blyberg.net » AADL.org Goes Social

I have a good excuse for dropping off the face of the biblioblogosphere for a month.

It only took a year, but I finally got permission to go ahead with implementing what I’ve dubbed “The SOPAC” here at AADL. That would be “cute-speak” for Social OPAC. The SOPAC represents a slew of features that I’ve wanted to implement for quite some time now. I’m rather excited to see if library users will respond to these tools in an OPAC setting as much as Web 2.0 users have to commercial social networking sites. I’m fairly confident they will. Mainly, I’m relieved that I no longer need to talk conceptually about features I’ve been planning to build on top of the catalog.

So what is the SOPAC? It’s basically a set of social networking tools integrated into the AADL catalog. It gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items. The concept is nothing new, but the nature of our systems do not yield readily to this kind of retrofitting–something I plan to really start tackling in earnest, but that’s a topic for another post.

If you’re wondering (and didn’t know already), AADL’s automation system is III which recently released a software package called “Encore” that does some of what the SOPAC does. We did not purchase it, nor do we intend to. Instead we’re going to use the money we saved to buy a Lexus. *grin*

Anyway, I’ve been messing around a bit with Snapz Pro, and thought that since this is a pretty big upgrade to AADL’s site, I would include a screencast covering most of the new features. So for those with 15 minutes or so to kill (ignore the screaming kids in the background):

(Download Movie ~88 MB)

SOPAC Features

The “front door” to the SOPAC is, of course, the main catalog search screen. Drupal’s API made development of this code relatively painless. For example, the blocks on the right-hand side use Drupal’s hook_block function, making the development of those blocks simply a matter of writing a function that would return the content. In this case, the right-hand column contains search, tag, and review information.

Let’s take a look at some of those blocks:

These two blocks represent the contextual nature of SOPAC. The first block appears in the regular SOPAC, while the second is displayed in the use management tools.

Here are some sample review pages:

Top of review page:

Reviews themselves:

Public view of all my reviews:

Private view of all my reviews:

While writing a review, you can simultaneously add tags for the item you’re reviewing. Or you can simply tag catalog items without reviewing them. Here are some same examples of the tag system:

Personal tag cloud (My tags in cloud-vew mode):

Personal tag list. This is where users can manage their tags. Delete, modify, view, etc.

List of items in the catalog tagged with “dogs”:

Feel free to visit the AADL catalog to tag and/or review some items. You do need an account to create content, but you don’t need a library card to get an account, so these features are not limited to cardholders in any way.

Because I feel that this version of AADL.org is a significant milestone, I’ve made a tarball of the source code publicly available for download. Included in the tarball is our middle-ware “glue” that allows us to interface Drupal with the III server in addition to all the SOPAC code and supporting libraries. Bear in mind that this code will definitely not work out-of-the-box but could definitely be made to work with any III server with XMLOPAC support.

You can download the package here, or from my files section.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

57 Comments so far
Leave a comment

WOW! How incredibly cool! I was showing off the AADL catalog and the “card catalog” feature to one of my coworkers yesterday. Guess I’ll have more to show off now. And I’m seriously impressed that you’re releasing the source code. Well done!

You are incredible! What a tool, and what generosity to share it. I hope your servers are ready for a major influx of visitors.

We should be fine.. I’ll be keeping an eye on them!

Great job John! I’ve started tagging…and I love it that there’s URLs for tags - but what, no RSS feeds on the tag pages?

I wrote a mini-review on Superpatron.

Darn it — now I’m going to have to clone myself to play catch up!

This is fantastic stuff John. Will you be integrating the tags, reviews, etc into the PatREST output as well?

