WordCamp NYC 2009 – Using WordPress as Library Catalogs

I am live blogging from WordCamp NYC,  please excuse any typos or less polished text.

Speaker: Casey Blisson

“wordpress is everything that libraries are not” Blisson opens.  The cost of library software is really high (Endeca is mentioned). WordPress is easy to use, easy to install, easy extend – plugins is an incredibly important feature, it is social and it is FREE.

Problem: Library Data is awkwardly coded, but rich with matadata. “it’s screaming to escape”

Solution:

A blog post= a catalog record.

How does that work? using excerpts, tags (“why use categories and folders if you have tags?” reminds me of Jon Lin teaching internal and external users of Martindale Hubbell Connected to use tags instead of folders) and robust taxonomy. Collison is showing Collingswood NJ catalog as an example for using Sciblio: looks like a blog, functions like a library.

Creating inventory of content in WordPress. Example: Beyond Brown Paper repository of images.

Social element is core to data robustness: “I cannot overstate the value of commenting”  People leaving comments are adding information to the content and data set. “we have better data because of our users. be aware of how valuable that is”. Blisson gives an example of how a user helped librarians gather more solid information about a picture from 60′s they had which had very little information on. One Blog post/information set is created by multiple users.

Casey does a demo of Scriblio use on collingswood NJ.

• Mentions giant search box that delivers auto-suggested results. each result is a ‘post’.
• Uses a wordpress plugin to do ‘Amazonish’ recommendations’ – “people that read this post, also read… “
• Uses multiple tag clouds: narrow by subject, format and genre, palce and time, reading level, awards – each comes from a different service platform
• Using social bookmarking to spread and share content

Tagged as: blog, Hosts, Library, Tag cloud, Templates, Web search engine, wordcamp, WordPress