Re: [CODE4LIB] Consortial services
On 25 May 2016, Mark Jordan wrote: I'll throw in a couple examples from western Canada: And in central (or eastern, depending on your perspective) Canada, there's the Ontario Council of University Libraries' Scholars Portal. It hosts about 50,000,000 articles for Ontario university libraries, runs Dataverse, hosts chat services, and more, and is currently in the middle of planning a province-wide union catalogue. http://www.scholarsportal.info/ Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada <https://www.miskatonic.org/>
Re: [CODE4LIB] Good Database Software for a Digital Project?
On 15 April 2016, Roy Tennant wrote: In my experience, for a number of use cases, including possibly this one, a database is overkill. Often, flat files in a directory system indexed by something like Solr is plenty and you avoid the inevitable headaches of being a database administrator. Backup, for example, is a snap and easily automated. And if you want to turn the bib into a web site, then it's easy to use a static site generator like Jekyll: put a few lines of metadata at the top of each file, set up a template, and bingo, there's your site. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] LCSH, Bisac, facets, hierarchy?
On 13 April 2016, Mark Watkins wrote: I'm a library sciences newbie, but it seems like LCSH doesn't really provide a formal hierarchy of genre/topic, just a giant controlled vocabulary. Bisac seems to provide the "expected" hierarchy. Is anyone aware of any approaches (or better yet code!) that translates lcsh to something like BISAC categories (either BISAC specifically or some other hierarchy/ontology)? General web searching didn't find anything obvious. There's HILCC, the Hierarchical Interface of LC Classification: https://www1.columbia.edu/sec/cu/libraries/bts/hilcc/subject_map.html Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] code4lib mailing list [domain]
On 27 March 2016, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: Everybody, please share with the rest of us your opinion about our mailing list’s domain. This need to move from the University of Notre Dame is a possible opportunity to have our list come from the cod4lib.org domain. For example, the address of the list might become code4...@lists.code4lib.org. If it moved to Google, then the address might be code4...@googlegroups.com. Is the list’s address important for us to brand? -1 for Google as with the others, +1 for the DLF since that seems smooth and stable, +0 for branding. And many thanks to Eric for all his work over the years---and to the small group of folks who got this all started a decade or more ago. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] personalization of academic library websites
On 23 March 2016, Cornel Darden Jr. wrote: Seems like overkill, why a login to access the library's website? Indeed, but once you're logged in, though, to access some subscription resource, there's a lot the system could show you. At the university where I work we don't do any customization on the library's web site, but we do provide a feed of personalized links into the course management system. Students have to log in to get into Moodle, and then when they're looking at a course page Moodle hands over the course code to us, and we send back a box with: - basic catalogue search - links to relevant subject guides - links to most relevant eresources - links to course guide (if there is one) - links to reserves (if there are some) - link to subject librarian The guides (LibGuides) are all tagged to match faculties and programs: the Biology guide is tagged sc/biol, so we know it's relevant to all course in the SC(ience) faculty and BIOL(ogy) program. Librarians are tagged similarly in a basic spreadsheet. We inject this into the course management system and the student portal, but don't make use of these things on our own site, even though students end up logging in a lot to get to journals and databases. We should! Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] List of Database Subjects
On 17 March 2016, Mita Williams wrote: I would suggest that the best subject list for database list might be the list of departments and or faculties you have on campus. That's how we chose to express our subject areas ( http://leddy.uwindsor.ca/research-tools) Our reasoning was largely based on this paper, "Students, Librarians, and Subject Guides: Improving a Poor Rate of Return" by Brenda Reeb and Susan Gibbons ( http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v004/4.1reeb.html) who suggest that students have a hard time mapping research topics to subjects and so ideally, our databases / subject guides should be mapped at a course level. That was considered too much for us, so we map to the Department level instead. That's what we did at York, too: http://www.library.yorku.ca/subjects/ That list hasn't been tended in four years, though, and is under consideration for being dropped in favour of the sadly ubiquitous LibGuides. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Forming a Coalition of Libraries running Tor exit nodes: C4L 2016 Breakout Followup
On 19 March 2016, Alison Macrina wrote: Hi all, Andromeda forwarded me this email and so I decided to join the list in case anyone wants to chat about Tor relays (exits and non-exits) in libraries. Welcome---I'm glad you joined. I work at a large university where the library has a small IT department and the university has a large one. University IT ultimately controls everything about networking and security. Library IT is concerned about security, and library administration is concerned about making sure our contracts with vendors aren't broken by us accidentally opening up JSTOR and PsycInfo to Tor users. How have academic libraries like mine been arranging exit nodes? Do you have any advice, regarding the technology and the advocacy, that would help? We tell vendors our IP range---how could I convince people to set up a new one for the exit node? Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Forming a Coalition of Libraries running Tor exit nodes: C4L 2016 Breakout Followup
On 11 March 2016, Ian Walls wrote: I hope by broadcasting this to our community, we can start to form a pool of those libraries who have interested libtech workers, so when we go to our directors/deans/boards, we can point to peers/aspirational peers and say "see, we're not alone!". Count me in. These are great starting points. I've been running a relay node for over a year but haven't started to work on trying to arrange an exit node---without a lot of preparation it's too easy to get a no ten seconds after starting to explain it. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] onboarding developers coming from industry
On 2 March 2016, Jason Casden wrote: The advantages that we do have over many of these organizations include the opportunity to work directly with the users of your products, the ability to be more involved in broader systems analysis work, and the pursuit of a mission anchored in education and research. And for all those reasons and more, don't put IT in a back room and leave it there, unconnected to the rest of the library and institution. How library IT works with and is integrated into the rest of the library varies from place to place, but if the developers and sys admins don't regularly see and work with and around students and faculty, they'll be badly disconnected and could develop a bunker mentality. Aside from being important, in a university, being around the students and faculty is really interesting, and it's fun. It's like being in a little city where everyone's studying and thinking, and every year a quarter of the population moves out and a new quarter moves in. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] introduction, and a fun date visualization
On 9 February 2016, Greg Lindahl wrote: https://blog.archive.org/2016/02/09/how-will-we-explore-books-in-the-21st-century/ And the demo itself is here: https://books.archivelab.org/dateviz/ Very cool! I'm glad you're on the list. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] LibX and new Firefox rules
Firefox has disallowed the LibX add-on because it's unsigned, and Firefox has new rules about verifying extensions. We upgraded our LibX build to a fresh version, but Firefox still doesn't lke it. Godmar, Annette, anyone---is this a way I can get it working? Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] OCLC shutting down xISBN and xID (was Re: [CODE4LIB] Matching print and electronic editions of the same book)
Rachel's message evidently prompted this: http://www.oclc.org/developer/news/2015/change-to-xid-services.en.html "OCLC offers an array of APIs that provide additional access points to WorldCat and the WorldShare platform, allowing libraries and partners to use the data inside applications in new and creative ways. While we add APIs at times, we also must retire some. The xID product, including xISBN, xISSN and xOCLCNum, has experience low usage and will be retired from the OCLC API offering. No new keys are being issued, and the service will be unavailable beginning March 15, 2016." OCLC people: how about releasing the data behind the xID services? A big static dump of all of the numbers (ISBN, LCCN, OCLCnum) and how they're related. It'll be out of date the next day, but it'll still be very, very useful. When you needed them, the xID services were EXTREMELY helpful. Perhaps part of the cause of low usage was the access restrictions, both of number of requests and commercial use. If the data had been open, many more uses would have arisen. I say make it open now, under something like an Open Data Commons Attribution License. Bill On 10 December 2015, Maderik, Rachel A wrote: Just a warning about OCLC's xID API: a few weeks ago I requested an access token to bypass the rate limit, and was told that they are no longer giving these out. I was also told that the data in xID has not been updated for some time (I don't know when they stopped, but I think the rep told me it was at least a year out of date). It was very disappointing to learn this; if the project is essentially dead, this fact should be advertised (at the very least, they should take down the pricing list!). -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of William Denton Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2015 5:40 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Matching print and electronic editions of the same book Thanks! That opens things up. We do have a lot of OCLC numbers. For my example book, there's an 035 with three of them, including 841051199. If I look at http://worldcat.org/oclc/841051199 it takes me to the human-readable page, but http://worldcat.org/oclc/841051199.rdf shows it all in RDF, and I can see a lot of things like http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1613596711#Place/japan;> so I can pick out the work ID and look it up. (Perhaps the work ID be specified directly there?) So that would work, but aha, I just noticed I could make it a little simpler by using xOCLCNUM to get the work ID, which is the owi field here: http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/841051199?method=getMetadata=json=* And then I can go to http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1613596711.rdf and get all the workExample links, and use those OCLC numbers. (Which I'm sure you knew, Roy, but perhaps didn't mention because of the rate-limiting, but as far as I know our subscription means I can get an access token so I can do some larger queries.) A first run of something like this would take a while to process everything, but I'd store locally what I need to know, and then incremental updates for a month's worth of news ebooks wouldn't take long. Thanks! Bill On 9 December 2015, Roy Tennant wrote: Do you have an OCLC number in your records? If so, you could call it at WorldCat like this: http://worldcat.org/oclc/XXX scrape the structured linked data on the page, looking for the "Example of Work" link, then follow it to the Work Record: http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1613596711 That then will give you all of the OCLC numbers that we consider are part of that work (under the "WorkExample" tab). I know, not an optimal solution even if you have the OCLC number. But it could work if you do. Roy On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 1:37 PM, William Denton <w...