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Juice Your OPAC

Casey Bisson — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:27:47 +0000

Richard Wallace’s Juice project (Javascript User Interface Componentised Extensions) is a “simple componentised framework constructed in Javascript to enable the sharing of Ajax Stye extensions to a web interface.”

WordPress or Scriblio users might do well to think about it as a way to put widgets on systems that don’t support widgets, though as Richard points out, “the framework is applicable to any environment which, via identifiers contained within a html page, needs to link to or embed external resources.”

Scriblio 2.3 v4 Released

Casey Bisson — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 02:03:05 +0000

Scriblio 2.3 v4 is out. See it. Download it. Install it. Join the mail list.

What’s new?

Lots of small bug fixes.
Implemented wp_cache support.
Revamped SQL query logic for better memory efficiency.
New widget options.
Search suggest/autocomplete support (implemented in the new theme).
New theme. New Theme! By Jon Link.

Is Automated Metadata Production Really The Answer?

Casey Bisson — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:16:45 +0000

(It’s old, but I just stumbled into it again…) Karen Calhoun’s report, The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools, included a lot of things I agree with, but it also touched something I’m a bit skeptical about: automated metadata production.

Some interviewees noted that today’s catalogs are put together mainly by humans and that this approach doesn’t scale. Several urged building or expanding the scope of catalogs by using automated methods.

And she highlighted this quote in particular:

If you put the money you’re spending on LCSH in automatic classification, you might get something more competitive in the Google world and get better subject access too.

Whoa.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t looking carefully at LCSH and our cataloging norms, but the notion of entirely giving up on them is a bit dramatic for me.

For the moment, our rich metadata — primarily the LCSH — is one of the best (and least tapped) assets in our catalogs. If the goal is competing with Google[1] or getting better subject access, then what we should start with is building OPACs that leverage this data first, then figure out how our cataloging practice should evolve to serve that new need.

Our systems aren’t hard to use because our cataloging is bad, they’re hard to use because we’ve not invested in their development and ease of use.

[1] Is the goal really to compete with Google? I’m more interested in how can we leverage those search engines to improve service to our users.

[tags]automation, computer generated metadata, metadata, libraries, lib20, library 2.0, OPAC, library catalogs, ease of use[/tags]

Presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0

Casey Bisson — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:17:19 +0000

MAIUG 2006 Philadelphia: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0 (interactive QuickTime with links or static PDF)

Web 2.0 and other “2.0” monikers have become loaded terms. But as we look back at the world wide web of 1996, there can be little doubt that today’s web is better and more useful. Indeed, that seems to be the conclusion millions of Americans are making, as current estimates show over 200 million users in the US, including 87% of youth 12-17.

Web 2.0 isn’t driven by technology, it’s driven by that critical mass of users. And while social software and AJAX enabled web applications get most of our attention, people are turning to the internet for some very mundane everyday activities that were little more than science fiction in 1996. The commonality of internet banking, for example, reflects the trust users now have in the security and reliability of online services.

But the web has weathered so much hype and hyperbole that it may be difficult to recognize its arrival as a true cultural force. Computing has become so common that children often learn to type before they learn to write. And the instant, self-service access to worlds of information and services is changing industries — a fact we can see clearly in the decline of the role of travel agents, even while air travel continues to grow.

Kevin Kelly, in a Wired Magazine story described this apparent blindness:

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. [thanks to Josh Porter for alerting me to this]

So the question of how to design a web OPAC for today is a question of how to design an information service in a world rich with information services and filled with users who make information seeking — though not necessarily at libraries — part of their everyday lives.

note: this is an update of my IUG2006 presentation.

Mid-atlantic innovative users group, iii, lib 2.0, libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, maiug, maiug2006, online catalog, opac, opac 2.0, presentation, web 2.0, web opac, wpopac

Cataloging Errors

Casey Bisson — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:01:05 +0000

A bibliographic instruction quiz we used to use asked students how many of Dan Brown’s books could be found in our catalog. The idea was that attentive students would dutifully search by author for “brown, dan,” get redirected to “Brown, Dan 1964-,” and find three books. Indeed, the expected answer was “three.”

