Re: [CODE4LIB] Formalizing Code4Lib?

[Esmé Cowles]

I don't think there is any Hydra legal entity (hence the need for a financial 
host), and the MOU is signed on behalf of the leadership committee.  So I think 
it boils down to being organized enough for the financial host to be 
comfortable entering into an agreement with them.

I can ask the people I know on the Hydra leadership committee to get more info 
on how the arrangement works.

-Esmé

> On Jun 7, 2016, at 4:19 PM, Jenn C <jen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This sounds like an intriguing option. What is "Hydra" that it is able to
> enter into an MOU - is the steering group an incorporated entity?
> 
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 3:40 PM, Esmé Cowles <escow...@ticklefish.org> wrote:
> 
>> I remember another option being brought up: picking an official
>> organizational home for C4L that would handle being the financial host for
>> the conference, and possibly other things (conference carryover,
>> scholarship fundraising, holding intellectual property, etc.).  An existing
>> library non-profit might be able to do this without that much overhead.
>> 
>> For example, Hydra has a MOU with DuraSpace for exactly this kind of
>> arrangement, and there was a post recently about renewing the arrangement
>> for another year, including the MOU:
>> 
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/hydra-tech/jCua5KILos4/yRpOalF6AgAJ
>> 
>> In the past, there has been a great deal of resistance to making C4L more
>> organized, and especially on the amount of work needed to run a non-profit
>> organization.  So having a financial host arrangement could be a
>> lighter-weight option.
>> 
>> -Esmé
>> 
>>> On Jun 7, 2016, at 3:31 PM, Coral Sheldon-Hess <co...@sheldon-hess.org>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I think this deserves its own thread--thanks for bringing it up,
>> Christina!
>>> 
>>> I'm also interested in investigating how to formalize Code4Lib as an
>>> entity, for all of the reasons listed earlier in the thread. I can't
>>> volunteer to be the leader/torch-bearer/main source of energy behind the
>>> investigation right now (sorry), but I'm happy to join any group that
>> takes
>>> this on. I might be willing to *co*-lead, if that is what it takes to get
>>> the process started.
>>> 
>>> And, yes, anyone who has talked to me or read my rants about the
>>> proliferation of library professional organizations is going to think my
>>> volunteering for this is really funny. But I think forming a group to
>>> gather information gives us the chance to determine, as a community,
>>> whether Code4Lib delivers enough value and has enough of a separate
>>> identity to be worth forming Yet Another Professional Organization (my
>> gut
>>> answer, today? "yes"), or whether we would do better to fold into, or
>>> become a sub-entity of, some existing organization; or, (unlikely) should
>>> Code4Lib stop being A Big International Thing and just do regional stuff?
>>> Or some other option I haven't listed--I don't even know what all the
>>> options are, right now.
>>> 
>>> One note on the "no, let's not organize" sentiment: the problem with a
>> flat
>>> organization, or an anarchist collective, or a complete "do-ocracy," is
>>> that the decision-making structures aren't as obvious to newcomers, or
>> even
>>> long-term members who aren't already part of those structures. There is
>>> value to formality, within reason. I mean... right now, I don't know how
>> to
>>> go about getting "permission" to form this exploratory group, right?
>> Having
>>> some kind of formal structure would help.
>>> 
>>> So... how do we do that? Can we do that? Who wants to help?
>>> 
>>> - Coral
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 12:21 PM, Salazar, Christina <
>>> christina.sala...@csuci.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> It's probably too late for a 2017 but I really do think it's time to
>>>> reopen the question of formalizing Code4Lib IF ONLY FOR THE PURPOSES OF
>>>> BEING THE FIDUCIARY AGENT for the annual conference.
>>>> 
>>>> Local (and national) politics aside, it's very difficult to stand in
>> front
>>>> of your boss (or worse, a total stranger) and ask them to be willing to
>>>> cover financial liability for an unaffiliated, purely voluntary
>>>> organization. In addition, we're no longer talking about a couple
>> thousand
>>>> dollars financial 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Formalizing Code4Lib?

[Esmé Cowles]

I remember another option being brought up: picking an official organizational 
home for C4L that would handle being the financial host for the conference, and 
possibly other things (conference carryover, scholarship fundraising, holding 
intellectual property, etc.).  An existing library non-profit might be able to 
do this without that much overhead.

For example, Hydra has a MOU with DuraSpace for exactly this kind of 
arrangement, and there was a post recently about renewing the arrangement for 
another year, including the MOU:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/hydra-tech/jCua5KILos4/yRpOalF6AgAJ

In the past, there has been a great deal of resistance to making C4L more 
organized, and especially on the amount of work needed to run a non-profit 
organization.  So having a financial host arrangement could be a lighter-weight 
option.

-Esmé

> On Jun 7, 2016, at 3:31 PM, Coral Sheldon-Hess  wrote:
> 
> I think this deserves its own thread--thanks for bringing it up, Christina!
> 
> I'm also interested in investigating how to formalize Code4Lib as an
> entity, for all of the reasons listed earlier in the thread. I can't
> volunteer to be the leader/torch-bearer/main source of energy behind the
> investigation right now (sorry), but I'm happy to join any group that takes
> this on. I might be willing to *co*-lead, if that is what it takes to get
> the process started.
> 
> And, yes, anyone who has talked to me or read my rants about the
> proliferation of library professional organizations is going to think my
> volunteering for this is really funny. But I think forming a group to
> gather information gives us the chance to determine, as a community,
> whether Code4Lib delivers enough value and has enough of a separate
> identity to be worth forming Yet Another Professional Organization (my gut
> answer, today? "yes"), or whether we would do better to fold into, or
> become a sub-entity of, some existing organization; or, (unlikely) should
> Code4Lib stop being A Big International Thing and just do regional stuff?
> Or some other option I haven't listed--I don't even know what all the
> options are, right now.
> 
> One note on the "no, let's not organize" sentiment: the problem with a flat
> organization, or an anarchist collective, or a complete "do-ocracy," is
> that the decision-making structures aren't as obvious to newcomers, or even
> long-term members who aren't already part of those structures. There is
> value to formality, within reason. I mean... right now, I don't know how to
> go about getting "permission" to form this exploratory group, right? Having
> some kind of formal structure would help.
> 
> So... how do we do that? Can we do that? Who wants to help?
> 
> - Coral
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 12:21 PM, Salazar, Christina <
> christina.sala...@csuci.edu> wrote:
> 
>> It's probably too late for a 2017 but I really do think it's time to
>> reopen the question of formalizing Code4Lib IF ONLY FOR THE PURPOSES OF
>> BEING THE FIDUCIARY AGENT for the annual conference.
>> 
>> Local (and national) politics aside, it's very difficult to stand in front
>> of your boss (or worse, a total stranger) and ask them to be willing to
>> cover financial liability for an unaffiliated, purely voluntary
>> organization. In addition, we're no longer talking about a couple thousand
>> dollars financial liability, we are now getting into a HUNDRED THOUSAND
>> DOLLARS liability.
>> 
>> I question the sustainability of this present system for the long term.
>> 
>> PS (I know, everyone says no no no, we don't want to be organized, but my
>> feeling is that we need a better way to manage the funding part of the
>> conference... Or choose to go local only.)
>> 
>> 
>> Christina Salazar
>> Systems Librarian
>> John Spoor Broome Library
>> California State University, Channel Islands
>> 805/437-3198
>> 
>> 
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
>> Brian Rogers
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2016 8:27 AM
>> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
>> Subject: [CODE4LIB] Update Regarding C4L17 in Chattanooga
>> 
>> Greetings from the Chattanooga C4L17 Planning Committee:
>> 
>> This is a follow-up to Andrea Schurr’s May 18th email (
>> https://goo.gl/bs2au7) regarding the survey around potential impact on
>> attendance of the 2017 Code4Lib conference, given the host of
>> discriminatory/concerning legislation in Tennessee.
>> 
>> Please see the summary of results below. We thank the individuals who took
>> the time to respond and provide thoughtful answers as to the issues at
>> hand, as well as suggest possible solutions. We met as a group last Tuesday
>> to decide how to proceed. As many pointed out, they were not easy
>> questions, and so predictably, there were no easy answers.
>> 
>> We’ve determined that given this community’s commitment to providing a
>> safe and accommodating environment for all attendees, it is morally and
>> 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Back-of-house software

[Esmé Cowles]

One of the great things you can customize in JIRA is the workflow, which lets 
you make the tool work the way you want it to instead of having to live with a 
pre-set workflow.  You can have different workflows for different projects, so 
the workflow can be tailored for different groups, or tasks, etc.  UC San Diego 
uses this to great effect, with different workflows customized to software 
development, digital library ingest, etc.

-Esmé

> On May 12, 2016, at 12:15 PM, Cynthia Ng  wrote:
> 
> I've had some experience with JIRA, Redmine, and RT, and I think part of it
> has to do with how much time you want to put into customizing the system to
> fit your needs before you start using it. Here's my quick run down as I've
> experienced them.
> 
> JIRA - can be customized greatly, but can a lot of time to set it up
> because of that. User interface is clear, but can be overwhelming. A very
> big system that many have previously expressed concerns with maintaining.
> (JIRA reminds me of Drupal, where everything is customizable, but you need
> instructions sometimes on doing something "simple".) Can be fully
> integrated with Confluence (wiki). Cost money (not sure how much).
> 
> Redmine - Easy to setup and start working with. Supports multiple projects,
> wiki, codeview, many of the other standard things out of the box. I found
> the community to be very supportive as well. Cost: free.
> 
> RT (Request Tracker) - Unfortunately, less about setup/maintenance of RT.
> As a staff users, it's been easy to us, but I found many things unintuitive
> and I've had a couple of issues getting permissions to work the way I want.
> Though I believe it was not the newest version.
> 
> In all 3 cases, my experience with users submitting issues has been for
> them to fill out a form that submits an email, which gets forwarded to the
> system. JIRA and Redmine both do very well in automatically putting it into
> a specific area, tagged, etc.
> 
> My vote goes to Redmine. When I asked this question a couple of years ago
> on the list, that was the consensus the group came up with and I was very
> happy with the speed at which we got it set up and running.
> 
> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 2:42 PM, Stuart A. Yeates  wrote:
> 
>> I’m looking for recommendations for software to run our much of our
>> academic library back-of-house business-as-usual work. Things like incident
>> management, CRM, documentation management, etc across three tiers of
>> support.
>> 
>> We’re looking for something more structured than a mediawiki wiki (which
>> we’ve got) and probably less structured than full-blown ITIL. We’re happy
>> with open source or proprietary,  self-hosted or cloud solution, but we’re
>> not happy to pay the kinds of money that Alemba (formerly VMWare) are
>> asking for vFire Core (formerly VMware Service Manager).
>> 
>> We have library management system (ALMA), a discovery system (PRIMO), a
>> website (httpd, drupal), a proxy (EZproxy) and a copyright management
>> system (Talis Aspire). Our institution provides us with user management,
>> physical access management, VM host, email and physical infrastructure.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> --
>> ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
>> 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Listserv communication

