Wednesday, February 15

Building a library IM bot.
As suggested by Ed Vielmetti, it would be handy to provide bots that patrons can add as buddies to their AIM, MSN, or Yahoo IM accounts. Features might include:

  • catalogue searching
  • library hours
  • my account information (at least display it, and maybe renew books too?)
  • contact information for circ desks, liaison librarians etc.
  • forward a reference question to a librarian IM account

Developing unAPI and w/unAPI
Discuss open issues on the spec and prepare a revision for release on 2/16 (day 2 of code4lib). Also a good time to learn more about what it can do for you, and to try implementing it, too! -dchud

Developing an Interface for Federated Search engines or for an OPAC interface
How are we all facing the issue of developing a well-designed and architected interface for a federated search engine or an OPAC? What are we missing, what is necessary, what is the “killer-app”? Suggested By Andrew Nagy</p>

Thursday, February 16

The future of code4lib (Roy Tennant)

More Lipstick on a Pig: Improving OPACs
Share ideas for ways to improve OPACs either by hacking/adding services/integrating services with vendor supplied OPACs or by exporting the data and presenting it in a custom app. (Tom Burton-West)