flex your info

Since I first heard about the OCLC Software Contest, I knew that I wanted to come up with an entry.  Unfortunately, at the time, I was neck deep in projects for LIBR 246, a special project at work, finishing my e-Portfolio, and writing a policy brief for LIBR 281.  Since then, work is back to normal and all my classes are done, so there’s a little more time available–at least when I’m not cooking up crazy desserts or reading great fiction.

Other than that, the biggest problem I encountered was coming up with a good idea.  Initially, I thought that I would tailor my LIBR 246 final project in a way where it could do double-duty as something for the contest.  However, I ended up writing the Journal Browser, which doesn’t really fit into the contest.  I had some other ideas too, which might make for interesting projects in the future but also wouldn’t really fit into the contest. I also don’t actually work at a library, so I don’t have access to any systems with which to tinker or from which to harvest data, so anything direct like that is pretty much out.

I don’t want to say too much about what I’m doing until it’s done, but what I ultimately settled on is a browser plug-in that will provide extra information on a web-based OPAC search results page.  I’m hoping to bring together various web services and display some useful extra information, with the intention that this could be used across multiple OPACs.

Progress has been good so far: I’ve created my Firefox plug-in, with various customizations, and I have it finding information that I want to find that will be used in making the web service calls. Now I just have to make all the calls and display the information in a useful fashion–within the next 2 1/2 weeks!  The contest ends on June 30, but I’m leaving on vacation June 25, so that’s my deadline.

The way that I decided on my project was mostly by reading the blogs of other library tech people to see their thoughts on OPACs and how others have used OCLC’s web services.  In particular, this OPAC Blog Posts List was a great resource for finding out about some of the problems with OPACs.  Even though the information is from almost 3 years ago, it seems as if many of the same problems still exist.  I’m hoping that the plug-in I create will alleviate some of the problems, if just a little, and make library catalogs more useful to patrons.