On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 07:04:32PM -0500, Pat Eyler wrote:
On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 01:27:32PM -0500, Pat Eyler wrote:
Since I figure there are likely to be a few people that would like a free book, I thought I'd put together a quick contest to see who gets the free copy. I also manage the Koha project (a free software library system), so I thought I'd tie libraries, LDAP, and maybe even Perl into the contest.
It seems that it could be used to build a sense of community among the library patrons. If users can edit (selected parts of) their LDAP entry, they could rate the books that they've read, link to their web page, mark other patrons as their friends, and so forth (this is probably not the place for reviews and other long blocks of text, though, IMHO). Based on patrons' ratings, Koha could generate recommendation lists, e.g., if you've just read book X, and five people (or five of your friends) have given high ratings to books X and Y, then Koha could add a note saying that you might also enjoy book Y. Users could also list the topics that interest them, or their favorite authors. This information could then be used to send them email whenever the library acquires a new book by their favorite author. Likewise, this could be a good place to put miscellaneous "X is related to Y" information, e.g., "The movie `Blade Runner' is based on the novel `Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' by Philip K. Dick", or "`Bored of the Rings' is a satire of `Lord of the Rings'". And while Koha does support series through the "biblio.seriestitle" field, some books and series don't neatly fit this model, e.g., Isaac Asimov's later novels, in which he combined the robot and Foundation series; or books that are already part of a series, but have also been discussed on the Oprah Winfrey show. It might also be interesting to list information on collaborations (e.g., Larry Niven often writes with Jerry Pournelle) or pseudonyms, but I think this can almost as easily be found from the catalog. No, I'm not entering the contest. I'm just brainstorming. -- Andrew Arensburger This message *does* represent the arensb@ooblick.com views of ooblick.com Fortis Vobiscum