Using the Talis Whisper prototype

The Basic Concepts

Talis Whisper is a Research Prototype application, developed as part of Project Whisper. It demonstrates the drawing together of Web Services from the Talis Platform and other service providers such as Amazon, Google and OCLC, orchestrating them to provide a powerful end-user experience.

Whisper can be best understood as a concept-car application, which includes many features that may well be found in future products and services, but not necessarily together. Some areas of functionality may only be applicable to library staff, others to library suppliers, or the general public.

The Main Screen

On entering Whisper, you are presented with a top-level navigational bar, which remains on all screens in the demonstrator, and a main display area divided in to six areas.

Unlike the rest of Whisper this screen only contains example static data to demonstrate how an Internet Library Portal could look. Each panel is delivering different information feeds that would be derived from various Web Services, providing for instance a Top 10 books feed. Such a service could provide the list based on local or national loan and/or sales statistics.

The MyAccount tab indicates that such a portal could be configured to enable users to identify themselves to the system. In that case the front screen could easily then contain account information [loans, reservations, charges, etc.] from the library or libraries associated with a user.

Discovery

Selecting the Discover tab causes the main display area to change in to a bibliographic discovery tool.

Typing in to the Search prompt invokes the Search Suggestion service which uses a Web Service which has access to the indexes to be searched by Whisper to provide hints to the user. Note these suggestions are based upon specific index, so changing the search type from keyword to author, for example, will display different suggestions.

Entering a search term and clicking Go will access a search Web Service against a bolographic record store which contains over 20 million records. The search used for these examples was a Keyword search for george w. bush.

Once the first ten results are returned, their brief descriptions are displayed on screen. Book jacket images are provided, where available, along side each result. In this version of the demonstrator, the jacket images are provided by an Amazon Web Service, but they could be as easily provided by any similar enrichment Web Service such as Talis Demeter.

Down the right side of the screen are a set of panels providing additional information about the selected result. Hovering your cursor over individual results causes them to become selected, changing the information displayed within the panels. Clicking on a result causes it to remain selected, until another result is clicked. Clicking on an already selected result causes the selection to follow the cursor as it hovers over results.

This instant update of information and dynamic changing of the display has been made possible by employing Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX [Asynchronous JavaScript and XML]; utilising the power of the PC on which the Web Browser is running, to deliver a major part of the functionality that underpins Whisper.

The Talis Base bibliographic data store contains items which are not all stocked in libraries. By clicking on the All available radio-button in the search bar, the results set is redisplayed to only contain results for which libraries have holdings. The results can be narrowed down further, to an individual library. Select Bedfordshire Libraries from the pull-down list, and click the MyLibrary radio button to show the items stocked by Bedfordshire.

Select the All available radio button, to take a closer view at what is on offer from the side panels. THE Whisper Libraries panel displays a list of libraries that have holdings for the selected item. This is powered by a Talis Platform Web Service which is also used by Talis Source. Clicking on Bury Libraries will open a window in to the live OPAC at Bury where the live status for that item is displayed. The direct linking in to this Innovative Interfaces System is provided by Silkworm the directory component of the Talis Platform.

The direct OPAC linking via Silkworm will work for all libraries as their entries are added to the directory. Cornwall, and The John Rylands University being other good examples.

Clicking the Create ILL
radio button in the Whisper Libraries panel and selecting a library, opens an ILL request form, pre-populated with library and book information, demonstrating how an application like Whisper could be integrated with, or within an interlending solution.

The Amazon.co.uk panel derived from an Amazon Web Service provides pricing information, enlarged book jacket image and a buy link that will take you to the Amazon website to purchase the item.

The Order History panel provides a graphic representation of the purchase ordering patterns of UK libraries. This uses a another Talis Platform Web Service which derives its data from the Talis Gateway service.

Locate

Selecting the Locate tab causes the main display area to change in to a satellite image of the UK & Ireland, populated with pins showing the location of libraries.

This is produced by combining the Google Maps service and the Talis Silkworm Directory, Platform Web Service.

As with a all Google maps, the user can drag the map view around, zoom in and out, and change from a satellite view to a map view.

Hovering over a pin will cause the name of the library to be displayed. Clicking on a pin will display a search box for that library.

Entering a search string and pressing Search will open a live window in to that library’s OPAC displaying the results of the search.

Choosing the Global radio button will change the view to a global one, indicating the locations of National Libraries. The search boxes for this indicating how a link is provided when a direct search of an OPAC is not yet been configured in to the Silkworm Directory entry for the library.

Directory

Selecting the Directory tab causes the main display area to provide an interface in to the Talis Silkworm directory to manage directory entries.

Monitor

Selecting the Monitor tab causes the main display area to show a different orchestration of Talis Silkworm Platform Services and Google Maps. This shows how Directory information could be used to monitor th status of a library’s OPAC, or other systems; placing a red Critical pin on the map for those systems that are not visible.

Note: This map is supported by sample data and is not a representation of the current status of an individual library.

Underlying Architecture

Talis Whisper has been developed using Web 2.0 techniques. It makes use of browser based AJAX technologies. The result of this approach is that the Whisper application only consists of a single webpage, a display style sheet file, and some JavaScript code. These files are all loaded in to the web browser where the application is run. There is no Whisper Server system, it all runs in the browser.

Because Whisper obtains its data from Web Services, provided by the Talis Platform (Silkworm, Gateway, Source, etc.) and other providers, such as Amazon, it only needs to orchestrate those services together and display the results on screen.

Whisper is therefore a light-weight, rapidly developed, application which provides value and functionality to the user which is greater than the sum of the Web Services it orchestrates.