PracticalGuideToRemixingTheLibraryTalk

ACRL Fall Virtual Conference My presentation is linked http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlevents/fallvirtualinstitute.htm:

A Practical Guide to Remixing the Library'

The reuse or "remix" of digital content continues to be a hot topics in web development. Not a day passes in which there is not some new "mashup" or novel combination of data or services. To the majority of users on the Web, however, mashups remain rather mysterious. Specifically, what does remixing have to do with libraries? This session is a practical tutorial geared to helping librarians learn how to use and deploy remixing strategies and technology to enhance the library experience. Although we will look at examples from both inside and outside the library world, we will focus on applying remix techniques to libraries. For instance, we will study what cutting edge developers are doing in recent library mashup competitions and the OCLC software competition, in addition to new services such as LibraryThing -- as well as such old chestnuts as Jon Udell's classic Library Lookup bookmarklet. (Of course, all the 2.0's (Web 2.0 Library 2.0, Book 2.0, etc.) will be mentioned in passing.) Don't worry if you don't have a lot of technical background -- a goal of this session is to make the technical aspects of remixing accessible to a general library audience.

1. What is it?
2. Demo of the service
3. How it works
4. Softcover and hardcover ISBNs not the same
5. Interconnecting systems via a widespread identifier such as ISBN

What is it?

Jon Udell: The LibraryLookup Project

Jon Udell's Library Lookup bookmarklet is a classic example of lightweight user-centric remix of library technology, from which there is still much to learn. Why is it interesting?

• It connecting services together inside the browser via a relatively simple but imaginative use of javascript in the form of "bookmarklets"

• It was not created by a librarian, but rather a user (though admittedly on of extreme technical sophistication) of libraries.

Demo of the service

I will demo this bookmarklet in the talk. Online, folks can see Jon Udell's videos: Basic and advanced demo.

Things to note:

• I find it incredibly useful. I often find it easier to discover books on a "service" like amazon.com -- and then see whether I can borrow the book from a local library than to try to find the book on a library catalog. (We should pause and reflect whether this is true in our experiences. If so, why?)

• We can put this together via lightweight service composition -- because of the existence of a common identifier: ISBN.

• But the project gets complicated because of the huge variety of library systems too. Long list to let you pick off of (e.g., Jon Udell: LibraryLookup (Innovative Interfaces libraries) or one generate from a bookmarklet generator. Note that the lists are no longer supported. ("But the accuracy of those lists has decayed over time, and I'm not able to maintain them. So I recommend that you use the bookmarklet generator in preference to the static lists, as well as for those catalog systems for which there are no lists.")

How it works

How this Library lookup bookmarklet works (2 parts):

1. the code extracts an ISBN from a URL

2. generates the appropriate query based on the ISBN to send to the library catalogue of the user's choice

1) is a generic process. 2) is the reason why we have such complications (long directories and need for a utility to generate the bookmarklet.)

The example I will use is Czeslaw Milosz's New and Collected Poems 1931-2001. Let's consider the paperback version first, whose ISBN is 0060514485. How do I know that? I use amazon.com to look up the book: Amazon.com: New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001: Books: Czeslaw Milosz. If you look at the URL:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060514485/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/102-8204915-1347316

you will find the ISBN. (It turns out that you can use a more compact URL too: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060514485)

Using the

you will find that you can't find that book at the Berkeley Public Library.

Using

you will find that the book is in many University of California branches.

But why not at the Berkeley Public Library?

Softcover and hardcover ISBNs not the same

Because I was looking up the paperback version and not the hardback version. There are different ISBNs for hardcover and softcover editions. Let's go to the amazon page for the hardcover edition: http://www.amazon.com/New-Collected-Poems-Czeslaw-Milosz/dp/006019667X/ref=ed_oe_h/102-8204915-1347316 or http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006019667X

Now if we use the Library Lookup bookmarklets, we find that we can find the hardcover version of the books at the Melvyl -- note presence at UC Berkeley and the Berkeley Public Library.

Interconnecting systems via a widespread identifier such as ISBN

• I built a little personal aggregation of sources based on the ISBN. See New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001. Note some services:

• booksense -- nothing -- but The Da Vinci Code

• Library of Congress

• isbn.nu