Ajax won't mean much for most of you, and that's OK. It's website behind-the-scenes stuff that allows you to make nifty applications and widgets, lessen the load on the server, and make page load times faster for people browsing the site.
The workshop explained the basics of Ajax, gave some code examples, and showed examples of things it's possible to do with it. One of the ones I liked a lot was putting page content in tabs with pages. For example, on our current website, I've got links for students up top and links for faculty on the bottom. I could put those in separate tabs, so that instead of scrolling all the way to the bottom, faculty users could just click a tab and have their links load in place of the student links. This would make the page as a whole load faster, and make it easier on screen readers.
Other library uses suggested are:
-- browsing subject headings in the catalog
-- "pre-displaying" indexes and database categories
-- managing complex ILL or contact forms
-- federated searches
-- catalog searches
-- rating systems
-- "print this page" functionality
There is a lot of data available on the web that libraries can access via APIs:
-- LibraryThing (you don't have to subscribe to the LibraryThing for Libraries service if you can program it yourself)
-- Google Books Availability API
-- WorldCat API - coming - just opened up to a few developers this week
-- Google & Yahoo Maps API
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