@pobox.com> wrote: I'm looking at how to match print (p) and electronic (e) editions of the same book in our collection. There is no connection between them in our system (VuFind in front of Symphony). For example, two catalogue entries for two versions of COMPOSING JAPANESE MUSICAL MODERNITY, entirely separate: + https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3238132 + https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3311584 I want know they're the same book so I can do more usage and collection analysis. I've been looking at two ways of doing it with data available right now: 1 a) MARC 020 (ISBN) can list multiple ISBNs. We have e books where the p editions are listed. 1 b) MARC 776 (additional physical form entry) for e books can list a p ISBN or other control number. If we have that edition, great. If not, need to go from e -> p-we-don't-have -> p-we-do-have, which I could do with xISBN. 2) OCLC's xISBN. When it reports other editions of the same work, it can include e versions. There is also:
[CODE4LIB] Matching print and electronic editions of the same book
I'm looking at how to match print (p) and electronic (e) editions of the same book in our collection. There is no connection between them in our system (VuFind in front of Symphony). For example, two catalogue entries for two versions of COMPOSING JAPANESE MUSICAL MODERNITY, entirely separate: + https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3238132 + https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3311584 I want know they're the same book so I can do more usage and collection analysis. I've been looking at two ways of doing it with data available right now: 1 a) MARC 020 (ISBN) can list multiple ISBNs. We have e books where the p editions are listed. 1 b) MARC 776 (additional physical form entry) for e books can list a p ISBN or other control number. If we have that edition, great. If not, need to go from e -> p-we-don't-have -> p-we-do-have, which I could do with xISBN. 2) OCLC's xISBN. When it reports other editions of the same work, it can include e versions. There is also: 3) Vendors supplying data. For example, YBP seems to have all the p and e editions of books tied together. We could ask. I've been looking around but can't find any discussion about making these connections. Have any of you done it? Know of it being done in code I can see? Written it up? Thanks for any pointers, Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Matching print and electronic editions of the same book
Thanks! That opens things up. We do have a lot of OCLC numbers. For my example book, there's an 035 with three of them, including 841051199. If I look at http://worldcat.org/oclc/841051199 it takes me to the human-readable page, but http://worldcat.org/oclc/841051199.rdf shows it all in RDF, and I can see a lot of things like rdf:about="http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1613596711#Place/japan;> so I can pick out the work ID and look it up. (Perhaps the work ID be specified directly there?) So that would work, but aha, I just noticed I could make it a little simpler by using xOCLCNUM to get the work ID, which is the owi field here: http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/841051199?method=getMetadata=json=* And then I can go to http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1613596711.rdf and get all the workExample links, and use those OCLC numbers. (Which I'm sure you knew, Roy, but perhaps didn't mention because of the rate-limiting, but as far as I know our subscription means I can get an access token so I can do some larger queries.) A first run of something like this would take a while to process everything, but I'd store locally what I need to know, and then incremental updates for a month's worth of news ebooks wouldn't take long. Thanks! Bill On 9 December 2015, Roy Tennant wrote: Do you have an OCLC number in your records? If so, you could call it at WorldCat like this: http://worldcat.org/oclc/XXX scrape the structured linked data on the page, looking for the "Example of Work" link, then follow it to the Work Record: http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1613596711 That then will give you all of the OCLC numbers that we consider are part of that work (under the "WorkExample" tab). I know, not an optimal solution even if you have the OCLC number. But it could work if you do. Roy On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 1:37 PM, William Denton <w...@pobox.com> wrote: I'm looking at how to match print (p) and electronic (e) editions of the same book in our collection. There is no connection between them in our system (VuFind in front of Symphony). For example, two catalogue entries for two versions of COMPOSING JAPANESE MUSICAL MODERNITY, entirely separate: + https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3238132 + https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3311584 I want know they're the same book so I can do more usage and collection analysis. I've been looking at two ways of doing it with data available right now: 1 a) MARC 020 (ISBN) can list multiple ISBNs. We have e books where the p editions are listed. 1 b) MARC 776 (additional physical form entry) for e books can list a p ISBN or other control number. If we have that edition, great. If not, need to go from e -> p-we-don't-have -> p-we-do-have, which I could do with xISBN. 2) OCLC's xISBN. When it reports other editions of the same work, it can include e versions. There is also: 3) Vendors supplying data. For example, YBP seems to have all the p and e editions of books tied together. We could ask. I've been looking around but can't find any discussion about making these connections. Have any of you done it? Know of it being done in code I can see? Written it up? Thanks for any pointers, Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/ -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Getting into Paperity
On 15 November 2015, Carol Bean wrote: Kind of wondering what the benefit would be to adding that to the publishing workload. Then I noticed: Paperity partners with *EBSCO Information Services* and *Altmetric* to improve discoverability of journals and help them demonstrate their impact. The Journal is already indexed by EBSCO, so what's the added value here? Being findable in an open article index would be good, but it's not worth it if it's too much of a bother, since C4LJ is very findable generally. Or if Paperity gets bigger we could go at it again next year and see if it works better. Thanks for giving it a shot, though. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] Getting into Paperity
Perhaps someone who's got a real current connection to Code4Lib Journal (Carol Bean as last editor, maybe?) could get it indexed in Paperity? Worth a shot. http://paperity.org/add_journal/ There a journal processing charge, but you can ask to get it waived. I don't know what to make of the "I confirm that I am a lawful representative of the journal and I have full legal capacity to apply for its inclusion in Paperity" line, but heck, just click it. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] LIS educators analyze jobs.code4lib.org (new paper in the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science)
On 16 September 2015, Jodi Schneider wrote: Maceli, Monica. (2015). Creating tomorrow’s technologists: Contrasting information technology curriculum in north american library and information science graduate programs against code4lib job listings. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 198-212. doi:10.12783/issn.2328-2967/56/3/ http://dpi-journals.com/index.php/JELIS/article/view/1523/1357 Subscription only, sadly ... SHERPA/RoMEO says the journal does allow the author to self-archive post-print (blue is the RoMEO colour) but she doesn't have it on her web site [1] yet, though maybe if we ask ... Bill [1] http://www.monicamaceli.com/ -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Native MarcEdit for MacOSX
On 6 April 2015, Roy Tennant wrote: I agree with Terry. His decisions on how to deal with his codebase has stood the test of time. Open source doesn't mean squat if no one steps up to maintain it (and I have some experience with that), so having someone dedicated to maintaining it is not a bad strategy. It may not beds the most politically correct solution, but so be it. Running (and maintained) code trumps everything. It doesn't trump software freedom, in my opinion, and I don't understand the apparent feeling that free software can't have a dedicated long-term maintainer, but how other people handle their code is up to them, and I'm glad to now know the reasoning in this case. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Native MarcEdit for MacOSX
On 6 April 2015, Terry Reese wrote: What I've offered is that I'd redo the application to provide a native Mac App that is Mac-Native while still making use of the present assembly code. This of course requires a Mac of some kind -- and since I'm not a Mac user, there it is. From the users perspective, it should all be Mac-tastic. I've always been curious, and now seems a good time to ask: I'm sure you've considered, and been asked about, releasing MarcEdit under a free software license, but decided against it. Why? Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Anyone analyzed SirsiDynix Symphony transaction logs?
On 19 March 2015, Jason Stirnaman wrote: I've been using the ELK (elastic + logstash(1) + kibana)(2) stack for EZProxy log analysis. That sounds like a great way to look at the Symphony transaction logs, and I'm going to try it. Thanks! Having all these logs will a great way to learn these applications. Thanks for all the other replies about the logs. People are analyzing them in different ways with different tools, and everyone finds something right for them. That's always good to see. I'll write up what I do in case it's useful. A general question for anyone looking at usage of circulating physical items: what have you found to be the most useful questions you ask of the data, or the most worthwhile reports and visualizations you make? I'm going to start with some obvious ones (what circs the most, what kind of user is most active, which locations are busiest, what call number ranges get used the most) but I wonder what others have found to be the most interesting and helpful. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] Anyone analyzed SirsiDynix Symphony transaction logs?
