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There's also XTF, <http://xtf.sourceforge.net/>, which we are presently using to index our records in an experiment to see if we can do retrieval/ranking better than our ILS vendor (a bit of a straw man, but....). Roy On Oct 27, 2005, at 3:38 PM, John Durno wrote: > You might want to have a look at Zebra for the indexing engine. > http://indexdata.dk/zebra/ > > Great tool for making a file of MARC records Z searchable. > > > John > > On 27-Oct-05, at 2:58 PM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: > > >> On Oct 27, 2005, at 2:06 PM, Andrew Nagy wrote: >> >> >> >>>> http://mylibrary.ockham.org/ >>>> >>>> >>> >>> I have been thinking of ways, similiar to what you have done that >>> you >>> mentioned below with the Ockham project, to allow more modern day >>> access >>> with our library catalog. I have been beginning to think about >>> devising >>> a way to index/harvest our entire catalog (and allow this indexing >>> process to run every so often) to allow our own custom access >>> methods. >>> We could then generate our own custom RSS feeds of new books, allow >>> more >>> efficient/enticing search interfaces, etc. >>> >>> Do you know of any existing software for indexing or harvesting a >>> catalog into another datastore (SQL Database, XML Database, etc). >>> I am >>> sure I could fetch all of the records somehow through Z39.50 and >>> dump it >>> into a MySQL database, but maybe there is some better method? >>> >>> >> >> I too have thought about harvesting content from my local catalog and >> providing new interfaces to the content, and I might go about this in >> a number of different ways. >> >> 1. I might use OAI to harvest the content, cache is locally, and >> provide services against the cache. This cache might be saved on a >> file system, but more likely into a relational database. >> >> 2. I might simply dump all the MARC records from my catalog, >> transform them into something more readable, say sets of HTML/XML >> records, and provide services against these files. >> >> The weakest link in my chain would be my indexer. Relational >> databases are notoriously ill-equipped to handle free text searching. >> Yes, you can implement it and you can use various database-specific >> features to implement free text searching, but they still won't work >> as well as an indexer. My only experience with indexers lies in >> things like swish-e and Plucene. I sincerely wonder whether or not >> these indexers would be up to the task. >> >> Supposing I could find/use an indexer that was satisfactory, I would >> then provide simple and advanced (SRU/OpenSearch) search features >> against the index of holdings. Search results would then be enhanced >> with the features such as borrow, re-new, review, put on reserve, >> save as citation, email, "get it for me", put on hold, "what's new?", >> view as RSS, etc. These services would require a list of authorized >> users of the system -- a patron database. >> >> In short, since I would have direct access to the data, and since I >> would have direct to the index, I would use my skills to provide >> services them. For the most part, I don't mind back-end, >> administrative, data-entry interfaces to our various systems, but I >> do have problems with the end-user interfaces. Let me use those back- >> ends to create and store my data, then give me unfettered access to >> the data and I will provide my own end-user interfaces. Another >> alternative is to exploit (industry standard) Web Services computing >> techniques against the existing integrated library system. In this >> way you get XML data (information without presentation) back and you >> can begin to do the same things. >> >> -- >> Eric Lease Morgan >> University Libraries of Notre Dame >> >> > > -- > John Durno > Project Coordinator > BC Electronic Library Network > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Phone: 604-268-7002 > Fax: 604-291-3023 > Email: [log in to unmask] > Web: http://www.eln.bc.ca > >