Part Three – Buy, Hack, or Build
New Hampshire's own Casey Bisson presents last: OPAC Hacks. This is our big draw. He's done really nice interface integration of his website and Plymouth's online catalog.
Catalogs are 'so Web1.0'; they exist in a world were everything is disconnected. Apache, PHP, and mySQL are the core of his hacks. The library's presence inside the portal (myPlymouth) is very similar to the website outside the portal. Wanted to make it appear the catalog is just another part of the website. Catalog usage is dropping while database usage rises. Casey's talking about AADL, the current darlings of OPAC integration. Our users already have epectations, login to all yahoo's tools ONCE and from one place, we just have to meet those expectations. And we're STILL just meeting them, not exceeding… most of us are not doing that. This is 'identity management.' 'We're separating the way you display information from how you store information.' Okay, OPAC Hacks – no need to access the OPAC, just pull out the data and present it the way you want. New books up and give them context by provided subject (LCSH) from there. Man, he had a cool, search suggest… as the patron types into a search box, suggestions are made that are LCSH headings. It was being tested so it's not up, must get the URL.
Good presentation, a stupefying amount of information and ideas… I wish I were as smart as Casey. I miss Tim.