As it turns out, my library has all four of Dan Brown’s published books, including the missing Digital Fortress. The problem is that three books are cataloged under the more common Brown, Dan 1964-, but Fortress was cataloged under Brown, Danielle.

The problem is that cataloging is imperfect.

Yeah, it takes some marbles to say that, but the fact is that cataloging is a human endeavor. Humans make mistakes. The challenge we face is to build systems that tolerate error, and then make it easy to fix those errors when discovered.

catalog, cataloging, error, errors, findability, keyword search, libraries, library, opac, search, searching, usability

It’s Official

Casey Bisson — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:56:47 +0000

WPopac, a project I started on my nights and weekends, is now officially one of my day-job projects too.

We’ve been using our WPopac-based catalog as a prototype since February 2006, but the change not only allocates a portion of my work time specifically to the development of the project, but also reflects the library’s decision to transition to WPopac as a our primary web OPAC.

Work to make a general release of the WPopac software available for download and use by any library (or anybody who wants to present structured data with faceted searching on the web) is in progress. And, as noted here, I’m also working with other libraries to bring WPopac-based catalogs online elsewhere.

In the meantime, I’m headed to WordCamp in San Francisco on August 5th, and the new WPopac blog has become the official source of news and information regarding the project.

lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, news, official, online catalog, opac, plymouth state university, wpopac

NELINET 2006 IT Conference Proposal

Casey Bisson — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:40:11 +0000

I recently submitted my proposal for the 2006 NELINET Information Technology Conference.

It’s about WPopac, of course, but the excitement now is that the presentation would be the story of the first library outside PSU to implement it.

WPopac is an open source replacement for a library’s online catalog that improves the usability, findability, and remixability of the library’s collection.

This presentation will detail the implementation of WPopac in the real world, including discussion of challenges and costs, as well as the improvements to service and increased access to library materials.

I’m keeping mum about who’s implementing just now, but the three presenters in the proposal include me, the web designer and usability engineer, and the library director.

Cross your fingers for us, and stay tuned for a public release of this mystery library’s new catalog soon.

update: I should have noted that I submitted this proposal late (it was due Friday, I submitted Monday). Siobhan, who has the enormous task of organizing the conference, wrote back to thank me for the proposal, but explained that the conference committee had already selected speakers — “I cracked the whip on this because we’re running a little behind in our planning.”

Still, she did suggest:

However, we would love to have you and your colleagues come speak at a NELINET seminar, particularly now as you have information about implementation and usage of WPopac.

it conference, lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, nelinet, opac, proposal, wpopac

Presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0

Casey Bisson — Sun, 21 May 2006 14:38:25 +0000

IUG 2006 presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0 (also available as a PDF with space for notes)

Web 2.0 and other “2.0” monikers have become loaded terms recently. But as we look back at the world wide web of 1996, there can be little doubt that today’s web is better and more useful. Indeed, that seems to be the conclusion millions of Americans are making, as current estimates show over 200 million users in the US, including 87% of youth 12-17.

Kevin Kelly, in a Wired Magazine story described this apparent blindness:

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. [thanks to Josh Porter for alerting me to this]

note: this is an update of my ALA Midwinter presentation.

iii, innovative users group, iug, iug2006,lib 2.0, library, library 2.0, library catalog, online catalog, opac, opac 2.0, presentation, web opac, wpopac, libraries, web 2.0

WPopac Gets Googled

Casey Bisson — Thu, 04 May 2006 15:50:00 +0000

A discussion on Web4Lib last month raised the issue of Google indexing our library catalogs. My answer spoke of the huge number of searches being done in search engines every day and the way that people increasingly expect that anything worth finding can be found in Google.

There were doubts about the effectiveness of such plans, and concerns about how frustrating it might be for a searcher in California to find books (that he or she can’t access) in New Hampshire.

My answer to the first point was that once we start participating in the Google Economy, we’ll find our records well represented within it, and my answer to the second point is that we already have good solutions to that problem: ILL and OpenWorldCat. Examples: a Google search for my favorite author/friend/example returns with WPopac among the top results. And if you view one of the resulting records, you’ll see a link to “find in WorldCat Libraries.”

