Outgoing

FictionFinder beta release

There is a new version of FictionFinder available.  I've been watching FictionFinder closely since its inception, something fairly easy to do since Diane Vizine-Goetz (the project lead) sits near me and Carol Hickey (my wife) is part of her team.

The first page of FictionFinder shows a cloud derived from FAST subject headings in fiction records.  Here's the list you get if you click on courtship:

1. Pride and Prejudice / Jane Austen
2. Tales / Hans Christen Anderson
3. Emma /Jane Austen
4. Sense and Sensibility / Jane Austen
5. Persuasion / Jane Austen
6. Novels / Jane Austen
7. Washington Square / Henry James
8. The American / Henry james
9. Misummers Night's Dream / William Shakespeare
10. These Happy Golden Years / Laura Ingalls Wilder

A little heavy on Jane Austen, but not a bad list.

--Th

Legendary characters

One of the nice features of FictionFinder is the ability to do searches against fictitious characters, such as Robin Hood or Elizabeth Bennet.  Unfortunately MARC-21 doesn't make it easy to pick these names out of bibliographic records.  Robin Hood is normally entered in a topical subject field (650) as Robin Hood (Legendary character), Elizabeth as Bennet, Elizabeth (Fictitious character), also in a 650 field.

In the work we've been doing to create summary pages for everyone in WorldCat we slightly extended our work to include identities such as these.  Imagine our chagrin, however, when we realized that Santa Claus was not being recognized!  The reason for this is that Santa Claus doesn't have a parenthetical after it to indicate what type of subject it is.  A similar problem occurs trying to pick up famous animals (e.g. Secretariat).  Secretariat is easy because (Race horse) follows the name, but many similar names do not have as distinctive a pattern.  Of course some things don't even have an authority record (I couldn't find one for the Easter bunny).

So, I wonder what else we are missing besides Santa?

--Th