I'm going to analyze a whack of transaction logs from our Symphony ILS so that we can dig into collection usage. Any of you out there done this? Because the system is so closed and proprietary I understand it's not easy (perhaps impossible?) to share code (publicly?), but if you've dug into it I'd be curious to know, not just about how you parsed the logs but then what you did with it, whether you loaded bits of data into a database, etc. Looking around, I see a few examples of people using the system's API, but that's it. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Info request - Library Hackathon for students
On 11 February 2015, Craig Boman wrote: Has your library ever hosted a hackathon for university students? If so, would you do it again? Anything you wish you had known before hosting the hackathon? We do one---next week it's our third year---and it's gone very well. It's taken a turn towards app-building and entrepreneurship, because of what the students wanted to do and a big business school on campus, but it's still a lot of smart students hanging around for a day or two, hacking and coding and doing really interesting work. The organizer, Sarah Shujah, wrote up the first one here: The Steacie Library Dungeon Hackfest: Hackers in the Library Coding, Collaborating and Creating, by Sarah Shujah https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/2774 Here's the one next week: http://hackfest.library.yorku.ca/ She and the others did everything you'd expect about getting the word out. Talking to profs in key undergrad courses in comp sci and engineering helped, and attendance has become an assignment in one course. Food helps, but we all know that, as does keeping an eye out for people sitting on their own and making sure they're enjoying it and have something to do. Having university IT developers and admins around really helps, whether they're just doing their work or they're acting as helpers or mentors. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Conference photography policy
On 26 January 2015, Andreas Orphanides wrote: Not to complicate things: shall (or *how shall*) we accommodate requests from presenters who might have a no photo preference vis-a-vis conference webcast? A few years ago a speaker didn't want to be filmed, and someone turned off the camera and put a paper bag over it for the duration. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North 2015 meet up?
On 5 January 2015, Tim Ribaric wrote: Is anyone interested in hosting the Code4Lib North 2015 meeting? I was going to volunteer and have St. Catharines ON be the place for this year but if someone has a desire to host I will graciously defer. Similarly if anyone is willing to help me run the event I'd be happy for the help. +1 for St. Catharines and for volunteering! There's interesting digital humanities and augmented reality work being done at Brock (eg Kevin Kee and John Bonnett) and if some connections were made there it'd be extra fun. Brock'll be easy for people from upstate New York to get to, as well. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] what good books did you read in 2014?
On 9 December 2014, Andromeda Yelton wrote: Hey, code4lib! I bet you consume fascinating media. What good books did you read in 2014 that you think your colleagues would like, too? + Love Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality, by Edward Frenkel; memoirs of a mathematician who grew up and trained in the Soviet Union. Explains a lot about the Langlands program. + The Circle, Dave Eggers. No masterpiece, but an updated 1984, set in the company that succeeds Google and Facebook and all the others. + Stoner, by John Williams. Life of an American professor of English. Quiet and powerful. + Can't We Talk About Something More Please?, by Roz Chast. Cartoonist from the New Yorker; this is a graphic memoir about her parents growing old and dying. Very funny in some parts, very sad in others, always good. + The Peripheral, William Gibson. 100 pages in I had no clue what was going on. 200 pages in things fell into place and it (or I) took off like a jet. + Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, by Gabrille Coleman. An anthropologist explaining the history and workings of Anonymous. Includes the most gripping IRC logs I've ever read. + The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. Old country house, post-WWII in England, is falling apart, family has no money, local doctor gets involved ... and strange things begin to happen. + The Org Manual (http://orgmode.org/org.html), where I always learn something new about this wonderful tool. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] New look for Planet Code4Lib: with Dublin Core metadata!
On 4 October 2014, William Denton wrote: http://planet.code4lib.org/ And for anyone who prefers the old view, it's here: http://planet.code4lib.org/old.html About Coral's question about copyright information in WordPress feeds, I had a bit of a look around but didn't see an answer ... maybe someone else knows? Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] New look for Planet Code4Lib: with Dublin Core metadata!
http://planet.code4lib.org/ I made a new theme for the Planet. It has Dublin Core metadata right for all to see! Suggestions and corrections welcome for the metadata, and tweaks welcome for the CSS. It's responsive and will work better on small screens. I used a template from Initializr (http://www.initializr.com/) and hacked on it a bit. For fun, someone who's good with microdata might want to try embedding the metadata actually into the page, which might be useful---or might not, but the more metadata, the better. By the way, I just noticed you can put rights information in feeds, and I'm displaying it in this theme. Most sources have no information, so it's blank, but if you're on the Planet, have a look and make sure that information is in your feed. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ https://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] Code2Bib (was Re: [CODE4LIB] UNIMARC validation rules)
On 23 September 2014, Sylvain Machefert wrote: the question has been asked on code2bib, the french equivalent to code4lib 2 being deux which sounds like du, which is like 4 being four but sounding like for? That's the first time I've ever seen that, and the name Code2Bib is a real delight. I'm very happy to hear about it! Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Privacy audits Re: [CODE4LIB] Library Privacy, RIP
On 16 August 2014, Karen Coyle wrote: I think a Code4lib guide to library privacy or something of that nature would be a valuable contribution. I'd be happy to work with folks on it. I saw on Twitter that this is being built up: https://www.piratepad.ca/p/Library_Privacy_Audit I'm sure many of you knew about it but thought I'd mention it. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Canvas Fingerprinting by AddThis
On 14 August 2014, Karen Coyle wrote: Bill (others), are you running PrivacyBadger alongside AdBlock? I'm concerned about the confluence of decisions there, although tempted to try anyway. I am---Adblock Plus, that is. Haven't noticed any problems (or ads!) or missing content. They seem to get along fine. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Canvas Fingerprinting by AddThis
On 14 August 2014, Eric Hellman wrote: I must say I'm surprised that most of the response to libraries are letting advertisers track patrons as they browse their catalogs is discussion of privacy condomware. Perhaps I've missed something? Indeed no, that's how this thread went. But it's relevant, because though we should make our own sites private and secure, we should also help people use the web privately and securely everywhere, and extensions like this do that. At the university where I work Google Analytics is the standard, and we use it on the library's web site. There's probably no way around that---but we can tell people how to block the tracking, which will help them locally (ironically) and everwhere else. (I use Piwik at home, and like it, but moving to that here would be a long-term project, only partly for technical reasons.) I know it doesn't make a lot of sense for some people in institutions to work to defeat what co-workers are doing, but I think there will be a lot of that around privacy---some people blocking tracking that marketers want to use, for example---for some time to come. Another approach is Tor, both spreading the word about it and how to use it properly, and also about running relays and exit nodes on the Tor network. I run a relay myself, and encourage others to do so. Institutions like libraries and universities should be running them---we have the bandwidth and computing power and instituional heft---and I wonder if anyone here is doing that are their work. Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Canvas Fingerprinting by AddThis
On 13 August 2014, Karen Coyle wrote: *ps - I had a great cookie manager for a while, but it's no longer around. Cookie control in browsers actually was easier a decade ago - they've obviously been discouraged from including that software. If anyone knows of a good cookie program or plugin, I'd like to hear about it. I use Cookie Monster [0] and like it. Related: on my work box I'm trying out the EFF's Privacy Badger [1], which I hope will be a success. At home I use Disconnect [2], which blocks entire domains. It's great for cutting out cookies and junk like AddThis, but cripes, I hadn't realized how many people pull in Javascript libraries from Google or Yahoo. That's a harder way of tracking to avoid. Bill [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monster/ [1] https://www.eff.org/privacybadger [2] https://disconnect.me/disconnect -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] planet.code4lib.org relaunched
It looks almost the same, but there's a new version of Planet Code4Lib live: http://planet.code4lib.org/ Changes: - many new feeds added (more are welcome! let me know) - feeds without updates in 1001 days were removed - complete configuration is at https://github.com/code4lib/planetcode4lib - it's using Venus (https://github.com/rubys/venus) Thanks to Ryan Wick for getting me access to the server. I think it's all working ... the final thing is to make sure the cron job is working so there are regular updates, and I'll see how that goes as new items show up today. If anyone notices any problems, let me know. Is anyone interested in doing a better theme? Planet Emacsen has my favourite: http://planet.emacsen.org/ Each entry looks like vanilla Emacs. If you're an Emacs user, this is hilariously funny. Maybe we could have a theme where every entry looked like it was written on a library card or in a book or something? Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] access to code4lib server for planet maintenance?
