mashing up libraries since 2008
Ideas for middlemash
Hi
I've been going through the ideas which were created at Mashup North back in July.
Below are some that caught my eye and sound interesting.
Do you fancy working on any of these during the afternoon session of middlemash? if so reply to this and let us know!
Some may not be so well suited to this kind of event (e.g. the ical idea will probably be quite library system specific).
While it would be great to produce something, some ideas can't be brought to life in an afternoon, but we can story board how we could achieve them (i.e. what technologies, data, etc we need to get them to work).
Idea #15 – Amy Hadfield (University of Aberystwyth)…
To combine usage statistics of books with floor plans to highlight areas of high usage helping collection development and also library design.
Idea #12 – anonymous…
The blog as the integration engine. Using WordPressMU as environment for providing interfaces to various search and browse services. i.e. interfaces to Intute search; institutional search; etc. Start off as national interface to interesting stuff. Allow plugins to be downloaded for institutional or personal use. This use of WordPress as a publishing engine also allows blog software to be installed behind the scenes.
Idea #6 – Mark Watmough (Edinburgh Napier University)…
It would be good if a user could, after logging in, download an .ical fie with their loan expiry dates, which they could then import into their calendar (outlook, google calendar, etc…) with a reminder – this would also allow users to sync with their ipod or other mobile device.
Idea #5 – Mandy Phillips (Edge Hill University)…
Reading lists – how effective are they?
Can we take data from our reading lists, from our circulation and usage stats, and reviews of items on that list from our students to give us a really rounded three way measurement of how effective reading lists are?
Not sure it would be popular – but hey!
Idea #4 – Owen Stephens (Open University)…
Creating a distributed catalogue and search. Idea is that if there is a web page per book, you don’t have to keep recataloguing the book but rather just aggregate the web pages that contain the descriptions of all your books.
Create a page or set of pages representing your library stock. The page would consist solely of URLs which point at information about the books you own – these could be Amazon pages, Open Library pages, Worldcat pages, LibraryThing pages etc. It wouldn’t matter you would simply be identifying a page that represented the book you had.
Then use a customised web crawler to crawl, using your list of URLs as a starting point and crawl each of the pages you are pointing at.
Index all the content you have crawled and make the index searchable
Idea #27 – Mike Ellis (Eduserv)…
I’ve started building a simple bookmarklet for books(!).
The idea is this would be a lightweight browser-based bookmarklet. If you were on any web page (library search results, amazon, blog, review, wherever) and that page mentioned a book (or books), the service would give you a contextual popup for that book (or books!).
Examples of what could be delivered into the popup include:
- book cover
- current price at Amazon / wherever
- customer reviews gathered from around the web
- “save to your”…delicious / amazon wishlist / netvibes account / etc
- “your friends also liked” functionality
- additional links and information (wikipedia, Open Calais, etc) generated from on-page or behind the scenes data
The service would be very easy to code – initially it could just look for ISBN numbers (I have this working!), easy to use (you drag onto your bookmark bar to create a bookmarklet), and would add real value, bringing together book references from across the web.
I've been going through the ideas which were created at Mashup North back in July.
Below are some that caught my eye and sound interesting.
Do you fancy working on any of these during the afternoon session of middlemash? if so reply to this and let us know!
Some may not be so well suited to this kind of event (e.g. the ical idea will probably be quite library system specific).
While it would be great to produce something, some ideas can't be brought to life in an afternoon, but we can story board how we could achieve them (i.e. what technologies, data, etc we need to get them to work).
Idea #15 – Amy Hadfield (University of Aberystwyth)…
To combine usage statistics of books with floor plans to highlight areas of high usage helping collection development and also library design.
Idea #12 – anonymous…
The blog as the integration engine. Using WordPressMU as environment for providing interfaces to various search and browse services. i.e. interfaces to Intute search; institutional search; etc. Start off as national interface to interesting stuff. Allow plugins to be downloaded for institutional or personal use. This use of WordPress as a publishing engine also allows blog software to be installed behind the scenes.
Idea #6 – Mark Watmough (Edinburgh Napier University)…
It would be good if a user could, after logging in, download an .ical fie with their loan expiry dates, which they could then import into their calendar (outlook, google calendar, etc…) with a reminder – this would also allow users to sync with their ipod or other mobile device.
Idea #5 – Mandy Phillips (Edge Hill University)…
Reading lists – how effective are they?
Can we take data from our reading lists, from our circulation and usage stats, and reviews of items on that list from our students to give us a really rounded three way measurement of how effective reading lists are?
Not sure it would be popular – but hey!
Idea #4 – Owen Stephens (Open University)…
Creating a distributed catalogue and search. Idea is that if there is a web page per book, you don’t have to keep recataloguing the book but rather just aggregate the web pages that contain the descriptions of all your books.
Create a page or set of pages representing your library stock. The page would consist solely of URLs which point at information about the books you own – these could be Amazon pages, Open Library pages, Worldcat pages, LibraryThing pages etc. It wouldn’t matter you would simply be identifying a page that represented the book you had.
Then use a customised web crawler to crawl, using your list of URLs as a starting point and crawl each of the pages you are pointing at.
Index all the content you have crawled and make the index searchable
Idea #27 – Mike Ellis (Eduserv)…
I’ve started building a simple bookmarklet for books(!).
The idea is this would be a lightweight browser-based bookmarklet. If you were on any web page (library search results, amazon, blog, review, wherever) and that page mentioned a book (or books), the service would give you a contextual popup for that book (or books!).
Examples of what could be delivered into the popup include:
- book cover
- current price at Amazon / wherever
- customer reviews gathered from around the web
- “save to your”…delicious / amazon wishlist / netvibes account / etc
- “your friends also liked” functionality
- additional links and information (wikipedia, Open Calais, etc) generated from on-page or behind the scenes data
The service would be very easy to code – initially it could just look for ISBN numbers (I have this working!), easy to use (you drag onto your bookmark bar to create a bookmarklet), and would add real value, bringing together book references from across the web.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gary Green on -
I wonder if #4 & #27 have enough common features to combine into a single idea?
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