Bright Ideas for the Web Darlene Fichter University of Saskatchewan Internet Librarian Monterey, CA November 4, 2003

Overview External Content integration Getting easier Examples Web parts, portlets, gadgets, widgets New mind set Examples Land of Oz Assimilate and be assimilated

RSS and headlines Create your own “newspaper” Use Bloglines Publish your list to the web Sites to read No coding Web forms Javascript Cut and paste

News to Read

zFeeder zFeeder is a PHP script used to display RSS content on your webpages Show the news to your visitors It parses RSS (or RDF or backend) files (xml files) and shows content formatted It is simple to use, implement and customize accordingly to your needs

zFeeder Example Show the headlines Example

Why just news stories? High quality links to web sites? Librarians' Index to the Internet Example

To the land of Oz and back Future is not a page Think of it as parts Building blocks It’s not all assembled from your database or your site

Amazon web services Associate ID Web token Light weight (non-programmer) XML Scratch Pad Heavier weight (programming)

Each of these areas

First steps News feed New web sites Integration of some Amazon content

Amazon for fundraising and/or content Fundraising Set up a Amazon store Sell complimentary items – posters, calendars, toys

Output choices XML Get a script that can display it XML and XSLT Use one of Amazon’s Make your own Use a CSS

Canned XLST templates

So how can this help My Library? Integrate this rich book content with your catalogue of books, movies, music

Provide Related Links Be Creative Find more by a “publisher” Scratch Pad – manufacturer Books by Oxford University Press

From Oz to Kansas again Jon Udell’s Library Lookup es/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html es/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html Innovative Voyager iPac DRA Talis

Library catalog bookmarklet Drag a link to your library to browser's link toolbar or add it to bookmarks You can look up books at your local library when you’re on a book- related site (Amazon, BN, isbn.nu, All Consuming)AmazonBNisbn.nu All Consuming ISBN must be in the URL

ISBN

My Library Catalog

Bigger steps Be everywhere New portal Portal with every students course schedule, link to course web pages What should be there?

Students – see their courses Ideally the library would have a list of resources for each course Faculty Easy ways to link at the lesson level to our material We need to offer vendor products like ILSs and article databases like ProQuest that support and allow deep and persistent links Wizards to make this easy for our faculty

More services HotScripts.com Search for XML

Look, learn and experiment

Questions? Darlene Fichter University of Saskatchewan Library library.usask.ca/~fichter/