On 11/14/12 1:25 AM, James Weinheimer wrote:
> </snip>
>
>
>
> I don't like to be the harbinger of doom and gloom, but I think we need
> to have a realistic view of what is happening. What is happening is not
> inevitable and can be changed. Karen's example of including the local
> holdings is interesting, but it can be done in a variety of ways,
> including browser add-ons. For instance, a plugin could be made similar
> to the Google Books API that automatically searches for the existence of
> a book in Google Books when you do a search in your own catalog; a
> library specific plugin could turn that around to search your own
> catalog when someone opens a Google Book (or Amazon, or anything else).
Jim,
In practice, I'm pretty sure this won't work. Library catalogs cannot
take the load of being searched every time someone opens a page for a
book on Google or Amazon -- any more than your Web site could survive if
Google searched inside your pages directly rather than making a copy and
storing it in the Google server farm.
We'll need something like "Google for library holdings" -- a database
that takes the load off of the local catalogs and only queries those
catalogs at the point where a user has made a selection of that
library's holdings and wants the current status information. I know that
my example shows the status, but I'm thinking that may not be practical
-- or it may not be practical for that to be real time information at
that point. A database of holdings could give a user local holdings on
anything that libraries can provide, and perhaps status information that
is slightly out of date (either by hours or days, depending on how we
figure out how to harvest the data).
So imagine:
1) an original crawl of library holdings, done carefully so as not to
disrupt the functioning of underpowered library systems
2) a method for library systems to "push" record IDs when status changes
3) a method for library systems to "push" records IDs for new records
and for deleted holdings
4) a periodic re-crawl for the changed and added information
This imitates some techniques used by search engines although they seem
to use different techniques for #s 2 and 3 -- rather than getting a push
they are aware of updates sometimes based on links, sometimes based on
their own gathering of information about frequency of change of pages.
AFAIK.
kc
>
> When I consider these issues and see all the possibilities, it becomes
> clearer and clearer to me that the efforts toward RDA and FRBR will have
> zero impact on the public. There are problems with people using
> catalogs, but the problems are definitely not with the cataloging rules.
> So sad to see such resources, talent and brainpower going into something
> that will turn out to be irrelevant.
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Wed Nov 14 2012 - 08:50:52 EST