[Web4lib] google & library catalogs

[Dale Askey]

This has been an interesting thread to follow. Here are a couple of 
other things that get at Sara's question.

- A library consortium in Germany used a unique method to open up their 
catalog (~10 million titles) to search engines. In a very brief 
nutshell, they exported a subset of RVK subject headings (about 47,000) 
to Plone and let Google loose (i.e.- put them on a Web-accessible 
server) on the Plone pages. When one of those pages is called from 
Google search results, it runs a live query on the catalog and presents 
the first 50 or so results that bear that subject heading, with a link 
to the remainder. Full details here if your German is up to snuff

http://www.opus-bayern.de/bib-info/volltexte/2005/108/)

or, if not, a sample search where their service comes up number one in 
the results

http://www.google.de/search?q=Stabilitaetspolitik

It's very nifty and creative, but the first question when this was 
presented at a conference came from Ross Singer's German Doppelgänger 
who said, to paraphrase, this sucks. What he meant by that was that for 
him, who lives in northern Germany, seeing the library results from 
southern Germany was nothing more than search result spamming. Harsh 
words, but true, of course. As has been mentioned, ventures such as 
OpenWorldCat get around that geographic binding, if only to a degree.

- Another way to do this: buy a Google Search Appliance and index your 
own OPAC for local use. We're acquiring just such a box within the next 
few weeks and plan to unleash it upon at least a subset of our catalog 
(the GSA license allows only 500,000 objects or database lines unless 
you buy more) to see how well this works, if at all. I'm optimistic, but 
am sure that I'm missing something obvious that will make a hash of it.

Dale

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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-- 
Dale Askey
Web Development Librarian
KSU Libraries
118 Hale Library
Manhattan, KS 66506
(785) 532-7672