LibraryLookup iPac edition and service discovery

The LibraryLookup project has added support for another vendor: epixtech. I found about 100 libraries that use their iPac system, and I've posted the bookmarklets.

LibraryLookup (iPac edition).

There are some nice finds here, including the Seattle Public Library. Unfortunately most of the names are just bare URLs. That's because most of the implementations I found used the default title, "iPac 2.0", rather than, say, "Rock Creek Public Library." As I keep on pointing out, titles matter. There's no more basic or essential piece of metadata. In the case of a useless default title, I fell back on the bare URL -- unfriendly, but at least identifiable.

The real lesson of this part of the experiment concerns service discovery. I wasn't able to find a page with pointers to iPac sites. But after exploring a few iPac sites, I realized Google could find a bunch of them using this iPac URL signature. You have to wonder how far this could take us in a world full of RESTful services. When might Googling (or otherwise searching) for signatures be as good as, or even better than, explicit lists and directories?


Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/12/16.html#a544