[Koha-devel] Searching and ILL (from: Searching Group Meeting Notes)

[MJ Ray]

Joshua Ferraro <address@hidden> wrote:
> 3 the discussion turned to opensearch. kados showed the opensearch demo
>   http://liblime.com/opensearchportal.html

This demo didn't work for those of us without javascript. :-/
http://search.athenscounty.lib.oh.us/cgi-bin/koha/opensearch?q=cats
helped to give more idea about what was going on.
opensearch.a9.com also contains some docs.

>  the idea of federated searching and ILL using opensearch was 
>   discussed
> 
>  slef suggested looking at RDF rather than RSS2.0
> 
>  the discussion will be moved to koha-devel

= Summary =

Resource Description Framework is popular with librarians and
RDF Site Summary is RSS 1, which is not the same as Really
Simple Syndication (RSS 2).  RDF Site Summary versions are 1.x
and Really Simple Syndication are 2.x, so many developers go
for the higher number and never mind the different words. I'm
surprised it's happened in koha-devel, as RDF is popular with
librarians and information scientists, who are using it to help
build the Semantic Web, which is where this talk of distributed
searching seems to be heading.
>-> http://www.w3.org/RDF/
>-> http://purl.org/rss/1.0/

I think RSS 1 already has solved some of the problems facing us
if we use opensearch, I think more RDF use could open interesting
applications for koha and I think RSS 2's namespace problem is
a pain.

= The Namespace Problem =

The problem is that the spec RSS 2 says "the elements defined
in this document are not themselves members of a namespace"
and while that looks like a really smart idea to simplify
parsing, it makes a few processes and applications difficult.
There are these elements, floating around without a namespace,
disconnected and trying to claim to be the root in any file
containing RSS 2 elements.

Basically, imagine writing a large perl system without using
modules at all, putting it all in the global namespace.  Yes,
it used to be done and can still be done, but most people don't
do it any more. Why don't we do it? Isolation. It helps to
keep things in neat little units, making it easier to test and
easier to change one with less risk of messing up the others.
I know we're still not very good at unit testing koha modules,
but can everyone agree with the general idea it's better we
use modules than have it all in one big flat namespace?

= Problems Already Solved =

Also interesting for libraries is the availability of the
Dublin Core metadata elements in an RSS 1.0 main module.
A lot of the things opensearch is trying to do have already
been in RDF Site Summary for years, such as returning metadata
appropriate to search results. Look at the mod_search module -
what do we need to do that isn't already developed by the
XML-DEV hackers?
>-> http://purl.org/DC
>-> http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/search/

= Interesting Applications =

Almost certainly, ILL is one thing I've not seen yet. I think the
OpenIll namespace is interesting and should be used, especially
if we can build bridges to other system developers. I'm not sure
what should be in there, as I've not done much with ILL. I hope
that it can be used alongside RDF and maybe be more general for
it, linking with Dublin Core and other useful namespaces. Is
that possible?

= Other Parts of OpenSearch =

So, if we avoid having OpenSearch Really Simple Syndication in
the koha's core (use a translator or something loosely coupled),
that leaves the query and description parts of OpenSearch. I
wondered whether we can convince other library systems to put a
<link rel="index" type="application/xml+rdf" href="..." /> tag
or similar in their page's head. Then configuring an "external
searches" setting in koha's parameters could be as simple as
cut-and-pasting or drag-and-dropping URLs, with koha figuring
out the details from that (actually, we could probably do some
from a search form... but that's getting far too clever for now).

The main attraction of opensearch seems to be that it lets
your results appear on A9. I've yet to meet many A9 users:
do any other search engines use opensearch yet? Also, given
their past, have Amazon said that it is patentless? If it
was through some loose part, it wouldn't be too painful if
it's unusable by some later.

= Request for Comments =

I offer no action plan yet. It's probably not for me to do so.
That said, I hope that koha 2.3 will start to support inter-site
searches more simply for programmers and sysadmins than Z39.50.
So, please send your comments to these ideas as soon as possible.
At latest, before the next Searching Meeting.

-- 
MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/koha/