Superpatron

superpatron code repository on github

I'm going to be collecting the various bits and scraps of code I've written for Superpatron on github.  Look at the superpatron archive there for details.

So far it's just promises (I'm still figuring out git; it's not hard, just new to me) but I do hope to get the code that I have already released on various random FTP sites into this one place.

Firefox's Ubiquity, and the challenge: make searching your library as easy as searching Amazon

Aza Raskin has released Ubiquity, a Firefox browser plugin that adds a command line of sorts to Firefox and gives you very easy access to search from within your browser.  I haven't completely absorbed it yet, but the effect is that you type "option-space amazon blueberries for sal" and you get almost instant results within the browser like this:

Now, the question is as always: how do you make it so that your local library is as easy and as few keystrokes away as a major online book vendor?  I don't have the answer yet - writing Ubiquity commands involves Javascript, and I don't have a super simple tutorial just yet for this task - but it's a very reasonable ideal.

How to renew all of your books from the command line

The Ann Arbor library makes it easy to renew your library books; it's one click once you've logged in.  I thought I'd make it zero clicks.  Here's how.

I'm on a Mac running Firefox, so I have two tools at my disposal: "curl", a command line tool for making web requests, and Firebug, a debugger for Firefox that gives you a ton of page information.  The v1.2 version of Firebug works with Firefox 3.0, so make sure your versions are in sync.  curl is stable and widely distributed on many systems (including MS-DOS and Amiga!) so that should be easy; there's a similar tool "wget" which should be a substitute.

With those two I was able to come up with this (edited very slightly so that it won't work for you):

#!/bin/sh
# renew all items
curl -b "PHPSESSID=b93f03330de3fe399e2e9659fc2c5898" \
  -d "itemsformsub=1&renewall_button=Renew+All+Items" \
   https://www.aadl.org/user/890

I'll decode this for you to replicate this yourself, or more to the point so I remember what the heck I did (and I can only imagine a handful of people who this is for, but just to bear with me in case one of them comes up with a better idea!)

The first -b argument takes a PHP session ID key, which is the cookie that the AADL site uses to authenticate you.  I dug that out of the page with Firebug, or you can find it without that under Tools / Page Info / Security / View Cookies.  The expiration date on that particular cookie was less than a month away, so this script will have to be fixed up periodically with a new auth key.

The second -d argument takes the form information to fill out.  In this case Firebug showed me the form on the page that I was looking to fill out, and once I had turned on "Net" debugging it gave me all of the fields I needed to send on the "post" tab of the POST transaction. 

The final argument is the page to post to, in this case my user id number on the site.

The command produces (prodigious) output, which I should next parse I suppose to tell me which books to read, which ones to find, and all that - all in good time.

The same approach (with all of the details changed, but the same tools) could work for you if your library system has a web based way to renew books.

U of Michigan Libraries to use Drupal for development

The University of Michigan Library just decided to use Drupal as their new content management system. You can find a list of content management systems that they evaluated at the Blog for Library Technology site.

An interesting consideration included this:

And in the end, we selected Drupal. While the other two tools had strengths, we ended up deciding against Joomla! because of what we perceived as a surfeit of security problems over time with frequent releases to patch bugs or security holes. We liked Plone, as well, but we felt taking on a new programming environment (Python) for something as critical as our web presence was not sensible.

The Ann Arbor District Library has a Drupal based system, though it's been actually designed and not just put into place with the stock set of Drupal default settings. There's a whole lotta ugly in the base configuration which is all customizable, given enough patience and attention to detail.

I would be remiss, actually, if I did not include a video of the Drupal song.

Colourphon - books by color service!

I don't have the full back story to this service yet, but Dave Pattern pointed out this site called colourphon which does image analysis to return the color of a book's cover.

new Google Book Search API in the works?

I got a query from someone inside Google who is working on a "new Google Book Search API" and looking for people interested in it. I'm trying to find out more.

I suspect it's different from this Google Book Search part of the Google AJAX Search API, but that's a guess; it might indeed be the same. If that's the case, here's some resources from resourceful people:

Dojo: Meet Google Book Search tells the story of integrating Google Book Search with the SFU Bookswap using the Dojo toolkit. Dustin Thomson put this together - he writes:

Google offers a Search container, which allows the integration of several search sources, including the web, images, blogs, news items and books. I only wanted the Book source so I chose to take the simple route and not use the container class. Instead I used the GbookSearch object directly, which allows me to access the data more easily as well as utilize only the desired functionality.

Among other things, he documents how to get book covers from Google via their API (and a bit of URL rewriting). Useful stuff, too much for me to parse to put together a sample for myself right now but it doesn't look like the resulting code is more than a page of text.

Technorati Tags: google, dojo, google-book-search, gbooksearch, sfu

Reported problems with AADL greasemonkey script

One of the users of the greasemonkey script I wrote last year that puts AADL holdings information into Amazon reported that it stopped working under Leopard.

Haven't debugged it yet, but I want to acknowledge the problem openly (in the hopes of course that someone else will fix it).

