Re: google onebox, "next generation" library catalogs, and interpreting queries

This is interesting. Our campus has the search appliance, and we are just implementing it for our library site search.

Can you email me and tell me how you included the catalog and the results of the site search on one page? I assume I have to ask for a subset to be created for the library catalog separate from our site search, then do I just put the one box query on the customized page?

Very interesting!

Lisa


-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries on behalf of Eric Lease Morgan
Sent: Tue 5/20/2008 8:32 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] google onebox, "next generation" library catalogs, and interpreting queries
 
On May 2, 2008, at 4:06 PM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

> I have been thinking about Google Onebox technology, "next
> generation" library catalogs, and interpreting user queries.
> Specifically, I think the techniques behind Google Onebox
> technology could easily be implemented in "next generation" library
> catalogs.


To illustrate some of the possibilities of Google Onebox technology
and how a library catalog search can be integrated into "search this
site" functionality, I created the following demonstration. Try
searching for Walt Whitman at the following URL:

   http://dewey.library.nd.edu/box/

Remember, it is just an example -- a prototype!

Here at Notre Dame the library manages the campus-wide search engine
-- a Google Search Appliance. For the most part, it works pretty
well. The Appliance allows us to create sub-collections, and in our
case we created a sub-collection of simply library- and archive-
related materials. It is then possible to insert sub-queries (called
Onebox in Google parlance) into the Appliance interface such as
queries against a campus-wide directory. Enter a query. The query
gets sent to the sub-queries. The query gets sent to Google
Appliance. Results are returned. Display. The whole thing sort of
works like meta-search, sort of. Try these searches as well:

   * jennifer younger
   * plato and aristotle
   * encyclopedia of philosophy

In a world were the name of the game is "Put your content where the
users are", integrating the searching of library content in "search
this site" functionality makes a lot of sense.

--
Eric Lease Morgan
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame