The Best Thing since a Better Mousetrap

Okay, so it’s been about four days since the application launched (btw, I swear there will be non-application blog posts someday!), and things are going overwhelmingly well. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback, mostly positive. My upgrade schedule is pretty-well set, but I’m looking to see if people would do things in a different order:

1. Get the digg-like interface for resources up and running. This will allow anyone to contribute to the resources, vote on them, and add comments. The top five will be displayed on the “canvas page,” with a link to the full listing. The universal resources will still be at the top (probably), but any catalog, database, etc. can be added.
2. The profile badge will have the newest and/or recently popular resources instead of the (hilarious) video from Weird Al’s movie, UHF.
3. An additional section will be added that will link to an Information Literacy wiki (If a good one aimed at non-librarians already exists, please link to it in the comments) in colloquial language to help patrons help themselves.
4. Some sort of usage of the invite notification system provided by Facebook. This will be aimed at getting users. As expected, the initial users of the application have (mostly) been librarians. This is positive for a few reasons, and useful because the infrastructure is there for patrons with Facebook-based questions.
5. Tweak my database of librarians with additional email addresses, homepage URLs, and other useful data — currently-registered librarians can easily update, while new librarians will automatically have the option.
6. More stuff is on the way, especially since the feedback and suggestions have been wonderful!

Note: I get off work today at 9:00PM, and will be burning some hardcore midnight oil to get these launched as quickly as possible. Please be patient as things come into operation over the weekend. Thanks!

You can see what I’m up to by adding the alpha app.

Also, look out for the open Application Data, and eventually the open source.

(Lastly, on a personal note — My packrat mentality makes it insanely difficult to weed “my” collection. Just wanted to get that off my chest.)