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22 August 2006

AADL / PatREST Google Gadget from John Blyberg for MUTL06

John Blyberg wrote a gadget for Google that lets you see new and hot books inside your custom home page. His blog entry has lots of details about it; here are a few screen shots.

Firefoxscreensnapz001-6This page shows what the section of your custom page looks like if you set it up to look for new knitting books. You can also configure it to look for new CDs or DVDs, to watch for hot books that have lots of holds at the library, and if you are so inclined you can put your current checkouts there as well.

Firefoxscreensnapz002-4Here's the corresponding configuration screen that goes with the knitting example. The "subject search" string has to be one of the subject terms used by the library, so pick your vocabulary carefully - books about fire fighting are listed under "fire extinction", and cookbooks are listed under "cookery". Knitting fortunately doesn't have any weird library-only word associated with it.

There are two libraries in the world that support this PatREST UI - Ann Arbor and the University of Huddersfield. My first round of testing didn't see that these work with Huddersfield, which seems to be missing a few necessary bits, but I didn't try all that hard. As I noted to John I'd love to see a "wall of books" style graphical version of this with book covers instead of text, & if I can decipher the Javascript he's using ...

This was an entry for Talis's Mashing Up the Library 2006 competition.

UPDATE 8/25/06: John tweaked the results and updated PatREST to make it easier to develop such services. I downloaded his code & made a few tiny changes in formatting (removing a few br/ tags) to come up with this "wall of books" style display.

Firefoxscreensnapz005-1

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Posted on 22 August 2006 in Ann Arbor, Beyond big vendors, Code, Library 2.0, Library mashups, Public libraries |

Comments

If you're patient, I'll have a wall of books for you shortly :)

Posted by:John | 22 August 2006 at 11:55 AM

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  • So you've got Ed exploring the possibility space, and John working to enlarge that space, and together they've created a virtuous cycle of innovation. Now this is obviously an extreme example. You are not going to find a superpatron of Ed's caliber and a superlibrarian of John's caliber in every town. But I think the dynamic at work there can apply more broadly. And if it does, it will matter that these patrons and librarians are situated in a local context. (Jon Udell, Remixing the Library, GRL2020)
  • Der Supernutzer beschreibt 10 Möglichkeiten, der Bibliothek zu helfen....Den wichtigsten Punkt hat er vergessen, ihn aber selbst erfüllt. Sozusagen als Präambel könnte man also anführen:

    “Übe konstruktive Kritik an der Bibliothek. Ohne Resonanz können die Leute da drin nicht wissen, was Du willst.” Infobib.de

  • How come only some books in the Google Book Search have “find in a library” links next to them? Diglet asks, and gets an answer, sort of a lame one if you ask me. update: Kevin mentioned in the comments that it would be great to see this for all books in Google Books. I went to bed thinking “Oh yeah, I should look into that….” and while I was sleeping, Superpatron, aka Ed Vielmetti solved the crime, er problem, and created a Greasemonkey script (a plug-in that you can run with Firefox) that does this for Ann Arbor and can be modified for any library. (Jessamyn West)
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  • The blogosphere's resident "awesomest patron ever," Edward Vielmetti, appears in an article in School Library Journal about how he wrote a script tweaking (ahem, improving) Google Book Search. Vielmetti's blog, Superpatron, is one I read daily and highly recommend to anyone in libraries looking to get a very smart user's perspective. (Librarian In Black)
  • When I wrote him back, I called him the “AADL Super Patron,” which is very coincidental, since he has been planning to create a blog with almost the same name. Today, Superpatron is live and I’m sure it will quickly be filled with Ed’s terrific ideas about making libraries more responsive to patrons’ needs. So hurry up and subscribe already, ok? (Meredith Farkas)
  • The Superpatron (faster than a speeding reference librarian…) posts a presentation on the use of del.icio.us for research. Steven Cohen, Library Stuff
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  • Last fall, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I gave a talk entitled Superpatrons and Superlibrarians. Joining me for this week’s podcast are the two guys who inspired that talk. The superpatron is Ed Vielmetti, an old Internet hand who likes to mash up the services proviced by the Ann Arbor District Library. That’s possible because superlibrarian John Blyberg, who works at the AADL, has reconfigured his library’s online catalog system, adding RSS feeds and a full-blown API he calls PatREST. (Jon Udell)
  • Little did I know that when I pointed to Ed Vielmetti’s blog, I was not only coining a phrase, but providing the name for Ed’s brilliant new blog. Ed is that (unfortunately still) rare creature that not only groks the net in fullness, but also has use for his public library. (Eli Neiburger)
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