Exposing Library Catalogues to Search Engines

  • Vinit Kumar Institute of Library and Information Science, Bundelkhand University, UP-284 128
Keywords: Sitemaps, search engines, OPAC, library websites, visualisation

Abstract

The paper attempts to provide ways to reach out to the users by exploiting present day mighty web search engines. Present day library Web OPACs architecture does not really help search engine robots or crawlers to index the huge library data. By exploiting some of the best practices of information architects and webmasters, libraries can also open their huge data to the search engines and can get listed in the top results to get more visibility. This paper describes the problem of unfriendliness of library OPACs and the reasons behind this. The paper further suggests the use of sitemaps to expose the  bibliographic records to search engines. Further by discussing the different options to create, upload, and submit the sitemaps to search engines, the paper moves to list some of the benefits and concludes by giving some future insights in this area.

http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/djlit.32.6.2846

Published
2012-11-19
How to Cite
Kumar, V. (2012). Exposing Library Catalogues to Search Engines. DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, 32(6). https://doi.org/10.14429/djlit.32.6.2846
Section
Papers