Thing is, it’s not just the stuff I’ve been linking to as examples that’s getting found in search engines. Listed below are the top 100 incoming search terms to WPopac from major search engines in the last week. The list is generated by bsuite, my multipurpose WordPress plugin, and the links lead to the item found with the search terms.

Some links will leave you scratching your head, others are clearly misdirected. But, I’m especially proud of this link, from a person who was especially happy to get a new book. Making our collections indexable also makes them linkable, and that means people can make libraries part of their lives — wherever their lives take them.

And this doesn’t just help Angie, it means faculty and students can link to library resources from class blogs or share them in AIM.

google economy, google in the catalog, lib20, libraries, library, library 20, library catalog, linking, links, loosely linked, opac, remix, search engines, wpopac

Boolean Searching in WPopac

Casey Bisson — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:35:58 +0000

WPopac takes advantage of MySQL’s indexing and relevance-ranked searching (go ahead, try it), including boolean searching (on MySQL versions > 4.x). Here are some details and examples taken wholesale from the MySQL manual:

+
A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each result returned.
-
A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the resuls that are returned.
> <
These two operators are used to change a word’s contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a result. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it.
( )
Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
~
A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word’s contribution to the result’s relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking “noise” words. A row containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the – operator.
*
The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
“
A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (‘”’) characters matches only results that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.

In short, it supports the quotes and plus/minus operators that people are familiar with in Google and others. The following examples demonstrate some search strings that use boolean operators:

‘apple banana‘
Find records that contain at least one of the two words.
‘+apple +juice‘
Find records that contain both words.
‘+apple macintosh‘
Find records that contain the word “apple”, but rank records higher if they also contain “macintosh”.
‘+apple -macintosh‘
Find records that contain the word “apple” but not “macintosh”.
‘+apple ~macintosh‘
Find records that contain the word “apple”, but if the row also contains the word “macintosh”, rate it lower than if row does not. This is “softer” than a search for ‘+apple -macintosh’, for which the presence of “macintosh” causes the row not to be returned at all.
‘+apple +(>turnover ‘
Find records that contain the words “apple” and “turnover”, or “apple” and “strudel” (in any order), but rank “apple turnover” higher than “apple strudel”.
‘apple*‘
Find records that contain words such as “apple”, “apples”, “applesauce”, or “applet”.
‘“some words”‘
Find records that contain the exact phrase “some words” (for example, rows that contain “some words of wisdom” but not “some noise words”).

Now I really need to configure my own version of MySQL without the over-reaching stopword list.

libraries, library, library catalog, online catalog, opac, wpopac

WPopac: An OPAC 2.0 Testbed

Casey Bisson — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 04:54:46 +0000

First things first, this thing probably needs a better name, but I’m not up to the task. Got ideas? Post in the comments. For the rest of this, let’s just pretend it’s an interview.

What is WPopac? It’s an OPAC — a library catalog, for my readers outside libraries — inside the framework of WordPress, the hugely popular blog management application.

Why misuse WordPress that way? WordPress has a a few things we care about built-in: permalinks, comments, and trackbacks (and a good comment spam filter), just to start. But it also offers something we’ve never seen in a library application before: access to a community of knowledge, programmers, and designers outside libraries. Because the core of WPopac is WordPress, and because it preserves WordPress’s rich plugin API and themes structure, it already has more users, designers, developers, and administrators than all the ILS vendors combined.

So, down with the ILS? Well, no. There are some brave souls working on full-fledged open-source ILSs, but that’s not my goal here. The ILS does a lot of stuff I don’t want to be responsible for, like the acquisitions workflow and financial, inventory, and circulation management. When you peak inside your ILS, you realize there’s a lot there you don’t want to have fix.

So, we have to have both an ILS and WPopac? Well, you don’t have to have anything, but if you want it, at least WPopac is free, extensible, and open-source. Less flippant answer: yes, it does assume there’s an ILS in the background somewhere, but more than a few people see potential for projects like this to serve underfunded libraries that may lack automation. That could be interesting.

