Welcome to Talis Library Platform News

Welcome to the March issue of the Library Platform News. The spoken word seems to be the theme for this issue. We have podcast interviews with the inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Leggott, and the launch of The Library 2.0 Gang. Also we have a video of Talis CTO, Ian Davis, talking about the Talis Platform to the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University. For those who would prefer to play with technology, we have Meet the API covering SPARQL.

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Richard Wallis, Editor

Sir Tim Berners-Lee talks about the Semantic Web

 

Paul Miller Interviewed the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, for Talking with Talis.

In a now famous Scientific American article from 2001, Sir Tim laid out his ideas for a Semantic Web. Much has happened since then. He discusses with Paul how things are coming together to start building solutions to make it a reality.

Take a listen or read a transcript of the conversation. For further discussion on the interview content, I also recommend Paul's post on ZDNet's latest blog, The Semantic Web.

Google Book Search releases an API

Google Book Search has caused much discussion and some controversy since it first appeared as Google Print back in 2004, yet with this month's announcement of an API it has appeared like a rash on OPACs across the globe.

The Google Book Search API was announced via the Official Google Blog

Here at Google Book Search we love books. To share this love of books (and the tremendous amount of information we've accumulated about them), today we've released a new API that lets you link easily to any of our books. Web developers can use the Books Viewability API to quickly find out a book's viewability on Google Book Search and, in an automated fashion, embed a link to that book in Google Book Search on their own sites.

The upshot of this is that with just a few lines of JavaScript you can have a link that appears in your OPAC (or any other interface that knows the ISBN, LCCN, or OCLC Number of a book) when Google has information about it. Clicking on the link will take you to the Google page for that book. That is exactly what has started appearing on OPACs around the world.

Along with Talis Cenote, and the Prism 3 prototype, the link can be found on Ex Libris OPACs such as Kansas State University. The National Library of Australia's prototype OPAC also sports a Google Book Search link, so does Huddersfield University, Waterford Institute of Technology, The Open Library, & LibraryThing.

Controversy or not, many libraries seem to think a link to Google from their OPAC adds value for their users - I wonder how many users have noticed, clicked on it, and agree with them?

The Library 2.0 Gang

 

Building on the success of the Talking with Talis podcasting initiative, which provides thought provoking insights into the latest issues in the world of libraries, technology and the Semantic Web, Talis, in association with Library Journal, have launched a regular round table podcast show - The Library 2.0 Gang.

Hosted by Richard Wallis, The Library 2.0 Gang brings together leading voices in the world of libraries. Regular gang members include John Blyberg from Darien Library, Char Booth from Ohio University, Nicole C. Engard from LibLime and Carl Grant from Care Affilates. Each month the gang will be joined by a relevant guest to discuss the latest topics and developments.

For the first show in the series, the Library 2.0 Gang welcomed our first guest Aaron Swartz from the Open Library. Picking up the themes from the recent Code4lib 2008 Conference, topics discussed include the Open Library, Integrated Library Systems, API’s and New Cataloguing Influences.

Richard commented “It is great to launch this regular series of podcasts for people to tune in to the hot topics in the world of libraries, technology, and the people that influence them. We are bringing together an excellent panel of regular contributors, some well known and some soon to be so. If the first show is anything to go by, this is going to be a lively and interesting series.”

Josh Hadro Library Journal Technology Editor commented “The community of librarian technologists is a connected bunch with bold opinions, and they're not shy about sharing them. Their focus is always on what's best for the user, and they're constantly bouncing ideas off each other online and at conferences to get that done. I think the Library 2.0 Gang podcast series, with its awesome cast of regulars, is a perfect venue for distilling and distributing the work that's being done in library technology, and a great format for generating some genuine discussion with experts from the field.”

Launched with the first show is a Library 2.0 Gang (librarygang.talis.com) web site where you can download all of the shows, view the profiles of gang members and featured guests, and engage to suggest new topics, members or simply ask questions for the gang to discuss and debate.

