[Web4lib] google & library catalogs

[Ross Singer]

Right, but I think Roy's point is that that's gonna suck if we all do it.

-Ross.

On 4/11/06, Casey Bisson <cbisson at plymouth.edu> wrote:
>
> Sara,
>
> With more than 80 million Americans searching the web on any given
> day, and major search engines handling five billion searches per
> month, it's hard to imagine not wanting to make library resources
> findable and available to those users.
>
> Google scares and confuses most of us, but I like to describe it as a
> giant OPAC with cataloging rules much like those we're already
> familiar with (even if those rules are different from what we're
> familiar with). Unfortunately, many of our systems are built in ways
> that contradict those rules and make our content difficult to index
> and find.
>
> But it's a challenge we can meet. And considering that a good number
> of those billions of monthly searches could benefit from the
> knowledge available within libraries, it's a challenge that's worth
> our effort.
>
> That's the philosophy, here's some practice:
>
> WPopac[1] is my project to improve the findability of our resources
> by following the rules of the Google Economy[2]. In doing so it's
> already highly ranked for at least one search[3], and the logs show
> that it's getting a large number of hits from search engines for
> terms like "di vinci code" (yes, note the misspelling)  and "assisted
> suicide" along with a few hundred more. How many hits? In the less
> than three months that the prototype has been open to the public,
> it's received more than 550,000 page loads (that count excludes my
> own activity), about as many as official Plymouth State University
> catalog received in 12 months last year.
>
> 1: http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11133/
>
> 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_economy
>
> 3: http://www.google.com/search?q=joe+monninger
>
> Casey Bisson
> __________________________________________
>
> e-Learning Application Developer
> Plymouth State University
> Plymouth, New Hampshire
> http://oz.plymouth.edu/~cbisson/
> ph: 603-535-2256
>
>
> On Apr 10, 2006, at 5:55 PM, Sara Brownmiller wrote:
>
> >
> > There is interest here in allowing google (google the search
> > engine, not
> > google scholar) to spider, or crawl, our library catalog.  Since many
> > students start their research in google, they might identify
> > information
> > easily available to them.  It would also help increase exposure to
> > materials in our digital collections and our special collections and
> > manuscripts.
> >
> > Has anyone allowed a search engine to crawl their catalog?  What
> > impact
> > did it have on the performance?  Does your library have a policy about
> > search engines crawling your catalog?  What factors influenced your
> > decision?
> >
> > I would also be very interested in locating some records in google
> > that
> > came from a library catalog to see how the user is linked to the
> > catalog
> > or to see how the material is identified with a specific institution.
> >
> > thanks, Sara
> >
> > Sara Brownmiller                      University of Oregon Libraries
> > Director, Library Systems             1299 University of Oregon
> > Women's Studies Librarian             Eugene, OR  97403-1299
> >                                       541/346-2368 (voice)
> > snb at uoregon.edu                               541/346-3485 (fax)
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