[CODE4LIB] developer competition - library usage data

[David Pattern]

Hi everyone

Just a quick plug for a developer competition that's being run by the JISC 
funded MOSAIC ("Making Our Shared Activity Information Count") Project in the 
UK: http://www.sero.co.uk/jisc-mosaic-competition.html

The usage data can be found for download via: 
http://library.hud.ac.uk/wikis/mosaic/index.php/Project_Data

...and the "Data Collection Guide" explains the XML format of the data: 
http://library.hud.ac.uk/wikis/mosaic/index.php/Project_Documentation

At present, it's just book usage data from the University of Huddersfield 
that's available to play around with, but we're hoping that it will be joined 
by some usage data from a few other UK academic libraries in due course.

As the XML usage data files are pretty big (i.e. opening them in Internet 
Explorer is a sure fire way of killing a PC!), I've put together a quick & 
dirty API for grabbing subsets of the data: 
http://www.daveyp.com/blog/archives/953

Tony Hirst (from the Open University in the UK) has done a helpful blog post 
here: http://bit.ly/8RjYU

In terms of the competition, it's open to anyone (i.e. not just developers 
based in the UK).  The prizes are in UK sterling and the competition is being 
run according to UK law (just in case competition laws vary from country to 
country).

Have fun!

Dave Pattern
Library Systems Manager
University of Huddersfield

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