Librarians are better at enhancing the end-user experience in physical libraries than in virtual services.

This was the intriguing opening to an engaging presentation by Anne Karine Sandberg at Internet Librarian International, and the second half of the next generation OPAC session, the first half of which has been previously blogged.

Anne and her colleagues at Oslo Public Libraries wanted to explore the potential reuse of cataloguing data and to create library mashup applications to make use of open content, with the ultimate objective of…  you guessed it, enhancing the end-user experience.

They agreed that the mashups created should not favour one system, but should make use of SRU, MARC and Z39.50. And because Koha is the best known Open Source integrated library management system in Norway right now, they installed Koha, imported their cataloguing data, and used it as a basis for their work.

Anne demonstrated one of their mashups – Trip Planner. By mashing up data from the catalogue, GeoNames, Google Maps, Encyclopaedia Norvegua, Open Library and weather forecast data, they’ve created a nice application whereby users can search for a location (London was used as the example) and get a broad sweep of information from diverse sources – population; currency; language courses; travelogues; fiction; cultural history; today’s weather; Google Map.

In their next phase of work, Oslo Public Libraries will be focusing on converting the cataloguing data from MARC to FRBR. This isn’t just about creating further mashups, although it introduces the possibility of mashups in the realm of fiction, which would certainly work in a public library context. It’s also about seeing what difference that makes to the catalogue display, and to the search experience.

It would be interesting to find out more about how Oslo’s users are benefiting from the work, especially as this was the starting point of this initiative.