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RSS of Public Library Check-outs and Requests Available for SF

ELF | Your Personal Email Library Reminder Service

Following-up on my earlier LazyWeb request for library account RSS feeds. Just last night, I requested that ELF add San Francisco’s public library to their collection of systems, and, bang, there it is when I wake up this morning: free RSS feeds of (and emails about) checked-out and on-request books with configurable reminders, mobile messaging, and a nice, simple interface. Looks pretty cool to use so far, and how fast was that service?

I still believe this is the sort of thing that ought to be built-in to almost any conceivable service, going forward. Grateful as I am for the hard-working folks who build things like ELF, it seems to me that consumers shouldn’t need to seek out third-party software, hacks, scraping, and clever chicanery to bubble up their important information in a smart, contextual way.

But, until it is truly ubiquitous among vendors and services, it seems like there’s a small but viable market for folks like ELF, RSS Calendar, and others to gobble up here.

Syndication ain’t just for kitty photos any more.

Mad Times's picture

Library card monitoring If you're like...

Library card monitoring

If you're like me, you check out way more books and magazines and videos and comics and CDs and things from the library than you could ever be expected to actually consume in the time allotted, let alone keep track...

 
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