michel aaij wrote:
Dear colleagues,
I hope someone can help me out with a query; I hope this is the right place to ask. A preliminary note: I'm computer literate but by no means an expert on anything besides Minesweeper.
I have been working on a bibliography of the good St. Boniface and am using a program called ProCite. If it ever gets done it will be fully annotated, but for now I wish to make my data accessible via the web. Initially I thought that ProCite could do this for me, but it turns out that it can only generate output as HTML, not make it searchable via the internet. Can any of you tell me how I can do this? Better yet, can an amateur like me do this? The database is fairly large--I believe I have some 750 titles in it right now.
Well, there are a variety of options. For example:
1)Depending on where and how your website is hosted, you could set up a database (e.g. mysql) and then some scripts of some sort (say PHP) to allow users to query the database.
2)You could plop it in an XML database (e.g. eXist) and design a basic XQuery to allow users to do a free-text search. (Or something more complicated). If you use this solution then exporting not as HTML, but as CSV or something and then converting that to more intricate XML would be a better way.
3)By far the easiest is to make your HTML attractive to a third-party search engine, and allow google to search and index it. Then, you can embed a search box which searches just your site by including something like:
<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search"> <div style="border:1px solid black;padding:4px;width:20em;"> <input type="text" name="q" size="25" maxlength="255" value="" /> <input type="submit" value="Google Search" /></td></tr> <input type="checkbox" name="sitesearch" value="DOMAIN-NAME-HERE" checked /> only search DOMAIN-NAME-HERE<br /> </div> </form>
Obviously changing the two 'DOMAIN-NAME-HERE' to be your site for your site. For example changing 'DOMAIN-NAME-HERE' to 'sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php' would make the box search only the Digital Medievalist wiki.
Of course this isn't flawless. Google follows particular rules when indexing pages.
Unless you are looking to put in a fair bit of time and effort, I would suggest the third option.
-JAmes
James Cummings wrote:
- By far the easiest is to make your HTML attractive to a third-party
search engine, and allow google to search and index it...Of course this isn't flawless. Google follows particular rules when indexing pages.
Sounds terrific to this editor! I've got a biblically sized edition in progress (Hall's Chronicle, 1550--about 700,000 words of Hall's text plus quite a lot of notes. Quite frankly, if this is ever to be put up on the web in my or anyone else's lifetime, I need to rely on tools like Google.
I see that Google posts "Guidelines for Webmasters" at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html They seem very oriented toward those who run commercial sites. Are these guidelines adequate for making the kind of material that medievalists create attractive to a search engine like Google? Are there some that scholars would emphasize and others than Google doesn't post?
BTW is it true that Google only index the top n% or K of a file?
Cheers, Al Magary
If you put "cheap prescription drugs" (or offers of even less politically correct services) in the meta line, you might help yourself rank high in google ;)
To return to the original bibliography question, I wonder if there might not be something that could be generalised from Roy Liuzza's work on the Old English Newsletter bibliography http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/login.php. It is coded using PHP and MySQL, I believe, and takes into account bibliographic standards. He is writing a piece for us on the bibliography, though its publication has been pushed back an issue due to Katrina.
If that system could be made standard, it might be very attractive to many people. ProCite, though a very good program for its day, has lousy customer support and has been more or less abandoned by Thompson, as far as I can tell.
On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 16:00 -0700, Al Magary wrote:
James Cummings wrote:
- By far the easiest is to make your HTML attractive to a third-party
search engine, and allow google to search and index it...Of course this isn't flawless. Google follows particular rules when indexing pages.
Sounds terrific to this editor! I've got a biblically sized edition in progress (Hall's Chronicle, 1550--about 700,000 words of Hall's text plus quite a lot of notes. Quite frankly, if this is ever to be put up on the web in my or anyone else's lifetime, I need to rely on tools like Google.
I see that Google posts "Guidelines for Webmasters" at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html They seem very oriented toward those who run commercial sites. Are these guidelines adequate for making the kind of material that medievalists create attractive to a search engine like Google? Are there some that scholars would emphasize and others than Google doesn't post?
BTW is it true that Google only index the top n% or K of a file?
Cheers, Al Magary
Digital Medievalist Project Homepage: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org Journal (Spring 2005-): http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal.cfm RSS (announcements) server: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/rss/rss2.cfm Wiki: http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php Change membership options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l Submit RSS announcement: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/newitem.cfm Contact editorial Board: digitalmedievalist@uleth.ca dm-l mailing list dm-l@uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
- By far the easiest is to make your HTML attractive to a third-party
search engine, and allow google to search and index it...Of course this isn't flawless. Google follows particular rules when indexing
pages.
There are also commercial options. Thompson's Reference Manager and CG Information's Biblioscape can publish an existing bibiographic database on the web. I tested them only very briefly, but both programs seem to work right away. Import from ProCite shouldn't perhaps be very difficult either?
Best regards, Peter
I have been working on a bibliography of the good St. Boniface and am using a program called ProCite. If it ever gets done it will be fully annotated, but for now I wish to make my data accessible via the web. Initially I thought that ProCite could do this for me, but it turns out that it can only generate output as HTML, not make it searchable via the internet. Can any of you tell me how I can do this? Better yet, can an amateur like me do this? The database is fairly large--I believe I have some 750 titles in it right now.
My university library has recently subscribed to a program called Refworks which is similar to ProCite and EndNote, but runs on line. I have only begun exploring its capabilities, but it claims to allow you to share your bibliography on-line once it is generated. If your institution doesn't have a subscription, individuals can sign up for US$100/year.
www.refworks.com
Is anyone else familiar with this product and its limitations?
Jesse jesse_hurlbut@byu.edu
On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 19:18 -0600, Jesse Hurlbut wrote:
My university library has recently subscribed to a program called Refworks which is similar to ProCite and EndNote, but runs on line. I have only begun exploring its capabilities, but it claims to allow you to share your bibliography on-line once it is generated. If your institution doesn't have a subscription, individuals can sign up for US$100/year.
www.refworks.com
Is anyone else familiar with this product and its limitations?
Wow. This looks interesting. Let me ask on the procite list (full of dissatisfied librarians) and see if they know anything about it. Procite was a great program abandoned by its new owners.
-dan
Jesse jesse_hurlbut@byu.edu
Digital Medievalist Project Homepage: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org Journal (Spring 2005-): http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal.cfm RSS (announcements) server: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/rss/rss2.cfm Wiki: http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php Change membership options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l Submit RSS announcement: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/newitem.cfm Contact editorial Board: digitalmedievalist@uleth.ca dm-l mailing list dm-l@uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
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Al Magary -
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Jesse Hurlbut -
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