Visual virtual shelf browsing

The Zoomii web site seems to be getting a lot of attention at the moment, so I got wondering how easy/difficult it would be do to a virtual bookshelf in the OPAC…
bookshelf
It’s definitely a “crappy prototype” at the moment, and the trickiest thing turned out to be getting the iframe to jump to the middle (where, hopefully, the book you’re currently browsing is shown). Anyway, you can see it in action on our OPAC.
I suspect the whole thing would work much better in Flash and it would look really cool if it used a Mac “dock” style effect. I wonder if I can persuade Iman to conjure up some Flash? 😉

Google Graphs

We’ve had loan data on the OPAC for a couple of years now, although it’s only previously been visible to staff IP addresses. Anyway, a couple of months ago, I revamped it using Google Graphs and I’ve finally gotten around to adding a stats link that anyone can peruse — you should be able to find it in the “useful links” section at the foot of the full bib page on our OPAC.
As an example, here are the stats for the 2006 edition of Giddens’ “Sociology“…


Stuck on a train

The joys of free wifi slightly make up for the fact that I’m stuck on a train that’s going nowhere fast — the East Coast main line is suffering long delays due to the train which was ahead of mine managing to damage and bring down the overhead power lines :-S
Today was the first meeting for the JISC Towards Implementation of Library 2.0 and the e-Framework (TILE), held at the impressive LSE Library in London.
I’m still not 100% sure what the TILE Project will manage to achieve, but it was great to spend 4 hours in a room full of people who are keen to liberate and share library data, primarily for the benefit of our users.
tile_001 tile_006 tile_002
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Wow!

Kudos to everyone at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada — in under 30 days, they’ve migrated from their legacy ILS to the Open Source Evergreen system!
One quote on Mark’s blog really jumped out at me:

This is a “skunkworks” planning process: as we progress we figure out how stuff will work and then we make it so. If we can’t make it so, we move back the appropriate number of steps until we have something that works and gives us a reasonable path to a better outcome. Much different than the normal process – the big advantage is we get used to solving problems and making accommodation, rather than striving for perfection at every turn. In this Web 2.0 world this is the way to grow. The disadvantage is that we could create configurations that will need to be changed down the road and could lead to some additional work/headaches down the road. We hope not, but working in this mode always creates that risk.

(via Lorcan Dempsey)

HighBeam Research, anyone?

Just wondering if anyone out there has a HighBeam Research account? If so, is there any chance you could look up the following article for me (pretty please!)…
A quartet that was just briefly a trio!
…I’ve absolutely no idea why the Huddersfield Examiner would want to reprint a 14 year old photograph of the band I used to be in …unless it was a very slow news day!!!
I can vaguely remember having to jump on the bus to Huddersfield after work (I used to work at the old Tesco supermarket in Brighouse) to have that photograph taken with Simon and Matthew — it was taken in the original Beaumont Street recording studio.
Douglas Thomson (the pop writer for the Examiner) seemed to like us and wrote several flattering articles:
The Headmen - newspaper_03 The Headmen - newspaper_04 The Headmen - newspaper_01

Before RSS…

Have you ever wanted to monitor up to 20 different things at the same time? Looking for a response time of just 3 milliseconds? Need the flexibility of portable or rack mounts? If so, you need the Gulton Techno-rite TR-9020!
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Bryony thoughtfully threw a withdrawn copy of the 1970 publication “Computer Technology for Textiles” my way. It’s a cornucopia of nerds trying to impress ladies by playing with knobs…
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…consultants pointing at things…
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…lady geeks (geekettes?) with fab hairstyles…
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…and loads and loads of tape based storage…
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…you can find the rest of the images in this Flickr set.