"Self-plagiarism is style"

I've been having a few email discussions relating to whether or not it's best to use a standard dictionary of words for an OPAC spellchecker or an index created from the actual holdings of that library…

Standard dictionary
pros: correct spelling
cons: suggestion might not find any results, might not contain buzz/new words

Custom dictionary
pros: suggestions should find results
cons: will contain mis-spellings (e.g. "mangement"), needs regular updates, might be difficult to extract the words from ILS/LMS/OPAC

I'm beginning to think that the best of both worlds might be to start with a standard dictionary and then let your users/patrons build upon that. In other words, whenever someone carries out a successful keyword search on the OPAC, automatically add the keyword(s) they used to your dictionary so that they can appear as spelling suggestions in the future.

Any comments?

I've just finished plugging the first bit of HIPpie into our test OPAC:

I'm gonna be out of the office for most of next week (3 days in London at Online Information 2007), but I'll start contacting those of you who said you'd like to be involved with the testing. The test code just requires you to paste a short block of JavaScript into one of the HIP stylesheets (searchinput.xsl).

At present, the version I've plugged into our test OPAC uses a generic US word list, but the idea is to allow libraries to either upload their own word lists or choose from country specific ones.

Although the code needs to be able to create links that contain the HIP profile string and the session ID, neither of these are actually passed back to the server at Huddersfield (just in case session privacy is an issue).

Just a quick update — I've not had too much spare time to work on HIPpie since announcing it, partly due to work and conference commitments, but I have been slowly beavering away.

The first chunk is some of the back-end code for the "did you mean" spell checker. To try and make the code as re-usable as possible (especially for other OPACs), the back-end has been coded so that it can be used as a standalone web service:

library.hud.ac.uk/wikis/hippie/index.php/Spell_checker

Various options can also be specified to affect the output, e.g. for "newmonia thrombrosis":

• XML
• XML, maximum of 3 suggestions
• plain text
• plain text, best guess
• plain text, max 3 suggestions, using Aspell "normal" suggestion mode

The grand plan is that anyone who wants to make use of it (either as a web service or the code that will embed into HIP) will have an account. By logging into the account, they'll be able to specify a dictionary to use (e.g. standard US English) or they'll be able to upload a their own word list (e.g. generated from the indexes in the ILS).

It's still early days, but if anyone has any comments or suggestions, please get in touch!

In the last couple of months, I've had several email exchanges with Dynix & Horizon libraries who were interested in using some of the "2.0" features that I've added to our OPAC at Huddersfield, but the technical challenges (setting up an extra web server, MySQL database, etc) would have been too much.

I've been thinking for a while that some of the features could be done if someone else (e.g. me) were to handle the techie stuff. All the library would need to do would be to add a few lines of JavaScript to the relevant XSL stylesheets…

HIPpie was the best name that I could think of in the bath last night, and (unless the SirsiDynix lawyers come down on me like a tonne of bricks) it stands for HIP patron interface enhancements (HIP being the product name of the Dynix and Horizon OPAC).

It's still mostly vapourware (i.e. I haven't finished writing the code yet), but if you're running HIP version 2 or version 3 and you fancy adding any of the following to your OPAC, then please get in touch (email d.c.pattern [at] hud.ac.uk):

• RSS feeds for keyword searches
• "did you mean" spelling suggestions
• email alerts for keyword searches
• user reviews
• user ratings

I've deliberately picked features that I don't think are being offered via other channels (e.g. LibraryThing for Libraries or Jim Taylor).

Unfortunately HIP version 4 was never released in the UK, so I'm not sure how easy it would be to add the features to that version, but if there's someone out there who's familiar with the stylesheets and is willing to experiment…?

HIP is the only OPAC I'm intimately familiar with, but if other people can figure out ways of making the features work with other products, then that'd be cool.

HIPpie will be offered for free and will hopefully stay that way, unless it becomes incredibly popular.

Like I say, it ain't ready yet, but please get in touch if you're interested in testing it once it's ready!