Archive for December 2007
So, what signage would you create for a librarian?
Which Books – choose ‘em based on yer mood
http://www.whichbook.net/default.aspx
Neat stuff, actually.
You click the mood and it will allow you to adjust a dial from, say, “Happy” to “Sad.” Made think, if you put the dial close to happy, how would you call it? “Not So Happy”? “Not Sad and Rather Happy”? I think I’m in the mood of reading something silly. But, yeah, “silly” is relative and it’s not one of the choices.
When you get list of books, you don’t see the typical catalog results from many of the library catalogs. No call number, no location. Just titles, author, a review, and snippet of text, if available. Once you’re interested in a book, you click the Borrow button and the system will ask you which library you’re associate it and take you to its catalog system.
I don’t know if they ask the affiliate library because they don’t recognize my IP address or it’s the system’s default (I am, after all, getting spoiled by WorldCat.) I also don’t know what would happen if the book I’m interested in is not available from the local library. I suppose they would do an automatic Interlibrary Loan. I hope so.
The book collection was jointly developed by public libraries from England, Wales, and Scotland. You can view the collection, but you, of course, have to have their library card to borrow the book.
Co-Scripter (formerly called ‘Koala’)
I wrote a post about an IBM research on a tool called Koala.
The tool is now called CoScripter, and available for anyone to use as Firefox extension. Check their introduction video on how this tool works.
Use Firefox 1.5 and higher to run the script; registration on IBM is required. The tool itself is (currently) licensed under Mozilla Public License version 1.1.
John Udell also wrote a blog about it following his interview with Tessa Lau.
