RSS, Library OPACS, and More
August 30th, 2004It looks like there is some discussion going on about Peter’s work with his library OPAC.
- Art mentions Peter’s work with Amazon API and ILL. Oooooh. Peter, show us what you did.
- Jeff, who also commented on my post, works at Library Elf, which “an Internet-based tool for anyone who uses the library and would like to keep track of what they’ve borrowed. Subscribers are able to checks one or more library accounts in one place, giving you a way to simultaneously keep tabs of the status of all your items on loan”. This just screams RSS Feeds…
- Walky points out that e-mail alerts of overdue books can be easily converted to RSS by using Dodgeit, which is a great idea. He also points to Peter’s new scripts: Feeds for new DVDs added to the library collection, and a quick URL for ISBNs (similar to TinyURL)
While these hacks are amazing, I wonder why library vendors haven’t created them themselves so that we don’t have to rely on Peter to create them for us. Also, these are just for one vendor (and, in the case of Library Elf, only a small number of libraries), so most of us can’t use them. We’re getting there, but I still feel that we are far away from an understanding of this technology. Sigh.
I guess I can be a bit pleased knowing that OCLC Research may hear about it…