> We are considering building a dynamic book stack map application,
> linked to our catalog, that would show a color-coded map of what
> region of the stacks a given book is in.
>
> I am writing to see if anyone here has seen or developed any dynamic
> map applications used for library stacks.
Timely question for me as we've just done this at Durham University.
It's almost ready for general consumption. You can see it on our
test Web server though, a few examples:
<http://library.dur.ac.uk:2082/record=b1734634a>
<http://library.dur.ac.uk:2082/record=b1076779a>
<http://library.dur.ac.uk:2082/record=b1476037a>
You want the link that says "Show location at $LOCATION". What we've
done is use Innovative's WebBridge product to look at item locations,
and create a link out to a PHP script if an item matches a given
location.
This link includes a classmark. The script looks up the Dewey number
in a MySQL database that contains regular expressions that match up
ranges of classmarks against co-ordinates on a map. The script then
sends off the map name and co-ordinates to another script that
overlays an arrow on a PNG map. Job done.
Long-term, the dream is to write out a complete SVG map in reply to a
query for a location and serve that up. This relies on browser
support, so you could do this now for Gecko-based browsers...
We looked for libraries that were doing this already, but didn't find
anyone apart from Huddersfield. Huddersfield seems to use static (but
so so pretty) animated GIFs for their maps which I assume need updating
each time stock is moved around. This is exactly what we wanted to
avoid, so a simple arrow on a map seemed the way to go.
Andrew
--
Andrew Preater
Web Applications Manager
Durham University Library
Tel: 0044 191 334 2941
Received on Thu Aug 09 2007 - 10:57:38 EDT