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What about something from the archives/museums world? Something like CollectiveAccess or even Omeka? John On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Owen Stephens <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > On 3 Aug 2012, at 15:56, Joseph Montibello < > [log in to unmask]> wrote: > > search, you could probably do worse than to install Blacklight. It > > probably doesn't really meet the "simple" criteria - there's a lot more > to > > it than I could talk about. But getting it out of the box, turned on, > and > > searching against a few records is something that you and students could > > probably manage. I've got a year of unix/ssh/command line experience and > > with a bit of mucking about, googling, and asking for help I was able to > > get a local (non-production) instance up and running, so it's definitely > > easy enough. > > I'd agree - either Blacklight http://projectblacklight.org or VuFind > http://vufind.org are straightforward to get running. I've found > Blacklight setup using the Ruby Gem very easy both on Windows and OS X. > Since they are both powered by Solr and use SolrMARC there are a lot of > similarities on the indexing/searching side. However on the interface side > they differ in terms of setup - so it might be this that would sway you one > way of the other (or a preference for PHP (VuFind) or Ruby (Blacklight)). > > > > >> > >> Lesson: Interfaces, usability, accessibility > >> Exercise: Use the OPAC, populate it with some data, assess its usability > > Once you've got VuFind/Blacklight setup populating with data is a matter > of uploading some MARC21 records - Blacklight comes with some test records > bundled, I suspect VuFind does to but can't remember > > >> > >> Lesson: HTML/CSS > >> Exercise: Use CSS to skin the OPAC, customize the HTML for your "site" > > This is slightly more complex I guess - both systems can be highly > customised, but in either case it isn't necessarily just a matter of > editing CSS or HTML. Both use templating systems and both have > configuration files that control certain aspects of the interface (e.g. > what is searched, how facets display). CSS is probably more straightforward > - VuFind you can just drop in CSS to override the default - not sure about > Blacklight > > >> > >> Lesson: Data management, search, IR > >> Exercise: See if we can peak under the hood about how the OPAC's search > >> works > >> > > I think this would be the real strength of using Blacklight/VuFind - > Solr/Lucene is a powerful combination, and used widely outside the library > sector. You can also configure the indexing to a high degree - lots of > options, the most basic of which I explore in > http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2012/07/marc-and-solrmarc/ > > The thing I really like about this is students would see some of the > complexity of MARC as well as some of it's utility - and where it doesn't > work well > > >> Lesson: Interfaces to data: databases, XML, SQL > >> Exercise: Use the OPAC as an living example to work with those > interfaces > > This is less well served by Blacklight/VuFind - no database, no SQL. > > >> > >> This idea primarily came from trying to get some simple XML/SQL > >> exercises that didn't suck (the setup for these environments is almost > >> as involved as any exercises itself), and the fact the previous classes > >> really liked dissecting the nextgen catalogs we've explored from a > >> software selection and 2.0 integration perspective. > > Unfortunately it may be that Blacklight/VuFind don't work for your > scenario because they don't provide an environment for SQL. You could do > some XML stuff (there is configuration files, and Solr can be updated via > XML messages) - but I'm not clear whether this is the kind of XML work you > want. However, I do think they open up some other avenues that are well > worth exploring, and use technologies that are going to become more > relevant in the future. > > Another option might be BibServer, which uses elastic search rather than > Solr - but I've never tried installing it > http://bibserver.readthedocs.org/en/latest/install.html >