Thursday, 28 September 2006
contest judging bonus: discovery of book burro!
This year I was once again asked to be a judge in OCLC’s second annual software contest, which is open to anyone who develops an applications that takes advantage of OCLC data services (like xISBN, which combines records for multiple editions of a single book, or WorldCat, which provides information on which libraries have an item in their collection).
The winner this year was a very impressive tool called Umlaut, but while I completely appreciate the skills it took to implement, and the value it provides to library patrons, it’s not something I’ll use on a day-to-day basis.
The runner-up, on the other hand, is something that I’ve already installed and fallen in love with. It’s a fabulous tool called Book Burro, created by Jesse Andrews. Here’s the brief description:
Book Burro is a Web 2.0 extension for Firefox and Flock. When it senses your are looking at a page that contains a book, it will overlay a small panel which when opened lists prices at online bookstores such as Amazon, Buy, Half (and many more) andsoonwhether the book is available at your library.
Once you’ve installed the extension, anytime you go to a bookstore listing (like the Amazon page shown below) an unobtrusive pane is displayed in the top left corner of your page. By default, it shows you the price for the item on other bookseller sites. But if you configure the extension with your zip code, it also shows you local libraries that have the item, listed in order of distance from you. Suh-weet!
This is a tool that will significantly improve my day-to-day quality of life—both for knowing what the RIT library has so I can borrow it, and for letting me know what they don’t have so I can suggest that they order it. And, when I do want to acquire a copy for myself, I’ll be able to easily comparison shop without having to go to multiple sites.
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Excerpt: One of the judges on OCLC's software contest, Elizabeth Lane Lawley, has an interesting post about the process, and about the value it brought her in the discovery of a new and useful tool. I couldn't agree more, and...
For some reason, Paul Miller was unable to leave this comment on my site. So here it is:
Both the winner and runner up are, indeed, excellent examples of library innovation, as were the entries received during the Mashing up the Library competition which also ran this summer.
We maintain an open 'Innovation Directory' to showcase such examples in one place, in order than everyone else may learn from them.
The 18 Mashing up the Library entries are in there, as are Umlaut and BookBurro, and more than thirty others.
It would be great to add the other nine (?) OCLC entries, if we could find out what they were?
This first iteration of the Innovation Directory is (deliberately) technically simple, and we are inviting comments from its users on the features and structures that would be of most use to them before we implement a richer solution.
For now, anyone with an entry to contribute should get in touch with us and we'll get them added.
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