DLF Fall Forum - PennVibes

In this presentation, UPenn Libraries staff Delphine Hanna and Michael Winkler demonstrated some of the work they've been doing in content delivery and organisation with AJAX, XML and Java to deliver a flexible, configurable interface for users. Essentially they have a portal with function/tool widgets (RSS feed subscribe, catalogue search, etc.), which looks much like iGoogle homepage. The widgets are developed with Script.aculo.us and prototype.js, in a PageFlakes-like environment.

The main issue identified was a lack of standards for widgets like this. However, they are hoping that a pool of library-oriented widgets will be produced over time.

One of the really interesting things is that they are also using this same technology as a web publishing tool. Reference librarians are contacted by phone and obtain information from the caller. At the same time, they are using the information provided to create a widget-based web page which will help the caller with their research query. Once completed, the librarian published the composed webpage as a public website page for the caller to access and use, with the added bonus that the page is there for other website users to refer to in the future.

This creative use of the technology was of interest not only in terms of reference, but also web publishing. Assuming that all (or most) of the information you wanted to publish on the website was available in structured electronic form, you could potentially construct your entire website from a variety of these widgets which use that information, and then publish it as static HTML pages. Maybe we will see this emerge as a way of creating and maintaining websites over the coming years.