Library Stuff

I’ve been in contact with Glenn Peterson at the Hennepin County Library regarding their new RSS goodies. Yesterday, he forwarded to me an e-mail conversation that he had with one of his patrons abut the new feeds. I’ve gotten permission from both Glenn and the patron to post the conversation here. If you don’t think library users are excited about RSS, read on:

Patron: I’m happy to see that Hennepin County Library is supporting Firefox and beginning to offer RSS feeds. Congratulations! It would be super sweet if you could now expand the RSS feeds to include personalized content (items checked out, items due, etc.). Thanks for your technological vision!

Glenn: Hi Paul – We do offer RSS for your items out. Go to http://www.hclib.org/pub/ipac/MyLibrary.cfm and log in to your account. Check “Remember my barcode” and submit the form. Click the back button to reload the MyLibrary.cfm page. You should see a link for items out in csv and xml formats.

Patron: Wow! That’s impressive! I don’t suppose you have a feed to notify me when an item on hold becomes available for pickup, do you?

Glenn: Easily done. Take the URL for your items out feed and change MyLibraryItemsOut.cfm to MyLibraryHoldShelf.cfm.

Patron: That TOTALLY ROCKS!!! I’ve set up a feed for my “items out” and another feed for my “items on hold.” The feeds work so beautifully, it brings a tear to my eye. I now get a daily reminder of what I need to pick up or return, a thumbnail of the item, and the date by when I have to pick it up or return it. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Talk about making the library convenient for your patrons! This ranks right up there with (and quite possibly outranks) Hennepin County Library’s excellent self-service checkout system. Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!

ALA Annual in Chicago is (I hope) going to be a turning point in how information at conferences (presentations, dinners, meetings, etc) is delivered to those who are not at the conference as well to those who are at the conference and want to be aware of what’s happening, especially as a gathering as big as Annual.

Now that there is a wiki (unofficial, but does that matter? Not really) and a blog (from PLA) ready for action, I’m really interested in the outcomes of both media and how the content that comes out from each differs. I think that there is a place for both blogs and wikis at events like Annual. The wiki is fully open to anyone, whereas the PLA Blog will be a bit more structured (it’s open to anyone who wants to post on PLA-related presentations). I think that there will be at least one more association blog at ALA (LITA?) and can’t wait to see how this all shakes out.

eGov Monitor, a portal for e-government information and news in the UK now has 13 RSS Newsfeeds for your aggregatation pleasure. (via Resourceshelf)

I love this. For you Mac nuts, take a look at Library Books a desktop tool which hooks up to your library catalog and shows which materials you have out. It only works for some libraries. You can even import the due dates into ical. Nice.

I showed off Library Elf (a similar poduct) to an SLA chapter today and they were really excited about RSS in the library environment. We’re getting there… (link via Common Information Environment)

Over at the PLA Blog, Barbara Macikas (Deputy Executive Director) is blogging her heart out while attending the PLIN event at the Seattle Public Library. PLA is one of the sponsors of the event.