[Esmé Cowles]

In fact, there is a C4L slack channel: https://code4lib.slack.com

Sign up here: 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/120Dw1JjLxPJB9VTGl0mUY7Ot6yg6YNY1RZUISJFzdwk/viewform?c=0=1

-Esmé

> On Feb 26, 2016, at 10:23 AM, Michael Schofield  wrote:
> 
> Not thinking very critically about this, but:
> 
> I was surprised seeing that the C4L conference was looking for an IRC 
> communicator that, well, IRC. Why isn't there a Code4Lib Slack channel? The 
> Library User Experience slack-- ahem ahem https://libux.herokuapp.com -- has 
> like 200 people in it, and as more and more organizations jump on the 
> Slackwagon it is easy to sit in multiple rooms, use on your phone, etc.  Even 
> for use during the conference, during WordCamp Miami there were 350 people 
> sitting in our slack channel, preferring that to the use of twitter as the 
> backchannel.  
> 
> Best,
> 
> Michael Schofield  (@schoeyfield)
> 
> www.libux.co
> www.webforlibraries.com 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Shaun 
> D. Ellis
> Sent: Friday, February 26, 2016 10:07 AM
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Listserv communication
> 
> 
> On Feb 26, 2016, at 8:42 AM, Julie Swierczek 
> > wrote:
> 
> We also agreed that listservs – both here and elsewhere – seem to have 
> shrinking participation over time, and there does seem to be a drive to pull 
> more conversations out of the public eye.  There is no question that some 
> matters are best discussed in private channels, such as feedback about 
> individual candidates for duty officers, or matters pertaining to physical 
> and mental well-being.  But when it comes to discussing technology or other 
> professional matters, there seems to be a larger trend of more responses 
> going off listservs.  (I, for one, generally do not reply to questions on 
> listservs and instead reply to the OP privately because I’ve been burned to 
> many times publicly.  The main listserv for archivists in the US has such a 
> bad reputation for flaming that it has its own hashtag: #thatdarnlist.)
> 
> Maybe we can brainstorm about common reasons for people not using the list: 
> impostor syndrome (I don’t belong here and/or I certainly don’t have the 
> right ‘authority’ to respond to this); fear of being judged - we see others 
> being judged on a list (about the technological finesse of their response, 
> for instance) so we don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we will 
> be judged; fear of talking in general because we  have seen other people 
> harmed for bringing their ideas to public forums (cf. doxing and swatting);  
> fear of looking stupid in general.
> 
> Thank you for bringing this up, Julie.  I have been curious about this 
> myself. I think you are correct in that there is some “impostor syndrome 
> involved, but my hypothesis is that there has been a lot of splintering of 
> the channels/lists over the past several years that has dried up some of the 
> conversation.  For one, there’s StackOverflow.  StackOverflow is more 
> effective than a listserv on general tech questions because it requires you 
> to ask questions in a way that is clear (with simple examples) and keeps 
> answers on topic.  There has also been a move towards specific project lists 
> so that more general lists like Code4Lib are not bombarded with discussions 
> about project-related minutia that are only relevant to a certain 
> sub-community.
> 
> I don’t see this as a bad thing, as it allows Code4Lib to be a gathering hub 
> among many different sub-groups.  But it can make it difficult to know what 
> is appropriate to post and ask here. Code4Lib has always been about 
> inspiration and curiosity to me. This is a place to be a free thinker, to 
> question, to dissent, to wonder.  We have a long tradition of “asking 
> anything” and we shouldn’t discourage that, but I think Code4Lib is a 
> particularly good space to discuss bigger-picture tech-in-library 
> issues/challenges as well as general best practices at a “techy” level.  It’s 
> certainly the appropriate space to inspire others with amazing examples of 
> library tech that delights users. :)
> 
> I have to admit that I was disappointed that the recent question about 
> full-text searching basics (behind OregonDigital’s in-page highlighting of 
> keywords in the IA Bookreader) went basically unanswered.  This was a 
> well-articulated legitimate question, and at least a few people on this list 
> should be able to answer it. It’s actually on my list to try to do it so that 
> I can report back, but maybe someone could save me the trouble and quench our 
> curiosity?
> 
> Cheers,
> Shaun

Re: [CODE4LIB] [code4libcon] Proposed Duty Officer

[Esmé Cowles]

We live in a world where the are repercussions of calling out people for sexual 
harassment.  Not to put too fine a point on it, we live in a world where people 
were recently sued for doing just that.  So I think it's completely necessary 
to have an anonymous method of raising concerns, if you really want people to 
raise concerns with the conference organizers.

-Esmé

> On Feb 24, 2016, at 6:12 PM, Kyle Banerjee  wrote:
> 
>> Feedback about proposed duty officers can be emailed to directly to me,
>> chadbnel...@gmail.com, or submitted via this anonymous form
>> .
>> 
> 
> 
> It's unfortunate people feel a need to move discussions offline -- I
> interpret this as meaning some people are afraid of repercussions for
> respectfully sharing thoughts on an issue that affects everyone.
> 
> I believe we agree as a community we cannot be our best if the ideas and
> talents of any group are excluded. I believe we agree specific measures are
> needed to overcome structural barriers and provide opportunities to broad
> groups of people who still can't participate in the technology community on
> an equal basis.
> 
> To be direct, I have concerns about the duty officer idea.  I support the
> motivation behind the concept 100%. I have great respect for the people who
> have stepped up on this issue, both as technologists and as people in
> general.
> 
> Being a self selected group, c4l has problems found in society at large. If
> the conference is at least as safe as other environments attendees
> encounter such as airports, streets, bars, and restaurants, I would hope
> the conference organizers could address issues when self policing (i.e.
> people looking out for each other) proved inadequate.
> 
> My concern is that while harassment and assault are real issues, they have
> taken a life of their own and divert too much focus from helping people and
> improving everyone's skills to protecting people from attack. I fear these
> well meaning measures do not improve safety and possibly harden the few
> miscreants they're intended to mitigate.
> 
> I hope my words will be perceived in the spirit intended.
> 
> kyle

Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib NYS Meeting: Aug. 4-5, 2016 at Cornell

[Esmé Cowles]

Christina-

It's really cool to see this shaping up!  The timing's great for me because 
it's right before my mother-in-law's birthday when we usually go up to Ithaca 
anyway.

I could lead a Fedora 4 workshop with Andrew/David, or solo if they can't make 
it.

-Esmé

> On Feb 24, 2016, at 9:23 AM, Christina Harlow  wrote:
> 
> Hi Code4Lib:
> 
> We’re planning a 2-day Code4Lib New York State Unconference at Mann Library, 
> here at Cornell University, on August 4-5 (first Thursday-Friday in August). 
> This will be in the style of the 2014 Code4Lib DC Unconference [1] and the 
> various Code4Lib Midwest Meetings [2].
> 
> We’re in the planning stages now of this event, but I’d like to both let the 
> community know this is happening (dates and place have been confirmed), and 
> send out a call for anyone interested in volunteering. Just send me a quick 
> email indicating your interest (or questions). You can see our proposal and 
> notes so far on our shared Google doc [3], and there will be an organizers 
> email sent out in the next few days.
> 
> Otherwise, expect to hear more about this event in the Spring.
> 
> Thanks!
> Christina Harlow
> 
> 1. http://library.gwu.edu/code4lib-dc-2014
> 2. http://wiki.code4lib.org/2015_Code4Lib_Midwest_Meeting
> 3. http://bit.ly/c4lNYS16

Re: [CODE4LIB] Recommendations for analytics software?

[Esmé Cowles]

I just wanted to chime in to say that this sounds a lot like "tell me how to 
track the users who have asked us not to track them?".

IMHO, the way to avoid this is to use different kinds of tools for different 
kinds of analysis.  Static log analysis generally doesn't treat users as 
individuals and provides good usage info (number of pages/requests, browsers, 
operating systems, etc.).  If your usage numbers from Google Analytics have 
suffered because of Do Not Track, then comparing current usage data to previous 
usage data will probably allow you to show a more reliable measure of aggregate 
traffic.

Tools like GA and Piwik that use Javascript to capture user sessions, events 
that don't trigger a server request, etc. seem very complementary: they can 
give you more insight into how people are using your site.  Usability testing 
is the same idea taken further, and I highly recommend it as a way to really 
understand your users better.

I'm afraid this is exactly the opposite of what you asked for (one-stop-shop 
analytics), but I think it's the way to get the info you need while respecting 
your users.

-Esme

> On Sep 25, 2015, at 3:58 PM, Shafer, Sharon  wrote:
> 
> Sorry for duplication.  I also asked web4lib.
> I've noticed a major decrease in my Google Analytics data because of  tracking> so I'm looking at other web analytics tools. We run the Google 
> Analytics module on a Drupal site. I'm curious what other libraries are doing 
> to capture web site user behavior.  Additional GA modules?  Combination of 
> tagging and log analysis via a vendor system? Perhaps, using a CRM like 
> SalesForce?  I did get a recommendation about Piwik so I'm off to investigate.
> 
> I'm trying to address the  issue, but I'm also contemplating the 
> pie-in-the-sky analytics wish list.  Is there something that provides an 
> archived, comprehensive, one-stop-shopping data source for all the web site 
> user behavior that is accessible by all Library staff and can be used to 
> easily generate data visualization reports for analysis, ROI reports, and 
> making data driven decisions regarding the web site.  Perhaps, mixed with 
> system performance reports and alerts for monitoring how systems are 
> performing.  Is there something that makes it easy to upload or access 
> enterprise data where the user is guided through statistical analytics and or 
> visualization?  Maybe there is a method of obtaining and archiving and 
> strategically scrubbing that ensures user privacy that adheres to ALA's 
> Library Bill of Rights and Core Values of Librarianship?
> 
> Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
> --Sharon

Re: [CODE4LIB] Fedora 4 repositories with open API?

[Esmé Cowles]

And if there aren't any open Fedora 4 repositories forthcoming, you can always 
use fcrepo4-vagrant to spin up your own pretty easily:

https://github.com/fcrepo4-labs/fcrepo4-vagrant

-Esme

 On 07/08/15, at 4:01 PM, Tom Cramer tcra...@stanford.edu wrote:
 
 Hi Patrick,
 
 To my knowledge, Penn State has one of the current Fedora 4 repositories in 
 production; a few others are close (including the Royal Library of Denmark). 
 You might also want to post th is query on the fedora-t...@googlegroups.com 
 and/or fedora-commun...@googlegroups.com list.
 
 Hope this helps, 
 
 - Tom
 
 PS. Has there been any thought that Omeka S might also be IIIF-friendly 
 http://iiif.io/, and able to present image-based resources from any 
 IIIF-compatible repository by consuming both the IIIF image and presentation 
 APIs http://iiif.io/technical-details.html? I can muster up some live IIIF 
 API endpoints, if you are interested. 
 
