While I’m on this subject (which is a stupid thing to say as anyone reading this – ‘anyone’ = ‘me and only me’ – will be reading top down, ie newest first, ie will be unaware I was on the subject… what subject) ah yes, the subject of library catalogue searching. <\/p>\n
Nothing too exciting really (this post has the word ‘library’ it in, so that was a pointless fact) but I’ve been reading with intrest how Talis – who supply the library management software for the Universit of Sussex – have been playing<\/a> with A9<\/a>, and how to get it to play nice<\/a> with their web catalogue.<\/p>\n Basically A9 uses a technology called opensearch<\/a>, which allows you to place a xml file based on this<\/a> on your web server. This allows your catalogue (or search engine) to be searched via a9.<\/p>\n To try this out, do a search on a9.com, once on the results, click on ‘See more columns’, type ‘talis’ in to the search columns box, and then select add.<\/p>\n We’ll see if it is possible to add the University of Sussex to this search.<\/p>\n Another nice<\/a> little thing is a utility called librarybooks<\/a> for Apple’s OS X. It provides an item on the menu bar showing how many books you have on loan from your local library, opening this as a menu shows you what books you have out, and when they are due back. Again, Talis seem to be ahead of the game with this<\/a>.<\/p>\n