FuzzyCat OPAC Crawler
“Connecting readers on the web to books in libraries”
Try the Prototype | Download the Code | Recent Posts | Read all Posts | Acknowledgements | Email
Likely you have heard of WorldCat. At WorldCat you can look up books, then enter your postal code to find their availability in nearby libraries. It is pretty neat. Now meet FuzzyCat. It uses web design patterns and fuzzy logic — hence ‘FuzzyCat’ — to do a similar task, only this critter goes where WorldCat does not.
Searches any library with a web-based catalogue. WorldCat only contains data for member libraries. Many libraries are not in WorldCat. Search for a book and you may find a result in the next city when you know there is a copy in the library down the street. FuzzyCat is being designed to search any library with a web-based catalogue (OPAC), not just those in a finite list. It means access to many libraries that are currently off the digital map.
Embeds libraries in web pages. FuzzyCat is a PHP software module that can be used by other web-based software such as WordPress, Drupal and others. For example, OpenBook currently displays a book cover, title, author and publisher; it also provides a link to its WorldCat record where the user can look up availability. With FuzzyCat, OpenBook can immediately display availability in the user’s library, and provide a link to the library’s search results page. These distributed links help put library catalogues into search engines like Google.
Uses OPAC design patterns. Other approaches require knowledge, configuration and maintenance of each library OPAC. For example, WorldCat maintains a repository of library data, and OpenURL technology requires libraries to have a resolver for each catalogue. FuzzyCat is based on the idea that most OPACs conform to a relatively small number of web design patterns, an OPAC architecture. These patterns can be used with fuzzy logic to search most libraries. People will enter the webpage of a library catalogue and FuzzyCat will do the rest.
It is open source. Do I sound like a salesman? Well, I have nothing to sell. FuzzyCat is an open source project, licensed under GNU GPL. The code is yours for the taking. Development is in an early stage and it will move slowly. I just do this on the side for interest. As an open source project, collaborators are always welcome. Maybe someone could start by designing a nifty FuzzyCat logo …
Recent Posts
- FuzzyCat Project Shelved
- FuzzyCat Crawls 10 Distinct OPACs
- FuzzyCat Tangles with Some Hairy HTML
- The FuzzyCat Secret: How it Discovers Books in Libraries
- FuzzyCat: “Connecting Readers on the Web to Books in Libraries”
- The Building of FuzzyCat: A Series
- You’ve Heard of WorldCat, Now Meet FuzzyCat
Acknowledgements
FuzzyCat uses a slightly modified version of PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser.