But blog posts are unstructured and library data is full of structure. What gives? The standard WordPress content database is buttressed with extra tables to represent all the bibliographic information in its atomic detail. But even the ‘unstructured’ data takes some clues from the microformats camp, putting everything in XML parsable XHTML.

How’s that work again? Well, let me be careful here. I’m not proposing WPopac as a solution, rather as a framework for building a solution. That said, you can get a pretty good idea of how the first draft of this concept works by looking at a real record (be sure to view the source, as there are some hidden divs in there). But if you don’t like that, you can change the look by fiddling with the stylesheet or switching themes, and you can change the content with the WordPress API or by changing the way it’s loaded in the first place.

Further, because all the bibliographic data is there in its atomic detail, plugins can use and display that data anywhere on the page. Try a search to see how I’m using that data in the right column to improve findability, as in my clustered search results prototype from last fall.

So, does that mean I can do XYZ that I’ve wanted to do? Maybe. Anybody who knows how to write a WordPress plugin can take a stab at playing with all that data. The “refine search” content in the right column, and the “alternate searches” content at the bottom is generated that way. Try this one: I’ve finally got the Wikipedia results I’ve always wanted in the catalog, just look in the right column. Or take a look at the “add to del.icio.us” link in the record display, that’s generated by a regular wordpress plugin written by Arne Brachhold, who wasn’t thinking of libraries or OPACs when he wrote it. And down at the bottom of the page you’ll see the a list of related works that’s built by my own bsuite plugin. Want COinS-PMH/unAPI? The interface and all the data are there to make it happen, and here’s a good plugin to start from.

So no guarantees, but hey, give it a try. And if you run into trouble you’ll be among hundreds of thousands of WordPress users and supported by a huge community of plugin and theme authors.

What about RSS, XML, OpenSearch? WordPress solves the RSS feed for us (look at this URL to see). A feature-complete XML API, is a bit further off, but maybe somebody wants to pitch in to help solve that one? And full OpenSearch support, taking advantage of the suggested and alternate search features, is my next big project (here’s where I’m going with that).

This is awesome, can I run it at my library? Well, Jenny called dibs… But, really, this project started with my attempts to find a way to make my work sharable, so, yes. Call me a dreamer, but I find the notion of a community of libraries sharing plugins and code changes really exciting. But right now, there are three major components — the data importer, the plugin, and some modifications to the WordPress baseline code — and all of them need a little more work to make them distributable. Stay tuned.

This sucks, it doesn’t do X, and your plan for Y is all wrong. You’re probably right. This is my first stab at a really big problem, and there’s a lot that isn’t done and certainly a few things I didn’t think of. The plan here is to build a framework that let’s us ask questions, build possible solutions, and share them easily. The only thing I’m certain of is our need to find ways to make our systems easier to use, easier to extend, and integrated into the larger stream of progress that’s shaping the internet that over 200 million Americans are making an essential part of their lives. Take this as an invitation to get involved, there’s lots to do.

library, libraries, library 2.0, lib20, opac 2.0, opac, library catalog, library services, wordpress, wpopac, future libraries

Data Visualization and the OPAC

Casey Bisson — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:06:49 +0000

A chat with Ryan Eby, also an Edward Tufte fan, elicited this line about another reason we continue to struggle with the design of our catalogs:

data isn’t usable by itself
if it was then the OPAC would just be marc displays

And yesterday I was speaking with Corey Seeman about how to measure and use “popularity” information about catalog items. It got me thinking about Flickr’s interestingness metric, which seems to combine the number of times a photo has been “favorited,” viewed, and commented. In a related fashion, I’ve been looking at ways to track the terms people use to find catalog items and use those to help improve search results. A basic form of this is in the OPAC prototype I demonstrated yesterday.

