[Web4lib] twitter for creating relations between isbn andweb resources

[Theo van Veen]

Hello Alan and others,

Actually we have no means to follow progress of the use of twitter for
this purpose. I know that this would be interesting. If someone uses his
own twitter account you can only see the result when you hit an ISBN
that has a relation. Rather than using isbn_12345678 we could use #isbn
12345678. In that case one could search for #isbn to see how many
relations are added.
Maybe a more refined syntax would be better like:
#isbn 12345678 #hasReview http://xyz
and
#isbn 12345678 #relatesTo http://xyz
In this way a search for #isbn 12345678 will reveal different types of
(predefined?) relations. Using Twitter we need however to be economical
with the number of bytes being used.
Any suggestions?

Regards,
Theo

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Alan Harnum [mailto:aharnum at torontopubliclibrary.ca] 
Verzonden: dinsdag 6 oktober 2009 15:45
Aan: Theo van Veen
Onderwerp: Re: [Web4lib] twitter for creating relations between isbn
andweb resources

Hello Theo,

This looks really interesting.  Do you or the project have a Twitter
account or homepage I could follow the progress at?

Regards,
Alan Harnum
Web Librarian
Toronto Public Library Web Team
aharnum at torontopubliclibrary.ca

>>> "Theo van Veen" <Theo.vanVeen at KB.nl> 02/10/2009 7:20:52 pm >>>
When users want to make a link between an ISBN and a review or other
relevant web resource they can do that for example by adding an entry in
Twitter like: relate isbn_xxxxxxxxx http://xyz. OPACS presenting a full
display of a book description may invoke a Twitter query on-the-fly for
the ISBN via the URL parameter q=isbn_xxxxxxxxx and when there is a hit
in Twitter these OPACS may add the URL http://xyz to the presentation
for that ISBN. In this way a single OPAC may benefit from links added in
Twitter by users of all other OPACS that support this feature. Of course
this concept does not have to be restricted to ISBN and works only when
a critical mass of supporting OPACS is reached.
 
Examples can be found and created via
http://dev.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tpportal. Search for "beatles", select
"Algemene Catalogus" and from the displayed records select the first or
fouth entry. There you will see in red the added links. If you have a
twitter account you can add a link to an ISBN by pressing the the ISBN
value. You will get a services menu and one of the options is "Add
related URL in Twitter". Clicking that link will result in a prompt for
a URL and after that for your user name and password. When retrieving
the same record one minute later the link in Twitter is added to the
ISBN.
 
Although this mail was intended for advertising the concept of using
Twitter as a common storage for relating ISBNs to web resources (which
might an old idea), I make use of the opportunity to explain what is
behind the test and demonstration portal that I mentioned. This portal
is used for testing the Schema for Integration of Web Applications
(SIWA). This is a model for allowing users to tell web applications
which other web applications they want to have integrated and when and
how. 
The basic most simple scenario is that the service integration
description specifies which metadata fields (as result of a search in a
portal) should trigger the invocation of another web application or
service. The value of that metadata field is used as input for the
invoked service. In many cases invocation is just linking to the service
but more advanced types of use are for example replacing metadata fields
by the output of a service (e.g. translation). Clicking on a metadata
value you will see all the services for which that metadata field is
defined as trigger. Some of those services are invoked automatically
like checking Twitter for ISBNs related to web resources. Average users
won't create service integration descriptions (SIDs) themselves, but we
aim at lowering the barrier for advanced users to share their SIDs with
other users.
The test portal is quite buggy but the model will be implemented in The
European Library portal and the Europeana portal in a more robust way. 
 
If you are interested in this type of service integration please let me
know.
 
Theo van Veen