On 14 July 2014, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: Hi all. The Planet Code4lib aggregator runs on a server operated by Oregon State. 128.193.168.90 poseidon.library.oregonstate.edu I've been sort of caretaking the Planet, but really just editing the config for feed sources. Which is really all I have the time/inclination for at the moment, I've basically just been barely care-taking it. Meanwhile, the planet is running on really old software, and maybe has some issues with some things. If I can get access, I'm glad to update the system and take a shift maintaining it. Whoever runs that server, let me know ... Bill -- William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] We should use HTTPS on code4lib.org
On 4 November 2013, Ross Singer wrote: While I'm not opposed to providing code4lib.org via HTTPS, I don't think it's as simple as let's just do it!. Who will be responsible for making sure the cert is up to date? I will for a while! I'll make some entries in my calendar. Who will pay for certs (if we don't go with startcom)? Good question. There was a small working group formed a little while ago that was looking at a formal Code4Lib organization ... did anything come of that? Cary Gordon kicked it off, I think. If there was a formal arrangement then that would be the right place to manage the costs of an SSL cert. But there is no formal arrangement yet, so we could rustle it up amongst ourselves (I'll chip in) or we could make it part of the annual conference costs ($100ish isn't an onerous burden). We don't have to get it working forever right now. We just need to get it working. Then we can worry about it next year. I've forgotten who at Oregon State is tending the server ... whoever it is, can you email me? By the way, if anyone out there has been thinking about privacy post-Snowden and has some ideas about what libraries and archives can do about it, this would be a good subject for a talk at the conference next year [0] ... Also, forcing all traffic to HTTPS unnecessarily complicates some things, e.g. screen scrapers (and before you say, well, screen scraping sucks, anyway!, I think it's not a stretch to say that microdata parser falls under screen scraping. Or RDFa.). Fair enough, but even if not mandatory or preferred, HTTPS should be available everywhere HTTP is used, and that's something we can work towards. People log in to code4lib.org and wiki.code4lib.org by sending their passwords in the clear! That is uncool. (Question: Why does HTTPS complicate screen-scraping? Every decent tool and library supports HTTPS, doesn't it?) Bill [0] http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2014_Prepared_Talk_Proposals -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] We should use HTTPS on code4lib.org
I think it's time we made everything on code4lib.org use HTTPS by default and redirect people to HTTPS from HTTP when needed. (Right now there's an outdated self-signed SSL certificate on the site, so someone took a stab at this earlier, but it's time to do it right.) StartCom gives free SSL certs [0], and there are lots of places that sell them for prices that seem to run over $100 per year (which seems ridiculous to me, but maybe there's a good reason). I don't know which is the best way to get a cert for a site like this, but if people agree this is the right thing to do, perhaps someone with some expertise could work with the Oregon State hosts? More broadly, I think everyone should be using HTTPS everywhere (and HTTPS Everywhere, the browser extension). Are any of you implementing HTTPS on your institution's sites, and moving to it as default? It's one of those slightly finicky things that on the surface isn't necessary (why bother with a library's opening hours or address?) but deeper down is, because everyone should be able to browse the web without being monitored. Bill [0] https://cert.startcom.org/ -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] W. P. Scott Chair in E-Librarianship at York University
Following up to myself one last time about this because it's after Labour Day in North America and schools and universities are back in action, and I don't want people to miss applying for this opening at York University in Toronto, where I work. This two- (possibly three-) year chair is a great opportunity for someone to really dig into a complex project. What kind of project? It's up to you! You've got something you'd like to do---something big and important and interesting---something you haven't had the time to do---something that will lead to exciting research and a symposium and talks and maybe some code---and this is the chance to do it! Details: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/8337/ The deadline is 15 November 2013, with the job ideally starting next April. If you can take two or three years of leave from your current job, or don't like your job and want to quit and start fresh, or don't have a job, or are a post-doc, think about it. Aside from the work you'd do holding this chair, the opportunities for your next position would be that much better. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I'm not on the search committee. Bill PS again: York pays well. I estimate that if you're five years post-MLIS you'd get close to $100,000 CDN. Our salaries are based on years-since-MLIS. On 17 June 2013, William Denton wrote: This is a great opportunity to have a couple of years (maybe three, if it gets extended) to really dig into an interesting project. I work at York (in Toronto, Canada) and am happy to answer any questions. The deadline is in November. Lots of time to think about it and write a proposal! If you work at a place where you can take a leave of absence, it's a good opportunity ... Bill PS York pays well. On 17 June 2013, j...@code4lib.org wrote: York University invites candidates to apply for a contractually limited appointment for a term of up to two (2) years to engage in groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research and development that will advance libraries and librarianship. The W. P. Scott Chair in E-Librarianship Research provides an exciting opportunity to accelerate the development of e-librarianship in support of research, teaching, learning or scholarly communications. The research may be interdisciplinary, with a context that is broader than academic librarianship, but should be clearly defined and articulated and of interest to the academic library community. A strong commitment to research in any relevant area of e-librarianship is required, including but not limited to e-learning, digital collections and archives, digital stewardship, linked data, liberation technology, social media, user experience, interface design, digital humanities and/or scholarly communications. We are interested in interdisciplinary approaches that engage with theoretical models from disciplines outside of information studies. The Chair must have demonstrated success in directing and conducting research or a large project. As a member of the YUL complement, the successful candidate will contribute in an area of the libraries suited to the candidate's area of expertise. Responsibilities * The holder of the Chair (the Chairholder) will be required to provide an annual report of research activities to the University Librarian. * The Chairholder is required to provide a W.P. Scott lecture or symposium relating to the theme of their research. This would be open to the professional library community. * The Chairholder is required to provide a presentation to members of York University Libraries and others on the results of their activities. For further information about the Research Chair please see: [http://www.library.yorku.ca/cms/e-librarianship/](http://www.library.yorku.ca/cms/e-librarianship/) Qualifications * Minimum of an ALA-accredited M.L.S., Master's of Archival Studies, or recognized equivalent. * Further post-graduate degrees or related work experience is preferred * Record of research achievement or demonstrated experience with research project management * Excellent oral and written communication skills * Ability to work independently and in collaboration with others * Excellent organizational, analytical and interpersonal skills The position is a contractually limited appointment with a term of up to two (2) years at the Adjunct Librarian level. The appointment start date is April 1, 2013 or as soon as possible thereafter. Librarians at York University have academic status and are members of the York University Faculty Association bargaining unit (http://www.yufa.org/). Salary is commensurate with qualifications. All York University positions are subject to budgetary approval. York University is an Affirmative Action Employer. The Affirmative Action Program can be found on York's website www.yorku.ca/acadjobs or a copy can be obtained by calling the affirmative action office at 416-736
Re: [CODE4LIB] Desk Statistics Software Question
On 22 August 2013, Brian McBride wrote: I am curious what other institutions are using for tracking desk stats? We are evaluating our current solution and wanted to see what what other solutions are available either commercial or open source. We use LibStats (GPL) at York U: https://code.google.com/p/libstats/ It appears to be moribund, but it works. It's pretty bare bones but it's easy to enter in what you want. It generates some reports but not many, so I wrote an R script to make a lot of prettier charts. Springshare's RefStats is similar but looks more up to date and has better reports, but it's proprietary and commercial. It probably doesn't matter too much what program you use so much as how you analyze the data and make that part of your thinking about how to make the ref desk better (whatever better means for you). We all enter our ref desk work into our system, but it's pretty much a one-way system and nothing much happens with the data except for some numbers in annual reports. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] Examples of augmented reality?
I'm writing a chapter about augmented reality and would like to include a couple more examples of it in use in libraries and archives. Are any of you using it for something exciting? I know about SCARLET at U Manchester [1] but would love to hear about other work. I'm especially interested in anyone that's made their own app or otherwise gone beyond just popping up POIs in Layar or Junaio or adding an image or video overlay to something in print. While I'm here about AR, the YouTube recording of Geoffrey Alan Rhodes's 2012 talk AR on AR: Occupying Virtual Space is worth a look as an interesting way of mixing and discussing the real and the virtual. And also, if you haven't seen the video showing of Meta's SpaceGlasses [3], it's freaky. Thanks, Bill [1] https://teamscarlet.wordpress.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyAkUJCgDUk [3] https://www.spaceglasses.com/ -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] StackExchange reboot?
