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Hi Eric, Given the likely need to map back from an alternate name (string search in the definition?) to the auth name (maybe the most common use for such a service?), I think this route might be on the inefficient side. I've been wondering about names as handles, with a crossref-like middleman piece. But not doing anything about such ideas. -t On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: > > Over the weekend I had fun with the DICT protocol, a DICT server, a > DICT client, and the creation of dictionaries for the afore mentioned. > > The DICT protocol seems to be a simple client/server protocol for > searching remote content and returning "definitions" of the query. > [1] I was initially drawn to the protocol for its content. > Specifically, I wanted a dictionary because I thought it would be > useful in a "next generation" library catalog application. The server > was trivial to install because it is available via yum. Since it is > protocol there are a number of clients and libraries available. > There's also bunches o' data to be had, albeit a bit dated. Some of > it includes: 1913 dictionary, version 2.0 of WordNet, the CIA World > Fact Book (2000), Moby's Thesaurus, a gazetteer, and quite a number > of English to other dictionaries. > > What's interesting is the DICT protocol data is not limited to > "dictionaries" as the Fact Book exemplifies. The data really only has > two fields: headword (key), and note (definition). After thinking > about it, I thought authority lists would be a pretty good candidate > for DICT. The headword would be the term, and the definition would be > the See From and See Also listings. > > Off on an adventure, I downloaded subject authorities from FRED. [2] > I used a shell script to loop through my data (subjects2dictd, > attached) which employed XSLT to parse the MARCXML > (subjects2dict.xsl, attached) and then ran various dict* utilities. > The end result is a "dictionary" query-able with your favorite DICT > client. From a Linux shell, try: > > dict -h 208.81.177.118 -d subjects -s substring blues > > While I think this is pretty kewl, I wonder whether or not DICT is > the correct approach. Maybe I should use a more robust, full-text > indexer for this problem? After all, DICT servers only look at the > headword when searching, not the definitions. On the other hand DICT > was *pretty* easy to get up an running, and authority lists are a > type of dictionary. > > [1] http://www.dict.org > [2] http://www.ibiblio.org/fred2.0/authorities/ > > -- > Eric Lease Morgan > University Libraries of Notre Dame >