Reading Radar, a mashup created by John Herren, combines New York Times bestseller list data that the NYT makes available via its Developer Network with book data from Amazon Web Services.

Reading Radar gives you the cover and the NYT Bestseller List stats alongside reader reviews and other data from Amazon. It’s simple, it’s highly functional, and can be incorporated into your library’s website via Yahoo Pipes.

This useful and tidy bit of code was just one of the many tips passed along by Nicole Engard in the recent Library Mashups class she taught for Nylink last week. Nicole’s new book, Library Mashups is available now, and we’re excited to note that she will be speaking at our Annual Meeting on June 3rd at FIT.

OCLC is pleased to announce that a freely-accessible site for searching only OAIster records is now available. With this OAIster site (http://oaister.worldcat.org/), you are able to search only OAIster and its millions of metadata records.
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Tweet Deck (in beta) is a great, compact little program that helps you track twitter searches, keep current on your friends and neighbors tweets, see when your tweets have been re-tweeted or otherwise referenced, and find great new twitterers to follow. One of its nicest features, if you happen to be a twittering hydra with multiple logins, is the ability to track all of your twitter accounts in one place. More information about Tweet Deck here.

Yahoo! MapMixer is an interesting new (as of August) web service that allows you to upload your own maps and superimpose them over Yahoo!Maps. It’s still in Beta, or development, but you can use it. (The screenshot above is of the Golden Gate National Recreation area – a satellite image superimposed with a map of the park, you can control the opacity of the superimposed map.)

Think of the possibilities! One thing that I’m always looking for on web-based maps like Yahoo!, MapQuest and Google are hiking trails, local interest sites, locations inside parks, etc. Now, instead of looking a big green shape for a park (with, if you’re lucky, waterways and a main road or two) you could see the hiking trails, pavilions, zoos, cultural spots, etc.

Imagine all of the map possibilities which reside in the collections of libraries throughout New York State!

Visit the site and see how straightforward the uploading process is or search for New York State tagged uploaded maps (NY is underrepresented at this time).

http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer

A new collection of handy tools designed especially for libraries, archives, museums, historic sites, and historic preservation and arts organizations has been released by the Heritage Emergency National Task Force. The tools are the result of the Task Force’s “Lessons Applied” initiative to develop practical applications for the lessons from Hurricane Katrina, such as helping cultural institutions apply for disaster aid and developing relationships with emergency responders.

The new tools are available as free downloads at www.heritageemergency.org