On 9 July 2013, Owens, Trevor wrote: After my experiences with the Digital Preservation and LIS stack exchanges I am very wary of using them as a platform. I'd agree with others comments that they have far too puritanical and stringent requirements for the kinds of discussion people wanted to have. Beyond that, the kind of activity the stackexchange folks want to see on these boards to meet their needs was a good bit beyond what our communities were going to generate. Well said. I was very interested in the LIS SE and asked and answered some questions, but the combination of the population not increasing and the SE environment not working the way that suits us for our LIS work ended up making me drift away. For all of our general IT questions (programming, databases, system adminstration), I'm sure we all use Stack Exchange sites regularly. It's too bad an LIS-centric version can't group all that together with our domain-specific focus, but it looks like mailing lists and blogs and such still work best. The whole SE network is fascinating. The range of subjects and how questions are asked and answered is very intriguing. I wonder what will happen to it in five years, and what will replace it. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] W. P. Scott Chair in E-Librarianship at York University
This is a great opportunity to have a couple of years (maybe three, if it gets extended) to really dig into an interesting project. I work at York (in Toronto, Canada) and am happy to answer any questions. The deadline is in November. Lots of time to think about it and write a proposal! If you work at a place where you can take a leave of absence, it's a good opportunity ... Bill PS York pays well. On 17 June 2013, j...@code4lib.org wrote: York University invites candidates to apply for a contractually limited appointment for a term of up to two (2) years to engage in groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research and development that will advance libraries and librarianship. The W. P. Scott Chair in E-Librarianship Research provides an exciting opportunity to accelerate the development of e-librarianship in support of research, teaching, learning or scholarly communications. The research may be interdisciplinary, with a context that is broader than academic librarianship, but should be clearly defined and articulated and of interest to the academic library community. A strong commitment to research in any relevant area of e-librarianship is required, including but not limited to e-learning, digital collections and archives, digital stewardship, linked data, liberation technology, social media, user experience, interface design, digital humanities and/or scholarly communications. We are interested in interdisciplinary approaches that engage with theoretical models from disciplines outside of information studies. The Chair must have demonstrated success in directing and conducting research or a large project. As a member of the YUL complement, the successful candidate will contribute in an area of the libraries suited to the candidate's area of expertise. Responsibilities * The holder of the Chair (the Chairholder) will be required to provide an annual report of research activities to the University Librarian. * The Chairholder is required to provide a W.P. Scott lecture or symposium relating to the theme of their research. This would be open to the professional library community. * The Chairholder is required to provide a presentation to members of York University Libraries and others on the results of their activities. For further information about the Research Chair please see: [http://www.library.yorku.ca/cms/e-librarianship/](http://www.library.yorku.ca/cms/e-librarianship/) Qualifications * Minimum of an ALA-accredited M.L.S., Master's of Archival Studies, or recognized equivalent. * Further post-graduate degrees or related work experience is preferred * Record of research achievement or demonstrated experience with research project management * Excellent oral and written communication skills * Ability to work independently and in collaboration with others * Excellent organizational, analytical and interpersonal skills The position is a contractually limited appointment with a term of up to two (2) years at the Adjunct Librarian level. The appointment start date is April 1, 2013 or as soon as possible thereafter. Librarians at York University have academic status and are members of the York University Faculty Association bargaining unit (http://www.yufa.org/). Salary is commensurate with qualifications. All York University positions are subject to budgetary approval. York University is an Affirmative Action Employer. The Affirmative Action Program can be found on York's website www.yorku.ca/acadjobs or a copy can be obtained by calling the affirmative action office at 416-736-5713. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and Permanent Residents will be given priority. Temporary entry for citizens of the U.S.A. and Mexico may apply per the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). York University resources include centres relating to gender equity, race and ethnic relations, sexual harassment, human rights, and wellness. York University encourages attitudes of respect and non-discrimination toward persons of all ethnic and religious groups, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The deadline for applications is November 15, 2013. Applicants must send a five-page letter of interest relating their qualifications and outlining their proposed project, a current curriculum vitae and letters from three referees to: Chair, Appointment Committee for the W.P. Scott Chair in E-Librarianship Research York University Libraries, 516 Scott Library York University, 4700 Keele Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 Fax 416-736-5451 yula...@yorku.ca Brought to you by code4lib jobs: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/8337/ -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] One-year contract web librarian, York University, Toronto
Hi, There's a one-year contract position open for a combination web librarian and science librarian at York University in Toronto, Canada: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/7252/ It's to cover while I'm away for a year. I'm on the search committee and can't discuss details with possible candidates, but Nick Ruest rue...@yorku.ca can give anyone interested more information about the job and what York University Libraries is like. I'll say this: there are some fine people here, and York pays well. It'd be a great springboard for a newish librarian with good technical skills and a science background. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Job: Digital Library Application Developer at Princeton University
On 11 March 2013, Ed Summers wrote: Apologies for this duplicate...I leaned too heavily on the new recent jobs from this employer which didn't alert me to the duplicate since it was posted under Princeton Theological Seminary and I put it under Princeton University Ed, does this amazing jobs site require your hand on the dial? I thought you'd coded it all into magic and it just worked. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Job: Project Manager at Digital Public Library of America
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/
[CODE4LIB] Did anyone try the Layar augmented reality thing in Chicago?
Did any of you try out Layar and the Code4Lib 2013 augmented reality view of Chicago when you were at the conference? If so I'd love to hear what you thought, if was useful or interesting, and what might make it better. Two things I'm going to do are add a filter option so you can see only points from a map or only tweets---having both was sometimes overwhelming---and also add a filter so you can just see recent tweets. I took some screenshots and I'll post about it but if you used do let me know. Cheers, Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] ruby code for Chicago Transit Authority API
Chicago's open data site has a lot of really interesting data sets: https://data.cityofchicago.org/ I wish my city had as much online. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Rdio playlist
There are 70 songs on the playlist [1] now, including Little Walter, Styx, Liz Phair, Tortoise, Lupe Fiasco, Cheap Trick, Herbie Hancock, Ministry, Sam Prekop and Screeching Weasel. Great listening! Nine busy people have added songs so far. It costs $5 or more per month if you want to subscribe to Rdio, but you can sign up free for a week if you just want to try it out. There's an API [2], and with it or by hand I'll make a record of the songs on the playlist so they're not lost and people can listen to them elsewhere. Bill [1] http://www.rdio.com/people/wdenton/playlists/2229053/Code4Lib_2013_in_Chicago/ [2] http://developer.rdio.com/ -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2013 in Layar
I've set up a Code4Lib 2013 layer in the Android/iOS augmented reality application Layar [1] to do something that I think---I hope---will add an interesting and fun element to the conference. You can use it to scan around the city to see two kinds of things: 1) tweets using the #c4l13 or #code4lib hashtag (if the tweets are geolocated so they can be nailed to a point) and 2) points of interest from the shared Google Maps that have been set up [2]. During the day all of the tweets will be coming from everyone at the UIC Forum, so that's not too interesting ... but I hope that outside the conference times, when people are all over Chicago, they'll be tweeting, and that's when you might wonder, Where's everyone at? and you can hold up your phone, look around, and see that a bunch of folks are two blocks over there at a blues club and another bunch are up over there trying obscure beers and someone else posted a picture of an LP she just bought down the block, and that a comic book store someone recommended is a half mile that way. It's an Code4Lib-augmented view of Chicago: you look around and see what we're all doing and where we're hanging out, and all the places we're interested in or recommend. To try it out, intall Layar on your phone, then run it, click to go into Geo Layers mode, and search for code4lib 2013. Launch the layer and look around. You probably won't see anything around you, but next time you tweet something with #c4l13 (and the tweet is geolocated so you're sharing your latitude and longitude) it will show up. So, if you want to try it, add points to the Google Maps, and when you're in Chicago, tweet! I don't know how well it will work, but please test it and try it, because I think if it does turn out it will be a lot of fun. It can work for any conference or event. The program driving this is Laertes [3], and the code is here: https://github.com/wdenton/laertes It's pretty straightforward, and if you're comfortable running a modern Ruby web app then to make your own layer it's just a matter of some basic configuration at Layar's web site and customizing Laertes by editing a hash tag in a config file. Or maybe I could host it for you, for a while at least. See you soon, Bill [1] http://www.layar.com/ [2] https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=213549257652679418473.0004ce6c25e6cdeb0319dmsa=0 and https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=208580427660303662074.0004d00a3e083f4d160a4msa=0 [3] As in Odysseus's father, who was one of the Argonauts and did a fair bit of travelling, and because his name has layer in it. -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Anybody using the Open Library APIs?
On 21 January 2013, David Fiander wrote: All I'm really looking for at this point is a way to convert an ISBN into basic bibliographic data, and to find any related ISBNs, a la OCLC's xISBN service. LibraryThing's thingISBN is nice and might serve your needs: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/LibraryThing_APIs Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Newberry Library tour
On 18 January 2013, Linda Ballinger wrote: As a Newberry inmate, I've had it on my mental to-do list to look into the possibility of arranging something for C4L beyond the Thursday canned tour. Now that you've reminded me, I'd be happy to ask for you if you would like me to. I'm not sure what might be possible for seeing things behind the scenes, but I can try once more people chime in. That would be wonderful! Thanks. It didn't occur to me someone from the Newberry might be on the list. I think people would be especially interested in what's happening in Digital Initiatives and Conservation Services, plus learning about what C4L-type stuff is going on there. And perhaps seeing a treasure and getting to go down a floor on the caged staircase. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] A gentle proposal: slim down zoia during the conference
On 18 January 2013, Karen Coyle wrote: Bill, I realize that. That's opt-out, and anyone new to IRC is not going to know that. So I am asking for the opposite, which may not be a current feature of IRC, but that those who wish to see Zoia's replies (and who therefore know about Zoia) should opt-in. Aha, I see what you mean. I don't think there's a way to do that in IRC, but I might be wrong. Personally I'd be happy if zoia was restricted to a very minimal set of what she does now, or if most of her responses were msged and not in channel. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] A gentle proposal: slim down zoia during the conference
On 17 January 2013, Karen Coyle wrote: Is another possibility is for Zoia to be opt-in rather than opt-out? If you say /ignore zoia all your IRC client will ignore everything she says. You still see what other people say to her, which is a bit odd, but it really makes the channel a lot clearer. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] Newberry Library tour
I was in Chicago last year and went for a tour of the Newberry Library (www.newberry.org) and really enjoyed it. It's an old independent research library on Washington Square Park and it's beautiful. (If you read THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE [1], it's where Henry works. [2]) They have free tours on Thursdays at 3, but they request advance notice of groups. I'm happy to be in touch with them and try to arrange a Code4Lib group tour, and to wrangle the C4L people who might want to go. If there a just a few, that's no problem; if there are a lot, maybe we can arrange something special. Questions: Are any of you who are going to the conference interested in such a tour? Does that time suit? Would you be interested in going behind the scenes, if possible, and seeing their conservation room and so on? Bill [1] If you haven't read it, then it's a good one to read before visiting Chicago. [2] If you saw the movie, which is a poor substitute for the book, you didn't see the Newberry, because the movie was filmed in Toronto and two different libraries here were library doubles for it. -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] What is a coder?
