Re: Re: Google Search Appliance and OPACs

At 4:48 PM -0500 2/8/08, Chris Barr wrote:
>We're working on that expired-link problem too:
>http://vufind.or
g/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
lbspodicust.hk  tel:852-2358-6743 fax:852-2358-1043
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This issue is being resolved in an upcoming release of
VuFind.

We have the same issue with a few other pieces of software
on our library web site and have made it a priority to
reevaluate our naming schemes by May. It is quite a task
when you look at the amount of software that runs the
typical academic library site, but very important if you
want proper placement in the all-mighty Google index.

--chris
________________________________________
From: Edward Spodick [lbspodicust.hk]
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 10:02 PM
To: Christopher Barr; web4libwebjunction.org
Cc: kgsbluehighways.com; kgsfreerangelibrarian.com
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Re: Google Search Appliance and
OPACs

At 4:48 PM -0500 2/8/08, Chris Barr wrote:
>We're working on that expired-link problem too:
>http://vufind.or
g/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
lbspodicust.hk  tel:852-2358-6743 fax:852-2358-1043
_______________________________________________
Web4lib mailing list
Web4libwebjunction.org
http://lists.we
bjunction.org/web4lib/

On Feb 10, 2008, at 10:02 PM, Edward Spodick wrote:

> [...]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

Not only that, but you can change how it's represented in
the theme.  
Some WordPress users have invested serious time into
thinking about  
how those things should work; the default Scriblio theme
follows the  
conventions set by other WordPress default themes, but
there's no  
reason you can't make changes.


> So while I do plan to explore the Sitemap method of
exposing these  
> permanent links, until [the page title metadata] is
fixed the  
> results in search engines may not appear too useful.

You can also use the WordPress sitemap plugin to do that.
I've not  
tried it yet (and you might find it's not coded to handle
nearly 1  
million records your collection has), but here's a link:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-
generator/
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