[…] John Blyberg beskriver på sin blogg blyberg.net om förändringar som de gjort i sin OPAC. Det är främst interaktivitetsförändringar, social webb prylar. Han beskriver det mesta av det i en 15 minuter lång screencast på http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/�helt klart en del saker som är intressanta och inte så svåra att implementera om viljan finns i organisationen. […]

[…] ….. who has created a “social OPAC” interface which sits over Ann Arbor’s III Innopac library management system. It allows user rating, tagging and reviews. He’s released the code as well. And made a screencast to show how to use it. […]

Oh man am I excited about this. Like really really really excited. I can’t get the modules to install in Drupal, but I’m very much the Drupal newbie so maybe there’s something I’m doing wrong. Or maybe it’s compatible with 4.x and not 5. At any rate, if/when I get this working I am going to be one happy happy nerd.

John,

Like I said, there is no way the code will work out-of-the-box. But I did forget to package the SQL table schema and a few other files. So I’ve repackaged the code–you’ll probably want to download it again.

The modules are written for Drupal 4.7. I don’t know if they work for 5.0 yet.

John

AADL’s Catalog Gets Social…

I was going to write a quick blurb about Perceptive Pixel’s new Multi-touch Computer Demonstration (which you should still totally check out), but I just have to write about the awesomeness that’s sitting in front of me. The AADL catalog has just bee…

Great utilization of Drupal. I like it very much. the clean desing is awesome.

Thank you for sharing this story with me !

This is very cool, I like being able to see the recent tags and reviews.

sopac…

Yeah, everyone’s talking about this today but frankly it is so cool and Blybergesque that it warrants another post. John has really gone all out and incorporated all of those 2.0 features that everyone (well, library folks at least…whether …

Respect from Holland!

[…] January 23rd, 2007 in Web, Search, Reference, Libraries blyberg.net » AADL.org Goes Social by John […]

Wow, this is impressive. I’ve long considered tapping into Drupal’s social features for our library sites - just never seemed to really get there. What you’ve done with III is admirable.

Now we’re moving to an enterprise CMS, and you’re making me even sadder about leaving Drupal behind.

What really excites me the most about this kind of work is the potential it offers for replication in other libraries. So many libraries are trying to play catch-up on community site features. Rather than building all that on a library-by-library basis, why not get together and standardize around a single platform and leverage what is already there? You’re providing an answer to that question.

Anyway, nice work.

[…] Bővebb ismertető: AADL.org Goes Social […]

[…] by Jami on January 23rd, 2007 John Blyberg has developed a wonderful integration of social networking features into the aadl.org OPAC. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but I am really excited about it. As I have […]

[…] this environment is engaging its patrons. Wiki library sites, comment-rich catalogs (which I would love), RSS feeds, and just simply bringing patrons back from the margin. He also spoke about Millennials […]

John, this is so exciting. Do you fear any reprisals from III for creating and distributing for free something that does more than their Encore product does? Or have they pretty much left you alone?

[…] blyberg.net » AADL.org Goes Social […]

[…] Blyberg, of the Ann Arbor District Library, recently announced the release of the SOPAC. The SOPAC, “cute speak” for the Social OPAC, is a redevelopment of the library […]

This is really cool John, thanks for sharing in such easy-to-read detail. I’m definitely going to keep track of the progress of this Social Networking site. Good luck!
- Heather

Excellent work!

Now it’s a little more clear to me why III no longer sells its XML server separately. I think it’s now only available bundled with the new Encore product.

George, I’ve heard that but I haven’t confirmed it yet. Do you know that for a fact?

Sarah,
Legally, III hasn’t a leg to stand on. The code I released was written entirely by me, except for the included tag cloud libraries which are GPL’d.

But that’s not to say that they can’t punish us (or me) in other ways by making our lives, as a customer, miserable. I really don’t think they’ll do that. They have always been very professional and courteous to me and AADL.

If there were reprisals, however, you would soon hear about them here, and I think they know that.

dude…you rock….thanks so much for getting this together and releasing it….i’m sure you sick of some of us bugging you about “can i just get a peek at the drupal module?”

jblyberg++

[…] the whole darn thing, with a particular interest in the Next Generation Catalog sessions (including John Blyberg). I’ll be sending reports and photos — sort of an “embedded” library […]

Fabulous! I have been waiting and waiting to see something like this. You are a pioneer.

