[Web4lib] Re: Google Search Appliance and OPACs

[Edward Spodick]

At 4:48 PM -0500 2/8/08, Chris Barr wrote:
>We're working on that expired-link problem too:
>http://vufind.org/demo/Record/695686
>In fact we consider permanent links a major feature of VuFind.

A good thing.  Our III catalog also has permanent links available.

But as someone else alluded to, many ILS systems, including both the III and VuFind implementations, suffer from using a generic TITLE tag in the HEAD of the html - to the title tag, which is used for displaying Google search results, will just be something like the following for every record.
	"Hong Kong University of Science and Technology"
	"Library Resource Finder: Record Holdings"
Not very useful when what the user would want would probably be the title of the item.

The Scriblio implementation does a better job on this aspect, at least in our implementation, with things like
"HKUST Library Catalog » Japanese popular music : culture, authenticity, and power"
as http://catalog.ust.hk/catalog/archives/710731

I am sure VuFind will rapidly include that capability as well - I wish III (and others) would do the same.

So while I do plan to explore the Sitemap method of exposing these permanent links, until that is fixed the results in search engines may not appear too useful.  But at least the III one does have our Library's name for the user to notice.

-- 
Edward F Spodick, Information Technology Manager
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Library
lbspodic at ust.hk  tel:852-2358-6743 fax:852-2358-1043