Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Modules and Widgets for Customization

At today's Tech Talk meeting, I'll talk about widgets. I've put the main points of the presentation into the OHSU Library wiki as well as in this blog post. In addition to the what and how of widgets, I hope you'll think about the implications for libraries. Yahoo widgets to search a catalog are nice, but I think there are larger implications here. Users expect customization in all their online tools, but libraries have been slow to provide it. Yes, there's MyLibrary, but consider for a moment what widget-like customization could look like. A library could provide a list of modules (e.g. document delivery, database search, FAQs, news headlines). The user could choose modules of interest and assemble them into a fully-customized interface to library services. Ideally these modules would be compatible with other campus resources (e.g. intranet, employee information system, student information system, research portal), so that library services could integrate smoothly with other systems needed by the user. Even cooler -- the modules could integrate with third-party services outside the library and university (MySpace, Facebook, Google personalized home page, etc.). Hey, I can dream, can't I? In the meantime, here's what we can do now:

While users have been able to customize content within various services (e.g. Yahoo) for awhile, customization is being taken to a new level with modules and widgets. Now we can customize our desktops or create a customized home page by assembling various small programs and tools into a unique combination of functions and information to meet our needs. These tools are created using lightweight code and, often, APIs that allow them to interact with other programs or web sites.

Types of Modules and Widgets

  • Accessory widgets - self-contained programs that don't require internet access or an additional program. Examples: clocks, timers
  • Application widgets - associated with some other application. Examples: iTunes controllers, media players
  • Information widgets - interact with data from the internet. Examples: stock quotes, news headlines, internet radio tuners, Flickr photo tools, satellite radio tuners, weather information.

Platforms

Creating Widgets and Modules (especially in libraries)

These tools don't appear to be too difficult to create. Some libraries have created Yahoo or Apple widgets for searching their catalogs, and CISTI has created a Yahoo widget for ordering documents and checking the status of orders.

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Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Scan This Book! - New York Times

In Scan This Book!, Kevin Kelly of Wired discusses the universal library, the (ending) hegemony of the copy, the legal tug of war between Google and publishers, and the larger conflict between old, copy-based business models and new technology. Here's a brief snippet:

What is the technology telling us? That copies don't count any more. Copies of isolated books, bound between inert covers, soon won't mean much. Copies of their texts, however, will gain in meaning as they multiply by the millions and are flung around the world, indexed and copied again. What counts are the ways in which these common copies of a creative work can be linked, manipulated, annotated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media and sewn together into the universal library. Soon a book outside the library will be like a Web page outside the Web, gasping for air. Indeed, the only way for books to retain their waning authority in our culture is to wire their texts into the universal library.

Kelly offers more than the idealistic, "information wants to be free," argument. Definitely worth a read.
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