Superpatron - Friends of the Library, for the net

Chişinău (Moldova) - National Library

Chişinău (Moldova) - National Library
Originally uploaded by Danielzolli

An account of the process of checking out books at the National Library of Moldova:

At the entrance to the library itself, I had to show the permit at the entrance desk and got also a "user talon". To get the books I looked for, I first had to find their register cards in the endless rows of catalogues (as in the picture). Then I had to copy the content of the register cards (not only the signature, but also the "inventar number") on another talon which I then could deliver at one of the many desks, together with my entrance permit.

definitely not "open stacks" !

There is an online catalog of the National Library of Moldova, which is running the TinREAD catalog software:

The result is TinREAD’s core, an ILS application generator that allows the System Administrator to completely define the application at runtime with no need to modify the source code. Parameterization concept usually defined by ILS system is extended by TinREAD to a new approach: application generating. The menus, submenus, lists, forms, fields, relations, validation, access-rights are all customizable by System Administrator and allows the most flexibility ever possible for an ILS.

TinREAD can be considered an Integrated Library System (ILS). In fact, the functionality included in TinREAD is more than the one in usual ILS systems and a more accurate term to define TinREAD is NILS (Neo – Integrated Library System). Traditional ILS supposes a complex integrated environment with standard functionality for users (OPAC, WebOPAC) and staff (Cataloguing, Circulation, Acquisitions, Serials Control). Such systems are doing a great job for an old-style library working by itself. Modern libraries need not only their departments to be integrated, but also the library to be a part to the global flow of information between libraries or other actors holding information. Also, the endless process of improving library services requires new tools, new functionality and obviously a new type of software.

IME, the vendor, claims 300+ installations (2006) of this software.

Mobile medical library reference information

Thanks to commenter Wayne Loftus for this information:

The Yale Medical Library has a mobile version. It includes among other things the National Library of Medicine's PubMed for Handhelds and Unbound Medicine's Unbound MEDLINE for the iPhone.

There is also an iPhone ready mobile drug guide from ePocrates, comparable in scope to the Physician's Desk Reference (but quite a bit less heavy).

Is your site visible on mobiles?

On the mobile formatted web sites (esp mobile formatted book finding web sites) front, here's a nice slide show which I pulled from the blog ZB Digitaal's post on Lekker blijven drammen: is jouw site al beschikbaar voor mobieltjes?

| View | Upload your own

(need a category for this stuff)

mobile versions of library web sites

If your library catalog has a special version optimized for small computer screens as seen on mobile phones or specially for the iPhone, I'm interested in a pointer to it.

So far I've found these:

• American University Libraries


• Ball State University Library


• Boston University Medical Center Mobile Library


• Cal Poly Pomona University Library


• Hanover College, Duggan Library


• Harvard College Library


• University of Illinois Library


• LibraryThing


• New York University Libraries


• North Carolina State University Library


• University of Richmond Library


• St. John’s University, College of St. Benedict


• University of Virgina Library

but where there's this many there's bound to be more.

Megan Fox from Simmons has a very good list of PDA projects in libraries, from which a portion of this list is extracted.

twitter at your library - what should or could it do?

Ryan Eby just invited me to join the Ann Arbor District Library twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/aadl

He promises event notifications and other newsworthy stuff.

Once upon a time I built a "superpatronbot" that searched the AADL catalog via a Jabber bot - quite reasonably you could build one of these upon Twitter's direct message listings. Useful? Perhaps, especially if I could link a Twitter account to my library card and then be able to twitter

d aadl reserve anatomy of a murder dvd

and have it do a hold on it for me (or return some disambiguator if there were multiple choices).

(Reminder - Library Camp 2008 at the AADL, March 20 2008.)

Technorati Tags: aadl, twitter

Public library, open source catalog: Michigan Evergreen

from the Michigan Evergreen blog:

Welcome! The Michigan Library Consortium and Grand Rapids Public Library are working together to develop a shared library system using the open source ILS software, Evergreen. We will use this blog to keep the Michigan library community updated on the progress of our Evergreen project.

