Developer Network luncheon
18 January 2010
Packed room for Developer Network luncheon. Great to see the male/female ratios are normalizing, too, for developer events. Looks like turkey sandwiches were more popular than chicken, and chicken was more popular than veggie, and veggie more popular than ham. Who knew? Don is walking everyone through the available Web Services, and giving a
few examples of how people are using them. Also very fun to see a few
Mashathon/Hackathon alumni--yeah! Almost all hands went up when Don asked about WorldCat.org usage, too. It's easier to wrap your head around what the WorldCat Search API can do when you're familiar with
WorldCat.org. Cyril Oberlander from SUNY Genesco showing off the
IDS Search Project, which uses the WorldCat Search API. Catalog is going to be beta-tested with 6 libraries starting on Monday. Cyril notes it will be out in the open for everyone to play with. Written in PHP--shows off the visual aspect with the Yahoo Spellcheker, GoogleBooks API, WorldCat Search API. Once you go into a detailed record, it can give you availability (through screen-scraping AND Z39.50). It also gives an estimated delivery date, depending on where the item is located (immediately, 3 days for consortia members, 7 days for worldwide). The consortial catalog benefits us as a group. Mike Curtis gets kudos. Other uses of WorldCat Search API: The Getting It Search (GIST) and a Gift/Weeding app. (I started taking video at that point). Michael Panzer from OCLC Dewey shows off the Dewey Linked Data set (Dewey.info). Lots of cool apps, and oohs and aaahs from a new Shelf Label API he's working on. (More coming about that, soon.)
WorldCat Registry APIs and exposure through end-user interfaces...take home is: Check your Registry profile and make sur eit's up-to-date and correct, so end-users and other libraries find you correctly. Mashathons: if anyone wants to
host the Autumn 2010 Mashathon, please let us know! Don introduces
Karen Coombs as the Developer Network product manager. Hooray! Karen jumped up to show off some of the work from her
ALA MW 2010 LITA preconference. Also, here are all the
workshops slides, demo code, documentation and more from Karen. I'll post the videos soon and if you have questions, please comment here or
let us know. Presentations are now available on the
Developer Network wiki.