On 29 November 2012, Cary Gordon wrote: Obviously, we need to offer trainings on how to get funding to attend conferences. The should be collocated with the conferences. This is a good idea; this should be a BOF or something---how to hack your system to get funding---maybe report back with a lightning talk? Some folks have good funding support, which is great. Some don't, but given the different problems or constraints, what's worked or could work to get people to a Code4Lib conference (major or chapter)? I know some people pay their own way and some use vacation time to go ... be good to hear that approach too. If someone's looking to change what they're doing in the library/technology world, getting to Code4Lib however they can is something to seriously consider. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] one tool and/or resource that you recommend to newbie coders in a library?
On 1 November 2012, Michael J. Giarlo wrote: Not to be glib, but: code4lib. +1 Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] open circ data
On 26 October 2012, Francis Kayiwa wrote: Just saw this at code4li... 'er Access 2012. ;-) https://github.com/splurge/splurge No open data here yet, but we're working on it ... and I'll see about merging in existing open data. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] Python web framework recommendations good when learning Python
I have a fairly basic web service I want to hack on that would manage some stuff (not too much) and feed out JSON in response to request. I'd like to do it in Python so I can get to know the language. StackOverflow is filled with comparisons of Python web frameworks, but I wanted to get the sense from all the Python hackers here about what framework might be a good one given their personal experiences. Django is very full-featured and well documented, and would make a complex project simple, but I think has more than I need; Flask looks pretty simple and could suit the basic service I want to do; web2py looks pretty rich. I know this isn't a particularly answerable question and the best thing to do is to try one and hack on it, and do it right the second time, but since future Python work might involve RDF and linked data, and there are so many Python people here whose opinion I value, I thought I'd throw it out. Thanks, Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] GRAP: The granular restricted access problem
On 3 November 2011, Mike Taylor wrote: In the mean time, it's hard to get excited about building software to *restrict* access to materials, when what we all really want to do is *improve* access. I know what you mean, but with archival material, there are lots of cases where setting up restricted access actually is an improvement: without it, there'd be no (online) access at all; the person would have to physically come to the archive and show identification to view the diary that won't be open to the public for 50 years. Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
[CODE4LIB] GRAP: The granular restricted access problem
Some of us at work were talking about a problem the archivist and other digitizing people have: showing particular digitized objects to particular people with particular restrictions. We called it GRAP: the granular restricted access problem. Here's the archivist's description. If you also had this problem and found a solution, we'd love to know. # - begin GRAP We are generating lots of digital assets (TIFFs of historical photographs, WAVs of sound recordings and oral histories, etc.) not only in the course of our regular digitization-for-access activities but also as a result of researcher requests and requests through Accessibility Services. We have a institutional digital repository (DSpace) that works well as a mass distribution tool, but as with most primary sources there are often additional restrictions on access based on copyright, donor permissions, third party privacy issues and other legislation. We are struggling to find ways of promoting these resources that have additional access restrictions. What we want: A system of storing and organizing all digitized materials in one place so that everyone (librarians, archivists, technicians, IT, scholars, faculty, students) can find them. A means of managing and tracking all these objects that will allow: - the creation of unique identifiers (to generate statistical metrics, track chains of custody, access etc.) - quick and easy updating - access controls, possibly with time limits, for all material (X to the public, Y to this person, Z to students in HUM 101 for one week) - seamless streaming of audio and video (with access controls) # - end GRAP Any suggestions welcome. I'll pass along and report back. Thanks, Bill -- William Denton Toronto, Canada http://www.miskatonic.org/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Listserv help desperately needed!
On 11 April 2011, LeVan,Ralph wrote: We can't be the only ones with this problem. Does anyone have a suggestion on how we fix it? OCLC could buy L-Soft, who make LISTSERV ... Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC magic for file
On 6 April 2011, Reese, Terry wrote: Actually -- I'd disagree because that is a very narrow view of the specification. When validating MARC, I'd take the approach to validate structure (which allows you to then read any MARC format) -- then use a separate process for validating content of fields, which in my opinion, is more open to interpretation based on system usage of the data. What do you think is the best way to recognize MARC files (up to some level of validity, given all the MARC you've seen and parsed) that could be made to work the way magic is defined? Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC magic for file
On 6 April 2011, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: I think we computer programmers are really better-served by reserving the notion of validity for things specified by formal specifications -- as we normally do, talking about any other data format. And the only formal specifications I can find for Marc21 say that leader bytes 20-23 should be 4500. (Not true of Marc in general just Marc21). Validity does mean something definite ... but Postel's Law is a good guideline, especially with the swamp of bad MARC, old MARC, alternate MARC, that's out there. Valid MARC is valid MARC, but if---for the sake of file and its magic---we can identify technically invalid but still usable MARC, that's good. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] utf8 \xC2 does not map to Unicode
On 6 April 2011, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: http://zoia.library.nd.edu/tmp/tor.marc Happily, Kevin's magic formula recognizes this as MARC! Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC magic for file
On 28 March 2011, Ford, Kevin wrote:
I couldn't get Simon's MARC 21 Magic file to work. Among other issues,
I received line too long errors. But, since I've been curious about
this for sometime, I figured I'd take a whack at it myself. Try this:
This is very nice! Thanks. I tried it on a bunch of MARC files I have,
and it recognized almost all of them. A few it didn't, so I had a closer
look, and they're invalid.
For example, the Internet Archive's Binghamton catalogue dump:
http://ia600307.us.archive.org/6/items/marc_binghamton_univ/
$ file -m marc.magic bgm*mrc
bgm_openlib_final_0-5.mrc: data
bgm_openlib_final_10-15.mrc: MARC Bibliographic
bgm_openlib_final_15-18.mrc: data
bgm_openlib_final_5-10.mrc:MARC Bibliographic
But why? Aha:
$ head -c 25 bgm_openlib_final_*mrc
== bgm_openlib_final_0-5.mrc ==
01812cas 2200457 45x00
== bgm_openlib_final_10-15.mrc ==
01008nam 2200289ua 45000
== bgm_openlib_final_15-18.mrc ==
01614cam00385 45 0
== bgm_openlib_final_5-10.mrc ==
00887nam 2200265v 45000
As you say, the leader should end with 4500 (as defined at
http://www.loc.gov/marc/authority/adleader.html) but two of those files
don't. So they're not valid MARC. I'm sure any decent MARC tool can deal
with them, since decent MARC tools are certainly going to be forgiving
enough to deal with four characters that apparently don't even really
matter.
So on the one hand they're usable MARC but file wouldn't say so, and on
the other that's a good indication that the files have failed a basic
validity test. I wonder if there are similar situations for JPEGs or
MP3s.
I think you should definitely submit this for inclusion in the magic file.
It would be very useful for us all!
Bill
P.S. I'd never used head -c (to show a fixed number of bytes) before.
Always nice to find a new useful option to an old command.
