This is a textual representation of a lightning talk done on Feb 26th at Code4Lib 2008. When the video of the talk is up (thanks, Noel!) I’ll link it here, too. The video is now available, and that article includes an update on progress since the this article was posted.
The Columbus Metropolitan Library, OCLC, and Ohio State University and OhioLINK have put in a bid as host site for the 2009 Code4Lib meeting. Code4Lib is an informal organization of self-selected librarians and technology professionals. It exists as a volunteer organization run by consensus of interested individuals. The meeting in 2009 will be the fifth fourth1 face-to-face meeting of this group. Details of the central Ohio host location proposal are on the web at http://roytennant.com/code4lib2009.html
Information about becoming a member of the Code4Lib community and voting in the host site selection process are included below.
Earlier I mentioned creating a Google Custom Search for Planet Code4Lib. The Google-supplied markup puts a form on your web page that leads to Google’s server farm. (Alternatively, you can create a custom URL that points to an HTML page at Google which contains the form.) Well, that’s really neat, but not far enough. How about an OpenSearch plugin suitable for Firefox and MSIE7? Here is the plugin markup:
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <opensearchdescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/"> <shortname>Planet Code4Lib</shortname> <description>Search the bloggers of Planet Code4Lib using Google Custom Search.</description> <inputencoding>UTF-8</inputencoding> <tags>code4lib library</tags> <contact>peter@OhioLINK.edu</contact> <url type="text/html" template="http://www.google.com/cse?q={searchTerms}&cx=017716194421589436379:zdoxzpetaxk&sa=Search&cof=FORID:0"> <image height="16" width="16" type="image/png"> data:image/png;base64,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</image> <adultcontent>false</adultcontent> <moz :searchform>http://dltj.org/2006/10/google-custom-search-for-planet-code4lib/ </moz></url> </opensearchdescription> |
Pretty neat, eh? This link will install the search definition in Firefox and MSIE7.
I wanted to mess around with Google’s new Custom Search Engine feature and in casting about for a list of URLs to feed it I thought I’d try the list of blogs at Planet Code4Lib. As it turns out, this might be a modestly useful search if you remember reading something from one of the code4lib bloggers but can’t remember which one. The exercise was pretty fun and here is the result: