Library Search AIM Bot

"I love perl. I just coded up a AIM bot to search some random library. Took me 20 minutes. I should be doing my ECE100 homework, but at least I got something interesting done. You can check out the code at lib_aim_search.pl or actually use it by messaging easyasy2kbot.

The bot should be up as much as I can for the next few days on my laptop, starting tuesday morning (connection issues right now...).

It was surprisingly easy to code, especially with IPAC systems returning XML. (See the code for specifics)

This was in response to The Shifted Librarian's post on AIM bots a few hours ago, where she wanted AOL to make more than just a 'Who wants to be a millionaire' bot. Well, AOL isn't going to do it, so I thought I would.

This is really just a spin off of code I couldn't find that did what this AIM with Amazon.com O'Reilly hack did (I did it about a year before the book was published)." [PROTOPLASMIC.ORG]

Too... damn... cool! Who knew this was so easy? Leland Johnson, that's who! He's got this running against the West Nyack Free Library's Horizon catalog, so now I'll have to try this out with my own organization's Innovative one. If it works, Aaron could add the AIMbot to the business cards he's handing out with his Library's AIM screen name!

So all together now, everyone throw a big thank you Leland's way, and wish him luck on his ECE100 homework!

Side note: as of 11:30 pm CST, I'm not getting any results from the AIM bot, but I don't think it's the code's fault because I'm not getting any results returned from within the WNFL catalog either. I'll try again tomorrow.

Librarians Ruled "Brainiest" in Britain 

"In a credit to the library profession, The British Library's team on the BBC2 show 'University Challenge - The Professionals' won out as the brainiest of the brainy professionals." [Katonah Village Library 125th Anniversary]

Today I did two hands-on workshops about blogging at Lincoln Trail Libraries System. Both sessions went very well, and I feel confident we'll see some new library blogs on the block. Best story of the day - one participant was from the Tuscola Public Library. When class started at 9:30 a.m., they didn't have a web site. Now they do.

Other fun things I learned today:

• LTLS has been using Blogger to produce a System Status blog for their online services, including their catalog! I've been trying to get SWAN to do this for a while now, but it's a good reminder for... um... IT staff at MLS. cough cough
   
• The Business & Economics Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has an RSS feed!

IMing Revolution Suggests Broader Social Implications 

"This generation is one of multitaskers who believe they can and are getting more things done simultaneously. It's hard to believe that multitaskers can do all those tasks well, as anybody who has driven behind someone on a cell phone will tell you. But that issue aside, maybe we are slowly wiring future generations in a new way. Maybe 40 years from now, we'll drive and yak as easily as we walk and chew gum today. Maybe we're turning ourselves into what our newest cell phones are: portable units capable of communicating in multiple formats.

Parents are seeing their high school teens rewiring their brains now. When the kids aren't talking on the phone, they're texting on it, and when they get home, they're IMing on the computer. Wary of this form of communication, many schools restrict cell phone use to prevent in-class chatting -- and cheating. But if the use of instant messaging is an indication, there are signs that these communication habits will stick with teens even beyond their college years....

So if this isn't a group of successful multitaskers, they think they are, and their skills will evolve along with the cell phones that already can surf the Web, play games, text-message, show television and download and play music.

But that evolution also means a whole group of children is being left behind because there's still no bridge across the digital divide. Chances are most of the respondents in the Pew studies were neither minorities nor from lower economic backgrounds. Low-income families are less likely to have a computer at home, and minorities are less likely to start using a computer at an early age, according to recent findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The foundation's study of Internet access and use by children ages 8 to 18 found that because of this class-race gap, technological literacy -- understanding the language of icons and knowing how to find information online -- was lacking among many minority children from lower-income homes, which were unlikely to have a computer or Internet connection." [Chicago Tribune, via textually.org]

Which, of course, is where libraries come in. Back in the 1990s, libraries debated whether email was a valid use of public computers, and now we're having that same discussion about instant messaging.

And you know what? The answer is the same - patrons using the internet to communicate, connect, exchange information, or just plain chat is indeed a valid use of public terminals. We have to get over this issue now because when we don't let them IM in the library, we're telling them that we don't value their preferred method of communication, whether it's with their friends or with librarians. We're telling them that the library is not a place for instant messaging, so go somewhere else to do it.

Except that they are going to go somewhere else and do it (at least, those that can), and they're not going to come back and they're not going to think of the library when they think of instant messaging. Would your library find that attitude acceptable if we replace "IM" with "email?" How about if we replace "IM" with "telephone?"