Fun With our Meebo Widget and the Library Catalog

Very cool. I think I might go ahead and add this to our log-in failed page for EzProxy.

EDward Metz – great idea about EZProxy! That’s another good use – stick it where customers generally get confused.

EDward Metz – great idea about EZProxy! That’s another good use – stick it where customers generally get confused.

We’re using the Wimzi widget, but I’ve also put it on our community info site: http://community.ahml.info. In future weeks it will proliferate its way into more pages on that site, but I wanted to put it on the homepage in a hurry. Note that I’m also using it to promote other avenues, as well, especially 24/7. A nice thing about Wimzi is that you can have different versions of the widget for different locations and that the transcript indicates which widget was being used, so we can compare traffic from different points. Meebo may do this, too. I don’t know.

Sorry, the above URL doesn’t work right (I think the ending period botches things). Try:

http://community.ahml.info

BTW, we managed to create a facebook “business page” for the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, but the Wimzi widget is only available for personal profiles right now, so it’s a no-go there.

Hey all, I got the meebo widget to work in HIP 4.x — if anyone wants details just let me know. I also added it on the ‘no hits’ page here http://www.uab.edu/lister/tools/ — so far it has been well received.

Lisa

Does anyone know whether the MeeboMe widget would work in Voyager?

Great idea, David. A year or two ago we added the Google spell check API service to our no results screen. It catches typos and misspellings and displays a clickable link, just like in Google. If you are comfortable editing the XSL stylesheets (and you obviously are) it’s pretty trivial to add.

Screenshot re: last comment

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hennepincountylibrary/2302121703/

Congrats for this creative visualization.

FYI. I have been updating my article on each development that takes place in the area, aka., Visual Library Catalog. See my article:
http://www.geocities.com/drmtaher/AlternativeCataloging.htm

awesome. unsure if you are aware that we use meebo because we don’t _have_an_OPAC_at_all…. so basically meebo is great for that purpose – when there is no info and people have questions.

great solution! i love it!

From Smart Computing Magazine (Sept. 2008, pg. 41, Web Tips) Have you checked out Zoomii (http://www.zoomii.com) It would look nice if a Library Catalog could have the option to view it like that.