Currently, we are working to select an initial group of public libraries for the pilot group. We hope to have the pilot group selected before the end of the year.

Please feel free to post your questions and comments to this blog. We are interested to hear your input!

Go, urgently.

Technorati Tags: library, evergreen, mlc, michigan, pines, grand-rapids

Jon Udell on Remixing the Library (GRL2020)

Jon Udell did a talk on remixing the library at the Global Research Library summit.

Abstract: In an online world of small pieces loosely joined, librarians are among the most well qualified and highly motivated joiners of those pieces. Library patrons, meanwhile, are in transition. Once mainly consumers of information, they are now, on the two-way web, becoming producers too. Can libraries function not only as centers of consumption, but also as centers of production?

mentioned in it: Library Lookup, Dune's "guild navigators", "folding space", xISBN, books on an Amazon wishlist available at your library, PatREST, superpatrons, superlibrarians, community photo aggregation, community calendar aggregation, libraries vs. newspapers as local information sources, community crime data, geocoding, Many Eyes, libraries as physical space, libraries in the mall, libraries as centers of production.

(sounded like an awesome talk - much to think about - much to do)

Technorati Tags: udell, judell, grl2020, library, arborparents

Eli Neiburger presentation on implementing Drupal at AADL - 9/24

from the Ann Arbor Drupal Users Group

Don't miss this meeting!!!

I'm happy to announce that Eli Neiburger of the Ann Arbor District Library is going to present at this coming Ann Arbor Drupal Users group meeting this Monday night 24Sep07 @ 7pm.

This will be a rare chance to look under the hood of a regionally high profile Drupal site.

We will meet at Ann Arbor Spark our new home.

The site has tons of features, users, images and so much more. I don't presume to know anything about what's going on behind the scenes. But from a users perspective it is handling tons of logistics in the form of inventory, users, transactions, reservations, reviews, events, interoperability with other web services, ....

I have wanted to see this presentation since I learned about this site. I can't wait and hope to see you there.
Bring a friend!

Technorati Tags: aadl, ann-arbor-district-library, drupal, eli-neiburger, ann-arbor-drupal-users-group, ann-arbor-spark, ann-arbor-usa

Ann Arbor District Library Developer Blog

The folks who do the software development at the Ann Arbor District Library have started a developer blog.

Welcome to the AADL Developer Blog! Software Development is a big part of what we do here at AADL, and this section of aadl.org is the place to keep up with our new features, see what our developers are working on, and find out what kind of tools we're playing with.

We also have open-source software that we've developed available for download, and you can find that here. Please feel free to comment on our posts or contactus if you have any other questions, and thanks for your interest

Recent blog postings include creating custom content types in Drupal, Eli Neiburger's talk on choosing games for your library , the development of the Library Lego League, and a sonnet regarding library card renewal alerts for III.

A tragedy! Your AADL card
Has now expired, and you must renew.
Just keeping track of all this stuff is hard,
And each new thing is one more thing to do.

Technorati Tags: aadl, annarbor, michigan, drupal, games, eli-neiburger, lego, iii, innovative-interfaces

Espresso Book Machine demo at NYPL's SIBL

pulled straight from PR Web w/o comments:

New York, NY (PRWEB) June 21, 2007 -- The first Espresso Book Machine™ (“the EBM”) was installed and demonstrated today at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL). The patented automatic book making machine will revolutionize publishing by printing and delivering physical books within minutes. The EBM is a product of On Demand Books, LLC (“ODB” - www.ondemandbooks.com), the company founded by legendary publishing executive Jason Epstein and business partner Dane Neller, who joined SIBL’s Kristin McDonough for a private event there to speak about the EBM’s potential impact on the future of reading and publishing.

The Espresso Book Machine will be available to the public at SIBL through August, and will operate Monday- Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library is located at 188 Madison Avenue (at 34th Street).

It makes you wonder a little bit about the cost per delivered book done this way compared to inter-library loan - I don't have all of those numbers in front of me to compare and I suspect it changes from library to library depending on how automated their ILL system is.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, sibl, nypl, superpatron