#
# MARC 21 Magic (Second cut)
# Set at position 0
0 short 0x
# leader ends with 4500
20 string 4500
# leader starts with 5 digits, followed by codes specific to MARC format
0 regex/1 (^[0-9]{5})[acdnp][^bhlnqsu-z] MARC Bibliographic
0 regex/1 (^[0-9]{5})[acdnosx][z] MARC Authority
0 regex/1 (^[0-9]{5})[cdn][uvxy] MARC Holdings
0 regex/1 (^[0-9]{5})[acdn][w]MARC Classification
0 regex/1 (^[0-9]{5})[cdn][q] MARC Community
--
William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] MARC magic for file
Has anyone figured out the magic necessary for file to recognize MARC files? If you don't know it, file is a Unix command that tells you what kind of file a file is. For example: $ file 101015_001.mp3 101015_001.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.3.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, Stereo $ file P126.jpg P126.jpg: JPEG image data, EXIF standard, comment: AppleMark It's a really useful command. I assume it's on OSX, but I don't know. You can get it for Windows with Cygwin. The problem is, file doesn't grok MARC: $ file catalog.01.mrc catalog.01.mrc: data I took a stab at getting the magic defined, but it didn't work. I'll include what I used below. You can put it into a magic.txt file, and then use file -m magic.txt some_file.mrc to test it. It'll tell you the file is MARC Bibliographic ... but it also thinks that PDFs, JPEGs, and text files are MARC. That's no good. It'd be great if the MARC magic got into the central magic database so everyone would be able to recognize various MARC file types. Bill # --- clip'n'test # MARC 21 for Bibliographic Data # http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bdleader.html # # This doesn't work properly 0 stringx 5regex [acdnp] 6regex [acdefgijkmoprt] 7regex [abcims] 8regex [\ a] 9regex [\ a] 10 byte x 11 byte x 12 stringx 17 regex [\ 12345678uz] 18 regex [\ aciu] 19 regex [\ abc] MARC Bibliographic #20 byte 4 #21 byte 5 #22 byte 0 #23 byte 0 MARC Bibliographic # --- end clip'n'test -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Register now for code4lib Northwest!
With Code4Lib North in early May, and Code4Lib Northwest in mid-June, we now need Code4Lib North by Northwest in late May, with Cary Grant running through a field escaping a plane attempting to dust him with poisonous, badly formed MARC records. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Controlled Vocabulary DB: RESTful CRU[D]
On 1 March 2011, Bobbi Fox wrote: I have been tasked with coming up with a RESTful Create, Read, Update [we're not Deleting] API to our home-grown controlled vocabulary database, WordShack. I can't help you with your actual question---except to wish you good luck---but have you read RESTful WEB SERVICES by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby (O'Reilly, 2007) (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529260)? It's excellent. You probably already know about it, but if not, it'll be a big help. Not only does it explain about REST, by doing so it explains how the web works. It changed how I think. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North | Meetup!
On 17 February 2011, Nick Ruest wrote: It is getting close to that time to start planning for another Code4Lib North meetup! In anticipation, John Fink and I have been working behind the scenes here at McMaster to convince our administration to allow us to throw in proposal to host it. Hurray! When - May 5/6, 2011 or May 12/13, 2011 Those both seem like good dates. And they both work for me. I'd love to come. I vote for a full-day hackfest, though. A half-day isn't enough to really get into things. I don't mind getting my own lunch. Thanks, Nick and John. I'm looking forward to it. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Streaming
On 8 February 2011, Jason Griffey wrote: I'd like to ditto what Roy said below. I know how hard this is to do at all, and to do it well is the sign of experience and talent. +1 I'm watching the archive now and the video is wonderful. Thank you! Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] code4lib 2011 announcements
On 7 February 2011, Ranti Junus wrote: Try to copy and paste the URL instead of clicking it. For some reason looks like the links include their web Outlook URL as well. I added direct links to the schedule page http://code4lib.org/conference/2011/schedule Many thanks for the streaming video---I'll be watching tomorrow with great interest! I hope everyone there has a great time. It looks like it'll be fun. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] How to give a friendly URL to a code4lib.org page?
On 12 December 2010, Roy Tennant wrote: Done. If you have edit privileges you should see, at the bottom of the page, a selection for URL path settings which I changed to conference/2011/schedule. Thanks, Roy! I can edit, but I don't see that, so perhaps PathAuto (or whatever is doing it) isn't available to whatever kind of account I have. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] How to give a friendly URL to a code4lib.org page?
I want http://code4lib.org/node/388 to be http://code4lib.org/conference/2011/schedule but I don't see any way to set that. How is it done? If it requires some kind of higher level access, maybe an admin can do it? Thanks, Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North: lots of fun
About 40 of us were in Kingston, ON last Friday for Code4Lib North. It was a great day! I had a really good time and I hope everyone else did too. Thursday there were about twenty people hanging out in the afternoon, and most went off for dinner and some ended up at the Sleepless Goat for dessert. I don't think much hacking went on, but the hanging out was good. Friday we started at 9. There were 10 twenty-minute talks, and before lunch we did an Ask Anyone session (like Dan Chudnov did at Code4Lib in Asheville). Queen's University generously provided lunch. When we came back we had nine or ten lightning talks, the last three talks, and then broke up and some BOF sessions happened. The library shut at 4:30 and a group headed out for dinner while others went back home. I knew some of the people there but there were lots of new faces. The talks were all very interesting. I went first and was, I'm afraid, insufficiently awake. Walter Lewis spoke for himself and Art Rhyno about linked data and old Kingston newspapers in Our Ontario. MJ Suhonos's location-aware mytpl.ca had people oohing and ahhing when it showed that the nearest copy in Toronto of a certain book was at a branch in the very east end of the city (Kingston being 250 km east of Toronto). Alan Harnum talked about Toronto Public Library's use of Endeca, and attributed some of its features for a level 20 wizard. Glen Newton's visualization of domains of knowledge in scientific journals was eye-opening. John Miedema gave a summation of OpenBook, his WordPress plugin that he's weaning from development, and Eric Palmitesta gave a great tutorial on XQuery and Exist. Nasser Saleh talked about Coagmento (www.coagmento.org), a collaborative browsing/research tool. I don't have the details of the nine or ten lightning talks, though people here will be glad to know Ed Corrado plumped for the Code4Lib Journal and encouraged us all to write for it. Anyone who spoke Friday---can you please edit the wiki to add a link to slides or a web site? Lightning talkers too, or just give a name to your talk, so everyone knows who spoke about what. Thanks again to Queen's University and Wendy Huot for organizing everything there. I think it was a really fun and informative day, and I hope everyone else felt the same. One last note: we decided to delete the code4lib-north mailing list and have any future discussions here on the main list. If we need to, we can make a separate list again, but there's no demonstrated need. Cheers, Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North planning continues
On 8 April 2010, Walker, David quoted: I think a good compromise is to have local meeting conversations on the code4libcon google group. That list is for organizing the main conference, with details about getting rooms, food, shuttle buses, hotel booking agents, who can MC Thursday afternoon, etc. Mixing that with organizational details *and* general discussion about all local chapter meetings would confuse everything, I think. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North planning continues
Hi, A quick note to anyone who's interested in Code4Lib North (6-7 May in Kingston, Ontario) and isn't on the mailing list for it: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/North Details about the mailing list are there. Planning's going on and anyone who's interested in giving a talk should drop a note and add themselves on the wiki page. Discussion of a possible hackfest/something on the Thursday continues, but it seems like most people will be solidly there for just Friday. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North planning continues
On 7 April 2010, Ed Summers wrote: Kind of bummed that you had to create a new mailing list, but whatever I guess ... It seemed like the right thing to do. We can always drop it. What's the limit on discussion of local events on the list? I guess it hasn't been reached yet. When will people get fed up, or start mass deleting? That said, if anyone wants to talk about it here, by all means, go ahead. The more the merrier. So far there are just three people with ideas for talks (me, Walter Lewis, Art Rhyno). Have the other local chapters found it works well to have more time for informal stuff, or lightning talks, or Ask Anything like I see NYC is doing? Sometimes with a smaller group people don't talk so much, but sometimes they do. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North, Kingston ON, 6-7 May 2010
Code4Lib North's first meeting is happening soon! It's time to get ready. If you're in Ontario, Quebec, New York, Vermont, or nearby areas, we hope you'll come. Join the mailing list to take part. Here are the details. URL: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/North Where: Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario (exact rooms to be determined) When: Thursday (afternoon/evening) and Friday (all day), 6-7 May 2010 Cost: No charge. Queen's University is generously donating the space, the Internet access, and even the food! How many: Probably around 50 people. Mailing list: Sign up at http://groups.google.com/group/code4lib-north Get involved: Planning will happen on the mailing list. If you want to come, or might come to the next one, or are at all interested in what's happening, please join the list. What: Code4Lib North is a local chapter of the Code4Lib community of people involved in libraries and technology (see http://code4lib.org/). North is meant to bring together librarians, programmers, and other interested people from Ontario, Quebec, New York, Vermont, and nearby areas. The annual Code4Lib conference began in 2006. Since then, several local chapters have started in diferent regions of the United States, as well as in Japan, Hungary, and the Netherlands. This is the first Canadian chapter meeting. Program: Twenty-minute talks and five-minute lightning talks, to be decided. Anything is possible, including a hackfest. Registration: There will be a short registration form going up soon, just to make it easier to count who's coming and what dietary preferences they have. But there's no cost to attend. Questions or comments? Send mail to the mailing list, or e-mail Wendy Huot wendy.h...@queensu.ca and William Denton w...@pobox.com. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2011 Proposals
On 2 March 2010, Ziso, Ya'aqov wrote: Many institutions would consider Canada an international conference, and most likely would allow (if any!?) one. My 5 cents (and that's all left in the budget), s/Many/Many American/ but I know what you mean. I don't see a local chapter meeting as conflicting with the full conference, and don't think that's anything to worry about. I'd like to go to Vancouver for a Code4Lib---it's certainly easy for me to get to, from Toronto, and I won't have the difficulties and anxieties that come from travelling into the US---but I hope some small to mid-size American cities put in too. Providence and Asheville were great to visit. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North, 6-7 May 2010, Kingston, Ontario
It looks like a Code4Lib North meeting on 6-7 May in Kingston, ON will work well. I was talking to Wendy Huot a couple of days ago. Next week we'll get the wiki page updated and do some other stuff and send out a little more e-mail so anyone who wants to come can get it in their schedule, but I wanted to send out a quick note to reassure people the discussion hadn't just died. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Kingston? And now the date (was Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?)