And all of this has me looking forward to Aaron Krowne’s Quality Metrics presentation at code4lib.

library, libraries, opac 2.0, library catalog, popularity, search ranking, data visualization, ryan eby, corey seeman, metrics, search rank, opac, library 2.0

Presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0

Casey Bisson — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:30:11 +0000

ALA Midwinter IUG SIG Presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0

update: PDF version with space for notes

Kevin Kelly, in a Wired Magazine story described this apparent blindness:

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. [thanks to Josh Porter for alerting me to this]

ala, ala midwinter, ala midwinter 2006, iii, iug, lib 2.0, libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, online catalog, opac, opac 2.0, presentation, web 2.0, web opac

OpenSearch Spec Updated

Casey Bisson — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:39:49 +0000

I just received this email from the A9 OpenSearch team:

We have just released OpenSearch 1.1 Draft 2. We hope to declare it the final version shortly, and it is already supported by A9.com. Uprading from a previous version should only take a few minutes…

OpenSearch 1.1 allows you to specify search results in HTML, Atom, or any other format (or multiple formats) in addition to just RSS. In addition, OpenSearch 1.1 will be supported by Internet Explorer 7, among other software, so we strongly recommend that you upgrade. Also new is the ability to specify suggested searches, such as spelling suggestions and related queries. (link and emphasis addded)

Woot! I’ll be doing something with this soon.

a9, opensearch, open search, amazon, search, libraries, library, opac, library catalog, library catalogs, a9.com, metasearch, aggregated search, search, federated search

Raging Arguments About The Future Of The ILS

Casey Bisson — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 14:29:48 +0000

I hadn’t seen Ryan Eby’s post at LibDev that connected ILSs with WordPress before I posted that library catalogs should be like WordPress here. It connects with a my comment on a post at Meredith Farkas’ Information Wants To Be Free. My comment there goes in two directions, but I’d like to focus on the technology side now.

Our vendors will inevitably bend to our demands and add small features here and there, but even after that, we’ll still be stuck paying enormous amounts of money for systems that remain fundamentally flawed. Technology marches on, and inevitably we’ll find some new way to use our catalog data. John Blyberg is talking about this in his ILS customer bill of rights post, and that’s what I was getting at when I say the catalog should be like WordPress.

Meredith asks for more programmers, but as a programmer, I’m asking for her help in demanding smart software design from our vendors.

tags: future of the opac, catalog data, coders wanted, future, future of libraries, future of library catalogs, future of the ils, libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, library catalogs, library technology, library20, opac, programmers wanted, smart software, software design

Library Catalogs Should Be Like WordPress

Casey Bisson — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 14:32:58 +0000

Library catalogs should be be like WordPress. That is, every entry should support comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks. Every record should have a permalink. Content should be tag-able. The look should be easily customizable with themes. Everything should be available via RSS or Atom. It should be extendable with a rich plugin API. And when that fails, it would be nice if it were all written in a convenient language like PHP so we can hack it ourselves.

tags: libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, library catalogs, library20, opac, wordpress

Pew Internet Report: Search Engines Gain Ground

Casey Bisson — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:53:24 +0000

According to the recently released Pew Internet report on online activities:

On an average day, about 94 million American adults use the internet; 77% will use email, 63% will use a search engine.

Among all the online activities tracked, including chatting and IMing, reading blogs or news, banking, and buying, not one of them includes searching a library OPAC.

tags: google, google vs. the opac, libraries, library, library catalog, opac, pew internet, pew internet and american life project, report, search engine, search engines

More NEASIS&T Buy Hack or Build Followup

Casey Bisson — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:20:01 +0000

First, Josh Porter, the first speaker of the day has a blog where he’s posted his presentation notes and some key points. Josh spoke about Web 2.0, and ended with the conclusion that successful online technologies are those that best model user behavior. “I think Web 2.0 is about modeling something that already exists in our offline worlds, mostly in the spoken words and minds of humankind.”
Interestingly, in findability terms, it was Josh’s post that clued me in that the event podcast was online because he linked to my blog in his post. Lesson: links make things findable.

Like Josh, I found my voice a little unfamiliar, but you can listen here (51MB) if that’s your thing.

