John Miedema's Page

The OpenBook plugin for WordPress is now available, version 1.0 beta. OpenBook is for book reviewers, book bloggers, library webmasters, anyone who wants to put book covers and data on their WordPress blog or website. The data comes from Open Library, a neutral source of book data. I built OpenBook for my own interest, but thought others might benefit from it too. OpenBook is an open source product. You can download it, view/modify the code as you like. It is just in beta phase, but it seems to… Continue

I have begun work on a WordPress plugin to easily insert book data into blog posts such as book reviews. The plugin will use “open web” technology, including WordPress open source code and OpenLibrary book data. It makes sense then to call this plugin, “OpenBook”. While I have a solid background in web development, I am new to WordPress plugin development, PHP, and open source practices, so this will be a bit of learning experience. I think the process might be of some interest to others, so I w… Continue

Is there One Big Library? Or are there many distinctive local libraries? I think both exist. For present purposes, I am interested in a comparison of the four big digital sources of book data: Amazon, LibraryThing, OpenLibrary, and WorldCat (which I will call libraries). I am in the early stages of designing a WordPress plugin that will allow people to easy insert book data (cover image, title, author, publisher, etc.) into their blog posts. For the first cut, I will select one of these four as… Continue

1. It all comes down to data and rules.
2. Organized information is handier than disorganized information.
3. The rate at which data is being recorded is accelerating faster than our ability to manage it.
4. Librarians should not build their own software systems.
5. These days there is only one way to acquire a system: buy a package, and two, custom build it.
6. RSS and XML are cooler than you think.
7. Print is the next evolution in information technology.
8. Library… Continue

You’ve heard of business intelligence. Business intelligence is a business management term, referring to the integration of data sources into a single dashboard so that users can make reasonable business decisions. Health intelligence is a similar concept but for the specific domain of health. I think it is time to introduce the concept of reading intelligence.

Read the post ...