[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen search discussion

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

I've added a topic to the hack-a-way agenda to discuss Evergreen search. 
However, I wanted to raise the topic here on the list first since the 
discussion may require some forethought and because I imagine there are 
people interested in this discussion who won't be attending the hack-a-way.

In discussing our development priorities for the year, MassLNC decided 
to focus on making improvements to search in Evergreen. We view  search 
as one of the most important pieces of the ILS, if not the most 
important. It's what allows our users to find those resources we spend 
so much time cataloging so that they can then place holds on them, check 
them out from the library, or access them in some other way.

There are some specific development projects we identified as 
possibilities: Did you Mean? functionality, working auto-suggest, 
improved speed, etc. However, rather than tacking these improvements on 
to the existing search, we thought it might be a good time for the 
community to step back, take a big-picture look at how we're doing 
search, and determine if we should continue down this path, if we need 
to make major underlying changes for our current path to be more 
performant/effective, or if we should consider moving to something else 
to handle Evergreen search.

Would it be worthwhile to move to something like Solr or Elasticsearch 
or something other thing to handle Evergreen searches? If not, are there 
changes we should do to better utilize improvements full-text search 
that have been made to recent versions of PostgreSQL? I don't have the 
answers to these questions, but I think it's worthwhile for the 
community to identify what we expect of Evergreen search and to do a 
thorough analysis of available options to determine what will best help 
us attain those goals.

Over the past few months, the folks at MassLNC have started a discussion 
of what our overall goals for search are. From these discussions, we 
have created a vision for what we would like to see in Evergreen search 
- http://masslnc.org/search_vision .

 From this search vision, we then identified specific areas of 
improvements / new features that would help Evergreen reach this vision. 
We also identified areas where we already are doing well and will want 
to maintain - http://masslnc.org/node/3164.

I'm sure there are some areas where others may disagree with our ideas, 
but I'm guessing there are other areas where we'll get broad community 
consensus around some of these search priorities.

I don't think we're in a position where we can choose a direction at the 
hack-a-way, but maybe we can do the following:

* At the hack-a-way,  can we have a discussion to see if there is 
interest in this project? We might also be able to identify some viable 
options that could be explored at the hack-a-way.
* After the hack-a-way, the community could work on setting and 
prioritizing high-level goals for search in the Evergreen catalog. 
Ideally, we would have these search goals ready by the end of the 
calendar year. I would be willing to help facilitate this process.
* After the goals are identified, we explore available options to see 
which will the best to help us attain those goals. It would be great if 
we had the ability to do some prototypes during this phase, but this 
would depend on people having the time / resources to do those prototypes.
* Ideally, by the time we meet again at the conference hackfest in 
April, we'll be in a position where we can set a direction for search 
and then move forward with development.

I'm sure the process won't be as simple as what I outlined above, and 
all of you may have better ideas on the best ways to evaluate our 
options. But I'm hoping this email helps us kick off a conversation that 
ultimately leads to fast and relevant search in Evergreen.

Thanks!
Kathy

-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter:http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier