivals
         See also: Music festivals

   Blues (Fictitious character)
         See from: Blues le chat (Fictitious character)

   Blues (Music)
         See from: Blues (Music)--United States
         See from: Blues (Songs, etc.)
         See from: Jive (Music)
         See also: African Americans--Music
         See also: Folk music--United States
         See also: Popular music
         See also: Rhythm and blues music
         See also: Washboard band music

This looks to me like an additional Did You Mean implementation. Food
for thought on a Monday.

[1] http://www.dict.org/
[2] http://www.ibiblio.org/fred2.0/authorities/

--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame