Solr powers library, government, and enterprise search systems in thousands of applications. This talk will showcase the various technologies and techniques used to build effective user search, browse, and find interfaces on top of Solr. Several of the full featured open-source library Solr front-ends will be shown, including Blacklight and VuFind. We’ll also demonstrate several front-end frameworks including: • SolrJS - a JavaScript widget library • Solr Flare - a Ruby on Rails plugin featuring Simile Timeline integration, Ajax suggest, and more • Solritas - a built-in lightweight UI templating framework Additionally, we’ll take a look under the covers of http://search.lucidimagination.com and see what makes it shine.

1. Solr Flair
Search User Interfaces Powered by Apache Solr
Erik Hatcher
erik.hatcher@lucidimagination.com
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2. patacriticism.org
"Poets are the unacknowledged engineers of the world"
- Monna Grémejc
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3. Patacritical Projects
• RoSe: Rossetti Search
rossettiarchive.org
• Collex: Collect/Exhibit
collex.org
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4. serendipity
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5. Rossetti Archive
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/rose/?query=%2Bpresentation+%2B%28archivetype%3Arap%29
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6. NINES on Collex
http://www.nines.org/search/saved?user=erikhatcher&name=wombat
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7. NINES tag cloud
http://www.nines.org/tags
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8. Finding the Celtic on Collex
http://celtic.ibiblio.org/collex/
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9. Simile Timeline
http://celtic.ibiblio.org/timeline/show
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10. Geographic
http://celtic.ibiblio.org/atlas/show
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11. Graphs
http://celtic.ibiblio.org/graph/show
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12. Solr
•
Data
Search server, powered by Lucene DB
•
Document
Document
Indexing/searching via HTTP, responses Documents
in XML, Ruby, PHP, Python, XSLT, etc
• Faceting
Solr
• Scalability: caching, replication,
distributed search
• Integrates: spell checking, highlighting, Search Results
more-like-this, clustering, rich document
indexing, data import handling (RDBMS,
and more)
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13. Lucene
analysis inverted index
from "Taming Text" by Grant Ingersoll and Tom Morton
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14. Facets
• Sets, buckets
• (Un)common / similar metadata
• Useful for making sense of large datasets:
navigation, foraging, context, visualization
• By field, date ranges, or dynamic queries
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15. Solr Flare
• Ruby on Rails plugin
• facet field detection, autosuggest, saved
search, inverted facets, pie charts, Simile
Timeline and Exhibit integration
• Useful for rapid prototyping
• See Flare's big brother, Blacklight, for
production quality
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16. Tang on Flare
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17. Solr Powered Library Systems
• VuFind (PHP)
• Kochief (Python)
• Blacklight (Ruby)
• and others
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18. • UVA radiation = blacklight
• libraries are much more than books
• opinionated
• Ruby on Rails: best choice for an
extensible user interface development
framework
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19. Blacklight @ UVa
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20. Blacklight @ Stanford
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21. Blacklight @ AgNIC
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22. SolrJS
• jQuery-based interactions with Solr
• Query navigation state management and widgets
• Evolving rapidly: Drupal contributed improvements
(see http://drupal.org/project/solrjs) coming soon
• Live example: http://solrjs.solrstuff.org/
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23. SolrJS Example
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24. Solritas
• celeritas: swiftness, speed (Latin), origin of
the symbol "c" for the speed of light
• solritas:Velocity template rendering of Solr
responses
• Useful for rapid prototyping and more
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25. Lucene in Action on Solritas
coming soon: lucenebook.com
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26. LucidFind
http://www.lucidimagination.com/search/?q=user+interface
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27. Food for thought
• The interface is the application
• URLs are UI too!
• Facets aren't just for lists (with counts)
• be creative: clouds, maps, graphs, etc...
• entice users to forage and browse,
facilitate serendipitous discovery
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28. Shout Out
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