code4lib 2006-02-17

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What Blog Apps Can Teach Us About Library Software Architecture

February 17, 2006Casey Bisson

online now athttp://MaisonBisson.com

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Horizontal = Good

Vertical = Bad

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Good Climate + Critical Mass

= Best Opportunity For Tech Progress

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Our Climate

• Six languages:Perl, Python, PHP, Ryby, ColdFusion, and ASP

• Four DBs:MySQL, PostGres, MSSQL, Oracle

• Five(+) Vendors:Sirsi/Dynix, Endeavor, Ex Libris, III, Talis

• 120 different environments

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Libraries

The World

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Libraries

The World

“Standards”

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Consider...

SRW/SRU OpenSearch Amazon API

?365

public targets

140,000registered developers

example

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How Standards Develop In...

Libraries The Blog World

Constant pursuit of the “ideal”

Codified by practice

Enforced by standards bodies

Enforced by the market

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Libraries

The World

Applications

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Comment Systems

• Security

• User management

• Administratrion/management/moderation

• Spam, spam, spam

They’re easy, just a textarea, right?Well, there are some challenges...

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So...Is this the segue

to WPopac?

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• Search for “Joe Monninger.” Note that the results include those for “Monninger, Joseph.” View record for A Barn In New England. Note comments and trackbacks.

• Search for “sociology of education.” Demonstrate faceted searching, how “educational sociology” emerges as a top subject. Refine search and show how the search and search limits can be modified.

• Search for “Harry Potter.” Note the Wikipedia content in the right column. View record for Sorcerer's Stone. Note “permalink” (a standard feature of WP) and “add to delicious” (a standard WP plugin) links in right column. Note the related items listed at bottom (also from a standard WP plugin), note how they include only Harry Potter titles. View Harry Potter crit title, note related items, note how they include only Harry Potter criticism titles.

• Search for “ambiant fndability” (intentionally misspelled). Note how it suggests a search for the correct spelling, even though “findability” is not a dictionary word (yet).

• Demonstrate the WPopac OpenSearch API in A9.

Scripted Demo(this slide did not appear in the presentation)

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Why?• Large community of users and developers

• Built-in features: comments, indexable content, permalinks, RSS

• Rich, well documented plugin API

• Well understood theme/skinning architecture

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Plea...

• Pave the cowpaths

• Good is better than best

• Involve (benefit from) non-library developers

• Embrace their standards

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Questions?

[email protected]://MaisonBisson.com/