Sook continued

I did a little coding and came up with Sook. It has been fun just to type in words and look at books. The next step was to do a query on our ILS and see if we have the book available. I am not really sure how to tackle this problem with the sirsi/dynix api but I was thinking first of ajax but since I have just purchased the Web Services with Perl I am thinking I might write a web service and see if that migh solve the problem.

IT Management ideas in libraries

 I was recently at a meeting where we were talking about how to build a team and effectively manage that team. I was asked about some of the changes I had made and how they were working. At the end of the conversation I was asked if I would write these ideas down in the IT Blog. Foolishly I said said yes. These are just some general guidelines that I try and often fail to follow. They are in no particular order.

1. Never ask someone to do something that you are not prepared to do yourself.
2. Frustration = Problems. Frustration is the leading indicator that your staff is having problems. It is your responsibilty to solve these problems.
3. Never blame. It is a waste of time. The solution to the blaming attitude is to collectively focus on the problem and find a solution.
4. Have and attitude of “Yes”. This doesn’t mean you say yes to everything but is more of mindset.
5. Communicate, communicate and communicate somemore. It is really helpful for staff to understand the goals and expectation and to be part of the planning process.
6. Acknowledge the work people do and thank them for it.
7. Delegate as much as possible. It empowers people and prevents you from micromanagement.
8. Actively listen.
9. Patience. The people you have on your team are working hard, do not over stress them by setting unrealistic timetables. Understand your staffs strengths and weaknesses. Help them with both. It is your job to make their job easier.
10. Have fun. Staff that are having fun at work are more productive. It will also help them and you live happy lives. This is perhaps the most important rule. If you are not having fun there is a problem.

These are the top 10 things that I strive towards. I know there are many more things to do but I can really only keep 10 thoughts in my head at one time and I really believe in keeping things very simple where possible.

Sook amazon and ajax

The next idea I am working on is  to try is to use the power of amazon to look for material.  Specifically books. What I am hearing from staff and patrons that they are using amazon to get the details on the book they want and then using that information to look up our catalog. Well why not automate that process. I have just started working on a Google like interface where you can to a search amazon if you are not certain of the title or author and it will give you results. I plan on using ajax to dynamically go out and hit the catalog and see if we have that material. 

Amzamash

Well I finnished my first Mashup. It was quit fun and now I am thinking of explanding some of the ideas. Adding as RSS feed for fiction and adding the feature of if you like this you might like that. This<=>That.

 The mash is between sirsi/dynix, amazon and the good old library card. Thanks to John Blyberg for the card idea

Amzamash
Overview of Amzamash
——————————
Description
————
This is a collections of programs that creates a table of book covers and then links these covers
to a more detailed description of the book. It also creates an old fashion library card on the fly.
I used the sirsi/dynix system to get the isbn numbers of the books that were cataloged yesterday.
I then used the amazon webservices to gather the covers and all other information. This information was
then placed in a mysql database. I then used the GD graphics library to create the library cards. The gathering
of the isbn’s was the only processing done on the ILS. I used expect to transfer the file to another computer
running linux to do the bulk of the processing.

Technologies used
—————–
Perl
Php
MySql
Sirsi/Dynix API
HTML
Expect
Amazon’s Web Services
Cron
Apache
Well it is a mashup after all. <smile>
Programs and function
—————————

get_book.pl : This program goes out and gets all the book isbn’s that were cataloged yesterday.
It sorts the isbn’s and then only outputs unique isbn’s It is locationed /usr/local/share/httpd/cgi-bin on foraker.
The output from this program is called isbn.txt

getisbn : This program is an expect script. It automatically ftp’s the isbn.txt file to the linux server called blog.

awslarge.pl : This program does the bulk of the processing. It first initializes the mysql database and resets
the index to 1. It then opens the isbn.txt file and queries the amazon web service. What is resulted is
XML information about the book. This then parses this information and places it into the database.

cardmaker.pl : This program uses the GD library to place text onto the library card image. There is some
formating that needs to be done and a little cleanup on some of the amazon information. The cards are then
created and placed in a dir. /var/www/html/amzamash/libcards .All previous cards from the day before are deleted.

book_wall.php : This program creates the wall of books. Just gets the data from the database. The links over the books pass the isbn to the bookresut.php /var/www/html/amzamash

bookresult.php : This program takes the isbn and gets the associated library card and then displays the other information about the book that was retreived from amazon. /var/www/html/amzamash

Final note
———-
I plan to use the database to create an RSS feed on fiction. I would also like to add the feature “If you liked this you might like this” The this<=>this feature.