[CODE4LIB] Updating OpenContent indexes
First, apologies if this message comes twice; I've been having some problems posting to the list from my work address. I've been using the OpenContent indexes for a while now, but I'd really love to get some of them updated, particularly the Open Content Alliance and Internet Archive indexes. I've been thinking about this since IA got copies of the Million Book project content, and this week after Cornell deposited 70,000 or so public domain books in IA. I'd also like to add indexes for IA's Moving Images and Audio collections. I do have a bit of money to update collections this year, and it would probably be cheaper for me to update these collections through OpenContent than to figure out how to add the Open Library API to my federated search tool (which is soon to be PazPar2). Working directly with IA is another option, though we've been trying to work with them on searching our Archive-IT content via SRU with little success (so far). I've seen the announcement from UNC that they have an OCA API similar to the Google Books API, and maybe they would be open to adding an SRU interface to their harvest, as well. I'm just fishing for ideas for now. Anybody have any others? If the OpenContent materials are desired by others in addition to me, I'd be happy to take that into consideration. -- Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) dplu...@tsl.state.tx.us dcplu...@gmail.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] Wolfram Alpha (was: Another nail in the coffin)
It seems W|A is something like a computational almanac, and because of that, there's a lot of stuff it doesn't know. It doesn't feel like a search engine to me, and it's not encyclopedic. It had no idea what to do when I asked it about nuclear pebble bed reactors (my favorite test query) but I was kind of impressed when I asked it what the circumference of the head of a 6-month-old female is (which is something i've had to look up when knitting baby hats for friends): http://bit.ly/6tp73 Marijane White, MSLIS marijane.wh...@gmail.com On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 1:12 AM, Mike Taylor wrote: > Sharon Foster writes: > > I wanted to find out how much my house would be worth today in a > > "normal" situation (if there is such a thing in the housing market). > > WolframAlpha helped me to formulate the query > > > > $96900 (1985 dollars) > > > > and then gave me the answer, adjusted for an average inflation of > > about 2.8% per year. > > > > Google gave me a bunch of irrelevant links, which is odd, since Google > > understand all kinds of conversions and other factual queries. Maybe > > it just wasn't phrased correctly, but Google didn't help me to find > > the correct phrasing. > > Funny. I test-drove Wolfram Alpha with a dozen queries off the top of > my head, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them gave "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure > what to do with your input". > > So I was less impressed than you. > > _/|_ > ___ > /o ) \/ Mike Taylor > http://www.miketaylor.org.uk > )_v__/\ "Have you killed anyone?" / "Yes, but they were all bad" -- > Arnold Schwartzenegger, "True Lies". >
Re: [CODE4LIB] Wolfram Alpha (was: Another nail in the coffin)
Sharon Foster writes: > I wanted to find out how much my house would be worth today in a > "normal" situation (if there is such a thing in the housing market). > WolframAlpha helped me to formulate the query > > $96900 (1985 dollars) > > and then gave me the answer, adjusted for an average inflation of > about 2.8% per year. > > Google gave me a bunch of irrelevant links, which is odd, since Google > understand all kinds of conversions and other factual queries. Maybe > it just wasn't phrased correctly, but Google didn't help me to find > the correct phrasing. Funny. I test-drove Wolfram Alpha with a dozen queries off the top of my head, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them gave "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input". So I was less impressed than you. _/|____ /o ) \/ Mike Taylorhttp://www.miketaylor.org.uk )_v__/\ "Have you killed anyone?" / "Yes, but they were all bad" -- Arnold Schwartzenegger, "True Lies".
