And we're off.
Promises a more data oriented, technical presentation than the "touchy-feely" content that preceded.
"Technology can only be the answer if the question demands it". David is not convinced that every offering is as easy to implement as they are supposed to be, or as useful. A useful reality check.
The example given to the panelists was to take a raw XML output of 70,000 items from a museum digital collection and make it into something useful to patrons.
The panelists are Joe Ryan, Digital Projects Librarian at NCSU Libraries, and Eli Neiburger, Associate Dir. for IT and Production at Ann Arbor District Library. Eli developed Goldigr, a set of instructions checked the value of the museum collection on EBay. There was a lot of scripting involved using a package called Symfony to mash together the museum's XML server with a Yahoo "term extraction" API and the eBay Marketplace API.
The end result was a website that allows the user to query the museum collection to see if it has a particular kind of item, then select from a results list and see what that item might be worth on eBay. It was all free except for the design and construction of the application- "mostly plumbing" and taking about 2 days of development staff time. That said, he's yet to express what the point is of this- perhaps a book- or catalog- related example would have been more salient. I'm not interested in how much I can get for a celery vase. Although there are a lot of museum people in the room who appear to like it.
Ah there's the connection- "mashups" and scripting languages are going to be the currency of choice for getting library collections in competition with commerce. Scripting is equivalent to the standardization of machinery and parts that enabled the industrial revolution.
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