What do y'all think of the idea of a spelling server -- a Web service
taking a word as input and returning a list of alternative spellings.

MyLibrary@Ockham has indexed about 430,000 OAI records. These records
have grossly classified into a number of domains such as mathematics,
life science, theses & dissertations, and a master domain consisting
of all the sub domains.

Taking a hint from Bill Mosely (of swish-e fame), I have read the
indexes, parsed out the individual words, and fed them to GNU ASPELL,
a dictionary program. It is then possible to query ASPELL and have it
return alternative spellings. We have incorporated this feature into
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I could make this spell checking functionality available as a Web
service. The URL could look something like this:

   http://spell.ockham.org/?word=origami

The output could look something like this:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<spell>
     <word>origami</word>
     <spellings>
         <spelling>origem</spelling>
         <spelling>irrigam</spelling>
         <spelling>obrigam</spelling>
         <spelling>kirigami</spelling>
         <spelling>ariguama</spelling>
     </spellings>
</spell>

It would then be up to the client to do with the content of the
spelling elements as they desired. For example, the client could:

   * spell check a document
   * implement a Did You Mean? service a la Google
   * incorporate the results into a Find More Like This One search
   * enhance the results of an OPAC search
   * feed selected words back to the spelling server

Alternative URL's might include:

   http://spell.ockham.org/?word=origami&domain=master
   http://spell.ockham.org/?word=origami&domain=master&version=1.0
   http://spell.ockham.org/?
word=origami&domain=master&version=1.0&verbosity=5

Writing the underlying script would be easy. Articulating a XML
stream as output would be harder.

What do y'all thinque? It would be fun at the very least.

--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame

(574) 631-8604