We are doing a tiny experiment here at Notre Dame with the Internet Archive, specifically, we are determining whether or not we can supplement a special collection with full text content.
We are hosting at site colloquially called the Catholic Portal -- a collection of rare, infrequently held, and uncommon materials of a Catholic nature. [1] Much of the content of the Portal is metadata -- MARC and EAD records/files. I think the Portal would be more useful if it contained full text content. If it did, then indexing would be improved and services against the texts could be implemented.
How can we get full text content? This is what we are going to try:
1. parse out identifying information from
metadata (author names, titles, dates,
etc.)
2. construct a URL in the form of a
Advanced Search query and send it to the
Archive
3. get back a list of matches in an XML
format
4. parse the result looking for the "best"
matches
5. save Internet Archive keys identifying
full text items
6. mirror Internet Archive content locally
using keys as pointers
7. update local metadata files pointing to
Archive content as well as locally
mirrored content
8. re-index local metadata
If we are (somewhat) successful, then search results would not only have pointers to the physical items, but they would also have pointers to the digitized items. Not only could they have pointers to the digitized items, but they could also have pointers to "services against the texts" such as make word cloud, display concordance, plot word/phrase frequency, etc. These later services are spaces where I think there is great potential for librarianship.
Frankly, because of the Portal's collection policy, I don't expect to find very much material. On the other hand, the same process could be applied to more generic library collections where more content may have already been digitized.
Wish us luck.
[1] Catholic Portal - http://www.catholicresearch.net/
[2] Advanced search - http://www.archive.org/advancedsearch.php
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame
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