LISNews: Librarian News

If you don't know about the Social OPAC application suite--an open source social discovery platform for bibliographic data, you're really missing out. SOPAC (Social Online Public Access Catalog) is a Drupal module that provides true integration of your library catalog system with the power of the Drupal content management system while allowing users to tag, rate, and review your holdings. User input is then incorporated into the discovery index so that SOPAC becomes a truly community-driven catalog system.
I Talked With John about SOPAC, and how it's used. (note: the recording got a bit messy, our voices end up overlapping towards the end of the recording).
Some of the other features of SOPAC include:
* Faceted browsing
* Ajax-empowered interface with native jQuery support
* 100% customizable interface via the Drupal template system
* Ability to remove search limiters
* Saved searches
* Integrated renewals, holds placement, and fine payment
* Ability to customize the user experience via the administrative control panel
* Ability to create custom functionality via a Drupal sub-module

Ellyssa Kroski, who writes at iLibrarian, also teaches a class at San Jose State University on the Open Movement and Libraries (Fall of 2008). As part of the class shes has done interviews with such notable figures as Stephen Downes of the National Research Council in Canada, and Nicole Engard of LibLime. Her guest a couple weeks ago was Jimmy Wales. You can hear the full 10 minutes interview with Jimmy Wales here.

I wasn't sure if this was going to come to pass, but it does appear that my interview with Mark Shuttleworth is now available online. I knew they put some content up, but had no idea how exactly they determined what content went where.

So why do I keep belaboring that interview here? Because Mark Shuttleworth is cool, and I think that there are a few things in the interview that librarians (and educators) might find interesting. Hold on to your hats, non-techie types... Not only do we never talk directly about Ubuntu, but we don't talk a whole lot about really overtly horribly bloody tech stuff in general.

For those who do love the tech stuff (there have to be a few of you, still, right?), I've launched into a podcast adventure with Lisa Hoover (of various tech media outlets) that can be found here if you're interested. Please note that we're librarians and writers, we're located at different ends of the eastern seaboard, and between Skype, my way too sensitive mic, and our inexperience with manhandling audio (this being our first podcast), it's a little rougher sounding this week than it will be next. We hope.

Yeah, no kidding, that Mark Shuttleworth. The interview will be in the July 2008 issue of Linux Magazine. Not sure how many libraries subscribe... Serials budgets being what they are, and there's that little issue we always had with niche magazines either getting totally forgotten about and ignored or stolen.

The magazine is also usually found at larger booksellers... Barnes and Noble, Borders, blah blah. Usually the current issue hits the shelves about a month beforehand. So it seems it'll be a first or second week of June roll out, if you should want to check it out.

I wouldn't have given it so much of a shout-out here, but because I am such a freakin' geek... There was a lot of stuff that Mark talked about that I thought a few of you might be interested in. Aside from that fact he's a really cool guy.