Karen Coyle wrote:
>
> All of this rambling is to say that we need to make some changes. It
> would be good to brainstorm on the easiest, fastest way to get library
> data to the fore in internet search.
>
>
OCLC's approach was not the first: the library consortium of a German
province, Northrhine-Westphalia, made an attempt in 2002/03 to construct
a "virtual bookshelf". It consisted of 12 million records, each
converted into one pretty HTML record and distributed over a hierarchy
of disk directories because one wasn't enough to hold them all and
because presumably the Google spiders would refuse to scan this many
files. They stopped at about 2 million anyway. And the files, lacking
links pointing to them, couldn't reach high ranking scores.
The Virtual Bookshelf was discontinued.
So, while easy and fast to rig up, this certainly isn't a promising
approach. Also, it isn't really one HTML file per book that users
could gain the most from. What they _probably_ want is a data service
that delivers interoperable data for a wide range of applications.
This would need to be structured data, of course, and "structured" would
not mean MARC. But what? A structural standard is not enough, as we now
know, a content standard is needed as well. DC is neither, only MARC
is de facto, currently, the best in both regards. Or what else have we
got that might gain acceptance?
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon Aug 25 2008 - 04:48:42 EDT