On January 28, 2015, attendees of the Ontario Library Association conference got together to work with datasets to solve problems.

1. OLA Hackfest
Wednesday, 9 AM-1 PM

4. The set-up
● Registrants proposed sessions in the weeks
leading up to Super Conference
● 45 participants from 36 different institutions
● 9:00: Present your idea
● 9:30: Get to work!

5. Landing Gear Family Tree: Book APIs
“Random House has released an API
for author Kate Pullinger’s new novel,
Landing Gear. What can we do with
this API to create new ways of thinking
about this book? How can we leverage
other APIs to connect this book to the
internet?”
- Sally Wilson, Ryerson University
Sally Wilson (Ryerson), Dana Thomas (Ryerson), Helen Kula (UTM), Pat Gracey (TPL), Lisa Smith
(Chatham-Kent PL), Eric Heesen (Glengary-Stormont), Linda (school)

7. Pinpointing Poetry
“Toronto Public Library has compiled a
dataset of poems that reference
Toronto neighbourhoods and
landmarks. The end goal is to create a
‘literary map’ experience. How can we
transform this data to create
something useable for an application?”
- Alan Harnum, TPL
Lina Kim (TPL), Sarah Wiebe (George Brown), Enid Wray (Etobicoke School of the Arts), Karina
Douglas (Timmins PL)

9. Mapping OLA Attendees
“The OLA office collects data about
where Super Conference attendees
come from. Let’s visualize who’s
here!”
- Michelle Arbuckle, OLA
Rebecca Larocque (North Bay PL), Jeanette Hatherill (U of Ottawa), Christopher Jasztrab (Brampton
PL), Tim Ribraric (Brock U), Julie Andrews-Jothom (Brampton PL), Jeff Toste (TPL), Neil Arsenault
(Wellington County PL)

11. Mapping Recreation - Edmonton PL
“The Edmonton Public Library
releases all of its branch location and
local program data. I would love to see
the programs data on a map that
indicates where and when different
things are happening.”
- Peter Maguire (Edmonton PL)
Peter Maguire (Edmonton PL), Stephen Wood (Bruce Country PL), Alan Harnum (PL)

13. Staff Digital Competencies
“Oshawa Public Libraries surveyed all
public library staff about their digital
device competency and comfort.
We’ve got a large data set and a large
collection of derived statistics. How
can we map, tabulate, improve upon
and use this data? How does a library
map its staff’s technology
competencies?”
- Aaron Kimberly (Oshawa PL)
Aaron Kimberly (Oshawa PL), Monica Fazekas (U Western), Margaret Wallace (Oshawa PL), “someone
from Waterloo PL”

15. Playing with the Bibliocommons API
Improving an existing Twitter bot
that recommends books at
Ottawa Public Library using the
Bibliocommons API, a.k.a. testing
the limits :-)
- Sarah Simpkin (U of Ottawa)
Francine Berish (Queen’s), Marc d’Avernas (WRDSB), Lindsay Shaw (Mohawk College), Sarah Simpkin
(uOttawa), Arouce Wasty (uOttawa)

17. Clearing the Path to Embedded
Metadata for the TPL Digital Archive
“There are Dublin Core data in the
TPL archive that aren’t surfaced
in the public facing web pages.
Dan Scott recommended using
Open Graph and Schema.org to
surface the data.
- Dan Scott & Donna MacLeod
Dan Scott (Laurentian U), Geoff Sinclair (NBSOL), Donna MacLeod (TPL) ft. John Fink (McMaster U)