Stephen, I think the key to all of this is to have not only an OPAC, but a resource discovery/delivery platform of broader scope (encompassing local content not only from the OPAC but from other sources like cultural heritage and other digital collections, as well as remote resources free and commercial via federated search) to be accessible by external interfaces. This can be accomplished via persistent linking or simple and complex web services. The overall goal whether we are dealing with public or academic libraries should be to expose library content and services wherever the user lives/interacts. One of the challenges that libraries face is to be able to accomodate all of these disparate starting/discovery points, especially when the overall user adoption (as a percentage of active library patrons) is reletively small.

A related concept is the ability to provide these services in an offline mode as well as online mode (ala Google Gears). Although library applications are broadening their scope in terms of connected systems (cell phones, PDAs, other smart devices, etc), the use of these access points are relatively minimal to the PC (connected or not).

Hey Stephen. I developed a simple facebook application for the Ryerson University Library that allows patrons to search the Catalogue through the facebook interface.

Instructions are listed here about installing it:
http://www.ryerson.ca/library/library20/

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I attempted to completely integrate the search into facebook, but when parsing the results our testing server would time out. Because of this I used iframes, this wasn't the prettiest solution, but at least it works.

Reply: Very cool!
SA"

http://uillinois.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2414276217

Mini-interface to the OPAC and four databases plus the state-wide academic libraries catalog.

For Hennepin County Library:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=735130d225b6fcc4c7df1501bb6ab3fc

Search HCL catalog by author, title, subject or general keyword.

The University of Michigan has a catalog search:
http://apps.facebook.com/mlibrary/

(Good to meet you at the Ohio State "Libraries 2.0" conference earlier this month...)

Ken Varnum

Over the last couple days I’ve cobbled together a Facebook application that searches the UAH book catalog:

http://apps.facebook.com/uahcatalog/

You can add it to your profile here. To give credit where it’s due, this is very heavily based on the code from UIUC’s similar application.

Having code to work from, the process was pretty straightforward. I did hit some speed bumps though. The largest was that once finished, the app didn’t show up on anybody else’s profile once added. It was fine on mine, but not on anybody else’s! I’m still not entirely sure how I fixed that one, but it seems to be working now.

I also ran across one issue that really bugs me: Facebook’s cache refresh time. They appear to be caching my application, so the recent design changes I made won’t show up yet. This cache seems to last an inordinately long time (more than 24 hours), especially when the app is in active development like mine is. I’d like to see changes reflected immediately to make sure I haven’t broken anything. A method to force a refresh would be much appreciated. (Maybe such a thing exists already, but I couldn’t find any mention of it in the developers’ forums)

As it is, once you add this to your profile the app will look rather suspiciously like UIUC’s for the time being… until the cache refreshes and my aesthetic design changes kick in.

This is just an early early application, but I wanted to see what is possible. Learning a new API is never simple, and I am barely scratching the surface here.