 
 
 
 
 On Jul 8, 2015, at 9:07 AM, Patrick Murray-John patrickmjc...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 Hi all,
 
 The Omeka http://omeka.org web publication tool for GLAMs is working on a 
 new version, Omeka S, that will include modules for connecting to various 
 other systems, including Fedora 4.
 
 Does anyone have a Fedora 4 installation with open API that we could use to 
 test the basic reading and import mechanisms against? This would be for 
 development and testing purposes only.
 
 Many thanks,
 
 Patrick Murray-John
 Omeka Director of Developer Outreach

Re: [CODE4LIB] Modeling a repository's objects in a relational database

[Esmé Cowles]

We do store our metadata in a relational database (postgresql).  But instead of 
doing relational modeling of any particular schema, we model everything as RDF. 
 So our database is just one big table with columns for subject, prediate, 
object and namedGraph.  We do queries using Jena to transform SPARQL into SQL 
queries.

We started out with a similar approach several years ago, and switched to a 
triplestore for better RDF and SPARQL support.  But we ran into problems when 
we deployed this, since the triplestore wasn't really designed for simultaneous 
reads and edits from multiple users.

Since we do the vast majority of our query and view operations with Solr, our 
main concern was having reliable transaction support for updates.  So using a 
relational database to store our triples was a good fit.

-Esme

 On 04/17/15, at 2:40 PM, Kevin S. Clarke kscla...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Hi Stephen,
 
 I believe the UCSD folks have put things in a relational database in a
 spec-agnostic way (and then they can pull things out as MODS, MARC, or
 whatever on the fly when needed).  There is a link below to their GitHub
 repository which has some documentation (and slides from a 2013
 presentation they gave at that year's Code4Lib conference).
 
 https://github.com/ucsdlib/dams/tree/master/ontology
 
 Hope that helps,
 
 Kevin
 
 
 
 On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 1:27 PM, Stephen Schor stephensc...@nypl.org
 wrote:
 
 Hullo.
 
 I'm interested to hear about people's approaches for modeling
 repository objects in a normalized, spec-agnostic way, _relational_ way
 while
 maintaining the ability to cast objects as various specs (MODS, Dublin
 Core).
 
 People often resort to storing an object as one specification (the text of
 the MODS for example),
 and then convert it other specs using XSLT or their favorite language,
 using established
 mappings / conversions. (
 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/mods-conversions.html)
 
 Baking a MODS representation into a database text field can introduce
 problems with queryablity and remediation that I _feel_ would be hedged
 by factoring out information from the XML document, and modeling it
 in a relational DB.
 
 This is idea that's been knocking around in my head for a while.
 I'd like to hear if people have gone down this road...and I'm especially
 eager to hear both success and horror stories about what kind of results
 they got.
 
 Stephen
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe there are
 two kinds of people in this world and those who know better.

Re: [CODE4LIB] linked data question

[Esmé Cowles]

Cindy-

I think there are several options for how this works, and different 
applications may take different approaches.  The most basic approach would be 
to just include the URIs in your local system and retrieve them any time you 
wanted to work with them.  But the performance of that would be terrible, and 
your application would stop working if it couldn't retrieve the URIs.

So there are lots of different approaches (which could be combined):

- Retrieve the URIs the first time, and then cache them locally.
- Download an entire data dump of the remote vocabulary and host it locally.
- Add text fields in parallel to the URIs, so you at least have a label for it.
- Index the data in Solr, Elasticsearch, etc. and use that most of the time, 
esp. for read-only operations.

-Esme

 On 02/25/15, at 2:30 PM, Harper, Cynthia char...@vts.edu wrote:
 
 Well, that's my question.  I have the micro view of linked data, I think - 
 it's a distribution/self-describing format. But I don't see the big picture.
 
 In the non-techie library world, linked data is being talked about (perhaps 
 only in listserv traffic) as if the data (bibliographic data, for instance) 
 will reside on remote sites (as a SPARQL endpoint??? We don't know the 
 technical implications of that), and be displayed by your local catalog/the 
 centralized inter-national catalog by calling data from that remote site. 
 But the original question was how the data on those remote sites would be 
 access points - how can I start my search by searching for that remote 
 content?  I assume there has to be a database implementation that visits that 
 data and pre-indexes it for it to be searchable, and therefore the index has 
 to be local (or global a la Google or OCLC or its bibliographic-linked-data 
 equivalent). 
 
 All of the above parenthesized or bracketed concepts are nebulous to me.
 
 Cindy
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sarah 
 Weissman
 Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 11:02 PM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] linked data question
 
 I think Code4libbers will know more about my question about 
 distributed INDEXES?  This is my rudimentary knowledge of linked data 
 - that the indexing process will have to transit the links, and build 
 a local index to the data, even if in displaying the individual 
 records, it goes again out to the source.  But are there examples of 
 distributed systems that have distributed INDEXES?  Or Am I wrong in 
 envisioning an index as a separate entity from the data in today's 
 technology?
 
 
 I'm a little confused by what you mean by distributed index in a linked data 
 context. I assume an index would have to be database implementation specific, 
 while data is typically exposed for external consumption via 
 implementation-agnostic protocols/formats, like a SPARQL endpoint or a REST 
 API. How do you locally index something remote under these constraints?
 
 -Sarah
 
 
 
 Cindy Harper
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Harper, Cynthia
 Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 1:20 PM
 To: auto...@listserv.syr.edu; 'Williams, Ann'
 Subject: RE: linked data question
 
 What I haven't read, but what I have wondered about, is whether so 
 far, linked DATA is distributed, but the INDEXES are local?  Is there 
 any example of a system with distributed INDEXES?
 
 Cindy Harper
 char...@vts.edu
 
 -Original Message-
 From: AUTOCAT [mailto:auto...@listserv.syr.edu] On Behalf Of Williams, 
 Ann
 Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:26 AM
 To: auto...@listserv.syr.edu
 Subject: [ACAT] linked data question
 
 I was just wondering how linked data will affect OPAC searching and 
 discovery vs. a record with text approach. For example, we have 
 various 856 links to publisher, summary and biographical information 
 in our OPAC as well as ISBNs linking to ContentCafe. But none of that 
 content is discoverable in the OPAC and it requires a further click on 
 the part of patrons (many of whom won't click).
 
 Ann Williams
 USJ
 --
 **
 *
 
 AUTOCAT quoting guide: http://www.cwu.edu/~dcc/Autocat/copyright.html
 E-mail AUTOCAT listowners: autocat-requ...@listserv.syr.edu
 Search AUTOCAT archives:  http://listserv.syr.edu/archives/autocat.html
  By posting messages to AUTOCAT, the author does not cede copyright
 
 **
 *
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] linked data question

[Esmé Cowles]

Yes, I would expect each organization to fetch linked data resources and 
maintain their own local indexes, and probably also cache the remote resources 
to make it easier and faster to work with them.  I've heard discussions of 
caching strategies, shared indexing tools, etc., but haven't heard about anyone 
distributing pre-indexed content.

Many vocabularies are available as RDF data dumps, which can sometimes be very 
large and unwieldy.  So I could imagine being able to download, e.g., a Solr 
index of the vocabulary instead of having to index it yourself.  But I haven't 
heard of anybody doing that.

-Esme

 On 02/24/15, at 10:56 AM, Harper, Cynthia char...@vts.edu wrote:
 
 Ann - I thought I'd refer part of your question to Code4lib.  
 
 As far as having to click to get the linked data: systems that use linked 
 data will be built to transit the link without the user being aware - it's 
 the system that will follow that link and find the distributed data, then 
 display it as it is programmed to do so.
 
 I think Code4libbers will know more about my question about distributed 
 INDEXES?  This is my rudimentary knowledge of linked data - that the indexing 
 process will have to transit the links, and build a local index to the data, 
 even if in displaying the individual records, it goes again out to the 
 source.  But are there examples of distributed systems that have distributed 
 INDEXES?  Or Am I wrong in envisioning an index as a separate entity from the 
 data in today's technology?
 
 Cindy Harper
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Harper, Cynthia 
 Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 1:20 PM
 To: auto...@listserv.syr.edu; 'Williams, Ann'
 Subject: RE: linked data question
 
 What I haven't read, but what I have wondered about, is whether so far, 
 linked DATA is distributed, but the INDEXES are local?  Is there any example 
 of a system with distributed INDEXES?
 
 Cindy Harper
 char...@vts.edu
 
 -Original Message-
 From: AUTOCAT [mailto:auto...@listserv.syr.edu] On Behalf Of Williams, Ann
 Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:26 AM
 To: auto...@listserv.syr.edu
 Subject: [ACAT] linked data question
 
 I was just wondering how linked data will affect OPAC searching and discovery 
 vs. a record with text approach. For example, we have various 856 links to 
 publisher, summary and biographical information in our OPAC as well as ISBNs 
 linking to ContentCafe. But none of that content is discoverable in the OPAC 
 and it requires a further click on the part of patrons (many of whom won't 
 click).
 
 Ann Williams
 USJ
 --
 ***
 
 AUTOCAT quoting guide: http://www.cwu.edu/~dcc/Autocat/copyright.html
 E-mail AUTOCAT listowners: autocat-requ...@listserv.syr.edu
 Search AUTOCAT archives:  http://listserv.syr.edu/archives/autocat.html
  By posting messages to AUTOCAT, the author does not cede copyright
 
 ***

Re: [CODE4LIB] seeking linked data-based user interface examples in libraries

[Esmé Cowles]

This is a good point.  Our DAMS (http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/) uses RDF, and 
there are link headers advertising the fact that you can add .rdf to our object 
and collection pages to get the RDF/XML for them.  But there isn't a lot in the 
UI that would tell you that.

-Esme

 On 02/11/15, at 7:20 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 It depends on what you mean by interface. Are you just looking for social
 network visualizations or virtually any interface built on LOD (which may
 be quite varied and transparent to the point you don't even realize you are
 interacting with linked data)?
 
 Most of these social network graphs are generated from static files (like
 the SNAC radial graph, which is a graph XML scheme derived from EAC-CPF) or
 from desktop tools. The holy grail for social network analysis is to build
 these visualizations in HTML5/Javascript on top of dynamic web services
 (e.g., from SPARQL). I'm going to start working on this as soon as this
 summer in xEAC (https://github.com/ewg118/xEAC) as soon as I finish the
 EAC-CPF - CIDOC-CRM crosswalk.
 
