It’s way past my bedtime, but the Ann Arbor Superpatron has been planting ideas in my head again…
Recently Checked Out Books feed (in RSS or otherwise)
I’ve not built a feed, but I have come up with these two representations of the most recent check outs (click for larger versions):
1) The last 30 covers to walk out the door…
2) Word Splat!…
…that particular splat is entitled “And Treacle Challenge Yorkshire” and is now on sale for only $395,000 (serious bidders only please!)
Word Splat! is made up of words from the titles of the most recent X number of check outs (where X is a roughly a handful).
I made a typo when initially coding the Word Splat!, and ended up with a random sub selection of words at the top left. I kinda like that, so whatever you get at the top left (if anything) is officially the title of that Splat!
update…
I’ve added three more book collages:
1) 30 Overdue Books
2) 30 Most Recent Requests
3) 30 Most Borrowed Books
The “Overdue Books” are a random selection of items that were due back on the previous day, but have yet to turn up.
I’ve uploaded the Perl script for Word Splat! to here:
http://www.daveyp.com/files/stuff/wordsplat.txt
It’s quick & dirty, but hopefully the lack of comments won’t put off anyone who wants to tweak it.
nice work.
.. when can I get a signed copy!
Really nice work. Love the display of covers. The titles on some are hidden if you click on them would you be taken to the item’s record?
If you made it the last 30 covers to come back in it might make a good display and marketing tool for public libraries
Tricia – if you can click on at least one part of the book cover, then it should take you through to the relevant page in the OPAC. I’ve now tweaked the code so that it also displays the book title when you hover your pointer over it. If I can figure out how to do it, it should be possible to make the book cover underneath the mouse pointer to jump to the top (e.g. by changing it’s z-index value).
Andrew – good idea! I was thinking if we displayed it in the library, I’d probably have a several minute delay in place so that covers wouldn’t appear as soon as the item had been issued (to save any potential embarrassments!) If I can figure out which database table to get the data from, then it should be possible to do a “just checked in” as well.
It’s interesting to see that we often get multiple copies of the same title checked out at roughly the same time – at first I thought it was an error in the SQL but, after checking, they’re all separate copies.
I’ve added a semi-permalink to the bottom right of each splat, just in case you find one worth sharing.
I can’t guarantee I can keep the archives for ever, so feel free to save copies locally if you need a keepsake.
I haven’t tried any of these libraries before, but it seems that putting in the Yahoo UI “drag and drop” modules might work really well for your pile of books – the docs and examples are here:
http://developer.yahoo.net/yui/dragdrop/index.html
if I get some sample code running I’ll show you.