MLibrary 2.0 Projects: Facebook integration

« Beyond Flickr Exhibits - Flickr Slideshows! | Main | 31 Flavors - Things to Do With Flickr in Libraries »

August 06, 2007

Facebook integration

Some of this has been posted in the mlibrary 2.0 facebook group discussion board, but Ken and I have put some work towards integrating library functions with facebook.

These are:

A standard search.

http://apps.facebook.com/mlibrary/

Presently this is a UIUC clone. We're looking into upgrading this to the functionality of the next item on this list, and maybe at some point I'll throw more experimental ideas into the next item.

Update: 8/13/2007
The standard search has been updated to be mostly the same as the beta search. Those of you with the standard search already installed, will find the box in your profile to exhibit the new functionality.

A beta search.

http://apps.facebook.com/mlibrary_search/

This has most of the features I could think to add, and it's entirely integrated in Facebook.

A preview of what to expect:

Search results stay in the Facebook canvas page for the appliation.

You can share the results with friends on facebook, or post them to your profile.

You can click a link to add the book to your mirlyn "My Shelf"

You get stable links to the document in the search results.

Locations are clickable, though they don't take you to the specific library's website at this time, they do search the library pages to find that library.

Some call numbers are clickable. Specifically, if the book is located in the graduate library, clicking on the call number will take you to a map of the the floor you can expect to find the book.

If the book has been digitized by mdp, then a link to its google books page will be provided.

An hours page.

http://apps.facebook.com/mlibrary_hours/

It puts today's hours for your favorite library on your Facebook profile. Nothing too fancy.

Posted by bertrama at August 6, 2007 04:56 PM

Comments

Ideas on content which could be added to the search function:

Checking for and displaying availability within the search results.

Checking for and displaying book covers within the search results.

A "find similar" function.

Links to other content provider's content related to the specific text. Maybe Amazon.com's commentary on the item if it exists.

Posted by: bertrama at August 7, 2007 08:13 AM

I've heard a comment for another library:

Integrate with iRead so that you can reserve (some/all) books on the person's "I wanna read" list. Initial investigation appears as though this list isn't easy to get, but maybe we could (a) convince the author of the application to export these lists as rss feeds, or (b) add a "find at your local library" link and could use facebook's location information to figure out which library to search.

Integrating the other way is possible, it should be easy to add links for the book into the iRead application, though I'm not sure I'd want to.

Posted by: bertrama at September 5, 2007 11:15 AM