IM your library catalog…sort of
Byoms…a new concept to me, introduced by Phil Bradley. Byoms.com lets you to create an AIM buddy that you can set up to do searches on a specific website (read: ask questions on a certain website). So, you use the one for Wikipedia. Just add the Byom Wikipedia screen name to your buddy list on AIM (byomsWikipedia) and you’re good to go. When I’m stumpified about something, I use AIM on my mobile device to ask Wikipedia using the keywords of my question. Wikipedia IMs me back with the answer (the fist chunk of text from the relevant search results for my terms).
I tested the Wikipedia byom and the IMDB byom. Both worked nicely.
I wondered if we could create library catalog byoms, so I tried creating one for our catalog. To create one, you have to first sign up for an AIM Screen name for this new entity (just name it the same as your Byom–like SearchXXXXX). Then you give the Byoms site that account info, make some customizable choices, you can even create a button!
You can try my library catalog too by adding SearchPLSCatalog to your AIM buddy list and asking it questions). Sadly, it doesn’t work too well. I’m not sure why. Well, that’s not entirely true. Yes I do. It’s searching the catalog just fine, it’s just not displaying the results very well, definitely not showing the relevant information, and not bringing back reliable results (which I’m sure has to do with III’s back-end). I’m guessing most library catalog searches wouldn’t work too well with this kind of tool. See the screenshot below for an example (including how the 
characters in the search URL turned into frowny faces). I asked the catalog about pigs, and then about cats. But note the nifty customizable message you can create for when there aren’t any results!
Maybe someone else can get it to work better for another library catalog. Who knows…but there is one more problem that effects the usefulness of this for library catalogs: you can only have 5 results come back to you. Most library material searches will surpass that greatly, if only for the same title in 5 different formats (book on CD, book on tape, regular book, Large Type book, Spanish version, etc.).
I think Byoms a cool tool, and one to promote to techies who like to ask things via IM, or who use mobile search a lot. This is much easier than going to a site only to then search it, especially on those tiny little mobile device screens. Read more about it at SearchEngineWatch and TechCrunch. Give it a try!
June 13th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
The frowny faces in the URLs are priceless! It’s like your catalog is saying “look, this isn’t working very well. We are both just going to get frustrated. I wasn’t really programmed for this. It will end in tears, I promise you. Please give up. And whatever you do, don’t ask me about cats.”