Searchlight

About Searchlight

Searchlight is a small web application, originally developed for VIVO, that has been now adapted for AgriVIVO. Searchlight uses the text from a webpage to automatically search for related researcher profiles. Highlighting text within the page narrows the scope of the search.

Searchlight can be used two ways: 

  1. A bookmarklet for your web browser that you click when reading an interesting article.
  2. A widget embedded within a web page you manage.

 

Note: Searchlight does not yet function correctly with Internet Explorer 9 and earlier.

 

Using the bookmarklet

A bookmarklet is simply a browser bookmark that contains some JavaScript instead of a URL.

When you click the AgriVIVO Searchlight bookmark while reading an interesting page, the app will open at the top of your browser and start searching for profiles.

 

Add the bookmark:

(Drag the button to your Bookmarks/Favorites toolbar -- with some browsers, such as Firefox, you might need to right click and "Bookmark This Link")

 

Using the widget

A widget is a small piece of code that can be embedded within a web page.

When added to the HTML of a page, the AgriVIVO Searchlight widget will load with the page and immediately show researcher profiles related to that page. Then, if the user highlights text on the page, the widget will search for profiles using that text.

Visit the demo page to see how the widget looks.

 

Try the widget, copy this code snippet to your page:

<div id="vsl-widget-frame" style="width: 300px; height: 500px; background: #999; overflow: hidden;"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
  (function(){var script=document.createElement('SCRIPT');script.type='text/javascript';script.src='../../javascripts/loader.js';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script)})();
</script>

Note: The widget is still experimental and should only used for demonstration.

 

Status of AgriVIVO Searchlight

Currently the AgriVIVO Searchlight should be considered a proof of concept. The results may not always be accurate. There is room for improvement, particularly as researcher profiles in AgriVIVO become more robust. For example, Searchlight could potentially use AGROVOC terms detected within a page to match researcher expertise.

The Searchlight application was developed by Miles Worthington and Rob Agle. The source code and documentation are available on GitHub.