Catalogue Enhancements on the Cheap?: Google Book Search Book Viewability API

We’ve been exploring a few possibilities of adding some ‘enhancements’ to our catalogue at the University of Winnipeg Library. Some options we’ve been looking into include adding book covers, table of contents, and reviews offered by Bowker’s Syndetic Solutions and we’ve also been examining Blackwell’s Table of Contents service. The pricing model of the two companies is quite different, Blackwell offers TOC’s for purchase, while Syndetic solutions offers a yearly subscription service. Syndetic solutions seems to be a good value and is used by a great many academic and public libraries such as McMaster University Libraries and Ann Arbor District Library. The question that has been on my mind since investigating some of these services is how can we do some of the same things without paying them…

Well, things have been looking up as of late with Google’s announcement posted on their “Inside Google Books Blog” of the new Google Book Search Book Viewability API (GBS API). Since the release in mid-March of this new API a number of libraries have since experimented with adding book covers and book previews (in some cases full-text where copyright permissions exist or those that fall out of copyright) to their catalogues.

Tim Spalding, of Library Thing, wrote about it on the Thing-ology Blog and provided some sample JavaScript code in order to help libraries fold Google Books covers into the catalogue and add links to full-text. Other libraries have already modified and used Spalding’s code to add covers and text to their catalogues like Wageningen Library.

More information on libraries exploring the GBS API, including on the Ann Arbor implementation (note: book covers are Syndetic’s in this example) can be found in Michael LoPresti’s article in Information Today.

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Well - it is some sunny day in the 'peg today.

Someone I've recently met was Googling my name the other day, and reminded me that I have this blog out there...

So, I've decided, maybe, that i might... update it. I'm not sure if I will take another stab at maintaining it but for now I may once again have a fleeting interest in doing so.

So until next time
:)

A warning to the others...

Conservapedia gives you the straight goods I tells ya

I've officially abandoned Wikipedia - it's just brimming with falsified entries by American bashing far-left types. Each article hosted in this faux encyclopedia is just replete with factual errors and anti-democratic vitriol gathered from Anti-Semitic literature and moldy copies of Pravda. Take Global Warming for example, the Wikipedia entry for this does not even discuss the concept of liberal science conspiracy or leftist control of granting agencies which only fund pro-Global Warming research! How can we take a Global Warming article seriously that doesn’t raise the serious dissident viewpoints advanced by scholarly sources such as Fox News? So, where does one turn to for an online encyclopedia that delivers the straight-goods? Conservapedia of course!

Don’t let the liberal media tell you what to think!

Share your bloglines feeds

Hi folks,

You can easily share your RSS feeds in bloglines with others by selecting "Share" on the main page then posting a link to your blog with the public URL that appears on this page. My public feeds can be found here http://www.bloglines.com/public/homanca. I've also added a link to my sidebar.

a.

Adding Feeds to Bloglines

1. Click on the "feeds" tab on the far left of the page and "add".









2. Enter the URL of the blog you wish to add to your feeds and hit "subscribe".






3. In this instance there are two types of avaialbe feeds: atom or rss - check mark one or the other (it does'nt matter which). Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and "subscribe".

Adding links to your sidebar

1. On Blogger’s dashboard under “Manage” click “Layout”.

If you don’t see “links” already on the layout page click “add page element” and add click “Add to Blog” under “Link List”

Create a title for the new link element such as “My Links”, then add links by copying your link into “New site URL” , and add a name under “New Site Name”.

Either hit "Save Changes" if you are done adding links for now, or simply "add link" to continue adding links. (you can add more links later on by clicking 'edit' next to 'links' on the layout page later on).

waterfront revitalization

"...The misfortune of that area is that nothing ever succeeds there, nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Gestures hang in the air, movements are prematurely exhausted and cannot overcome a certain point of inertia. We have already noticed the great bravura and prodigality in intentions, projects, and anticipations which are one of the characteristics of the district. It is in fact no more than a fermentation of desires, prematurely aroused and therefore impotent and empty. In an atmosphere of excessive facility, every whim flies high, a passing excitement swells into an empty parasitic growth; a light gray vegetation of fluffy weeds, of colorless poppies sprouts forth, made from a weightless fabric of nightmares and hashish." - Shultz, The Street of Crocodiles

Learning 2.0

Howdy 2.0'ers

OK. You may have noticed this is my first blog entry in some time. Well, around december I ended up getting into facebook, which made the blog somewhat redundant, but I've decided to start using it again for Learning 2.0 and i'll be posting some responses to some of the more frequently asked questions I receive. If you have not already done so, I would suggest that you add your group members RSS feeds once you set up your google rss, or bloglines accounts. It's a great way of keeping up to date with your group members blogs!
a.