OpacOnline now offers a new module, Opac Library Service (OLS), which opens your library catalogue to other libraries' OPACs -- or indeed to any software program that can make HTTP requests. In this way your partner organizations can offer to search in your library through their own library search interface, totally transparent to the users.
Of course it is possible to restrict the use of this function to authenticated partners only.
As an example, say your organization is an NGO specialized in democracy and citizenship in Southern African countries. Your library is open to users world-wide through OpacOnline. Now with OLS, it is possible for an affiliated NGO specialized in let's say democracy in the Third World, to include results from your library when users are searching theirs.
Another example: a holding company can easily aggregate an intranet search function over all of its subsidiaries' libraries and present this to the user either as an integrated search function, or as a "portal" search with search functions to the various libraries grouped on one page all with the same user interface.
The backbone of this new feature is based on the bibliographical exchange format MARC 21, and more specifically, the MARCXML schema developed by the Library of Congress. MARCXML is a "slim" definition of the MARC 21 format, which ensures it does not constrain your data format too much, while specifying all types of MARC 21 records: bibliographic, holdings, bibliographic with embedded holdings, authority, classification, and community information. The widespread usage of MARC 21 ensures a high degree of interoperability - many a library system can happily work with it.
Technically the implementation is a Web Service that consumes SOAP messages in MARCXML format. These choices leverage all of the scalability and interoperability of standard Web Services.
The OLS feature is of course optional, and is available free of charge to new and existing customers of OpacOnline.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Graphical thesaurus view
There are many possible ways to display a thesaurus online. Generally a thesaurus consists in structured data, and it is desirable to make use of the information contained in this structure.
Most library thesauri are a graph-like structure where each node may have relations to broader terms, narrower terms, related terms, equivalent terms, preferred terms, and such.
The current thesaurus results page in OpacOnline lists all items in these categories, if applicable for the term. Each item that's listed is a hyperlink to that particular thesaurus term. Another link provides a direct query into the catalogue for records containing this thesaurus term in their keywords. The number of catalog results that the user will receive is already avaible.
You can see a picture of OpacOnline's thesaurus results, on the NiZA library's site, below. All information from the thesaurus is there, clearly and concisely displayed, easy to understand and inviting to click around to see more of the thesaurus.
However it may also be a nice idea to present the structural information in a more graphical way. At OpacOnline we are considering to do this for the next release, OpacOnline 2.1, scheduled for August 2007. Currently we are investigating what options would be good for this.
Few implementations of a graphical thesaurus representation exist; one attempt has been made by the company Gridwalker. You can see their solution in the screenshot below. We are not impressed -- the page is crying out ugly, the site uses the proprietary Flash technology, and we find literally nothing appealing here. This is how OpacOnline will certainly NOT do this !
Another story is the solution provided by the AquaBrowser software. In the screenshot below you can see a nice graphical structure to the left of the page. It is updated dynamically when you click on any of the related items, which upon clicking, move to the center, and the surrounding graph is updated. Very nice indeed ! The only negatives that we find with this is that again, it has been implemented in the proprietary Flash format, and that their solution appears to require Microsoft server software.
At OpacOnline we are considering something like the AquaBrowser solution above, but of course using our trademark methodology of open source and open standards. Our solution will be pure XHTML / Javascript, no Flash, no applets, or such. Various open source Javascript libraries exist for displaying nodes of graphs, that should facilitate our development effort; we are currently looking into Aslak Hellesøy and Dave Hoover's implementation, as well as into open-jACOB's.
If you have any suggestions, wishes or other remarks on this subject please do share with us !
Most library thesauri are a graph-like structure where each node may have relations to broader terms, narrower terms, related terms, equivalent terms, preferred terms, and such.
The current thesaurus results page in OpacOnline lists all items in these categories, if applicable for the term. Each item that's listed is a hyperlink to that particular thesaurus term. Another link provides a direct query into the catalogue for records containing this thesaurus term in their keywords. The number of catalog results that the user will receive is already avaible.
