Hometown library done good

Today, we at Zepheira have taken another exciting step by publishing Worthington Public Libraries bibliographic records as actionable data. While I’m excited every time we publish a library, today is special as this is *my* library (in that I’m a proud library patron of Worthington). While publishing information to the Web allows this to be accessible to everyone, I’m particularly interested in exploring how to use global technologies to accelerate and enhance local communities. I’m wonderfully fortunate to work with a team dedicated to make this a reality by weaving the best of the Web and libraries together. In this particular case however, literally in my backyard.

This publication of Worthington results in a million+ resources that previously were hidden from the Web. Here are a few interesting highlights.

• The phantom tollbooth (You’ll be hearing a lot about this of going forward … spoiler alert, I wrote about this idea a couple of years ago but very soon will show this in practice). But I also love that one link away from this book being able to explore all sorts of resources about Mathematics for kids or Mathematics (the topic) in general which is a pretty active discussion with my children. Magic is another one…. go figure 😉
• My kids are particularly interested in all things graphic novel’esque and I’m amazed at how publishing MARC as Linked Data provides new ways of exploring these (really cool) resources. Case in point, I had no idea that Graphic Novels in Sweden was even a thing?! but the The troll king proved me wrong.
• Being able to focus in on Worthington, Ohio (the Place) is pretty interesting as its the focus of a lot of different ways materials in the library are organized. The History of Worthington is one of these aspects and from there we can find examples of Photographic surveys and cool videos capturing the history of the area.

I love my job and I love my *visible* library.