April 14: Making Information Work Harder
Patrons in the Drivers Seat: Giving Advanced Tool-sets to Library Patrons
John Blyberg
Ann Arbor District Library
Building a Wall of Books
Edward Vielmetti
University of Michigan School of Information
Google Maps and You: Five Steps To Including a Google Map On Your Website
Chris Deweese
Lewis & Clark Library System
Go Where the Patrons Are: Outreach In the Age of Library 2.0
Jason Griffey
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Today’s presentations focus on how libraries can make information/functionality independent of a particular application so that it can be manipulated and reused in a variety of creative ways. An API exposes a set of functions that make up an application and can be used in the creation of other applications. RSS is an XML-based format for syndicating content on the Web. Structured blogging and microformats are ways of creating structured data that computers can understand. The following presenters are using these tools in order to put more information in the hands of patrons, allow patrons more control over information, and allow librarians to disseminate information in novel ways and only to those who would want it.
John Blyberg is the Network Administrator and Lead Developer for the Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan, and was largely responsible for their Web site redesign, widely hailed as a model for all libraries. John did a lot of hacking at his library’s catalog and content management system in order to put more information into the hands of his patrons. John will talk about the tools and interfaces he has made available to his patrons and how he has built a true online community on his Web site.
Edward Vielmetti, researcher at the University of Michigan School of Information, is a passionate advocate of libraries and is on the Technical Advisory Board at the Ann Arbor District Library. He has designed several applications for libraries, including his “wall of books” display. By exposing the structured data in the catalog through RSS, Ed has transformed the new books feed into a visual display. See how he did it and how you can do the same at your library.
Chris Deweese is the Internet Applications Developer for the Lewis and Clark Library System in Illinois. There, he works to develop Web applications to enable member libraries to provide better services to their patrons. In his presentation, Chris will teach attendees how to use the Google Maps API to put a Google Map on their own library’s Web site using JavaScript and XSLT. Don’t worry; he does all of the hard work!
Jason Griffey is a Reference/Instruction Librarian at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He has been working with his colleagues to develop a way of using Wordpress and the Structured Blogging plugin to create a “catalog” of new books and then to disseminate that information to academic departments. Jason will discuss how structured blogging creates machine readable data that can then be manipulated and presented in a variety of ways.
Here are links to the topics from earlier this week:
April 10: Blogging In Libraries
April 11: Podcasting in Libraries
April 12: Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies
April 13: Issues In Libraries