Interview with Library Elf
January 31st, 2006Head on over to Pop Goes the Library for a one on one interview with Jeff Chow, creator of Library Elf. I love reading how neat tools get started:
“The inspiration for Elf came about because my friend started to receive a lot of overdue fines — he and his wife were having a hard time keeping track of their library books and videos at their local library. They have three kids and the library is a big part of their lives (everyone has a library card). At first they tried a manual system where each kid took out exactly five items. That helped a bit but it forced a fixed reading diet on the kids and the kids weren’t particularly keen on being limited this way. So he asked if some software I was working on at time could be adapted to help him and his family keep track of their library borrowings.”
Somehow, somewhere, Library Elf is going to meet Library Thing. Introduce them both to Casey Bisson, put them in a room somewhere with a few computers with broadband, and I’ll bet they’ll come back with one of the best online catalogs you’ll ever see. Ever!
And do yourself a favor and subscribe to Pop Goes the Library. Great stuff over there.
February 11th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
[...] between two cards and we get overdue fines. So, I was very glad to find a link to LibraryElf (via LibraryStuff), which will take your library cards and track them for you with email and RSS reminders of books [...]