Software Development

This Twitter feed lists books just added to the DC Public Library system

The account, @booksfordc, is a civic hacking project by Emanuel Feld.

New uses for old boyfriends: a novel
Bad teeth
My heart and other black holes
Those are three of the newest books available in the D.C. Public Library system. How do we know? There is now a Twitter feed of the latest additions: @bookdsfordc tweets out new books based on hourly scrapes of the library’s catalog.
Emanuel Feld created the account because he wanted to find out about all the graphic novels; at least, all the ones that were available at his local library. He told Technical.ly DC in an email:

I went to MLK Jr. library one day to check out their graphic novel collection and was frankly surprised by how many recently published books they already had on their shelves. Because of some issues with DCPL’s catalog technology provider, there was no friendly way of keeping up to date with the latest additions.

The account went live at last month’s Open Data Day DC. You can help Feld with the project at Code for DC.
“In general,” he added, “it’s just fun to see the variety of books coming in each day — books I wouldn’t even know to look for were it not for this project.”

Companies: Civic Tech DC

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