This podcast series is produced in association with Library Journal who are syndicating the podcasts through LibraryJournal.com.

Podcast of the Month

Mark Leggott from the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, has been promoting Open Source principles for many years, be it the need for an open shared knowledgebase to underpin access to electronic journal articles, or the use of Open Source tools to deliver services for University researchers and students.

In this Talking with Talis conversation, Mark describes his work at UPEI using software including Drupal and Fedora to deliver a holistic solution to learning, administration and research across the University.

Meet the API

In last month's Meet the API we mentioned SPARQL as one of the standard API functions that is available with every Platform Store. SPARQL, the query language for RDF, has now reached the dizzy heights of 'Recommendation'; the highest accolade that those guardians of the web's evolution, W3C, awards.

SPARQL is definitely extremely important. Indeed, Tim Berners-Lee went so far as to suggest that;

“Trying to use the Semantic Web without SPARQL is like trying to use a relational database without SQL.”

However, it's one of those pieces of the puzzle that just gets on and does its job, behind the scenes, often unnoticed and unremarked. That is, of course, exactly as it should be. Technology (unless it's an iPhone) isn't there to be drooled over. It isn't there to rub your nose in its cleverness. It should just ensure, quietly, that your task is completed with less fuss, less intervention, and less hassle than before. If you're lucky, it might let you do something you couldn't do before.

Reduced to their simplest, the SPARQL Recommendations offer a simple and standard means of querying any store of RDF, regardless of the software used to run the store. The software has to support SPARQL, of course, and the Talis Platform is amongst those that do.

My colleague, Danny Ayers, has put together a simple demonstration to illustrate how SPARQL queries can be formed and submitted to one of several Talis Platform stores. As the Semantic Web grows, and reaches increasingly beyond the laboratory and the Intranet to embrace the open Web, the ability to consistently and reliably query disparate pools of data via SPARQL will become ever more important. Any resource becomes - potentially - both directly addressable and consistently queryable. A very different picture from that of today's web... where often all you can search for across the Web at large is the user interface of some proprietary database or other. You then need to visit that database, understand its interface, and then ask the question again; this time constrained to the pool of possible answers within that one source.

Take a look at Danny's examples (including one for the Twitter store he built for his article in the Talis Platform News) and you begin to understand some of what's possible. Now stretch a bit, and imagine this query capability transposed behind the shiny, curvy-cornered UI of some Web 2.0 application. Suddenly, this application breaks free of the limitations of its own 'database', and is able to reach out across the Web at large to interact with conformant and permissive agglomerations of data, wherever they may be.

Worth Watching

Ian Davis, Talis CTO

Ian was recently invited to the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute to present in their prestigious seminar series. His 45 minute presentation entitled The Talis Platform: A generic Infrastructure for Next Generation Web Applications can be viewed here.

His presentation, and the questions and answers at the end, outline the problems the Platform is attempting to solve, describe the principles on which the approach is based, and ground these in trends such as "Software as a Service". A fascinating and informative insight into the thinking and development behind the Talis Platform - well worth a watch.

Meet the Team

Adam Edgar- Developer

This month we meet Adam Edgar, Developer at Talis. Having been with Talis for the past nine years, it is a refreshing change to introduce our readers to someone who has grown and evolved with the company.

“I have worked across a number of areas during my time at Talis. including Unity, UnityWeb, and Talis Prism. More recently, I have been working on Talis Keystone and the Library Platform supporting the new Talis Prism. These projects have used Agile techniques like Scrum, Pair Programming and Test Driven Development. These methods have made us much more adaptable to change.

Even though I hold a degree in Archaeology and Pre-History, the reason why I joined Talis was because it was a library software house and one of the places where you can see yourself doing some good in the world! The library is all about collaboration and has a world view of openness and sharing. I think that this view permeates the ethos at Talis.

Our company’s informal collaborative culture, smart people consistently full of great ideas, makes Talis a stimulating place to work. We are always interested in new technologies, techniques and ideas. It feels as though I was once working for a library software house, but am now working for the development of the semantic web.”

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