Microsoft’s Jon Udell – he of LibraryLookup fame – got up early this morning to post A message for library catalog vendors.  (posting at 6:45am indeed! - he’ll get us bloggers a bad name).

Jon’s LibraryLookup project is almost five years old – have library mashups been around that long! Doesn’t time fly when you are having fun.  For the odd one or two who have missed out on LibraryLookup, it is a browser installed bookmarklet which looks up books, found on book-related web sites such as Amazon, in your library catalogue.  The forerunner of many similar tools, including our own Amazon@Libraries Firefox extension which connects you with library holdings contributed to the Talis Platform.

Having had the library lobe of his brain stimulated by a post from lifehacker about book-hacks, he delivers three of bits of simple wisdom to the library system vendors of the world.

1. Add a simple search pattern url to your OPAC interface:
     /search?isbn=1565925378

   If only it was that simple I hear issuing from my fellow system vendors.   Well it flipping well should be, and if it isn’t that simple it is our fault.

   OK the syntax is not quite the same (http://library.gateshead.gov.uk/TalisPrism/doOpenURLSearch.do?isbn=0722655371) but the current Talis OPAC has always done this, because it was an assumption from the start of its design that the search prompt may not be the only way to fire off a search.  Up until recently, that assumption was pretty rare in our community.
   

2. Use the OCLC’s xISBN service to expand the search to include all manifestations of the work indicated by the given ISBN.

   Did I hear another shout of “if only it was that simple” from someone?

   That one is a little more difficult Jon, as it requires delving in to the inner search logic of the system to get it to interact with the normal search results and then do a bit more searching.  You would also have to do some digging around in the display logic in ways that librarians have been agonizing about for years – how do you simply display to the user that you hold various versions of the same book without confusing him/her?

   [Update]There is another hurdle to clear when following this suggestion, that I omitted to mention when I wrote this earlier.  Can the library justify the expense in implementing this.  xISBN is free to use if you are serving less than 500 searches per day.  But as I discussed previously, the costs rise significantly for higher usage levels.  So even if implementing it is easier than I describe, a library will have to decide as to the cost benefit for providing the service to their users. 
    
   Again the fact this is not easy is the fault of the developers of the systems we [currently] rely on in libraries, which almost without exception have software in them that are several years old.

3. Create a bookmarklet for your library and display it, and how to use it, prominently on your site for users to download.
   
   Now that one is that simple – so why is it not done? – Lack of understanding/motivation by library system managers, possibly.  – Lack of guidance/enthusiasm by vendors, almost certainly.
   

Thanks Jon for your message, keep sending them.  Whenever you point your thoughts in a library direction, it is always stimulating and interesting.  These three thought show in sharp relief of un-agile the software behind the current crop of OPACs is.  Things are a changing – watch this space!

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