Library 'Superpatron’ Outsmarts Google

By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 5/1/2006

Edward Vielmetti thought it was about time for Ann Arbor, MI, residents to be able to locate online the books that are available on their local library’s shelves. Tweaking an existing program, Vielmetti did just that—allowing anyone who downloads the script to find a book at the Ann Arbor District Library through Google’s Book Search page.

Only a small fraction of titles on Google’s Book Search contain a “Find in a Library” link, according to Vielmetti, a member of the library’s technology advisory board and a researcher at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. So, based on code from the LibraryLookup program written by Jon Udell, an IT analyst for InfoWorld, Vielmetti devised a program that enables users of Google Book Search to link to a title’s corresponding library record.

Although not a librarian himself, Vielmetti has a patron’s appreciation for libraries—actually he’s more of a superpatron, which happens to be the name of his blog (vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron), launched in December 2005. “It’s written from the point of view of a library patron, rather than librarians,” he says. “I felt that there were things librarians may not see if they sit behind a desk that you can when you walk through the door.”

The blog has a decent following with 188 RSS subscribers and daily hits from 150 readers. But when Google linked information about his Ann Arbor Library Lookup program to its site, traffic swelled to about 800 readers per day, says Vielmetti.

Although clearly an Internet expert, Vielmetti was formerly part of Cisco Systems’s network security team, he says his blog is not really about technology: “I’m just looking for what’s really good at libraries.”