Shiny Happy Patrons
April 30th, 2005I’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!