 On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 10:12 AM, David Lowe 
 david.b.lowe.librar...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I consider SNAC and its radial graph view one of the leaders in this space:
 http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/search
 --DBL
 
 On 2/11/15, Sheila M. Morrissey sheila.morris...@ithaka.org wrote:
 Do you know if the relationship-viewer source code open source and
 available?
 Thanks,
 sheila
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
 Kevin Hawkins
 Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2015 11:27 PM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] seeking linked data-based user interface
 examples in
 libraries
 
 Here's one that I heard about at a presentation at ALA Midwinter:
 
 http://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/content/relationship-viewer
 
 People also like to cite this one, though it's not, strictly speaking,
 based
 in a library:
 
 https://linkedjazz.org/
 
 --Kevin
 
 On 2/10/15 12:39 PM, Adam L. Chandler wrote:
 Hi,
 
 
 I am working on a presentation about linked data and I need some help.
 My
 talk is about examples of linked data-based user interfaces in
 libraries,
 wireframes, demos, or working systems. I am having difficulty finding
 them. Please send me your examples.
 
 
 Thanks,
 
 Adam Chandler
 
 
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] examples of displays for compound objects and metadata

[Esmé Cowles]

Sarah-

We developed our own RDF ontology[1] to model our data, based roughly on MODS 
and MADS, and we store our files and metadata in a custom repository[2] which 
implements the core of the Fedora 3 REST API.  We developed a Hydra head[3] for 
searching, display, etc.

There is currently an effort underway in the Hydra community called 
Hydra::Works[4] to build a common data model that can handle complex objects.  
We plan to implement this model soon using Fedora 4, a Hydra head based on 
Sufia[5], and a data model that closely follows DPLA's v4 draft[6].

If you are coming to C4L in Portland, I will be there there (as will be many 
other Hydra and Fedora 4 people), and there are also some sessions planned for 
Thursday and Friday after the conference proper ends[7].

-Esme

1. https://github.com/ucsdlib/dams/tree/master/ontology
2. https://github.com/ucsdlib/damsrepo
3. https://github.com/ucsdlib/damspas
4. https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/hydra/Hydra::Works+Shared+Modeling
5. https://github.com/projecthydra/sufia
6. 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jh8ULpw0jb8kyxV-Ygw9U0n-XqXkM6_V3jxfmnkebqo
7. https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/hydra/Hydra+Activities+post+code4lib+2015

 On 01/29/15, at 10:25 AM, Sarah Park gp...@siue.edu wrote:
 
 Esme,
 
 Your examples are similar to what I am hoping for. Can you explain a little
 bit more what system you used for backend to store image URLs and Object
 descriptions? 
 
 Sarah
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Esmé
 Cowles
 Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2015 4:14 PM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] examples of displays for compound objects and
 metadata
 
 Laura-
 
 At UCSD, we have complex objects which range from a flat list of files (e.g.
 page images):
 
 http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb59054559
 
 all the way up to pretty involved hierarchy modeling a filesystem:
 
 http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb9796611k
 
 Many of these have a hierarchy with files attached, but not much metadata
 for the individual parts.  But there are also some objects with more
 metadata for each part:
 
 http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb0479301d?
 
 -Esme
 
 On 01/28/15, at 4:43 PM, Laura Buchholz laura.buchh...@reed.edu wrote:
 
 We're migrating from CONTENTdm and trying to figure out how to display 
 compound objects (or the things formerly known as compound objects) 
 and metadata for the end user. Can anyone point me to really good 
 examples of displaying items like this, especially where the user can 
 see metadata for parts of the whole? I'm looking more for examples of 
 the layout of all the different components on the page (or pages) 
 rather than specific image viewers. Our new system is homegrown, so we 
 have a lot of flexibility in deciding where things go.
 
 We essentially have:
 -the physical item (multiple files per item of images of text, plain 
 text, pdf) -metadata about the item -possibly metadata about a part of 
 the item (think title/author/subjects for a newspaper article within 
 the whole newspaper issue), of which the titles might be used for 
 navigation through the whole item.
 
 I think Hathi Trust has a good example of all these components coming 
 together (except viewing non-title metadata for parts), and I'm 
 curious if there are others. Or do most places just skip 
 creating/displaying any kind of metadata for the parts of the whole?
 
 Thanks for any help!
 
 --
 Laura Buchholz
 Digital Assets Specialist
 Reed College
 503-517-7629
 laura.buchh...@reed.edu

Re: [CODE4LIB] examples of displays for compound objects and metadata

[Esmé Cowles]

Laura-

At UCSD, we have complex objects which range from a flat list of files (e.g. 
page images):

http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb59054559

all the way up to pretty involved hierarchy modeling a filesystem:

http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb9796611k

Many of these have a hierarchy with files attached, but not much metadata for 
the individual parts.  But there are also some objects with more metadata for 
each part:

http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb0479301d?

-Esme

 On 01/28/15, at 4:43 PM, Laura Buchholz laura.buchh...@reed.edu wrote:
 
 We're migrating from CONTENTdm and trying to figure out how to display
 compound objects (or the things formerly known as compound objects) and
 metadata for the end user. Can anyone point me to really good examples of
 displaying items like this, especially where the user can see metadata for
 parts of the whole? I'm looking more for examples of the layout of all the
 different components on the page (or pages) rather than specific image
 viewers. Our new system is homegrown, so we have a lot of flexibility in
 deciding where things go.
 
 We essentially have:
 -the physical item (multiple files per item of images of text, plain
 text, pdf)
 -metadata about the item
 -possibly metadata about a part of the item (think title/author/subjects
 for a newspaper article within the whole newspaper issue), of which the
 titles might be used for navigation through the whole item.
 
 I think Hathi Trust has a good example of all these components coming
 together (except viewing non-title metadata for parts), and I'm curious if
 there are others. Or do most places just skip creating/displaying any kind
 of metadata for the parts of the whole?
 
 Thanks for any help!
 
 -- 
 Laura Buchholz
 Digital Assets Specialist
 Reed College
 503-517-7629
 laura.buchh...@reed.edu

Re: [CODE4LIB] Update on Code4Lib 2015 registration info

[Esmé Cowles]

Also not on the committee, but I can help with #3: getting to the conference is 
very easy by train: there's a train from the airport to downtown Portland, 
which stops less than 1/4 mile from the hotel, and costs $2.50 each way.

-Esme

 On Dec 1, 2014, at 5:10 PM, Coral Sheldon-Hess co...@sheldon-hess.org wrote:
 
 I'm not on the committee, but I can help with #5:
 http://vote.code4lib.org/election/results/33
 
 (Also here are the keynotes: http://vote.code4lib.org/election/results/31)
 
 - Coral
 
 On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Emily Lynema emily_lyn...@ncsu.edu wrote:
 
 I suspect that it is time to start planning travel requests for Code4Lib
 2015. Can the organizing committee provide some more info than what is
 currently available at http://code4lib.org/conference/2015/ such as:
 
 1. Hotel price
 2. Estimated registration (I know you don't know for sure yet!)
 3. Travel info (are there buses, shuttles, public transit, etc.)
 4. Date registration will open (again, just an idea of the timeline will
 help us plan for travel requests)
 5. An easy link to the proposals that were submitted / results of voting.
 
 This would be immensely helpful.
 
 Thanks!!
 
 
 
 --
 Emily Lynema
 Associate Department Head
 Information Technology, NCSU Libraries
 919-513-8031
 emily_lyn...@ncsu.edu
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] very large image display?

[Esmé Cowles]

We previously used the Zoomify Flash applet, but now use Leaflet.js with the 
Zoomify tileset plugin:

https://github.com/turban/Leaflet.Zoomify

One thing I like about this approach is that it minimizes the amount of 
Javascript code the clients have to load, since we use Leaflet.js for our maps 
and it's already loaded.

-Esme

 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of 
 Jonathan Rochkind
 Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 10:36 AM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: [CODE4LIB] very large image display?
 
 Does anyone have a good solution to recommend for display of very large 
 images on the web?  I'm thinking of something that supports pan and scan, as 
 well as loading only certain tiles for the current view to avoid loading an 
 entire giant image.
 
 A URL to more info to learn about things would be another way of answering 
 this question, especially if it involves special server-side software.  I'm 
 not sure where to begin. Googling around I can't find any clearly good 
 solutions.
 
 Has anyone done this before and been happy with a solution?
 
 Thanks for any info!
 
 Jonathan

[CODE4LIB] Friends of code4lib (was Re: [CODE4LIB] Call for Old Conf Tshirt Logos)

[Esmé Cowles]

It seems like the main things a 501(c)(6) can do that a 501(c)(3) can't is 
engage in advertising, lobbying, supporting candidates for office, etc.  Other 
that that, it can engage in the same activities as a 501(c)(3).

IMHO, a Friends of code4lib non-profit organization would fall squarely under 
the the advancement of education category (i.e. to support educational 
activities such as the conference, mailing list, website, IRC channel, etc.).  
So a 501(c)(3) seems like a better fit to me.

-Esme

On 04/13/2014, at 12:57 PM, Simon Spero sesunc...@gmail.com wrote:

 [Note that 501 (c)(6) only applies to membership organizations]
 
 
 On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Simon Spero sesunc...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Whilst it might be possible that code4lib might qualify under IRC
 501(c)(3) it is also possible  that code4lib might be a professional
 organization under IRC 501(c)(6) .
 
 6.  An organization formed to stimulate the development and
 free interchange of information pertaining to systems and programming
 of electronic data processing equipment may qualify for exempt status under
 IRC 501(c)(6). The membership of the particular organization at issue
 is composed of members who represent diversified businesses that own,
 rent, or lease digital computers produced by various manufacturers. The
 organization holds semi-annual conferences to discuss operational
 and technical problems. The activities of this organization provide a
 forum for the exchange of information that will improve the efficiency of
 the use
 of such computers, both by members and other interested users, and
 thus improve the overall efficiency of the business operations of each.
 Rev. Rul. 74-147, 1974-1 C.B. 136. Distinguished in Rev. Rul. 83-164,
 1983-2
 C.B. 95, discussed under The Line of Business Requirement, page 22.
 
 
 http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopick03.pdf  , page K-8
 
 See e.g. the ALA - a 501(c)(3) organization, vs. ALA-APA 501(c)(6).
 
 http://ala-apa.org/about-ala-apa/governing-documents/501c6-tax-status/
 
 [IANAL. IANALL.]
 
 
 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:51 PM, Heller, Margaret mhell...@luc.eduwrote:
 
 Here is a good place to start:
 http://www.irs.gov/Charities--Non-Profits/Charitable-Organizations. I
 don't think a Friends of Code4Lib would qualify as a 501(C)(4) or the other
 types of exempt organization, but possibly.
 
 That said, we will run into all the problems that have stymied these
 types of discussions in the past that are not legal problems but
 philosophical problems. It's not hard to fill out the 501(C)(3)
 application, but figuring out what to put in the boxes when you don't have
 a legal entity is difficult. So someone would have to incorporate the
 Friends organization. I am sure most of us work at places with Friends of
 the library and could see their bylaws to get some ideas.
 
 Margaret Heller
 Digital Services Librarian
 Loyola University Chicago
 773-508-2686
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
 Lisa Rabey
 Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 9:39 AM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Call for Old Conf Tshirt Logos
 
 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Francis Kayiwa fkay...@colgate.edu
 wrote:
 
 +1
 
 Go for it Lisa!
 