Also, I demoed some features I’d like to see in a future OPAC, but to help people visualize them, I finally put together a graphical mockup of them here.

tags: asist, authentication service, buy hack or build, databases, hack, hacks, libraries, library, library catalog, library services, neasis&t, neasist, opac, opac hacks, university portal

NELINET Bibliographic Services Conference

Casey Bisson — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:25:55 +0000

I’m here at the NELINET Bibliographic Services Conference at the College of the Holy Cross today.

The conference is titled “Google vs. the OPAC: the challenge is on!” and there’s quite a lineup of speakers.

My presentation is on “the social life of metadata.” My slides are online, and below is some background.

The Library Catalog…
The catalog is among a library’s most important assets. An unread book offers little value, but the catalog offers the promise that the library’s resources will be found and used, and a well constructed catalog makes the finding easier by offering rich details and easy navigation.

…vs. The Google Economy
One of the most critical differences between the search behavior of librarians search and that of a typical patron is the conscious decisions librarians make to define the question and identify specific resources to search. Many patrons, however, pose their question in simple terms to the nearest search engine, and refine it over successive searches until an answer is found.

Patrons are increasingly unlikely to consider questions of where or what resources to search prior to executing their first search attempt.

The Systems We Build Shape The Search Results We Get
We must remember that search results reflect the resources and metadata indexed by the search engine. Search engines offer us the opportunity for libraries to deliver quality information to patrons who need it, but who have not yet thought to search library systems specifically.

So, in addition to outstanding ease of use and quality search features, a well constructed catalog must optimize the linkability and indexability or our data.

Findability Is Paramount
“What we find changes who we become.” So reads the subtitle to Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability.

The internet and search engines offer our patrons access to more information sources than ever, making our role in the findability equation ever more important. The challenge is to take advantage of how search engines work, to manage the tools that manage our information.

tags: library catalogs, bibliographic services, bibliographic services conference, google, google vs. the opac, libraries, library, library catalog, nelinet, nelinet bibliographic services conference, opac, opacs, social life of metadata, the social life of metadata, worcester, worcester ma

NEASIS&T Buy, Hack or Build Followup

Casey Bisson — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:06:45 +0000

I was tempted to speak without slides yesterday, and I must offer my apologies to anybody trying to read them now, as I’m not sure how the slides make sense without the context of my speech. On that point, it’s worth knowing that Lichen did an outstanding job liveblogging the event, despite struggling with a blown tire earlier that morning.

It’s probably well understood by anybody reading this that most library services are at the web 1.0 stage. My slides show a number of screenshots of our current library catalog, but my speech went something like “I’m not here to tell you how we re-painted, re-wallpapered our catalog….” So, skip past those slides, and read here for context.

My following points were about some of the hacks I’d put into production to bring our library services up to about web 1.5 status. They include an awareness that library services include not only the OPAC, but also our website and a number of databases. We’ve all encountered difficulty trying to describe the different reasons to use each of these resources, but our patrons have less and less patience for it. Among the barriers to use is access. Even when our databases are freely available on campus, off-campus use often requires a special password for one stage or another of the process.

The slides demonstrate our current solution. By integrating our resources into the university portal and leveraging the authentication service it provided, I was able to hack single sign-on access to our databases and patron self-service module. This lowered the barriers to access, and we saw our usage of those resources increase dramatically.

All this was good, but it still wasn’t web 2.0, and it revealed a larger problem looming ahead: identity management. The more we try to provide individualized, customized, targeted services, the more we’ll bump into that issue of how we identify our patrons.

Moving forward to our web 2.0 future, I wanted to posit the idea that one of the most useful recent developments is the way we can now separate the tools that store and manage our data from the tools that display and manipulate our data. Yes, I’m talking about APIs, Webservices, XML, RSS, REST, SOAP, et all.

As examples, I offered a personal vacation map (using Google Maps), the Colr Pickr (using Flickr), our reviews and bookjacket pages (using Amazon), and this silly home made search engine (using Yahoo, Technorati, Amazon, Flickr, and Wikipedia).

Even more specific to libraries, I offered my OPAC suggest, A9.com integration and this functional (but not pretty) prototype of how I’d like to make subject headings a more prominent part of the search process.

