UPDATE: See Jenny Levine's review of the virtual new bookshelf at the Allen County, Indiana public library.
I wrote a half dozen lines of not very pretty code and turned the Ann Arbor District Library's new holding lists into a wall of books display for non-fiction and for fiction. (I would have done DVDs and CDs too but the catalog doesn't have enough images to make it worthwhile.)
It was relatively easy to do because the catalog has an RSS feed. The code is fragile - it will break on the slightest change to the catalog formatting - though I have a sneaking suspicion we can fix that with some relatively simple microformat coding. The same principle should work with any catalog search, or with any other AADL feed (patron checkouts, holds, checkout history).
Technorati Tags: books, aadl, library, library2.0, remix, rss,
Om Jorunn calls this a "bibliotekhack" at http://andedam.org/2005/12/31/mer-hacking/ .
(Sorry, I don't understand the rest, for lack of translation tools.)
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | 31 December 2005 at 10:34 AM
Great stuff!!! ... Love what AADL does ... I absolutely love the idea of giving patrons the ability to use whatever tools makes sense them and expand their abilities to change their lives ... keep doing it ... you folks are inspirations for all of us! Say "hi" to John for me ...
Posted by: Tim Rogers | 31 December 2005 at 11:02 AM
Ed, I would *totally* like to steal this idea for use on our site.
Maybe even make something like a coverpop for it...
Posted by: ejk | 31 December 2005 at 11:37 AM
Beautiful!
Posted by: Laura | 31 December 2005 at 11:39 AM
Very, very smooth. Your blog is fast becoming a daily read for me. Your ideas are wonderful! Can I ask...what ILS is Ann Arbor using?
Posted by: Patricia Uttaro | 31 December 2005 at 12:03 PM
ejk: steal away! I put one up on flickr as well with "hot titles", which looked nice too.
Patricia: Ann Arbor is using a heavily customized Drupal front end to an Innovative Interfaces catalog. John Blyberg's blog at http://www.blyberg.net/ has the most ongoing technical details; I don't recall reading a "build notes" style description of all that is involved.
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | 31 December 2005 at 12:19 PM