Millennium Integration module for Drupal 2.0 screenshots

Here are some screenshots from the 2.0 version of the Drupal Millennium Integration module in action.

These records were imported from a live library catalog. This example is using the Fusion theme.

Teasers for nodes with imported records.

A full node view. The Table of Contents section below is provided by the optional (included) Millennium Enrichment module which brings in data from the Library of Congress at import time. All the information would be in Drupal's full text index and thus is searchable.

This node shows an embedded Google Book Search reader. It only shows when the item actually has a preview or full view in Google Book Search.

This is a wall of books from the included Views integration. This example uses the Garland theme.

You can easily do manual or automatic batch imports in a variety of ways; this screenshot shows an example.

Here are some of the configuration/settings screens.

General settings and sources. The module can handle several OPACs simultaneously.

Read more over at the Millennium Integration module project page.

My article about our Drupal library discovery layer

At last, it's out.

From the abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to document how the library at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey Campus came to use the open source Drupal with other freely available tools as the basis for an extensible platform for current and future information discovery gateways.

The article is available here:
From OPAC to CMS: Drupal as an extensible library platform (subscription required; you can get a pre-print version).

Basically the article relates how we built a library discovery layer built on Drupal, which contains the portion of our collections that is relevant to the School of Biotech and Health at the university. It uses the Drupal Millennium and HILCC modules, the Google Custom Search Engine, EZProxy and lots of other Drupal modules to do it.

As it stands, I'm proud I was able to publish my first article in a peer-reviewed Journal; I, however, think I could have delivered a better product. Something for next time =)

Also, I was rather surprised to find out the journal (Library Hi-Tech) has impact factor metrics from ISI-Thomson.

I'm not sure if I can distribute a pre-print version; I'll ask =) Pre-print version is here.

You can also view my earlier post about a presentation on the same subject.

Authenticating Drupal users against III / Millennium

The Millenium (III) Integration module for Drupal now has a VERY experimental module that uses screen-scraping to allow authenticating users against an III system using their library credentials (barcode/ID, last name and PIN).

This is done using a bit of screenscraping and using the "usual" Drupal API hooks.

The neat side of doing this is you could, in theory:

• [optionally] share your currently loaned items with other users or publicly
  
• receive custom alerts while navigating within the Drupal site ("you owe the library $$")
  
• when looking at an item imported via Millennium module for Drupal, see a message informing this item is one you currently have/is overdue, etc.
  
• let users make some/all of their loaned items public (in profile? RSS? etc)
  
• Mash up any of the previous with other Drupal modules (imagine "Your Friend checked out this book, and rated it ****", or "Subscribe to your friend's checkout feeds", etc.)
  

Here's a screenshot of how this shows under the /user Drupal path:

Now, of course this is teh fragile, using screenscraping and stuff. Current options are: (1) $hell out for Patron API module for III, (2) use SIP (which still requires a module), or (3) keep at this;

How can YOU help? If you have an III system at your command, you could provide me with a temporary login to test against.

Building a Thematic Library with Drupal presentation

Here is a link to a presentation we did on how we built a special site for library health resources--an OPAC built on Drupal, Solr, the Millennium integration module and Google Custom Search Engine.

http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/mty/workingtogether/Developing_a_Thematic_Library_rev_AGG_IJET_13oct08.ppt

You can visit the working site here: http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/pasteur/

This was part of the University of Maryland/Tecnológico de Monterrey sister libraries conference, "Working Together".

Drupal 6 version of Millennium Module available for testing

I just created and released a new version (2.0-dev) of the Millennium Integration module for Drupal. The earlier version worked with Drupal 5 and required the Biblio module. This new version is for Drupal 6, and removes the requirement for the Biblio module.

The module currently outputs bibliographic in a themeable table (meaning that with a little PHP, you can completely change the layout). For the final 2.0 version I plan to include other import and/or presentation options, like putting the fields into CCK or import into the Biblio module (when that module is available).



I still insist trying to integrate with Biblio because it already does a lot of cool things like provide a bibliographic citation (APA) view, provide CoINs (embedded machine-readable metadata in pages), export to bibliographic management software and more. For now, releasing this version will (I hope) kickstart a new round of testing by libraries who want to try out options to make their catalog better.

To get more information, download and installation instructions, go to the project page: http://drupal.org/project/millennium

Drupal + SOPAC + Community power Darien Library's new site and OPAC

Step by Darien Library's website, where you can see their new catalog powered by Drupal and SOPAC2, created by John Blyberg. John created the Ann Arbor District Library site, which uses an III system for its ILS, and was--according to Richard Wallis--"the poster child of Library 2.0" websites.

