Make Mine Mashed...

Greetings!

Mashups have given me more pause than any of the other technologies we've looked at. I think this is because there are an infinity of combinations of APIs possible and the sites I've looked at seem to have just scratched the surface. Once again, I think that some of the examples looked at such as Ann Arbor's are great and useful for customers(also transparent) but aren't possible for this individual library to use on its pacs because it would have to happen at a system level. The mapping applications are nice and in fact we have used one of these already here in DeForest. We got a list of patron addresses without names and used a mashup that mapped these addresses onto a google map so we could see where our patrons lived. The information wasn't startling or unexpected -- the closer you live to the library the more likely you are to be a library patron -- but it was nice to see a visual representation on an actual map of the area of where our customers are coming from. That LibraryThing for libraries where you can import recommendations, see what's hot, find similar authors, etc. is awesome. But, this would have to be undertaken at the system level and perhaps our database is of a size it would overwhelm LibraryThings capacity. I have seen the Encore ILS which seems to have some of these features -- I'm not sure where their program gets it's data. But I digress. So, I like mashups and think they're great because anyone can play around with them and create something new and useful -- and without a lot of technical education. This may be moving the world towards the ability to customize almost infinitely -- which is a good thing. But large systems, by their very nature push towards uniformity, and most public libraries anymore do not stand alone. This creates a real tension between customization and uniformity which goes a long way towards explaining customer complaints like " I just don't see why I can't...... (fill in a verb and/or adverbial phrase). or better yet " I don't see why they won't let you.... So, until systems get so large that their vastness starts to look like customization ( I'm patterning my theory on the chaos theory of physics ( if you get far enough away get enough perspective) you will see the pattern in what you thought was chaos)) this tension will continue to exist and I'll continue to scratch my head and think "Wouldn't it be cool if...!!!!"

The Rat hopes you have a very Hoppy Easter and that the Easter Bunny leaves you lots of chocolate, jelly beans, and Peeps (and nothing that looks like chocolate jelly beans)!!!