[Web4lib] Google Search Appliance and OPACs

[Ross Singer]

Dale,

Art Rhyno and I were working on a project that had similar goals (I
think) to what you're proposing with OneBox.  See:
http://librarycog.uwindsor.ca:8087/artblog/librarycog/indexcat

which uses Google Desktop to push library content into Google searches.

While I don't think you'd need to necessarily use Cocoon (I mean, you
*could*), I'm assuming you're really just trying to target computers
physically in the library (I wouldn't really want to see KSU catalog
records in my Google searches, for example) and this is a pretty
effective (although needs to be cleaned up more and there might be
more efficient ways to do it).

-Ross.

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Dale Askey <daskey at ksu.edu> wrote:
> While trolling web4lib archives today, I stumbled across the thread
>  that the message below generated. Fascinating reading, and well worth
>  taking the time to peruse.
>
>  I can offer a somewhat more targeted answer. Yes, we (K-State
>  Libraries) own a GB-1001 Google Search Appliance and have experimented
>  with indexing our catalog. We're not using http for this, but rather a
>  direct database crawl using a custom SQL query. The indexing piece
>  works fine, albeit with the caveat pointed out by Casey, namely, that
>  it's easy to exceed the licensed document maximum. Our GSA has a
>  500,000 document/db line maximum, and our ILS has somewhere around
>  2,000,000 lines. Our solution was to have it index a subset based on
>  date, number of circs, etc. All fine and good, but getting them to
>  display well in the results is a challenge we never resolved. It was
>  probably doable, but the other limitation pointed out in the thread,
>  namely, that Google's PageRank relies heavily on links, made it seem
>  not worth doing. Still, learned a bit about pulling stuff out of the
>  ILS via SQL and was happy to see it work.
>
>  More fruitful would be, of course, to use what Google calls One Box
>  technology, available on the GSA but not the Mini. It uses either a
>  trigger word in the query and/or a hidden field in the form to send
>  the query not only to its own index, but also to an external data
>  source. Search for your home phone number in Google, and you'll see
>  this in action. Results in public Google that come back at the top of
>  the list with little icons next to them (as with the phone number
>  example) are using One Box. I'd love to be able to use One Box to toss
>  keywords at our catalog and present at least a few book results along
>  with the site search results. We have yet to devote the resources to
>  do this, but in principle, it's fairly straightforward. First, one
>  must write some middleware that modifies the query into a state that
>  the target database can tolerate, and then take the returned results
>  and wrap them in a GSA-friendly XML schema. Sounds pretty easy in
>  theory, but we just haven't made it a priority with our limited
>  resources as yet.
>
>  Best regards,
>  Dale Askey
>
>
>  On Tue, Feb 5, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Gem Stone-Logan
>  <gemstonelogan at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > Out of curiosity, has anyone experimented with using the Google Search
>  >  appliance for retrieving information from an ILS database?  If so, what was
>  >  your experience with it?  I'm thinking of an implementation where Google
>  >  retrieves the results but then points the user to specific OPAC records.
>  >
>  >
>  >  Thanks,
>  >
>  >  Gem Stone-Logan
>  >  Weld Library District
>  >  http://www.mylibrary.us/
>
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>
>
>
>  --
>  Dale Askey
>  Web Development Librarian
>  K-State Libraries
>  118 Hale Library
>  Manhattan, KS 66506
>  (785) 532-7672
>
>
>
>
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