 ./fxk
 
 
 I can start digging into the hows/whys sometime in early May and report
 back. If anyone has anything of interest (past C4L list convos,
 recommendations, etc), pass them along!
 
 
 --
 
 Lisa M. Rabey | @pnkrcklibrarian
 
 
 http://exitpursuedbyabear.net | http://lisa.rabey.net
 
 
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Call for Old Conf Tshirt Logos

[Esmé Cowles]

+1 # this could be a great way to provide some financial stability and 
continuity.

-Esme

On 04/11/2014, at 8:30 AM, Francis Kayiwa fkay...@colgate.edu wrote:

 Signed PGP part
 On 4/11/2014 7:19 AM, Lisa Rabey wrote:
  On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Jon Gorman
  jonathan.gor...@gmail.com wrote:
  I've long thought a friends of code4lib would be useful
  organization, but never quite pulled it together...
 
  If there is still interest in doing a Friends of, I would help
  organize such a beast.
 
 +1
 
 Go for it Lisa!
 
 ./fxk
 
 
 
 
 --
 scenario, n.:
   An imagined sequence of events that provides the context in
   which a business decision is made.  Scenarios always come in
   sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case.
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Shop Link

[Esmé Cowles]

I wonder, with the 10th conference coming up next year, if there would be any 
interest in re-issuing some or all of the shirts.  A while back I went through 
and added links to the wiki for all the t-shirt contests and winners I could 
find.  But for the first couple of years, I could find the candidate designs, 
but I couldn't actually find any record of which design won: 
http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Main_Page#Older_Conference_T-Shirt_Designs

-Esme

On 03/9/2014, at 6:52 PM, Francis Kayiwa fkay...@colgate.edu wrote:

 Signed PGP part
 
 
 On 03/09/2014 05:59 PM, Roy Tennant wrote:
  Someone apparently had a Code4Lib CafePress shop at one point, but
  now it's gone. I actually like the idea of a place where we could
  buy Code4Lib swag. For example, why not raise a little money
  selling stuff with the Code4Lib logo on it? But that would mean
  being a fiscal entity of some sort and that hasn't flown in the
  past. Not saying it can't now, just that it hasn't yet. For now
  I've disabled the link.
 
 That'd be me. There seemed to be eough interest in last year's
 Metadata T-Shirt that made it worth doing. The goal was to pass the
 money raised from selling t-shirts to this year's Conference. It
 didn't generate revenue (I didn't work too hard in promoting it to be
 honest) or traction so I scuppered it.
 
 Cheers,
 ./fxk
 
 
 --
 Boren's Laws:
   (1) When in charge, ponder.
   (2) When in trouble, delegate.
   (3) When in doubt, mumble.
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Expressing negatives and similar in RDF

[Esmé Cowles]

Yes, I was thinking you would create a content as text node, and just leave the 
value blank (or maybe use something like rdf:nil).

And the good thing about qnames is that you can use whatever you want.  I 
always use mads: instead of madsrdf: for MADS, and would use cat: or 
content: for content as text.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
 argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783

On 09/14/2013, at 10:27 AM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:

 Hmm. For the missing title would you create a content as text node with a 
 blank body? How does RDF handle empty strings?!
 
 (And I'm sorry to say that the qname for content as text is cnt - I'm going 
 to have to just get over the dis-ease that causes me )
 
 kc
 
 On 9/14/13 6:47 AM, Esmé Cowles wrote:
 That looks like a nice way to handle many different cases where you have a 
 textual value, and may also want to attach other triples about certainty, 
 source, definiteness, etc.  This would neatly handle the missing or 
 definitely non-existent title problem.  And it also avoids sub-optimal 
 approaches like reification or having to create a new class for every 
 possible value that you might want to annotate.
 
 -Esme
 --
 Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu
 
 Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
  argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783
 
 On 09/14/2013, at 9:02 AM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:
 
 This reminds me of a conversation (that did not come to a conclusion) on 
 the BIBFRAME list about the need to have a way to say that a bit of data is 
 transcribed, not transcribed, or supplied. And that reminds me of the 
 issues with SKOS labels, which is that if your data is text, not a URI, you 
 can't say anything further about that because text cannot be the subject of 
 a triple. And this was also the issue between BIBFRAME and Open Annotation 
 because BIBFRAME wanted to have annotations that are plain text, and Open 
 Annotation doesn't allow that for the reason that you can't further 
 describe the text.
 
 Which leads me to conclude that we would need to be using Content as Text
  http://www.w3.org/TR/Content-in-RDF10/#ContentAsTextClass
 
 kc
 
 
 On 9/13/13 8:57 AM, Stephen Hearn wrote:
 The MARC21 Authority format does have some negative assertions. Field 675
 asserts that a source contains no relevant information (vs. 670 which
 asserts the source and its relevant information). Field 673 asserts that a
 title is not related to the entity in the 1XX (vs. 672 which asserts that
 the two are related). These aren't yet mapped in any detail to RDF or to
 MADS, but finding a way to map them could be a practical approach the
 question of negative assertions.
 
 Stephen
 
 
 On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:
 
 On 9/13/13 5:51 AM, Esmé Cowles wrote:
 
 Thomas-
 
 This isn't something I've run across yet.  But one thing you could do is
 create some URIs for different kinds of unknown/nonexistent titles:
 
 example:book1 dc:title example:unknownTitle
 example:book2 dc:title example:noTitle
 etc.
 
 I'm bothered by the semantics of this... but maybe I'm being too rigid.
 This states that the title is a URI, not a string, and that the URI is a
 status, not the actual title. Your system will have a mixture of literal
 strings that ARE titles and URIs that say something about titles, both as
 objects of dc:title. The object of DC title needs to be the title. The
 title COULD be a URI if the URI represents the title (e.g. a uniform title
 in an authority file).
 
 Even if this turns out to be legal from an RDF point of view, it seems
 that this would complicate title displays because you'd have to treat 
 these
 URIs differently from the usual title literals, which you could just grab
 and toss into a display.
 
 I'd probably leave title as the literal string, and create a new property
 for title status that takes its value from a controlled list. In fact,
 wouldn't we need something almost identical for anonymous works, to say
 that there really isn't an author. (Cataloging knowledge lapse: we quit
 using Anonymous as an author a while ago, right?) Given the open world
 assumption, we are going to need to make these kinds of negative 
 statements.
 
 Also, remember that OWL does NOT constrain your data, it constrains only
 the inferences that you can make about your data. OWL operates at the
 ontology level, not the data level. (The OWL 2 documentation makes this
 more clear, in my reading of it. I agree that the example you cite sure
 looks like a constraint on the data... it's very confusing.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This book has no title:
 example:thisbook dc:title hasobject:false .
 
 I don't think the title itself can be hasobject:false. I think you need
 to have a property like: xx:hasATitle and this can be true or false. But
 I'm going to run

Re: [CODE4LIB] Expressing negatives and similar in RDF

[Esmé Cowles]

It's too bad rdf:nil is only for lists -- I think it could be handy in many 
other contexts.  But just using an empty string should be fine:

example:book1 dc:title _:bn1 .
_:bn1 rdf:type content:ContentAsText .
_:bn1 content:characterEncoding UTF-8 .
_:bn1 content:chars  .


I'm not sure I got much from that Problems of the RDF model piece, other than 
the fact that literals aren't URIs, and they lack many of the convenient 
properties of URIs.  I suppose there is a nuanced semantic argument about the 
value being different from the thing itself.  That distinction doesn't seem 
that practically important to me.

There are certainly some places where documents with RDF(a) markup would be a 
lot more convenient than trying to put everything in triples.  That can lead to 
something like the companion ContentAsXML element (and the general idea of 
putting markup in a literal), which usually seems like a bad fit to me.  

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
 argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783

On 09/14/2013, at 2:22 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:

 This mentions empty strings but doesn't give an example of one:
 
 *Lexical Space.* An rdf:PlainLiteral lexical form is a string of the form 
 /abc/@/langTag/ where /abc/ is an arbitrary (possibly empty) string, and 
 /langTag/ is either the empty string or a (not necessarily lowercase) 
 language tag. Each such lexical form is mapped to a data value dv as follows:
 
 * If /langTag/ is empty, then dv is equal to the string /abc/ and
 * If /langTag/ is not empty, then dv is equal to the pair /abc/,
   /lc-langtag/  where /lc-langtag/ is /langTag/ normalized to
   lowercase.
 
 [http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-plain-literal/]
 
 I'm assuming it would be . Do you think that works?
 
 rdf:nil seems to be only for lists.
 5.2.4 rdf:nil
 
 The resource |rdf:nil| is an instance of |rdf:List 
 http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_list| that can be used to represent an 
 empty list or other list-like structure.
 
 [http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_nil]
 
 And I think I might be further along in this thinking if I could understand 
 this discussion:
 http://milicicvuk.com/blog/2011/07/16/problems-of-the-rdf-model-literals/
 
 The fact that much of library data consists of literals is an issue, and I 
 don't (yet) understand what that means in terms of RDF. Sometimes I think 
 that we should be treating our bibliographic descriptions as documents with 
 RDF/RDFa markup where appropriate, rather than pretending that all of these 
 strings are data. Sometimes I don't think that. ;-)
 
 kc
 
 
 On 9/14/13 9:06 AM, Esmé Cowles wrote:
 Yes, I was thinking you would create a content as text node, and just leave 
 the value blank (or maybe use something like rdf:nil).
 
 And the good thing about qnames is that you can use whatever you want.  I 
 always use mads: instead of madsrdf: for MADS, and would use cat: or 
 content: for content as text.
 
 -Esme
 --
 Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu
 
 Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
  argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783
 
 On 09/14/2013, at 10:27 AM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:
 
 Hmm. For the missing title would you create a content as text node with a 
 blank body? How does RDF handle empty strings?!
 
 (And I'm sorry to say that the qname for content as text is cnt - I'm 
 going to have to just get over the dis-ease that causes me )
 
 kc
 
 On 9/14/13 6:47 AM, Esmé Cowles wrote:
 That looks like a nice way to handle many different cases where you have a 
 textual value, and may also want to attach other triples about certainty, 
 source, definiteness, etc.  This would neatly handle the missing or 
 definitely non-existent title problem.  And it also avoids sub-optimal 
 approaches like reification or having to create a new class for every 
 possible value that you might want to annotate.
 
 -Esme
 --
 Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu
 
 Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
  argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783
 
 On 09/14/2013, at 9:02 AM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:
 
 This reminds me of a conversation (that did not come to a conclusion) on 
 the BIBFRAME list about the need to have a way to say that a bit of data 
 is transcribed, not transcribed, or supplied. And that reminds me of the 
 issues with SKOS labels, which is that if your data is text, not a URI, 
 you can't say anything further about that because text cannot be the 
 subject of a triple. And this was also the issue between BIBFRAME and 
 Open Annotation because BIBFRAME wanted to have annotations that are 
 plain text, and Open Annotation doesn't allow that for the reason that 
 you can't further describe the text.
 