[…] interesting things are happening in the cataloguing sphere: John Blyberg has announced his work on the SOPAC (”social OPAC”), enabling users to tag and review […]

[…] Here’s a description about the background of it from the web developer: […]

So I went to your catalog, figured out I had to register to write, did that. Wrote. All done, I come upon “tags,” so just to be sure, I clicked on “what is a tag”, and it returned the same page, as a BLANK form. It ate my review and did not tell me what tags are. Need to look to this.

Shane,

Thanks for the info. That link did, indeed, go nowhere. I’ve removed it for the time being until I can do something else with it. I’m sorry you lost your review.

John, re: XML server bundled with Encore…

Refer to the III product catalog. XML Server is listed with: “Prerequisites: Encore.” whereas formerly it did not have this requirement.

So XML server can be purchased, but you must have Encore to now get it.

I’ve learned of this great news from a link to AADL from the libraries group at groups.drupal.org. John, if you can clone yourself further, propose to teach (at any of the LIS schools with distance programs)a course on library systems based on open source software. I’ve just learned that an LIS school in Texas is offering a course on open source solutions for libraries [see Koha with Class: Future Librarians Train Using Koha ILS]. Paul Resnick at the UMI’s SI is teaching a course on CMS (using Drupal - see SI 631).

So, things are happening and I hope more will come.

[…] many, I am quite excited about John Blyberg’s release of the SOPAC (and other enhancements). The social tools - tagging, rating, recommending, etc. - are an […]

[…] Full post […]

[…] ver la web de la biblioteca, el propio catálogo, la reseña de un usuario o el post de presentación del servicio. Va a dar que hablar, ya […]

[…] of Drupal modules to provide an interface to their III system. The description below is from his weblog. It only took a year, but I finally got permission to go ahead with implementing what I’ve dubbed […]

[…] http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/ […]

[…] másoknak a párbeszédre. Ez a hely néha egészen kirívó tud lenni, mint például a SOPAC, vagy a Hennepin Country Library katalógusának kommentálható felülete, de lehet egy egyszerű, […]

[…] la descrizione del SOPAC dell’Ann Arbor District Library fatta dai suoi web developer: http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social mentre il catalogo è raggiungibile da qui: […]

[…] blyberg.net » AADL.org Goes Social […]

[…] In his blog, John has provided a screencast of the features, as well as screenshots and the package for download. […]

Hi John - I’m looking at things from a Drupal perspective and was wondering how AADL’s SOPAC integrates with the circulation software i.e. is the availability status set automatically?

TIA.

[…] have developed Open Source Library Management Systems like Koha and Evergreen. People like John Blyberg, Casey Bisson and Dave Pattern are tweaking existing software to perform in ways that are better […]

[…] details, take a look at their blog entry introducing the enhancements, their catalog page, and a blog kept by one of their key innovators, John […]

[…] because I worked part-time (while a student at UMSI) at the Ann Arbor District Library when they rolled out their new website built on Drupal. Blogs were suddenly a major part of the library’s web presence and the great […]

[…] the AADL catalog [that] gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items.”[1] It uses an open source content management system called Drupal as a structure through which the […]

[…] SOPAC had just been released, Blygerg posted in his blog Blyberg.net that he was “rather excited to see if library users will respond to these tools […]

[…] AADL.org Goes Social (blyberg.net) […]

[…] John Blyberg is Systems Administrator and Lead Developer at the Ann Arbor District Library, and an industry leader in OPAC innovation. Here are some of his […]

[…] SOPAC pour Drupal […]

[…] drooling noises>The AADL social OPAC</Homer drooling […]

All you had to do was implement a greasemonkey script and pull the reviews in from amazon.

[…] http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/ […]

Great post! Thanks

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>