Library Web Chic

Recent Projects

Jenny says that I need to write about what
I am doing with RSS and our web catalog. So I thought that I would post
a brief overview of my RSS, XML, library catalog exploits. Currently, I
have two RSS XML projects that I am working on. The first is an
XML-based blogging tool. By XML-based, I mean that the stat is stored
as XML. This project is nearly complete. There is an interface for
posting materials to the blog, editing/deleting posts, and edit
catagories. The tool creates an RSS feed when new posts are added or
old posts edited. In addition, I've built several web pages on the
libraries site which display the library blog. Additionally I have
created a system which allows blog readers to post comments. Like the
blog itself, the comments are stored in XML format. This allows us to
have an RSS feed of the comments on our blog.

The
second XML/RSS project which I am working on at the moment is a page
which allows library users to created an RSS feed of their checked out
items and subscribe to that feed. How I am able to do this is our
library management system includes an XML server. Using the XML server
I can gather data on what a user has checked out. An XSL file is then
used to transform that XML file into valid RSS. Conceivably an Atom
feed could also be created but I haven't done this yet.

In
addition to the two XML/RSS projects I am finishing, I have several
other RSS/XML web catalogs in the works. All of these projects are
based on using data from our ILS's XML server. Searches can be sent to
the XML server and the XML server returns an OAI-MARC XML file
containing the search results. This XML file can then be transfromed
into the format that you want. In my case, this principle is being used
for several different projects. One project is the creats of an RSS
feeed of New Books. Potentially a feed can be created of all the new
books or a subset of new boosk (eg. all the new geology books). Another
project that is in the works is creating an RSS feed of a particular
search in the catalog (eg. a keyword search for quechua music). The
last XML project I am working on allows the web catalog to be searched
as part of the library's intranet and resources from the catalog can be
added to library research guides.

So
that is an overview of my XMl projects. Several of thse I am talking
about in much greater detail at Internet Librarian and if you want more
information visit my Internet Librarian presentation on the web.