US contingent lead mashup contenders

The first Talis Library Mashup awards look set to go to the US, where information professionals lead the field in mashup development.

Library automation specialist Talis is offering £1,000 to the winner of its competition to encourage the creation of web mashups that display data holdings outside a library setting.

Judges are currently deliberating on the finalists, with Talis expecting two outright winners.

Despite the strength of the US contingent, Talis technology evangelist Paul Miller was quick to defend British information professionals. He said institutions in the UK, especially the Open University , were being highly creative.

“There are plenty of ideas in the UK,” he said. “What we are interested in doing now is seeing how we can encourage information professionals to take the next step and create mashups.”

Miller said information professionals would be “storing up problems for themselves” if they didn’t start producing mashups soon. “Users are being pushed down one avenue or another, online or offline. Most users are using online and forgetting about offline.”

The aim of the Talis competition is to integrate information about offline, and online content held by corporate, academic and public libraries into a variety of web applications such as Google Maps.

“It’s all about managing the information hybrid better,” Miller said.

The competition certainly shows that information professionals have vision. A big favourite with the judges is the Illinois Alliance Library System’s Second Life 2.0, which involves gamers in the avatar virtual world using the library catalogue to access and order content through the game.

www.talis.com/tdn/competition

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!