On Friday, January 30, 2009 10:19 PM, I posted the following message to AUTOCAT in response to a thread concerning open source interfaces. Some of what I wrote relates to various postings on NGC4Lib, including case examples for (though not necessarily directly addressing):
On Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 22:57, Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
>...
>> But it still needs to be proven that Google can do a reliable search
>> for something by Tolstoy or Confucius.
>What's the criteria? Let's put together a number of cases, and see how we go.
[AUTOCAT posting:]
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On Thursday, January 29, 2009 12:27 PM, Judy Anderson wrote:
>Has anyone acquired an open source interface/portal such as VuFind (see http://www.vufind.org/) that would search not only your OPAC but other resource collections as well?<
...
>What do you see as its major strengths and major weaknesses - and how might this particular product fair in relation to similar ones?<
On Wednesday, January 28, 2009 2:55 AM, James Weinheimer wrote (in Re: SUPER-OPAC ON THE WEB Re: [ACAT] OCLC and the Guardian):
>The Koha3 catalog has a public interface that I think matches or surpasses that of any other library catalog. See Athens County's library catalog:
http://search.athenscounty.lib.oh.us/.<
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I like open source software and am enthusiastic about the potential future of systems like Koha and Evergreen. One thing that I have noticed that seems to be common among many of the newer systems is the lack of an alphabetical browse interface, either in the staff client or the OPAC. An example of this display would be LC Authorities [1] (subject, name, title, name/title) and the LC Online Catalog [2] (title, author, subject, call numbers, author/creator by title).
Do other catalogers (and end users--such more advanced ones, including reference librarians and researchers) find the alphabetical browse essential, or am I alone in this? Sure, for the OPAC, end users may be doing keyword searching most of the time, but sometimes it is very useful to be able to see the controlled headings used by and not used by the catalog. For example, if I am interested in knowing whether the library has anything by "William Shakespeare" but not by the famous on who lived 1564-1616 (without knowing those exact dates), then being able to browse the authority file by author shows me (in the LC/NACO universe) that "Shakespeare, William, 1843-1930" and "Shakespeare, William, 1849-1931" and 3 others with middle names/initials exist and I can get to their works using their authorized headings. I can also see that "Shakespeare, William." has been applied to 2 records in LC's database, "Shakespeare, William Ellen (Wright) [from old catalog]" to 1, and "Shakespea!
re, William, jr., company, Kalamazoo, Mich. [from old catalog]" has been used (as a corporate name) once. Using this knowledge, as a cataloger/maintainer of the database, I could try to associate the uncontrolled headings with an authority record, to bring them under control. Similarly, for a subject search in LC authorities, I can see whether a heading is authorized or not, its thesaurus (LCSH, LCAC, GSAFD, etc.), and how many times it has been used.
In most of the modern systems I've seen (VuFind, Evergreen, Koha, WorldCat.org), the alphabetical browse interface (of either bibliographic records [2] or authority records [1]) seemed to be lacking--I was unable to find it. In some cases, it has been a while since I looked at an example system (VuFind, Koha until I looked at it while composing this message--it is much improved), so it may have been added since then, but in other cases (Evergreen, WorldCat.org) it is still missing. It is surprising to me that this has not yet been a required element demanded by any of the libraries using that system.
While composing this message, I did attempt some sample searches in the LibLime academic and public library demo servers for Koha [3]. I did see a subject browse option there and attempted a few searches there. As an aside, the Browse by Subject/Authority search has several indexes, but Personal Name does not appear to be one of them (in the Public Library setup, though it is available in the Academic demo, so I guess that is a configurable option). After several academic library demo searches resulting in no results, I happened upon a browse corporate name beginning with 'c'. This showed 3 results. Further experimentation with Default "starts with" various letters of the alphabet seemed to indicate that part of the lack of results was due to a lack of authority records in the database. Results in the public library demo were improved due to what appears to be a larger number of authority records. The "starts with" searches also seemed to include any words starting with the !
term anywhere within the heading, rather than the first word of a heading. By comparison, in LC Authorities, if one searches 'azzzz' as a subject, the result is dropping the user into a browse display starting just after the searched term, and continuing indefinitely. Attempting to do a corporate name "Browse by Subject" in the Koha public library OPAC demo for all corporate name headings starting at "United States" resulted in starting in "Corporate Names: 100th Bomb Group Association (United States)" with 37671 results.
In the Koha staff demo, I went to the Cataloging module, created a new MARC record and attempted to edit the 100. The resulting searches, as in the previous paragraph, seemed limited to records with already created authority records. I believe this was likely due to a configurable setting within Koha that allows one to restrict usage to established authorities only. I was unable to find an option that would let me see/browse headings that had been used but had not yet been established. The Biblios client allows for better sorting of results in the record results listing, but when entering names into controlled fields, it has some odd quirks. For example, attempting to select the correct heading for Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 is difficult because the pop-up menu seems to show only part of $a, "Shakespeare, Wil". There are several of these listed, most likely due to the author-title authority records. So the cataloger doesn't know which one they've selected until after it!
has been selected. If it was the wrong one, they then have to delete the parts and try again. The listing of names in the drop-down box appears to be sorted in a random order, rather than alphabetically. The list also seems to be constructed using a keyword search, as one of the listings for "Shakespeare" is "Raff, Joachim, 1822-1882. Shakespeare-Ouverturen." (aside--it would be nice to be able to copy and paste that as one string/field-at-once rather than having to copy the individual parts, copying each subfield separately; I may submit additional Biblios-related comments later, most likely off-list).
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A related issue concerns facets, or related terms appearing on the side of the search results pages. On Wednesday, January 21, 2009 2:59 PM, I posted to the Evergreen Discussion Group [4] in response to links to example systems (Innisfil and Demo-PINES) using Evergreen:
>When I click on the example links, I get to the record for "Little Polar Bear and the reindeer" for Innisfil and "Little Polar Bear and the big balloon" in Demo-PINES. Along the side are various Relevant subjects:<
[...] [list of related terms omitted for AUTOCAT]
>However, while Bears--Mythology and Aircraft carriers--Flight decks are present, I don't see [Heading]--Fiction, or any of the other various subdivisions for [Heading].<
>Also, while wandering around the Demo-PINES related subjects, I came across "Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975" (after clicking the Aircraft carriers -- Flight decks related subject). However, when I attempt to use this as a subject search (as well as its updated heading "Vietnam War, 1961-1975"), I get zero results. Doing a keyword search on Vietnam War indicates that there are several records, including TCN ocm40835909, with "Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975." Also, looking at the relevant subjects, or doing a subject search on Vietnam, I don't see a listing of all of the various subdivisions under the main heading of Vietnam, like $xForeign relations, $xPolitics and government, $xHistory, etc.<
>I'd also like to see a way to sort the other "relevant" items, alphabetically, for example, and/or to get to a browse list of all headings in the authority file with links to records containing those headings (in a manner similar to Subject or Author or other Browse in http://catalog.loc.gov/ and http://authorities.loc.gov).<
Follow-up messages in the thread did indicate that the way the facets display could be configured through a different indexing method.
Conducting the search in the academic staff demo of Koha [3], for "su, phr: Vietnam War", I get 12 results, in the topics section, I see 2 listings for "Vietnam War, 1961-19..." (which show as ending with "1975" and "1975." when moused-over). Clicking a record shows that a full heading would include "Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Chemical warfare." and "Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Peace." There is no way to limit (via selection/clicking) the results to records containing the exact, subdivided heading. I get similar results when searching "Vietnamese Conflict" as a subject phrase. Neither search appears to show a the cross-reference relationship between these headings. Of course, this is probably due to the lack of authority records in the academic library demo. Conducting a Browse by Subject in the public library demo was much more useful and essentially resolves the majority of my complaints described above.
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[1] <http://authorities.loc.gov>
[2] <http://catalog.loc.gov/>
[3] <http://academic.demo.kohalibrary.com>, <http://academic-staff.demo.kohalibrary.com>, <http://public.demo.kohalibrary.com>, <http://public-staff.demo.kohalibrary.com/>
[4] Part of thread "Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] shared funding for Evergreen enhancement?":
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Thank you for your time, with apologies for rambling,
Bryan Baldus
Cataloger
Quality Books Inc.
The Best of America's Independent Presses
1-800-323-4241x402
bryan.baldus_at_quality-books.com
Received on Tue Mar 03 2009 - 15:34:49 EST