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COPYRIGHT 2008 Information Today, Inc.
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INNOVATION in the workplace doesn't necessarily presuppose having a large budget and a detailed strategic plan. Both are undoubtedly helpful, but sometimes simply being alert to unanticipated opportunities is every bit as good. Take our situation at the Combined Arms Research Library (CARL): A chance conversation this spring alerted us to the possibilities offered by our parent institution's Google Mini Search Appliance. A new Google Mini ranges in cost from about $3,000 on the low end to as high as $10,000 (handling up to 300,000 files), which is well outside of our budget. However, if we could tag along with the existing Mini, we could greatly enhance document discoverability.
The U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) originally purchased the device to provide a search capability for its website. We learned, with some excitement, that our Google Mini indexes up to 150,000 files. We could set up multiple front ends (Google Search Interfaces) to target specific subsets of documents or webpages. We reasoned that we could use it as a simple and expedient means of searching the wealth of full-text materials we place on our library's web server.
PLUG AND PLAY
A major selling point Google touts is its plug-and-play installation. Power up your Google Mini and plug it into your network with an Ethernet cable. Then attach a laptop directly to the Mini to configure the device for your network. Open a web browser to the Mini's fixed IP address provided in the instructions and enter its IP address, host name, subnet mask, DNS servers, and NTP server. Next create an admin account username and password. The last thing you need to do is start the indexing process. This involves logging into the admin module and adding the URLs you want the Mini to crawl. After that it's pretty much hands off, apart from monitoring the crawling process.
You can direct your patrons to the Mini's default search page, but it's also very easy to integrate the default HTML search form into your own webpage(s). The remaining investment in time will largely involve tailoring the search parameters and results page interface to your needs. You can apply global rules that filter out unwanted file types or subdirectories from the results. You'll probably also want to give the results page your own branding.
Our focus...
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