Grow your own OPAC…but save those kittens.
Jan 22nd, 2007 Print this
MPOW recently switched on a function on our III Opac which allows users to add a star rating to items in the catalogue. In one of those late night conversations in Second Life, I showed it to Dave Pattern, who was motivated by the green tinge he felt to code his own version and pop it over his Dynix installation. Gee I wish I had the skills to code that.
Today he’s casually mentioned that the University of Huddersfield will go live with user comments on the OPAC in the next week. Gee I wish I had the skills to code that.
But..Dave, in turn, has said “Gee I wish I had time to do that”….about….
John Blyberg…..
….. who has created a “social OPAC” interface which sits over Ann Arbor’s III Innopac library management system. It allows user rating, tagging and reviews. He’s released the code as well. And made a screencast to show how to use it.
Dave would “kill a box of cute kittens with my bare hands to be able to take on a project like this“. Well, John and Dave, I’d care for a box of cute kittens until they were grown (infinitely more of a sacrifice) to have the coding skills to do what you guys are doing.
Keep it up. Please keep sharing…and those of us with lesser skills promise to try to persuade those higher up in the food chain at our workplaces that guys like you need time and support to do what you do. We’ll even try to change things so we can care for any “free as in kittens” services you produce.
It’s a deal — nothing worse than a cat trampling all over the keyboard when you’re in the midst of some really important code!
I’ll tidy up some of my code and make it available — like John’s, it won’t be plug and play, but I’m more than happy to share it and maybe someone else can improve it?
I am so with you on this. I would love to have either this expertise or someone at my library service with this sort of expertise, so we could be doing the same things!
Hi Dave…done deal….you keep on churning out those cute kittens, and Michelle and I and others will try to increase the catfood budget.
Now I think it’s time the metaphor was well and truly put to sleep. Err..I mean put down…ummm…never mind…
[…] funds for a coding wizard who was given time to work on new projects to enhance our library systems,Grow your own OPAC…but save those kittens. I think a position like this would be useful […]