Having been on holidays for a while I haven't been listening to podcasts much lately, but got back into the swing of things with a morning walk with the Library 2.0 Gang.
The gang talked with Frances Haugen Google's product manager for book search. This is definitely worth a listen touching on the move to provide a version of the service for mobile devices and on how library holdings might be made more visible via services like Book Search. There was talk about the need for libraries, Google and other search engines to develop an open standard to make it easier to expose not just library holdings, but also information about libraries themselves via their catalogues.
This could include addresses, contacts, open hours and more - so that users might not just identify a useful book, but find which library nearest to them has a copy available and is open for business.
I expect that it would also provide a much better way to provide updated information to directories of libraries and their catalogues, such as The Australian Library Gateway. Each library just updates their own details on their own system(s) and then can forget about updating the likes of "The Australian Libraries Gateway", Libdex etc.
The gang talked with Frances Haugen Google's product manager for book search. This is definitely worth a listen touching on the move to provide a version of the service for mobile devices and on how library holdings might be made more visible via services like Book Search. There was talk about the need for libraries, Google and other search engines to develop an open standard to make it easier to expose not just library holdings, but also information about libraries themselves via their catalogues.
This could include addresses, contacts, open hours and more - so that users might not just identify a useful book, but find which library nearest to them has a copy available and is open for business.
I expect that it would also provide a much better way to provide updated information to directories of libraries and their catalogues, such as The Australian Library Gateway. Each library just updates their own details on their own system(s) and then can forget about updating the likes of "The Australian Libraries Gateway", Libdex etc.
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