improve Google Scholar and apply a suitable amount of lipstick

Go play…

I feel that as well as the embedded microformat, there needs to be a button to download the vcard or vcalendar so that a user can easily import details into outlook or similar.  My feeling is that Microformats are useful so long as the information is readily accessible/useable by people who have no idea that a microformat exists, otherwise what’s the point?

Technorati Tags: microformats

It seems especially crazy to charge a data contributor when they are wanting to give it away free anyway!  Are they really going to pay you OCLC, to take their data?

In Herefordshire we jumped at the chance of giving our holdings data to Talis Source, Talis do all the hard work, and we can start to find ways to reap the benefits, play with the Talis Platform, and come up with ’stuff that works for us’.  Why we would ever want to shell out money to a company that wants to charge us for taking our data off our hands I will never know.  Perhaps I am young and not versed in the inner workings of the business world, but even I can see that some things are money for old rope.

With Talis Source, I am confident that the data will become more useful as UK (and other) institutions make their holdings available.

Worldcat.org seems somewhat out of place and perhaps a couple of years out of date, as though OCLC have only just noticed that things like flickr, google maps, and user centered servcies have suddenly sprung up.

In fact, I could take holdings data for a book from Talis Source, find a set of locations where it was available, look up the geolocation using either the lat/lng from the Silkworm Directory, or geocoding the postcode from the directory with the Google Maps API.  I could then ask the user where they lived, and center a map on their location, with all the locations of the books displayed using amazon jacket images.  I could even throw the LibraryThing thingISBN service into the mix, and find similar books to the one I was originally searching for, paperbacks, other editions etc.  The only thing I don’t have at the moment is a searchable index… but hey, I could write it as a plugin for firefox and use it when I was on amazon, abebooks, google, or anywhere else with an ISBN.  Why do I need an index?

It looks like I don’t need worldcat.org, as I could get the information that I want in my browser at the point where I ask the question, “I wonder If I can borrow a copy before I buy it?”

If I had time I would put this all together and enter it into the Mashing Up the Library Competition!

Technorati Tags: OCLC, MUTL06, Talis, Silkworm,

On the info windows, you will now see a little blowup map of the library location, and an [edit] link which will take you directly into the silkworm directory and show you a page for that location.  Assuming you have a user login with the directory, you can edit anything that is wrong and it will be reflected in the map within moments.
Installation

1. Download getlibraries version 2
2. The text file simply contains the query, and you will need to pop your library’s identifier in there.
3. The js file will need your Talis API key, and the path to getlibraries-v2-sparql.txt
4. upload these to your server.
5. Add a script tag in your html page with the getlibraries-v2.js as the src attribute.
6. Remember that you need to have a google maps API key and a script tag pointing there as well – see http://www.google.com/apis/maps/.
7. Add a div to your page with attribute id=”map”.  You will probably want to add a style attribute too with the width and height defined.

Most changes are behind the scenes, i.e. handling of single locations and handling of locations that have no geodata.

I’m indebted to Sam Tunnicliffe of Talis who informed me, after I posted about the last version, that they had just enabled a new JSON ouput option for the SPARQL endpoint, and also added a query_uri parameter so that long queries (like one of mine!) can be passed without bumping up against the maximum length restrictions of GET requests (see the docs..).  He has also troubleshooted a few teething troubles: mostly because of my unfamiliarity with the SPARQL language.

Technorati Tags: MUTL06, Silkworm, Talis, Google Maps, JSON, SPARQL, getlibraries

Thanks to Ryan Eby, I have located the lost posts add been able to reunite them with their syblings here at ITO.

I remember that some of these posts generated some interesting comment at the time, but of course time has moved on and those comments are lost.

By the way Ryan, You have the old URL for ITO…

I have also turned on the register feature, so you could try registering and commenting that way.

When I get a chance I shall have to upgrade to the next wordpress…

Here’s wot I got… getlibraries LibMap – sounds better!
A multi-library google map – the map in action on a real page!

Firstly, there’s one javascript file which when called from a web page using an xhtml script tag will form a query with your parameters and send it to the TPA SPARQL endpoint. the result is fired and recieved at the same time using Dynode style cross-domain scripting method (I didn’t use the dynode script, just the essense of the technique). The Parameters that you can set within the .js file are as follows:

• key = Talis Api Key
• identifier = identifier of a libraries collection (with more than one library*) from the Silkworm directory.
• xsl = the URL to the XSL stylesheet explained next.

*At the moment the script will not cope with a single location, but I’m working on that.

Secondly, there’s one XSLT file which is submitted along with a SPARQL request to the Talis Platform Api (TPA) SPARQL endpoint. This reformats the RDF output into a javascript file that encapsulates the data as a JSON object, invokes a new map container and iterates through the JSON object, showing details for all libraries found by the SPARQL query.

Thirdly – and lastly, there is a small amount of code to go IN your web page, whatever your webpage may be. first is a script tag, which points to getlibraries.js. the second is a DIV tag with an id=”map” attribute. You can also set the height and width attributes to define the size of container that Google Maps will use. More instructions are in the .js file.
And that is it!

the getlibraries.js script writes another script tag that calls the data from the TPA. The javascript file can be edited to include your TPA key, the silkworm identifier for your library and the location of your copy of the XSLT file.

1. Put the code in your page
2. Edit the js file
3. Put the js and xsl files on your server
4. Job done!

I don’t for a moment think it worthy of the Mashuing Up The Library competition, but give it a go and let me know!

A note on browsers – I have tested this in Firefox 1.5.0.4 and in IE 6. It would be interesting to know if there are any problems with other browsers?

Download here… getlibraries.zip

Technorati Tags: AJAX, silkworm, talis, google maps, MUTL06, talis platform, tdn