Can we fix it?
Yes we can!
-- Bob the Builder

Jon Udell's Library Lookup has moved

If your bookmark for Jon Udell's Library Lookup doesn't work, here's why - it's moved:

I’ve been continuing to receive requests to update the LibraryLookup bookmarklet generator which, since it’s hosted at InfoWorld, I can no longer maintain. So took a snapshot at jonudell.net/LibraryLookupGenerator.html, and I’ll make updates there. Today, thanks to Betsy Ptak, I added support for a newer version of PowerPac.

While I was at it, I resolved a longstanding annoyance. On Firefox, I was never able to figure out how to ensure that the lookup window would open in front of the current window. Turns out that Michael Moncur found a workaround over two years ago. Apparently it’s still needed in the current version of Firefox, so I rolled it into the generator.

Library Lookup gives you a one-click way to determine if your library has a copy of a book that you see on your screen - very handy!

Technorati Tags: library-lookup, books, library

Things I want to write more about here - categories A-G

Every so often I run into corners of the world that I want to explore. Here's some list of the things I'd like to write more about, even if I don't have a full blog-length posting for any of them written right now. I'm keying off the categories I've set up.

This is part 1: Amazon through Google Book Search.

Sorry no links yet....will hyperlink as I have time to edit, but I thought I'd get this out into the world.

Amazon - about the book cover and album cover art database they have; how to set up an affiliate bookstore that actually works; on using Amazon to do wish lists that are then fulfilled through your library (via Jon Udell); on using Amazon as a book finding system and then using Book Burro or similar to connect back to your library; much more I'm sure.

Ann Arbor - plans for a new library downtown; reviews of all of the branches; reviews of other Washtenaw County libraries; special libraries in town like the Ford Presidential Library

Archives - an interview with the folks who run the Labadie Collection; an interview with the Prelingers; an interview with Brewster Kahle; some discussion of the peculiar nature of archives in the digital age

Archival Television - Jeff Ubois blog of the same name; the loss of the video record; clearing and securing rights; bootlegs on Youtube; museums of the broadcast industry

Beyond big vendors - this was the title of a talk I gave; an exploration of consolidation in the integrated library systems space, and some understanding of new alternatives

Book Burro - at least an annual post on what it is (repetition is the soul of the net); a screencast showing how I use it; documentation for online book finding system developers to get them to have Book Burro pop up on their book screens; a discussion of how tools like this can be funded by affiliate revenues

Book covers - as finding aids; variations between editions; in online book finding and book inventory systems; search by contents of the cover, not contents of the book

Book trading - more reviews of any book trading systems I find; some stories about book swap clubs that meet in person; children's birthday parties where everyone brings a book and everyone gets a book

Bookins - how they advertise new inventory on Twitter; comparison with other book swap sites; integration with LibraryThing

Books - more book reviews, lots of book reviews would be welcomed; the book publishing industry as a whole; old books; smelly books; pretty much anything is fair game.

Books sorted by color - more discussion of cover art, illustrations, other metadata about the book captured in the cover art but not indexed by typical book finding systems; the book illustration business; how covers are designed; history of binding systems; algorithms to determine which color a book is; art and photographic illustrations of installations where books have been sorted by color

Bookshelves - compact shelving, buying shelves for personal libraries, reviews of bookcases, shelving for libraries, innovations in book shelving, reviews of books about bookshelves, how to build your own, built in shelving, what to do when yours fill up

Code - more code! software that does interesting things with book and library data; mashups, data extraction, search algorithms, recommender systems, page layout, interactive design, home grown alternative views of the library

Collection development - impact of patrons on collections; controversial materials and how they are added to the collection and perhaps subtracted from the collection; metrics used for weeding and deaccessions; building your personal library from another library's discards; libraries as endangering printed materials

Electronic collections - library originated book and non-book collections; hardware, software, and systems for managing and cataloging same; preservation of digital relics; copyright, fair use and international implications of same; the proper provenance of enthusiast collectors

Events and exhibits - individual events and exhibits, and also ways by which libraries can improve their ability to bring people through the door by hosting book-themed events. Compare libraries to bookstores and see how they stack up; facilities building and planning with events in mind.

Film - libraries for film; collecting video and film; archival television (via Jeff Ubois); rights, copyrights, and the like; stock footage libraries; impact of digital distribution on the circulation patterns in public libraries that have big DVD collections

Friends Bookshop - relationships between Friends groups and libraries; examples of particularly fun bookshops; self service bookshops; using friends book inventory to do outreach; purposes of friends bookshops - to entertain people who want to run a bookstore, or to raise money, or both

Friends of the library - about national and local organizations; demographics of friends groups; "Friends of the Library, for the net"; library advocacy; when friends groups turn into haters groups

Games - games in the library; word games; something more about Eli@AADL; Wii at the library. Games in the kids room - ice cream truck. Learning from games.

Google Book Search - contracts, restrictions on use of data, inaccuracies within, quality of scanning, quality of metadata, shout out to Ben Bunnell, aftermarket greasemonkey hacks to fix issues with, comparison with Microsoft et al, comparison with Open Library, Distributed Proofreaders

Google Scholar - library use and access to, Andrew Odlyzko on open publishing, relative frequency of citation of non-internet publications, Math 40 yr history of increased collaboration via Patrick Ion, quality of data, quality of metadata, use by scholars as replacement for vita

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