Linked Data

You've probably heard Linked Data being talked about by library people.

You may have even heard jargon being thrown around like triplets, the Semantic Web, RDF and Bibframe.

But if you're anything like me it has not been totally clear what linked data is and how it could benefit libaries.  But I've been let into the club and you can be too.

Mashing up the Flickr API with Google Maps

This post is 3rd and final post in a series documenting my experience Learning the Google Maps API.

My final experiment in learning the Google Maps API involves using the Flickr API as a data source for a set of  map markers and info windows.

The first post in this series focused on loading a set of markers, with associated info windows onto a map. In that post I mentioned that in a production environment I would be looking at loading the data for the markers from an external source. Using the Flickr API to fetch the data about my public photos is one way that I could develop an example of how this would in practice.

Overlaying Historical Maps using the Google Maps API

This post is part of a series documenting my experience Learning the Google Maps API.

Straight up, overlays were the main reason I wanted to learn the Google Maps API. Markers are cool and all, but there are number of ways you can generate maps with a set of markers and info windows and embed them on a website, even with limited JavaScript skills, without having to code them from scratch.

When it comes to Overlays, however, we're talking unique custom maps.  It also has direct, immediate relevance to libraries that have historical maps in their collection.

First Steps with the Google Maps API

This post is part of a series documenting my experience Learning the Google Maps API.

The most basic thing you can do with the Google Maps API is to load a map onto your website that is centered on a custom location and set to your choice of zoom level. But a map by itself is not particularly useful - you probably want to mark the location of something on the map. And you may even want to display some extra information related to those markers. So that is where my journey into the Google Maps API began.

Learning the Google Maps API

I've been working on library websites for a long time but as a self taught coder JavaScript has been my stumbling block.  My HTML and CSS skills have allowed me to do most of what I wanted over the years but increasingly of late I have found myself dipping my toes in to the JavaScript waters to get certain things done.

It was high time I got a bit more proficient in JS land and over the last year or so I have taken a more structured approach to tying to teach myself the language.  I've been learning a lot. Part of the what has driven me to learn this stuff is the potential I see in some of the APIs available from different web services that can benefit libraries.