Talis Developer Network - ideas for Prism - Comments

Article from Lorcan Dempsey's blog

MEK — Tue, 16 May 2006 16:13:12 +0100

Going through my blog roll I came across this from Lorcan Dempsey
http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001021.html Having posted some wishes here which can be linked to the development of the catalogue it is quite timely to add this link to Lorcan Dempseys discussion about the future of the catalogue/OPAC.
As librarians we want to enable our users to have access (traditionally ) to our holdings. Now with the electronic information we wish to ensure , especially in the academic library that the end user is accesssing quality information not only from the library holding sbut also from elsewhere via the web. This is not the only provision we wish to make for our end user. Customer service is also very important and that is what Library2/Web 2 should allow us to develop and push forward. So I very much agree with Richard and Lorcan the OPAC has to change. The underlying library catalogue however must continue to provide quality records of library holdings.
Melanie

RSS should be on anyones whish list

Richard Wallis — Sun, 14 May 2006 23:32:09 +0100

You are right, as was shown at Insight last year and the recent Library and Information Show, we are looking to develop Prism further and all areas of functionality are up for grabs.

The question is do we develop "just another traditional OPAC" or do we take account of the Web/Library 2.0 technology advancements that are demonstrated in things like Whisper. - Guess where my vote would sit?

You could mostly satisfy the desires you lay out, by using a general purpose RSS reader; creating a way to use the library system to confirm identity; and building RSS feed capability in to the OPAC (both for search and account information), Talis List, and anything else a user would want to monitor.

So does that mean, all we have to do is fit RSS feeds to all functionality and everything will be fine - no, but it could be a good start. RSS, and its close cousin Atom, are a well understood light-weight standard way of connecting things, which could underpin both the exporting of Library functionality in to things like MyYahoo, and a new personalised OPAC or OPACs.

It would be interesting to hear from others using RSS to integrate library systems and services together.

Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist - Talis

ideas for Prism

MEK — Thu, 11 May 2006 10:03:02 +0100

Prism as I understand it is moving on developing into more of a portal than just access to the OPAC. As such can the personal part of PRISM be developed further? I would like to have a 'My personal PRISM' section. Here you set up your personal profile. This will include information about journals you are interested in receiving TOCs for, new stock in specific subject, course code so that there is a link to LIST so if new lists are added for that course or an update has been made to a list want to be alerted to this. This alerting service to be delivered via RSS.