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.
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.
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?
(need a category for this stuff)
For library patrons who love their libraries, who take advantage of everything they have to offer, and are always on the lookout for great ideas from libraries around the world. From Edward Vielmetti, [email protected] .
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