So, you’re free to go through my slides, but you might do better to read around here and at LibDev. If you do go through the slides, be sure to follow the links out to websites. I didn’t visit even half of them during my talk, but I put them there to offer some redeeming value on review.

tags: asist, authentication service, buy hack or build, databases, hack, hacks, identity management, libraries, library, library catalog, library services, neasis&t, neasist, opac, opac hacks, university portal

NEASIS&T Buy, Hack or Build

Casey Bisson — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:28:25 +0000

I’m here at the NEASIS&T Buy, Hack or Build event today at MIT’s Media Lab. On the list are Joshua Porter, Director of Web Development for User Interface Engineering, Pete Bell [corrected], co-founder of Endeca Solutions, and me.

I’m posting my slides here now, but I’m told we’ll see a podcast of the proceedings soon after the conclusion. Be aware that the slides are full of links. I won’t be able to explore them all during the presentation, but they might add value later.

tags: asist, buy hack or build, hack, hacks, libraries, library, neasis&t, opac, opac hacks

Library-Related Geekery

Casey Bisson — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:16:07 +0000

Ryan beat me to reporting on the interesting new services at the Ockham Network (noted in this Web4lib post). The easiest one to grok is this spelling service, but there are others that are cooler.

He also alerted me to a Perl script to proxy Z39.50 to RSS. Though for those more into PHP (like me), I’d like to point out the YAZ extension from the folks at Index Data.

This extension offers a PHP interface to the YAZ toolkit that implements the Z39.50 Protocol for Information Retrieval. With this extension you can easily implement a Z39.50 origin (client) that searches or scans Z39.50 targets (servers) in parallel.

The module hides most of the complexity of Z39.50 so it should be fairly easy to use. It supports persistent stateless connections very similar to those offered by the various RDB APIs that are available for PHP. This means that sessions are stateless but shared among users, thus saving the connect and initialize phase steps in most cases.

Clearly, if I wasn’t so lazy, I’d get around to compiling YAZ into my PHP and actually build something with it. Though without Z39.50 on my own ILS, the incentive is understandably diminished.

Finally, I’ve gotten an answer about indexing cat dates in III so they can be used in searches or sorts. The answer is mostly “no,” but I go into a little more detail at LibDev.

tags: cat date, ils, index data, information retrieval, libaries, library, library catalog, library systems, ockham, opac, perl script, php, rss, search by cat date, sort by cat date, xml, yaz, z39.50, z39.50 proxy

Put A Pepper In Your Library

Casey Bisson — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:41:37 +0000

Libraries are known for books. And despite the constant march of technology, despite the fact that we can put a bazillion songs in our pocket, despite the availability of the New York Times and so many other newspapers and thousands of journals online, books are a big part of what libraries are. Books, dead tree books with that rotting paper smell. And though I dare not prognosticate, I expect they’ll be an emblematic feature of libraries for a while now.

Problem is, books are increasingly anachronistic to young patrons who’ve grown up with the wonders of Google and full text searching.

Find a patron who can explain whatever call number system is in use at your library. Find a patron who can locate a book as fast as they can find movie times in any random city.

That’s why I was anxious to speak with Pepper Computer’s Jon Melamut last week. The Pepper Pad (pictured left) is a delightful, but hard to define post-PC device. Take a look at the specs or my hardware review (coming soon) to learn more.

What’s so special about the Pepper Pad? It’s portable, more portable than a laptop. Laptops move from desk to desk, but patrons often leave them behind when they go looking for books or other materials. See it? Books and computers — even laptops — don’t mix. In this age of computers, PDAs, and iPods, a pen and notepad are still one among our best information tools. The Pepper Pad is small enough, light enough to go with the patron among the stacks, around reference, even (god forbid) into the bathroom.

It’s portable, but it has a big bright screen (8.4“ diagonally) that makes web pages (displayed in Mozilla) and other text easy to read. Your library catalog will look great on it, and any maps or location guides will make a lot more sense when patrons can view them in-situ. It will help them find the books they’re looking for, then offer them a lot more once they do. They should be able to use it to mark the book as useful, or not. And if they stumble across something they didn’t expect, they should be able to mark that too — or look up bibliographic details to help decide what to do with it. Got search-inside-the-book going? How better to use it than on a Pepper Pad from within the stacks?

