It’s a day past Valentine’s Day, but I heart Talis!

Ground breaking Library Personalised RSS

“Talis, in partnership with Northumbria University Library, have launched a trial of personalised RSS (PRSS) feeds for Library users. This trial is part of the Talis Research Project Bluebird. Members of the trial and other interested parties, interact on the Talis Bluebird Forum.

Subscribers to their personal feed receive alerts from their Library account such as 'Item due for return in 3 days', or 'The item you reserved is now awaiting collection at the Library', or 'Your overdue item has already attracted in excess of £2.00 in charges'. The feed items provide a link to take the user, without an interviening login challenge, in to their Library interface at the apropriate page to take the required action such as renew the book on loan.

To illustrate the issues surrounding the requirement for alerting Library Users, to describe the technology used, and to give an overview of the trial I have published a white paper Personalised RSS for Library - User Interaction.

We have set-up a Demonstration PRSS Feed to show how the loaning activity of a fictitious user [Mr Draco Malfoy] would be represented in his Personalised RSS feed. Over the next couple of months Mr Malfoy will reserve, loan, and return (often late) items from the Demonstration Library to provide pseudo realistic RSS traffic.

So what is ground breaking then?

Firstly, Talis are the first LMS/ILS supplier to demonstrate live Library Borrower/Patron account data alerts using RSS.

Secondly, although there are many thousands of RSS feeds around there are very few that are personalised to a specific user on a specific system.…

PRSS opens up the third generation of RSS applications. (Podcasting ushered in the second generation. So many generations and not yet a teenager! )…

The image of Libraries just being places with lots of books where there is not much innovation is definitely old hat!” [panlibus]

Where to begin??

How about too… damn… cool!

How about a new term – PRSS? (I don’t think I’ve heard this anywhere else yet.) How about a vendor that didn’t stop to ask everybody why or take a poll? Instead, they looked around, recognized the value on their own, and just did it rather than talking about it (or worse yet, not talking about it).

How about the notice of fines? How about the fact that the library’s privacy policy is still applicable to the RSS feed? That’s a hee-uge point to note.

All wonderful and well, but the part that really has me drooling is the “feed items provide a link to take the user, without an interviening login challenge, in to their Library interface at the apropriate page to take the required action such as renew the book on loan” feature. How perfect and useful and efficient and progressive and innovative is that?!

More after I read the white paper (I’ve been able to subscribe to the demo feed successfully and I’m most curious to learn how they prevent you from subscribing to someone else’s feed), but major, major congratulations to Talis for picking up the ball, running with it, crossing the goal line, spiking it, and kicking the extra point! Well done!

I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried, but this theme leapt out in 3D from my aggregator yesterday. Together, they don’t even need any commentary, although the easy one would be to just restate yesterday’s tagline that you can go on thinking these trends won’t affect libraries, but you’d be burying your head in the sand.

In the order they were posted:

Sendo X2 Packs a Punch with Music and Light Weight
“The new X2 Music Phone features stereo sound, MP3/AAC/AAC+ format support, plus Bluetooth and USB to move your music.  It will also feature a 1.3 megapixel camera with support for 1GB miniSD memory for storing your music, photos, and video.  Finally all of this content will be brought to you by a rather large 2.2 inch 65k display.  Oh, and did we mention this whole package clocks in at a mere 95 grams?” [Engadget]

MP3 Players Storm the World
“I hardly ever do ‘here's the news’ entries, but the Pew Report released today stands almost without comment for anyone following podcasting and related technologies. ‘We just got the results of the survey we took between January 13 and February 9 and for the first time asked a question to find out how many American adults have iPods or MP3 players. The answer is 11% -- or more than 22 million of those who are age 18 and older. It’s safe to say that there are several million more MP3 players owned in the teen world, but we did not survey teens in this poll.’ ” [Free Range Librarian]

Motorola E1060: The iTunes Phones“So here it is, the mythical iTunes phone. The Motorola E1060 will be the first Motorola handset to run the mobile Java version of iTunes that will become the default media player for future Motorola handsets.” [Gizmodo]

Sony Ericsson Introducing Walkman Cellphones
“Remember how the other day Sony Ericsson said that 2005 is all about listening to music on cellphones? Yeah, well they’re cashing in on the Sony part of their parentage with a new line of Walkman-branded music playing cellphones. They don’t have any prototypes or pics or anything to show off, but they did announce today at the big 3GSM World Congress (which is why there is so much damn cellphone news) that they’re going to introduce the line in March. They say the phones will have large amounts of memory, good headphones, the ability to easily transfer songs over from a PC, and will work with Sony’s Connect online music store.” [Engadget] 

Thanks to Cellphones, TV Screens Get Smaller
“Three original television series, including a spinoff of ‘24,’ are making their debut on Verizon's new high-speed cellular phone network.” [New York Times]

Portable Future
“We seem to be on the verge of a big breakthrough in portable entertainment similar to the emergence of so many MP3 players back in 1999-2000. This time, the breakthrough isn't yet another device to lug around weighing down pockets already overloaded with cell phones, digital cameras, iPods and other cancer-inducing battery-powered leg warmers. Instead, we are extended support for existing formats in the same old devices we've grown accustomed to fill our pants…. The convergence that succeeds will combine audio and video player with what we currently recognize as a cell phone into one unified portable entertainment hub, finally providing some justification for that $25-per-month unlimited Internet access charge…. When Nokia announces improved support for Real media formats, Windows Media and Flash in the same week, it's time to take notice.” [Jake Ludington’s Digital Lifestyle]

More Cell Phone Functionality
“Cell phones do alot already. Companies are looking at adding even more functionality:

• Internet radio
• Music
• Document scanning
• Three-dimensional sound….

You can read more about these ideas at CNET.com.” [Library Technology in Texas]