 Which leads me to conclude that we would need to be using Content as Text
  http

Re: [CODE4LIB] Expressing negatives and similar in RDF

[Esmé Cowles]

Thomas-

This isn't something I've run across yet.  But one thing you could do is create 
some URIs for different kinds of unknown/nonexistent titles:

example:book1 dc:title example:unknownTitle
example:book2 dc:title example:noTitle
etc.

You could then describe example:unknownTitle with a label or comment to fully 
describe the states you wanted to capture with the different categories.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
 argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783

On 09/13/2013, at 7:32 AM, Meehan, Thomas t.mee...@ucl.ac.uk wrote:

 Hello,
 
 I'm not sure how sensible a question this is (it's certainly theoretical), 
 but it cropped up in relation to a rare books cataloguing discussion. Is 
 there a standard or accepted way to express negatives in RDF? This is best 
 explained by examples, expressed in mock-turtle:
 
 If I want  to say this book has the title Cats in RDA I would do something 
 like:
 
 example:thisbook dc:title Cats in RDA .
 
 Normally, if a predicate like dc:title is not relevant to example:thisbook I 
 believe I am right in thinking that it would simply be missing, i.e. it is 
 not part of a record where a set number of fields need to be filled in, so no 
 need to even make the statement. However, there are occasions where a 
 positively negative statement might be useful. I understand OWL has a way of 
 managing the statement This book does not have the title Cats in RDA [1]:
 
 []  rdf:type owl:NegativePropertyAssertion ;
 owl:sourceIndividual   example:thisbook ;
 owl:assertionProperty  dc:title ;
 owl:targetIndividual   Cats in RDA .
 
 However, it would be more useful, and quite common at least in a 
 bibliographic context, to say This book does not have a title. Ideally (?!) 
 there would be an ontology of concepts like none, unknown, or even 
 something, but unspecified:
 
 This book has no title:
 example:thisbook dc:title hasobject:false .
 
 It is unknown if this book has a title (sounds undesirable but I can think of 
 instances where it might be handy[2]):
 example:thisbook dc:title hasobject:unknown .
 
 This book has a title but it has not been specified:
 example:thisbook dc:title hasobject:true .
 
 In terms of cataloguing, the answer is perhaps to refer to the rules (which 
 would normally mandate supplied titles in square brackets and so forth) 
 rather than use RDF to express this kind of thing, although the rules differ 
 depending on the part of description and, in the case of the kind of thing 
 that prompted the question- the presence of clasps on rare books- there are 
 no rules. I wonder if anyone has any more wisdom on this.
 
 Many thanks,
 
 Tom
 
 [1] Adapted from http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Primer#Object_Properties
 [2] No many tbh, but e.g. title in an unknown script or indecipherable hand.
 
 ---
 
 Thomas Meehan
 Head of Current Cataloguing
 Library Services
 University College London
 Gower Street
 London WC1E 6BT
 
 t.mee...@ucl.ac.uk

Re: [CODE4LIB] MODS experts here?

[Esmé Cowles]

Patrick-

There are some things in MODS that are close to addressing this problem, for 
example you could create a part wrapper around each file, but my reading of the 
docs says that may not be the intended use of the part element (depending in 
part on whether the files represent different physical objects or not).  The 
other strategy used to coordinate elements in MODS is the altRepGroup attribute 
(where the location, physicalDecription and accessCondition elements for one 
file would all get the same altRepGroup attribute value).  But that seems to be 
for multiple versions of the same content (e.g., titles in different 
translations/etc., internal note and link to external HTML version of the same 
note, etc.), which doesn't necessarily seem like a good fit here.  But you may 
be able to use one of those strategies.

At UC San Diego, we use our own locally-developed model, based in part on MODS. 
 One of the things we've added is a component class within a digital object to 
handle any kind of structure, including multiple files, nested hierarchy, etc.  
When we export to METS, we would make one MODS record for the object, and then 
a separate MODS document for each component, and then link them using the METS 
structmap.  To stay completely within MODS, you could also use relatedItem to 
link multiple MODS records.

For a better encoding of the restrictions and embargo dates, you may want to 
add PREMIS, which has a better vocabulary for describing those things.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
 argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783

On 09/6/2013, at 3:11 AM, Patrick Hochstenbach patrick.hochstenb...@ugent.be 
wrote:

 Hi,
 
 I need some advise on creating MODS records for our institutional repository. 
 In particular I wonder how best to express the different access restrictions 
 on digital files when a record contains more than one full-text file. E.g. 
 what we do now is write something like:
 
 location
  url 
 displayLabel=ruimtelijk_bestuursrecht_Geert_13-12-10.pdfhttps://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1927382/file/1927384/url
 /location
 physicalDescription
  internetMediaTypeapplication/pdf/internetMediaType
 /physicalDescription
 accessCondition type=restrictionOnAccessrestricted (changes to open on 
 2016-01-01)/accessCondition
 
 and this repeated for every full-text file in the record
 
 I don't like this solution because:
 
 1. This make the MODS context-sensitive: the order of local, physical, 
 accessCondition has a meaning (the first accessCondition is for the first 
 location, the second accessCondition ois for the second loaction etc etc).
 As I understand the order of elementents in MODS shouldn't matter.
 2. Access conditions and embargo's are free-text!
 
 Are there best practices we should use?
 
 Greetings from Belgium
 Patrick
 
 Ghent University Library

Re: [CODE4LIB] Libraries and IT Innovation

[Esmé Cowles]

On Jul 17, 2013, at 2:01 PM, Matthew Sherman matt.r.sher...@gmail.com wrote:

 As for cloud computing I am rather unsure of how that can be applied to the
 libraries.  Possibly it can be used as part of the collaborative space?
 Possibly it can be utilized for file redundancy in digital archives to
 help with preservation of born digital records?  I simply am not sure but
 it is an area of IT innovation so it would be neat to hear people’s ideas.

I think cloud computing is very relevant to libraries because it lowers the 
barriers to entry for hosting servers and storage, and helps let people scale 
up on-demand.  

-Esme

Re: [CODE4LIB] Job: Project Manager at Digital Public Library of America

[Esmé Cowles]

The ad also doesn't mention that this is a 2-year fellowship, and requires not 
just a PhD, but one conferred since 2010.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Men feared witches and burnt women.
 -- Louis Brandeis, Whitney v.  California, concurring

On 03/6/2013, at 10:48 AM, William Denton w...@pobox.com wrote:

 As Candy Schwartz pointed out on Twitter: PhD required, but no project 
 management experience.  Odd requirements for a project manager at a library, 
 albeit an unusual library.
 
 Bill
 
 On 6 March 2013, j...@code4lib.org wrote:
 
 The Project Manager will:
 
 * manage a portfolio of select research projects related to the Hubs project 
 (including conducting research and analysis);
 * manage the addition of several content Hubs to DPLA, including project 
 management of the process from agreement signing through ingestion of data 
 and data evaluation;
 * write blogs posts, presentations, reports, white papers and other 
 publications for promotion or dissemination of research or activities;
 * plan and organize internal and external meetings and workshops;
 * broaden the scope of participants through networking, focused outreach and 
 or participation in conferences;
 * as part of a team, write grants to support content infrastructure 
 development; and
 * act as an active participate in the overall development of the 
 organization.
 **Qualifications**
 
 * Ph.D. in the humanities or humanistic social sciences
 * Strong desire to research the impact of transformative technologies
 * Excellent writing skills and research, data analysis and analytical ability
 * Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail
 * Flexibility, initiative and strong problem-solving abilities
 * Excellent interpersonal and cross-cultural skills
 * Ability to work collaboratively and without supervision
 * Willingness to move to DPLA permanent headquarters (TBA by April 2013)
 * Knowledge of one or more of the following fields is desirable:
 * Digital Humanities
 * Digital Scholarship
 * Data Management/Curation
 * Data Modeling
 * Libraries and Scholarly Communication
 
 -- 
 William Denton
 Toronto, Canada
 http://www.miskatonic.org/

Re: [CODE4LIB] Editing Code4lib Wiki

[Esmé Cowles]

I had the same problem today -- I changed my email address and sent a new 
confirmation code and it arrived right away.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a
 form of theft. -- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture

On 02/6/2013, at 5:24 PM, Robert Haschart rh...@virginia.edu wrote:

 I have tried editing the Code4lib wiki several times, but keep getting a you 
 have not confirmed your e-mail address message.
 I then go to the Preferences page and try to do so.  I am told that a  
 confirmation code is being mailed to me, but no mail ever seems to arrive.
 
 Does anybody have any suggestions?
 
 -Bob Haschart

Re: [CODE4LIB] Zoia

[Esmé Cowles]

I personally regard the IRC channel as a particular flavor of c4l, rather 
than the primary flavor.  For example, this discussion is happening on the 
mailing list and not in the IRC channel.  I'd say IRC is one of the main 
flavors, but I'm not sure I would call anything primary.  I really like zoia, 
and find the channel to be a very good complement to the conference.  But I 
really don't hang out in IRC, and I think many people who read the mailing list 
and/or attend events don't either.

Regarding people being comfortable with participating in the IRC channel, I 
think you can't please everyone.  If you stop all the messing around with zoia 
because some people find it frivolous and irritating, then other people will 
think the channel has gotten too stuffy and serious.  So I think it's important 
to keep focused on what is alienating to a large fraction of the community. 

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Information wants to be anthropomorphized. -- /. sig

On 01/18/2013, at 3:47 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:

 This would mean not seeing the c4l irc as a primary community space but as 
 a particular flavor of the community space, and taking pains to make sure 
 that c4l IRC is not billed as or treated as the main stage for c4l and 
 those who do not hang out in the channel should not be viewed as 
 non-participants in c4l (and I think they are not). However, by doing so we 
 do lose the one central go-to place for quick questions when you're stuck 
 in some technology nightmare. Some of that takes place on the list, but 
 sometimes you want to find a real person and do a quick back-and-forth.

Re: [CODE4LIB] code4lib 2013 location

[Esmé Cowles]

On 01/11/2013, at 7:54 PM, Francis Kayiwa kay...@uic.edu wrote:

 The hotel is a mile or thereabouts from UIC Forum. Here is the problem
 with us natives planning. It never crossed our minds that walking a mile
 while on the *upper limit* of our shuttling to and from work is not the
 norm for everyone.

I am personally looking forward to the walk.  Though I live in Florida, I've 
lived in colder places and have appropriate coats, etc.  And I don't have any 
mobility issues, and routinely walk a few miles just for fun.

But if I didn't already own cold-weather gear that I would never need in 
Florida, I would not be looking forward to walking a mile, early in the morning 
or late at night, in February, in Chicago, where I could reasonably expect it 
to be in the ballpark of 20°F.

