Thunder Talks — Access 2008

Thunder Talks are brief (4 minutes 30 seconds!) talks on any subject the speaker wants to talk about. Without further ado:

BiblioCommons

Rolled out at Oakville (Ontario) Public Library. Live implementation of the tool (the research leading to BiblioCommons was described in one of yesterday’s post. Lesson learned: Don’t roll out a JavaScript-heavy site on IE 6 browsers. In a few weeks, have received thousands of ratings, reviews, and lists.

OLE — Open Library

OLE is a framework for libraries that support research, teaching, and higher education. Led by Duke University. By July 2009 there will be a completed design document. Focuses on design, not software development, but expects that a follow-on implementation phase will happen.

How To Adopt Open Source

Things they’ve done recently in University of Prince Edward Island library catalog. Since there was no reserves module in Evergreen, they used book bags to gather resources and use RSS to populate subject guides. Added linkable subject terms. Switched thumbnail images from Amazon to Google Books API. Also added a tab in the catalog record for “Excerpt”, which pulls an excerpt of the book from Google Books.

What’s Happening in Saskatchewan

One system for all public libraries to share resources. Single library card, no ILL — just place a hold. This project was going well, and then it wasn’t when the budget went away. But progress was still being made. Libraries created consortia, did an RFP, and are moving forward. A consortial integrated library system (CILS). Start of a three-year process.

RSS Feeds for New Books

Based on Doran’s New Books List for Voyager catalog. A 3 element table: Use a single LC class, a multi-character LC class (A, B, and J), or ranges of call numbers (AB 123 to AB 155). Script outputs both RSS and HTML. They can be mixed and match to pull together a new books list that matches specific patron needs.
See KSU’s New Books Feed. Custom feeds are possible — for KSU staff only — but requires that patron enters request in words, library staff translate into LCSH speak. But custom feeds are underutilized. Only 10 custom feeds, mostly for librarians, so far.

Koha in a Small Public Library

Hanover, Ontario, public library wanted to go in with a small number of libraries (14) nearby. Couldn’t find a Koha support vendor to do the implementation the way they wanted. So they’re doing it themselves. Building on virtual machines to allow flexibility — in implementation, to add new libraries.

Fedora Drupal Module

University of PEI built a Fedora module for Drupal. Will be open-sourced “very soon.” Have several content models. Makes ingest very easy — to solve the basic problem of many repositories: nobody contributes because it’s hard. Have an example of a RefWorks collection — to ingest citations and, if allowed locally, if it’s allowed to put in the full text (if ROMEO allows it). Metadata are editable in Drupal but stored in Fedora.

Zotero Connection to Evergreen

If you have the Zotero Firefox plugin, you see Zotero cues in the Firefox URL bar. It then lets you select items from the results list into Zotero. Accomplished through a LINK item in the document head that points to the unAPI service that Zotero uses.

Dashboard for Library Information

Summary information for administrators. It shows trends — not individual items, but gross numbers over time that can help administrators understand what is going on. There’s a back end that allows users to easily create widgets, pulling together numbers from various systems. The tool allows easy creation of these widgets, but the data are entered by hand. A storehouse for library data with graphical presentation.

Drupal Module for ContentDM

A Drupal module built at Simon Fraser University to search ContentDM through Drupal for the Multicultural Canada site. It uses the ContentDM API and the Drupal API, or “one big ‘appy family.”