Pipes and me
By yvonnereed - Posted on February 25th, 2008
I decided to go with Yahoo Pipes (thanks to Melissa). After watching the video, Pipes seemed pretty straight-forward until I started to deviate from the formula it had used in the example. It was fun trying to figure out what would work and what didn’t but I wished they would have provided more examples in the video about the other modules and what they can do for you. I looked at some samples and tried to make sense of it all but it took me longer than I first anticipated.
I created a Pipe for Graphic novels because somewhere in one of my listservs a colleague had asked advice about keeping up with new graphic novels. We all poured in with our favorite sources. There were so many sources given that it made me realize that maybe there is better way to keep up with the new GN. Aha, Yahoo Pipes should fix me right up.
I did not include all the sources in this module since I was really interested in making it work properly and I even disconnected one feed because it got to be a little confusing. I wish the sort function worked better or allowed me to specify format for each individual feed. Maybe by running the sort function on each individual feed then combining the feeds would fix the problem. There are so many possibilities. And the fact that it is a beta doesn’t make me feel too bad when something doesn’t work like I want it to.
If I could create a wish list for how my library could use this would be to create a module that would connect our online catalog, subscription databases and e-books so when a patron does a search for a particular topic he would get results for books, journals, encyclopedias, online e-books etc all in one screen. Trying to get our patrons to use the subscription databases is sometimes a challenge but if the information just popped up for them well that’s just great marketing.
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