The portability, the touchscreen, and the stand that keeps it upright and available at all times could make it an ideal research companion. Of course, the built in web radio and AIM client help too. Better, it could enable new applications, new modes of accessing library resources that current technology hasn’t yet revealed.

No matter how small laptops get, they’ll still be deskbound. Tablet PCs change that, but they’re expensive and depend on touchy handwriting recognition. Libraries need inexpensive, useful devices like the Pepper Pad. Libraries are rethinking the OPAC, but the way we access the OPAC must change too.

tags: handheld, handheld computer, laptop, laptop computer, libraries, library, library catalog, library catalogs, opac, pepper, pepper computer, pepper pad, ultra portable

The High Cost Of Metasearch For Libraries

Casey Bisson — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 06:13:20 +0000

I’ve been looking seriously at metasearch/federated search products for libraries recently. After a lot of reading and a few demos I’ve got some complaints.

I’m surprised how vendors, even now, devote so much time demonstrating patron features that are neither used nor appreciated by any patrons without an MLS. Recent lessons (one, two, three) should have made it clear that libraries need to conform to patron expectations of how online resources should work. Our own search statistics show that only 0.0067% (YES, less than a hundredth of a percent!) of the searches on our OPAC get “limited” to specific languages, locations, dates, or material types. What our patrons expect is that a natural language search will yield relevant results in the first page of hits. “Googlization” isn’t about dumbing things down, it’s about making the technology smarter.

And that’s the problem with these vendor’s metasearch products. They don’t do much to improve the quality of the results retrieved from any database. Shovelware, products that pile up junk in an attempt to generate value based on quantity, is poor solution for libraries or researchers. Still, that’s how these products work, and it’s how they’ll continue to work until libraries and their database providers adopt some of the advances in search technology now used on the web (it’s not just Google, but Yahoo, Teoma, Clusty, and others).

At the same time these metasearch products are doing little to improve the results we get, they’re also making the search process slower. Why do they all make us wait while slowly updating a table that shows only the number of hits retrieved from each database? A9 can teach all these vendors quite a few lessons on that point. A9 reports results in resizable columns, and fills in the details from various databases as they become available. The biggest lesson A9 can teach these vendors, however, is that metasearch should be free. They’re pushing OpenSearch as a public standard based on RSS/XML and already they’ve got access to 236 databases. That’s not bad compared to z39.50 (which we all still respect as the elder parent of current search standards), but remember that the standard was only announced in March 2005.

We need to pressure database vendors to improve their search engines and give better results. Maybe database providers need to rank journal articles by the number of citations they receive? Maybe libraries need to buy Google Search Appliances and do their own indexing of database content. That way, links from university faculty would increase the rank of articles they link to, making search results especially relevant.

Then, we need to ask where our money is going when we buy software like this. We need to demand standards-based products with outstanding ease of use. Go try out A9 and compare it to anything in your library. Yeah, don’t you wish you could offer that to your patrons?

tags: a9, clusty, federated search, google, libraries, library, library systems, metasearch, natural language search, opac, patron, patrons, search technology, teoma, yahoo

LibDev Launched

Casey Bisson — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 09:43:11 +0000

LibDev launched today. From the Welcome message there:

LibDev is a site for those interested in libraries and networked information. Want to find a way to apply tags or social bookmarking to library content? Interested in how Wikipedia can serve libraries? Want to find a better way to do patron loads or talk about what identity management means to libraries? Looking for single sign-on solutions so patrons can move seamlessly from the campus portal to your OPAC without re-authenticating? Do you know your library is sitting on a goldmine of valuable data that you can’t use because there are too many systems and vendors who can’t or won’t talk to eachother?

LibDev might be for you.

Readers of following the library and tech categories here might want to check things out there. I’ll probably cross-post the most interesting items there and here, but I hope/expect to see some unique and valuable discussion there.

tags: blog, campus portal, imagineering, integration, libraries, library, library blog, library content, library integration, library portal, opac, portal