You can find out more about SOPAC:

• John Blyberg's own blog post about SOPAC 2.0
  
• The Library Journal article on SOPAC
  
• My earlier blog post
  
• An audio interview with John, via Talis's Panlibus Blog
  
• Almost Christmas in Libraryland…Ho Ho Ho Mr Blyberg from Kathryn Greenhill's blog

From the interview, it seems that the code for SOPAC will be available in a week or two, and John stated that it will be GPL-licensed.

Congratulations!

SOPAC 2.0: a discovery layer for every library?

John Blyberg (creator of AADL.org and now at Darien Library) posts about the new version of SOPAC-- a "Social Opac" discovery layer which, it seems, will be ILS-independent. SOPAC 1.0 works with III (or "Millennium") ILSs and Drupal, and apart from normal catalog searching, it adds features like tag clouds, reviews and more.

It seems to me that if SOPAC can have an abstraction layer so that you can plug in translators for different ILSs, it really opens the door to using all of the great modules we already have in Drupal and have the tools to "easily" build Library Catalogs Just The Way We Like.

This is our philosophy--and I guess John's--for picking Drupal: have a solid base (in code AND community) from which to build on, and... build!

I envy Darien Library, I'm sure they'll get a great new website to match their library =) Full steam ahead!

Drupal Millennium Module 1.4 released

This release mainly fixes some MARC import problems and adds a few new features.

You can try out our live implementation in PASTEUR, our thematic library oriented towards our Health, Chemistry and Biotechnology faculty and students. This site is also running Apache Solr for faceted search, a custom (not yet released) Millennium Authentication module and others.

From the project release page:

Fixes:

• Fixed [#263310]
  
• Fixes for [#253593]
  
• Holdings ajax call now locale-aware
  
• Fixed ids for coverimages; were incorrect if ISSN or ISBN inculded a dash.
  
• Added missing "real names" for MARC language codes (e.g.: eng => English)
  
• Cleanup of CSS file
  

New features:

• Added more placeholders for book jacket image call (title, author)
  
• Tries to get Call number from first item if not available in MARC bibliographic record
  
• Adds all biblio information to Drupal's fulltext index.
  
• [#260858] Added .pot file for translators
  

Changes:

• Dropped auto URL alias generation; should be handled by pathauto.module + biblio.module (see [#89038])
  

A million free covers from Library Thing

LibraryThing just opened access to around a million cover images uploaded by LT users; you can get to them just by signing up for an API key and grabbing them from a special URL.

Tim Spalding makes some disclaimers: Amazon has more and probably better cover images, and they impose no maximum limit. However Amazon requires you to backlink to them from each image. LT has no such limit, and in fact encourages you to locally store images in order to reduce load on LT's servers.

If you installed the Millennium Module for Drupal, you can take advantage of LT's cover images like this:

• Sign up to LibraryThing if you haven't done so already
• Get an API key from LT
• Put this URL into your Millennium module's settings, replacing KEY with your actual LT API key:
  
  http://covers.librarything.com/devkey/KEY/medium/isbn/!id
  
  It will look like this:
  
  

Drupal Millennium Module 1.3 released

The Millennium module for Drupal is now at version 1.3. It fixes a number of bugs (mainly with MARC import) and has some new features:

• added option to show Google Books links (thanks Tim Spalding!)
  
• now shows a direct link to "Place hold" for current item. It only shows if this is really possible, by contacting Millennium when the node is generated.
  
• provides a block which shows actions (comment, hold, favorites, etc) which normally show under the item. (This should probably go into another module, though, as it is not really Millennium-related!)

The Google Books links show like this. It only shows if the current item has a "Full view" or "Preview" available at Google Books.
The other nice feature is a more cosmetic one; I made a block to join all the actions that can be made on an item on a Drupal block, so you can more fully place and style it:
Now, the only link that's actually generated by the Millennium module is the "Place hold or request delivery" link; the others come from other modules (Add This Button, Views Bookmark, and the core Comment module).

Thanks to everyone contributing! See the project page for more info, or you can go see our live demo.

Drupal Millennium module screenshots

Below are pics of the admin portion of the module; for a live demo you can try our implementation at http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/pasteur/en

These are the general settings for the Drupal Millennium module, from where you can jumpstart your Next-Generation Library Catalog =)





Here's where you can manually queue items for import:

Beta release of Millennium integration module

I am proud to announce the newest version of the Millennium integration module, which crawls a Millennium WebOpac and converts MARC into Biblio nodes, adds taxonomy terms, and can show holdings information in real-time.

Check it out here: http://drupal.org/project/millennium

For a demo, go to http://enlinea.mty.itesm.mx/