Subject: Full text searching and other updates
Date: Saturday, March 2, 2002 2:28 PM
From: David A. Day <dad@email.byu.edu>
Greetings,
I am happy to announce that we now have full text searching functioning in the BASIC SEARCH mode of the database. The search is not completely full text, rather it is based on about 16 fields from the ISAD specification that I felt would be useful for online searching. Some fields such as legal status, accruals, etc. are not included in the full text search.
The full text search is also limited in that Boolean operators are not yet functional. This omission is due to the current limitations of MySQL. Version 4 of MySQL will be made available in the near future and will add this feature. For now, just enter keywords without any operators.
ADVANCED SEARCHING is also mostly functional. Advanced mode enables keyword searches within a selection of the most important fields. We hope to add a full text option in the advanced mode in the near future.
The presentations about our project that I made at the MLA meeting in Las Vegas went well. The Resource Sharing and Collection Development Committee of MLA has expressed a serious interest in collaborating with our project to insure access to information about archives and collections related to American music. This interest is at an early stage of development. We may see efforts within MLA and the Society for American Music to establish some kind of task force or forum for discussion. I am hopeful that we may have a representative for this interest present at one of our sessions at Berkeley.
I also established contacts with several curators at important music libraries that will help us build the content in the database.
We upgraded WebObjects to version 5.1. Since the upgrade we have noticed that the system is running smoother and faster.
The system is ready for data entry. My student assistant has entered about 420 records from UC Berkeley, the Juilliard School, the British Library, and the National Library of Canada. We urgently need other participants and volunteers to enter records. I am sure that many of your institutions already have collection level records in a format that can easily be transferred to our database. I plead with you to test the system and at least create a few sample records. If I do not hear from you soon I will begin to harass you individually. ;-) We need everyoneÕs participation in order to succeed. I ask that those who attended the sessions in PŽrigueux especially make an effort to enter data.
Best regards,
David Day