Displaying Clustered Search Results

“A big point in my NEASIS&T presentation Tuesday was how new technologies like XML and web services allow us to separate the tools that manage and store our data from the tools that display and manipulate it. This is, of course, part of the web 2.0 infrastructure, and an enabler of so many great hacks and mashups.

In this prototype, I’m using XML access to our catalog to fetch the top 150 results for a keyword search, aggregate the subject headings and authors, and display it all for the user. The data is live, so go get clicky on it. Also, try this version that displays the clusters in a more tag-like way. I’m not sure which view I like better, so I’m experimenting with both….

[update:] here’s a mockup of how this info might be displayed, along with some other ways I’d like to enhance the catalog.” [LibDev]

I can’t believe how quickly this guy throws together these proofs-of-concept. I’m officially nicknaming him the “hardest working man in the OPAC 2.0 business!” Plymouth State University better be treating him right.

You can see a second sample search at http://www.plymouth.edu/library/prototype/clusteredopac.php?srchtype=X&k=harry+potter. Make sure you click through to that mockup, too – I love all of the different tags he used on it. He wrote more about his NEASIST presentation here, and Lichen liveblogged what sounds like yet another fascinating NEASIST event here. And finally, as if all of this wasn’t enough, Casey did a cool mockup of Social Bookmarking for Higher Education. A little like CiteULike and Connotea, but with the clean interface of del.icio.us and the intriguing addition of a section for “your courses.”

On a personal note, I love how Flickr shows me a shared interest with Casey – he visited the Edward Gorey House! Gorey is one of my favorite authors and illustrators, so I’m jealous. Almost as jealous as I am of the Pepper Pad Casey got to play with!

(P.S. Find Exhibit A here.)

Today is our lucky day. I've got two great things to show you, neither of which I can claim any credit for, but both of which have blown me away. Maybe it's because I'm not a programmer, but maybe it's also because a whole lot of really smart people are "getting" this damn fast. Much more quickly than the library world has moved on things in the past. The distributed "think tank" mentality that the coversations in the biblioblogosphere are driving right now is freaking amazing. Exhibit A, via Tim Hodson:

Library 2.0 at Talis Insight 2005

"I Have spent the last two days at the Talis Insight 2005 conference. The main theme of the event was the idea of Library 2.0 being the next incarnation of libraries. (of course there were previews of future products too, with obligatory rebranding!!) library 2.0 follows the web 2.0 idea of using webservices to build web applications.

Talis seem to be embracing the open philosophy of much of the more exciting web developments that are happening. They seem willing to share the bibliographic records in talisbase (I think 27 million was quoted), along with holdings records and the records held in the silkworm directory....

Talis Whisper is a demo of what could be (a beta). I don’t go much for the usability aspects of this offering, but despite my grumblings, this is a fantastic taster of what could be. A google map to locate where the copies of those books are, an ILL form to fill in (THIS IS A DEMO!!), and even a facility to monitor opacs known to the directory for operational status, providing little balloons! All done with web services." [Information Takes Over]

Make sure you read the whole thing, and make sure you view the demo (and make sure you're using Firefox when you do it, because it doesn't work in IE-based browsers).

Talis is really impressing me these days with the speed at which they are moving. They've obviously embraced the whole "labs" idea (Google Labs, etc.), and they're making the most of it. I can't wait to see what they keep coming up with - really interesting!