HIPpie update (20/Nov/2007)

Just a quick update — I’ve not had too much spare time to work on HIPpie since announcing it, partly due to work and conference commitments, but I have been slowly beavering away.
The first chunk is some of the back-end code for the “did you mean” spell checker. To try and make the code as re-usable as possible (especially for other OPACs), the back-end has been coded so that it can be used as a standalone web service:
library.hud.ac.uk/wikis/hippie/index.php/Spell_checker
Various options can also be specified to affect the output, e.g. for “newmonia thrombrosis”:

The grand plan is that anyone who wants to make use of it (either as a web service or the code that will embed into HIP) will have an account. By logging into the account, they’ll be able to specify a dictionary to use (e.g. standard US English) or they’ll be able to upload a their own word list (e.g. generated from the indexes in the ILS).
It’s still early days, but if anyone has any comments or suggestions, please get in touch!

OPAC keyword cloud

This is crying out to be done like the visual word map in AquaBrowser, but here’s a browseable tag cloud based on data from nearly 2 million keyword searches on our OPAC.
shakespeare performance
The code looks for other keywords that were entered as part of the same search (e.g. “ethics of nursing care”) to draw out the most commonly used words. For example, the most common keyword used with “performance” is “management”. The size of the word in the cloud is determined by how often it appears with the search keyword.
nursing
I’ve not removed keywords that generated zero search results, so the cloud for “acrobat” includes “abode”. (I’ve now removed zero result searches)
I’ll have to have a play to see if there’s a way of incorporating the cloud into the OPAC — for example, if you used a vague/general keyword such as “health“, then maybe the OPAC could suggest more specific searches for “health care”, “mental health” or “health promotion”?

CODI 2007

The events last week clashed with CODI 2007, Pittsburgh.
In previous years, I’ve tried to bring together all of the blog posts covering the event, so here’s some of the bloggers who covered the event:

…I can’t believe that there were only 2 active bloggers covering the event, but that’s all I could find on Technorati and Google Blog Search — if you’ve blogged the event (or know someone who did), please leave a comment!
There are currently 252 images on Flickr tagged with codi2007.

Waterford, Ireland

A big “thank you” to everyone who made me feel so welcome at the Library Association of Ireland’s Public Libraries’ Section Conference in Waterford!
waterford_018
My presentation (“Libraries on the Web (2.0)”) is currently available on SlideShare.
There’s a big pile of photos from the event on Flickr, and I’ve also separated out the images taken in the Waterford County Library…
waterford3_003 waterford_039 waterford_034 waterford_028 waterford_019 waterford_026
Continue reading “Waterford, Ireland”

Catching Up – CILIP Glasgow & Talis Insight 2007

Just quickly catching up and catching my breath!
My two presentations from the last 7 days are now available on slideshare — both were effectively the same:

There’s also a selection of photographs from both events on Flickr:

talis_013
talis_012
talis_005
tt_001
tt_002
talis_006
Some of my favourite quotes from the various presentations at both events:

  • [about Librarians] “We don’t do cool… we do dull and worthy” (Brian Kelly, UKOLN)
  • [about liability] “There is a case to be made for putting a bag over your head and ignoring it” (Betty Willder, JISC Legal)
  • [about Facebook] “We’ve got to ban Facebook — it’s too popular!” (Brian Kelly, UKOLN)
  • “You’ve got to eat your own dog food sometimes” (Ken Chad)
  • “If you’re not, you should be sharing services” (Ken Chad)
  • “How many of you have looked at a printed encyclopaedia in the last month? [couple of hands are raised] How many of you have looked at Wikipedia in the last week? [lots of hands are raised]” (Peter Godwin)

…next stop — Waterford, Ireland!
[update] For some reason, Slideshare keeps deleting the Talis presentation. I’ve now uploaded it 4 times now, and each time it’s disappeared from the site an hour or so later 🙁
The Talis slides can be grabbed instead from here.

A deep breath before the plunge…

Over the last 15 months I’ve been giving occasional presentations & workshops about “2.0” and some of the things we’ve done with our OPAC, but the next five weeks are going to be hectic with 6 presentations:

  • 02/Nov/2007 – “Transformative Technologies: Web 2.0 in the library environment”, Glasgow (CILIP Scotland)
  • 06/Nov/2007 – “Insight 2007: Inspiration for Change”, Birmingham (Talis)
  • 08/Nov/2007 – “Off the Shelves: From the Quill to the Chip”, Waterford, Ireland (Library Association of Ireland)
  • 21/Nov/2007 – “Is library 2.0 a trivial pursuit?”, London (JIBS)
  • 23/Nov/2007 – CILIP Yorkshire & Humberside Members’ Day, York (CILIP)
  • 06/Nov/2007 – Online Information 2007, London

At most of the events, I’m going to be talking about the OPAC and the core content of the presentations will be the same.
I’m really looking forward to all of the events although, being someone who likes his creature comforts, it’s going to be a wrench to be away from Bryony and Joe for so much of the month.
If you’re planning to be at any of the events, be sure to say to “hello” — if I can hand out all of my moo cards, then I’ve got an excuse to order some new ones!
With all the travelling involved, I should have plenty of time to plan exactly how HIPpie will work and get some of the coding done. Speaking of which, many thanks to everyone who’s been in touch and expressed in interest — as soon as there’s something to test, I’ll let you all know!

(Hopefully) coming soon — HIPpie

In the last couple of months, I’ve had several email exchanges with Dynix & Horizon libraries who were interested in using some of the “2.0” features that I’ve added to our OPAC at Huddersfield, but the technical challenges (setting up an extra web server, MySQL database, etc) would have been too much.
I’ve been thinking for a while that some of the features could be done if someone else (e.g. me) were to handle the techie stuff. All the library would need to do would be to add a few lines of JavaScript to the relevant XSL stylesheets…
hippie
HIPpie was the best name that I could think of in the bath last night, and (unless the SirsiDynix lawyers come down on me like a tonne of bricks) it stands for HIP patron interface enhancements (HIP being the product name of the Dynix and Horizon OPAC).
It’s still mostly vapourware (i.e. I haven’t finished writing the code yet), but if you’re running HIP version 2 or version 3 and you fancy adding any of the following to your OPAC, then please get in touch (email d.c.pattern [at] hud.ac.uk):

  • RSS feeds for keyword searches
  • “did you mean” spelling suggestions
  • email alerts for keyword searches
  • user reviews
  • user ratings

I’ve deliberately picked features that I don’t think are being offered via other channels (e.g. LibraryThing for Libraries or Jim Taylor).
Unfortunately HIP version 4 was never released in the UK, so I’m not sure how easy it would be to add the features to that version, but if there’s someone out there who’s familiar with the stylesheets and is willing to experiment…?
HIP is the only OPAC I’m intimately familiar with, but if other people can figure out ways of making the features work with other products, then that’d be cool.
HIPpie will be offered for free and will hopefully stay that way, unless it becomes incredibly popular.
Like I say, it ain’t ready yet, but please get in touch if you’re interested in testing it once it’s ready!

Sue the libraries!

Nice to see libraries get a mention in this week’s IT section in The Guardian:
Sue the libraries – they’re letting people get content on the cheap

[Libraries] are the institutions which have the longest experience of making copyright goods available fairly to people who have not paid directly for them; and in all the time libraries have been around, no one has come up with a better model.

But the real value of libraries comes when they deal with large, expensive and valuable digital stores of information … To any individual subscriber the cost of all these would run into thousands of pounds a year, yet this reliable information is available free, without any of it being stolen.

Reminds me of this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon (click for a larger version):