Which reminds me, I really hope some warmer locales are prepping c4l14 
proposals as we speak.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a
 form of theft. -- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture

Re: [CODE4LIB] Question abt the code4libwomen idea

[Esmé Cowles]

I really don't see how setting up a new IRC channel (or tumblr, or any other 
forum) to encourage and promote the inclusion of women is discriminatory.  You 
keep on using that term, and accusing others of prejudice, but you have shown 
no proof.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a
 form of theft. -- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture

On 12/10/2012, at 8:30 PM, MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop wrote:

 Wilhelmina Randtke asked:
 When you say someone referred to a group just for women, did you mean
 when Bohyun Kim said interests in a space for women?
 
 Because if you did, then you should not have used quotes, since you were
 not quoting.  If that language you don't like came from somewhere else,
 then please be more specific, because I didn't see it at the start of this
 thread that I'm emailing on.
 
 That language is in the second paragraph of the email dated Fri, 7 Dec
 2012 16:13:47 + from Bohyun Kim, but I apologise for having put
 the a in the quote marks.  It should have been outside them, as I cut
 part of a small support and discussion group for just women.  I
 guess I hit the editing keys badly on Friday.
 
 It's very disappointing that no-one else seems willing to challenge
 that behaviour and so many are actively supporting it.  I feel like
 we're still in the dark ages.  Two wrongs do not make a right and two
 discriminations - one unconscious and one conscious - does not make
 equality.
 
 Joshua Gomez suggested:
 [...] And I don't think that reverse discrimination is the true
 concern of most of those that have voiced opinions against a
 sub-community for women (at least I hope not).
 
 I don't think that suggesting everyone who disagrees with one's view
 is insincere or dishonest or something is a good idea.
 
 Personally, my concern isn't that it is reverse discrimination - it's
 that it is still discrimination.  I don't feel that past sins excuse
 further ones.
 
 [...] And since I am not a member of the group that has been
 discriminated against I don't think I or anyone else not in that group
 should try to dissuade them from doing what is in their best interest.
 
 I am not a member of *that* group that has been discriminated against,
 but I am a member of one minority that is routinely discriminated
 against in a pretty direct way - code4lib's wiki suggests we are not
 human, as I mentioned in another mail on Friday:
 https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1212L=CODE4LIBD=0P=167926
 - and I am not dissuading women from doing what is in their best
 interest, but I believe setting up another discriminatory group is not
 in anyone's best interests.  The best thing would be to do similar as
 we do for accessibility and have mixed groups like fixtheweb.net
 working together to dismantle the barriers.
 
 Regards,
 -- 
 MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
 http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
 In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
 Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/

Re: [CODE4LIB] Gender Survey Summary and Results

[Esmé Cowles]

I think a coed group would be great.  It might be nice to have a separate IRC 
channel for testing things out where people wouldn't have to worry about 
bothering people or looking foolish.

I think an intro to IRC and quick rundown of all the zoia commands would be a 
great thing to do in the Open space pre-conf.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give
 it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.
 -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

On 12/5/2012, at 4:45 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:

 Roy,
 
 It wasn't for safety -- it was for training. Some of us haven't spent much 
 time on IRC -- I never know what to do when I get there -- can't remember 
 commands, even with a decent GUI. So I was trying to think of places (e.g. 
 Github, IRC) where we'd like to have more women participating and how we 
 could give them a chance to learn.* Lots of people are afraid of making 
 mistakes in front of others, and we know that women/girls take fewer chances 
 in mixed classrooms. Once they get adept at the environment they can 
 participate in the group list with more confidence. Training, mentoring -- it 
 all blends together.
 
 In fact, I'm thinking that at c4l we could put up some big pieces of paper (I 
 love the giant post-it paper) and have people make lists of their favorite 
 tools, hangouts, etc. Then we could use those lists as ways to figure out 
 what people need to learn to feel more like part of the community and to 
 feel more confident about participating.
 
 kc
 * Look at the list of edits on the anti-harassment policy -- not many women 
 there. I suspect it's unfamiliarity with Git. If we're going to use a tool as 
 a community, then I want more women to be familiar with it. If someone else 
 wants to train men or a coed group, that's fine.
 
 On 12/5/12 1:35 PM, Roy Tennant wrote:
 On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 12:57 PM, Rosalyn Metz rosalynm...@gmail.com wrote:
 Karen had the idea of creating a women Code4Lib IRC channel, maybe that can
 be a place to start.
 I understand the motivation to create a safe space for women, but
 please let's not do this. Separate but equal has never been shown to
 make progress toward equality, and I doubt this situation would be any
 different. I believe it would instead make things worse, by
 balkanizing the community rather than encouraging good behavior within
 a unified group. In other words, the solution will never be reached
 without active participation by men.
 Roy
 
 -- 
 Karen Coyle
 kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
 ph: 1-510-540-7596
 m: 1-510-435-8234
 skype: kcoylenet

Re: [CODE4LIB] Choosing fora. was: Proliferation of Code4Lib Channels

[Esmé Cowles]

I think this raises some interesting questions about community and appropriate 
use of the code4lib name.  I just took a look at the code4lib reddit and there 
were comments from a handful of people.  If a handful of people want to create 
some new channel and call it code4lib, is that OK?  Who decides that?  Does it 
matter if it's part of something like reddit, that is seriously at odds with 
our budding anti-harassment policy?

I don't personally use reddit, but I can see the advantages of a threaded 
discussion system, especially for a wide-ranging and branching discussion such 
as this one.  Slashdot is the other full-featured discussion system I know, but 
(as previously mentioned) has similar problems, and would also create a new 
hosting and maintenance burden.  Is there a better alternative?

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters
 will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the
 Internet, we know this is not true. -- Robert Wilensky

On 12/2/2012, at 3:19 PM, Wilhelmina Randtke rand...@gmail.com wrote:

 At the end of this email, is the current default homepage of Reddit at this
 very moment.  I only had to read down to the current 6th most popular post
 - 6th most popular of the ENTIRE REDDIT SITE - which is a man's reference
 to seeing a highschool classmate on Girls Gone Wild, then masturbating such
 that one arm becomes much bigger than the other (person posted a picture of
 Quagmire from Family Guy with one big arm).  I'm sure the front page will
 have changed by the time you read this, but just read down and find the
 example of the moment.  There will be one.
 
 Women as sex objects isn't a fringe thing on Reddit.  It's a core part of
 the service.  Reddit's got lots of porn forums, with 5 digits of users.
 Sexual images of women is not a fringe activity on Reddit.  It's a core
 service.  Racism is also prevalent. For example,
 http://www.reddit.com/r/niggers/ .  At least there are only 4 digits of
 users, so dedicated racist forums is a fringe activity.  But, why is there
 a dedicated forum at all?
 
 It's inappropriate to try and move drafting of an antidiscrimination policy
 to Reddit, alongside forums which are so hateful to the groups which are
 underrepresented in Code4Lib.
 
 -Wilhelmina Randtke
 
 
 Begin Clip of Current default Front page of Reddit ---
 Item number 6 refers to masturbating over a female high school
 classmate -
 
 1
 2572
 
 Taiwan engineers defeat limits of flash
 memoryhttp://phys.org/news/2012-12-taiwan-defeat-limits-memory.html
 (phys.org http://www.reddit.com/domain/phys.org/)
 
 submitted 4 hours ago by Maslo55 http://www.reddit.com/user/Maslo55 to
 technology http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/
 
   - 565 
 commentshttp://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/145h0c/taiwan_engineers_defeat_limits_of_flash_memory/
   - share http://www.reddit.com/#
 
 2
 2503
 
 I'm not sure how to title this http://i.imgur.com/kZBrW.png (
 i.imgur.com http://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/)
 
 submitted 3 hours ago by wow050 http://www.reddit.com/user/wow050 to
 WTFhttp://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/
 
   - 343 
 commentshttp://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/145imx/im_not_sure_how_to_title_this/
   - share http://www.reddit.com/#
 
 3
 1768
 http://i.imgur.com/isC9k.jpg
 
 On a metro bus http://i.imgur.com/isC9k.jpg
 (i.imgur.comhttp://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/
 )
 
 submitted 3 hours ago by jjameson18 http://www.reddit.com/user/jjameson18to
 atheism http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/
 
   - 251 
 commentshttp://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/145ktv/on_a_metro_bus/
   - share http://www.reddit.com/#
 
 4
 1828
 http://imgur.com/E4KYV
 
 Back in my day we had to work for our games http://imgur.com/E4KYV (
 imgur.com http://www.reddit.com/domain/imgur.com/)
 
 submitted 4 hours ago by
 MouthFullOfPubeshttp://www.reddit.com/user/MouthFullOfPubesto
 gaming http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/
 
   - 166 
 commentshttp://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/145h3h/back_in_my_day_we_had_to_work_for_our_games/
   - share http://www.reddit.com/#
 
 5
 1950
 http://qkme.me/3s09n5?id=228440273
 
 When ever I have to get up and mow the 
 lawnhttp://qkme.me/3s09n5?id=228440273
 (qkme.me http://www.reddit.com/domain/qkme.me/)
 
 submitted 4 hours ago by flabeachbumhttp://www.reddit.com/user/flabeachbumto
 AdviceAnimals http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/
 
   - 200 
 commentshttp://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/145har/when_ever_i_have_to_get_up_and_mow_the_lawn/
   - share http://www.reddit.com/#
 
 6
 1657
 
 After finding my old highschool crush on /r/gonewild last night... This is
 exactly how I'm felling this morning. http://i.imgur.com/Tz3uE.jpg (
 i.imgur.com http://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/)
 
 submitted 5 hours ago by
 DaPolishFarmerhttp://www.reddit.com/user/DaPolishFarmerto
 funny http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/
 
   - 475 
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] tech vs. nursing

[Esmé Cowles]

On 11/29/2012, at 4:43 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote:

 Code4Lib didn't used to, when I attended the second code4lib conf, the vast 
 majority of the presentations and presenters were NOT about grant-funded work 
 or digital repository work, and the majority of people I met at Code4Lib 
 were not working on such things.
 
 I miss that. Code4Lib was in fact the only place I knew of for people working 
 on traditional library use cases, not on grant-funded projects, trying to 
 innovate with technology and keep libraries relevant.


If your idea of keeping libraries relevant doesn't include digital 
library/repository and grant-funded work, then I think we have very different 
ideas about that.

In any event, the thing I always liked about code4lib was that there was a good 
mix of different stuff -- something for everyone.  So repository stuff and OPAC 
stuff and study room scheduling and everything else were all welcome.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
 (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)  -- Dave Barry

Re: [CODE4LIB] anti-harassment policy for code4lib?