You can see a picture of OpacOnline's thesaurus results, on the NiZA library's site, below. All information from the thesaurus is there, clearly and concisely displayed, easy to understand and inviting to click around to see more of the thesaurus.
However it may also be a nice idea to present the structural information in a more graphical way. At OpacOnline we are considering to do this for the next release, OpacOnline 2.1, scheduled for August 2007. Currently we are investigating what options would be good for this.
Few implementations of a graphical thesaurus representation exist; one attempt has been made by the company Gridwalker. You can see their solution in the screenshot below. We are not impressed -- the page is crying out ugly, the site uses the proprietary Flash technology, and we find literally nothing appealing here. This is how OpacOnline will certainly NOT do this !
Another story is the solution provided by the AquaBrowser software. In the screenshot below you can see a nice graphical structure to the left of the page. It is updated dynamically when you click on any of the related items, which upon clicking, move to the center, and the surrounding graph is updated. Very nice indeed ! The only negatives that we find with this is that again, it has been implemented in the proprietary Flash format, and that their solution appears to require Microsoft server software.
At OpacOnline we are considering something like the AquaBrowser solution above, but of course using our trademark methodology of open source and open standards. Our solution will be pure XHTML / Javascript, no Flash, no applets, or such. Various open source Javascript libraries exist for displaying nodes of graphs, that should facilitate our development effort; we are currently looking into Aslak Hellesøy and Dave Hoover's implementation, as well as into open-jACOB's.
If you have any suggestions, wishes or other remarks on this subject please do share with us !
Did you mean?
Sadly many OPACs offer the user a very limited set of features. Where in general the internet becomes more and more user-friendly and interactive (a.k.a. Web 2.0), many OPAC providers seem to lag behind and be content with their eighties-style usability, disregarding the expectations of the present-day internet user.
One such feature that helps to greatly improve on the usability of your OPAC is what's known as a "Did you mean...?" function, as popularized by Google. When a user does not get any (or a small number of) results for her query, the OPAC responds by suggesting alternative queries that are similar, but that do result in more hits from your catalog. This similarity is often determined by the use of the information-theoretic Levenshtein distance : an expression of how close one string is to another.
OpacOnline boasts such a "Did you mean.. ?" function. Whether it is enabled for your OPAC, and what is the results threshold to invoke it (by default, when your query returns no results), is of course fully configurable; as is the number of suggestions that are displayed.
The suggestions are links that the user can simply click to execute the suggested query, with all other user-set parameters such as language selection preserved.
Below you can see OpacOnline's "Did you mean.. ?" feaure in action. The query "ekma" having produced no results in the NiZA library catalog, the 5 suggestions with the highest Levenshtein ranking are shown and presented to the user as alternative queries.
One such feature that helps to greatly improve on the usability of your OPAC is what's known as a "Did you mean...?" function, as popularized by Google. When a user does not get any (or a small number of) results for her query, the OPAC responds by suggesting alternative queries that are similar, but that do result in more hits from your catalog. This similarity is often determined by the use of the information-theoretic Levenshtein distance : an expression of how close one string is to another.
OpacOnline boasts such a "Did you mean.. ?" function. Whether it is enabled for your OPAC, and what is the results threshold to invoke it (by default, when your query returns no results), is of course fully configurable; as is the number of suggestions that are displayed.
The suggestions are links that the user can simply click to execute the suggested query, with all other user-set parameters such as language selection preserved.
Below you can see OpacOnline's "Did you mean.. ?" feaure in action. The query "ekma" having produced no results in the NiZA library catalog, the 5 suggestions with the highest Levenshtein ranking are shown and presented to the user as alternative queries.
About this blog
This blog is intended to be a discussion forum for OPAC library systems (Online Public Access Catalogues) and everything related to it.
In particular we focus on OpacOnline although discussion on any other such system and related subjects are encouraged as well.
Feel free to contribute your thoughts and opinions !
In particular we focus on OpacOnline although discussion on any other such system and related subjects are encouraged as well.
Feel free to contribute your thoughts and opinions !
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