[Esmé Cowles]

Also, I've seen a number of reports over the last few years of women who were 
harassed at predominately-male tech conferences.  Taken together, they paint a 
picture of men (particularly drunken men) creating an atmosphere that makes a 
lot of people feel excluded and worry about being harassed or worse.  So I 
think a positive statement of values, and the general raising of consciousness 
of these issues, is a good thing.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Men feared witches and burnt women.
 -- Louis Brandeis, Whitney v.  California, concurring

On 11/26/2012, at 7:47 PM, Michael J. Giarlo leftw...@alumni.rutgers.edu 
wrote:

 Hi Kyle,
 
 IMO, this is less an instrument to keep people playing nice and more an
 instrument to point to in the event that we have to take action against an
 offender.
 
 -Mike
 
 
 
 On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.comwrote:
 
 On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Jon Stroop jstr...@princeton.edu wrote:
 
 It's sad that we have to address this formally (as formal as c4l gets
 anyway), but that's reality, so yes, bess++ indeed, and mjgiarlo++,
 anarchivist++ for the quick assist.
 
 
 This.
 
 
 To that end, and as a show of (positive) force--not to mention how cool
 our community is--I think it might be neat if we could find a way to make
 whatever winds up being drafted something we can sign; i.e. attach our
 personal names
 
 
 Diversity and inclusiveness is a state of mind, and our individual and
 collective actions exert that force than any policy or pledge ever could.
 
 I'm hoping that things can be handled with the minimum formality necessary
 and that if something needs to be fixed, people can just talk about it so
 things can be made right. If we need a policy, I'm all for it. But it's
 truly a sad day if policy rather than just being motivated to do the right
 thing is what's keeping people playing nice.
 
 kyle
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] email to FTP or something?

[Esmé Cowles]

The traditional Unix tool for this job is procmail[1].  You can configure it to 
process all incoming mail in an account with a shell script -- decoding the 
attachment and saving it to a file would be very easy to do, assuming the 
server is also a FTP or web server.  Of course, the script could also just 
decode the attachment and load it directly into MySQL.

1. http://partmaps.org/era/procmail/mini-faq.html#rtfm

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

I don't need to be forgiven. -- The Who, Baba O'Reilly


On 10/17/2012, at 11:46 AM, Nate Hill nathanielh...@gmail.com wrote:

 Maybe someone can offer me a suggestion here...
 I bought a nifty new gadget that records data and spits out csv files as
 email attachments.
 I want to go from csv  MySQL and build a web application to do cool stuff
 with the data.
 The thing is, the device can only email the files as attachments, it
 doesn't give me the ability to upload them to a server.
 Can anyone suggest how I can securely email a file directly to a folder on
 a server?
 
 The scenario is nearly identical to what is described here:
 http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-upload-to-an-FTP-site-via-email
 
 -- 
 Nate Hill
 nathanielh...@gmail.com
 http://4thfloor.chattlibrary.org/
 http://www.natehill.net

Re: [CODE4LIB] Best way to process large XML files

[Esmé Cowles]

One way to get the best of both worlds (scalability of a streaming parser, but 
convenience of DOM) is to use DOM4J's ElementHandler interface[1].  You parse 
the XML file using a SAXReader, and register a class to handle callbacks, based 
on an XPath expression.  I used this approach to break up giant MARCXML files 
with hundreds of thousands of records.

Though this approach does require the XML to be well-formed.  I had some 
problems with that, and wound up pre-processing the MARCXML to strip out 
illegal characters so they wouldn't cause parsing errors.


1. 
http://dom4j.sourceforge.net/dom4j-1.6.1/apidocs/org/dom4j/ElementHandler.html


-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the
 evil get to go home early on Fridays. -- Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

On 06/8/2012, at 2:36 PM, Kyle Banerjee wrote:

 I'm working on a script that needs to be able to crosswalk at least a
 couple hundred XML files regularly, some of which are quite large.
 
 I've thought of a number of ways to go about this, but I wanted to bounce
 this off the list since I'm sure people here deal with this problem all the
 time. My goal is to make something that's easy to read/maintain without
 pegging the CPU and consuming too much memory.
 
 The performance and load I'm seeing from running the files through LibXML
 and SimpleXML on the large files is completely unacceptable. SAX is not out
 of the question, but I'm trying to avoid it if possible to keep the code
 more compact and easier to read.
 
 I'm tempted to streamedit out all line breaks since they occur in
 unpredictable places and put new ones at the end of each record into a temp
 file. Then I can read the temp file one line at a time and process using
 SimpleXML. That way, there's no need to load giant files into memory,
 create huge arrays, etc and the code would be easy enough for a 6th grader
 to follow. My proposed method doesn't sound very efficient to me, but it
 should consume predictable resources which don't increase with file size.
 
 How do you guys deal with large XML files? Thanks,
 
 kyle
 
 rantWhy the heck does the XML spec require a root element,
 particularly since large files usually consist of a large number of
 records/documents? This makes it absolutely impossible to process a file of
 any size without resorting to SAX or string parsing -- which takes away
 many of the advantages you'd normally have with an XML structure. /rant
 
 -- 
 --
 Kyle Banerjee
 Digital Services Program Manager
 Orbis Cascade Alliance
 baner...@uoregon.edubaner...@orbiscascade.org / 503.999.9787

Re: [CODE4LIB] Metadata

[Esmé Cowles]

+1 # everything is data, context makes it meta

On Feb 15, 2012, at 10:29 PM, Simon Spero wrote:

 I have had several theoretical changes of opinion on this question, and
 have come to the considered opinion that there is no principled *essential*
 difference between Metadata and Data. It all depends on the
 context/theory/background assumptions to which the data is being applied.
 
 The property of Data being meta is entirely use sensitive. The property of
 being information may depend upon the existence of metadata referring to
 the data.
 
 For example, it is labeling of an antelope in a zoo as an antelope that
 turns an ungulate into a document; data measured from this beast gives us
 evidence about what an antelope is like.
 The label  number of the beast, as well as the date of capture and other
 provenance, are clearly metadata in this case, and provide the context for
 interpreting the data as information, and for assessing the degree of
 justification we have for treating this information as knowledge. However,
 in other cases, the metadata may serve as data for other studies, with no
 reference to our four legged friend.
 Suppose we are doing a study on the rate of differently labeled specimen
 acquisition in zoos across Europe over the course of the 19th and 20th
 centuries. In this situation, what was metadata has become our primary
 data; *our* metadata relates to the provenance of the descriptions.
 
 Metadata embedded by a smart sensor package included in the same persuade
 as the data gathered as part of an observation run is essential to the
 interpretation of that data as information. However, it is not the primary
 data itself; it is the context. Radar data from early JSTARS platforms was
 severely downgraded by rain between the platform and the ground; the
 information provided needs context about climate conditions in order to
 determine the actual amount of information obtained when fusing that
 information with other sensor systems. However, the climate readings are
 not part of the radar data itself.
 
 
 So, to sum up, it depends; Further Research Is Needed; one man's Meta is
 another man's Poisson.
 
 Simon
 On Feb 14, 2012 9:59 AM, Michael Hopwood mich...@editeur.org wrote:
 
 Having done research, and now working in a very varied metadata role, I
 don't quite understand this discussion about data that is or isn't
 metadata. Scientific data is a great example of structured data, but it's
 not impossible to distinguish it from metadata purely describing a dataset.
 
 However, if you have scientific research data created during the
 experiments, even if it's operational, it's clearly part of the data.
 This doesn't mean there can't be metadata describing *that data*. Just
 because it's not glamorous data doesn't mean it's not essential to the
 scientific process. Similarly, just being about mundane or procedural
 things doesn't make data into metadata...!
 
 You're absolutely right, the contextual information is certainly part of
 the experimental outcome in this example; otherwise it would be abstract
 data such as one might use in a textbook example.
 
 Metadata would describe the dataset itself, not the scientific research.
 There's always a certain ambiguity involved in identifying the data as
 distinct from the metadata, and it's a false dichotomy to suggest metadata
 is not useful at all for the domain expert. It's contextual, and the
 definition is always at least partly based on your use case for the data
 and its description.
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
 Nate Vack
 Sent: 14 February 2012 14:45
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Metadata
 
 On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 1:22 AM, Graham Triggs grahamtri...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
 That's an interesting distinction though. Do you need all that data in
 order to make sense of the results? You don't [necessarily] need to
 know who conducted some research, or when they conducted it in order
 to analyse and make sense of the data. In the context of having the
 data, this other information becomes irrelevant in terms of
 understanding what that data says.
 
 It is *essential* to understanding what the data says. Perhaps you find
 out your sensor was on the fritz during a time period -- you need to be
 able to know what datasets are suspect. Maybe the blood pressure effect
 you're looking at is mediated by circadian rhythms, and hence, times of day.
 
 Not all of your data is necessary in every analysis, but a bunch of blood
 pressure measurements in the absence of contextual information is
 universally useless.
 
 The metadata is part of the data.
 
 -n
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] image zoom for iPad

[Esmé Cowles]

For a client-side solution, you can use the Google Maps or OpenLayers libraries 
with an alternate tileset.  Here are a few examples:

http://clintlalonde.net/2009/01/09/zoom-and-pan-large-images-with-google-map-interface/
http://blog.mikecouturier.com/2011/07/create-zoomable-images-using-google.html
http://forevermore.net/articles/photo-zoom/

If you're already using Zoomify, then you might be interested in this example 
of using OpenLayers with Zoomify tilesets:

http://plone.itc.nl/OpenLayers/examples/zoomify.html


-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible,
 and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken

On Jan 30, 2012, at 10:20 PM, Friscia, Michael wrote:

 Hi all,
 I'm wondering if anyone can recommend an image zoom option for ipad that 
 provides functionality like zoomify/seadragon but works on the ipad. I'm 
 hoping for some ajax/jquery library I never heard of that will work and 
 provide good functionality. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong and my use of 
 seadragon would be better if I did x, y and z...
 
 Any thoughts or suggestions that do not include don't do zoom would be 
 greatly appreciated.
 
 Thanks,
 -mike
 ___
 Michael Friscia
 Manager, Digital Library  Programming Services
 
 Yale University Library
 (203) 432-1856

Re: [CODE4LIB] Linux Laptop

[Esmé Cowles]

Mark-

One option which works on any Linux/Unix machine (including OSX) is rsync with 
the --link-dest option.  This does the same thing as Time Machine: it creates 
backups that hardlink to existing copies of files (if they exist) saving disk 
space on unchanged files.  There are lots of instructions for how to do this, 
e.g. http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/rsync_time_machine.html

This doesn't provide the same UI as Time Machine for restoring files, though.

-Esme
--
Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
 argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783

On 12/16/2011, at 1:06 PM, Mark Jordan wrote:

 Apologies to anyone who is not interested in this thread, but I'm curious to 
 know what backup software comparable to OS X Time Machine Linux users have on 
 their lap/desktops. Time Machine is one of those parts of OS X that would 
 make it hard for me to emigrate from the garden.
 
 Mark
 
 - Original Message -
 I just had a Howard Beale moment with Apple. I'm mad as hell and I'm
 not going to take it anymore.
 
 I'm curious what people can suggest for linux laptop?
 Any suggestions for distros and hardware?
 
 thanks. b,chris.