I went through all the mail about this and counted a + for each of the top two choices people made (if they made two; otherwise just one + for their single vote). The results: Kingston +++ Montreal +++ Ottawa + Toronto Sudbury Hamilton (No-one really came out as wanting it in Toronto, though obviously it's there and it seems to be a fallback for everyone.) Kingston came out on top, as a nice city, in the middle of everything, with people ready to help, and easy to get to my bus/train/car, if not by plane---but then it's expected, being a local chapter, that people will be coming from nearby, so that's not really a problem. So unless people see a need for a more definite vote, it seems like we're OK with Kingston. Is that cool? Next we need to decide dates. We had these comments: April/May not 16 April - 16 May not end of April not end of April after April May/June second half of May not 10-11 May (Canadian ETD and Open Repositories in Ottawa) not 9 May-13 May (ELUNA, Fort Worth, Texas) And there are two long weekends to avoid because people will be busy: not Monday 31 May (Memorial Day in US) not Monday 24 May (Victoria Day in Canada) Assuming it will be in Kingston, Wendy, are there any dates to avoid because of something happening there, like Annual Everything Is Closed Day or a special Hunt the Librarian event? `cal may 2010` tells me: May 2010 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Monday 3? Thursday-Friday 6-7? 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22Monday 17? 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Thursday-Friday 6-7 May (perhaps Thursday night and Friday all day?) seems like it fits almost all but one date range. Two Mondays would also work, 3 May and 17 May. If we want to keep it to one working day that could mean doing it all on Monday, or configuring ourselves Sunday night and being around Monday. I think a Thursday-Friday seems better, though---people can travel back Friday night or Saturday, as they want, and that means more time for hanging out on Friday night. How should we do the dates? Given the April/May range, and the suggested restrictions, I think these are the days that work. Can we vote on the list, or should we do a Doodle thingie? If we can vote here then I say +1 Thursday-Friday 6-7 May Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?
My ranked ordering: Kingston Montreal Ottawa Toronto It may easier to fly to the non-Kingston cities, but train/bus is easy and it's in the middle of the Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal hub. Ridesharing would be easy and people could get there after work for the next day. Library geeks from around here have probably been to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal (and Hamilton) fairly recently for conferences. Not Kingston, though. Plus I want to visit. And Wendy Huot's ready to help set things up, and Michael Vandenburg and Martha Whitehead are there ... For time, I prefer May/June. What about the weekend of Friday 14 May - Sunday 16 May, maybe starting Friday night and happening Saturday, or starting Thursday night and happening Friday? That's the weekend before Victoria Day. (The 24th of May is actually on the 24th of May this year!) Is there any American holiday happening in there? Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Announcing Code4Lib North
Wendy Huot and I have made a page and a post on the Code4Lib site about a new local chapter: Code4Lib North, for people in Ontario, Quebec, and the nearby parts of the United States. http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/North Anyone who's interested should please put their name down. We're talking about a possible meet in the spring. Kingston, Ontario seems like a really good location for it---nicely placed, convenient for lots of people, Kingston is pretty, and Queen's University is doing a lot of cool stuff. I know some Americans have said they'd come up for it, and if we had 30-40 people for day and a half then we could have a blast. Anyone who's interested, speak up here or drop us a note. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library Website Redesign Info and Project Plans
On 16 September 2009, Rosalyn Metz wrote: I'm about to embark on a library website redesign. I've started thinking about creating a project plan, but I honestly don't know where to start. Lots of good stuff in this thread which would have helped me with something smaller that I'm just wrapping up now. We redid our home page and applied our university's standard page template to our site. We're doing post-change follow-up usability testing now to iron out final bugs. http://www.library.yorku.ca/ The User Experience Group's plan is here: http://www.library.yorku.ca/ccm/web/committee/ueg/ Most of the documents linked are behind a password, but if you're really interested drop me a note. The thing that proved to be most helpful was that we kept everyone up to date on what was going on as we worked. At the major librarian monthly meeting we'd report on the latest survey, on the latest usability testing, on what the wireframes looked liked, and so on. We had one (two?) meetings open to everyone who worked in the library (and you know what the librarian/staff division is like) where we showed what we had, why we had it, and asked for comments and feedback. One really interesting thing that happened there was that when crazy or bad ideas came up, they'd be shot down by people not in the home page working group. This worked out very well. It also means that if people didn't come to the meetings but didn't like things later, well, they'd had their chance. We went slowly but that's what universities are like. Think what you may of the end result, as a project it went very smoothly. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] R?
Are any of you using R? http://www.r-project.org/ Blog about R, info viz, etc.: http://blog.revolution-computing.com/ I have something in mind I'm going to try fooling around with in R, but I wondered if anyone was using it for visualizing searches, usage, networks of information, that kind of thing. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Suggest a keynote speaker for Code4Lib 2010!
I nominate Patrick Ball [1], director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group [2] and lead on Martus (which is FLOSS) [3]. I've never heard him talk but I admire the project, which is about gathering and analyzing enormous amounts of data and making it accessible and understandable to make the world a better place, like we do---except they do it about torture and human rights violations. Here's a video of him leading a panel at Berkeley recently: http://fora.tv/2009/05/04/Human_Rights_Databases_Data_Sharing_and_Data_Security Benetech HRDAG develops database software, data collection strategies, and statistical techniques to measure human rights atrocities. Our technology and analysis is used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations around the world. Our analysis identifies the trends and patterns which is the evidence of crimes of policy. Martus is a secure information management tool that allows you to create a searchable and encrypted database and back this data up remotely to your choice of publicly available servers. The Martus software is used by organizations around the world to protect sensitive information and shield the identity of victims or witnesses who provide testimony on human rights abuses. Martus is the Greek word for witness. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Ball [2] http://www.hrdag.org/ [3] http://www.martus.org/ Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Position open: Chair in E-Librarianship, York University, Toronto
Hi, York University (Toronto, Canada) has a new chair, the WP Scott Chair in E-Librarianship, and applications and proposals are being accepted until 15 October 2009. I work there and I hope someone with a really exciting research project gets the chair. If you want to take one to three years to really dig into something, while living in a very nice city, please apply, or pass this on to someone who might be interested. Anyone in the world can apply. The full posting is here: http://webapps.yorku.ca/academichiringviewer/viewposition.jsp?positionnumber=1091 A short extract from it: York University invites candidates to apply for a limited term appointment of one to three years to engage in groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research and development that will advance libraries. The W. P. Scott Chair in E-Librarianship provides an exciting opportunity to accelerate the development of e-librarianship in support of research, teaching, learning or scholarly communications. The research may be interdisciplinary, with a context that is broader than academic librarianship. The areas of research should be of mutual interest to the candidate and to York University Libraries so that both benefit from a close working relationship. A strong commitment to research in any relevant area of e-librarianship such as: e-learning, digital collections, collaborative web spaces, social software, interactive and integrative online services, semantic web or cyberinfrastructure is required. The Chair must have demonstrated success in directing and conducting research or a large project. As a member of the YUL complement, the successful candidate will contribute in an area of the libraries suited to the candidate's area of expertise. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] journal.code4lib.org down
Error establishing a database connection, it says, for all requests. :( Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] COinS in OL?
On 9 December 2008, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: ... I think two books can share the same LCC? But I guess not when you include all the trailing 'cutter'-type numbers? Not in the same library, but there's nothing to stop two different libraries from having the same call number for two different books. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] presentation voting open through Wednesday December 3
On 25 November 2008, Birkin James Diana wrote: Voting is now open to select the presentations for the 2009 Code4Lib conference. http://vote.code4lib.org/election/index/7 Can you get a post up on the code4lib.org home page about this? Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] presentation voting open through Wednesday December 3
On 25 November 2008, William Denton wrote: Can you get a post up on the code4lib.org home page about this? Never mind, anarchivist did it, and now I know where I could have done it myself, through the create content link. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Extreme reference
I don't know how many people on the list work the reference desk, but I bet it's a pretty good proportion. Probably more than use the extreme programming technique of pair programming. I've found that I give the best help when I'm working the ref with someone else, either because one of us has come over to talk to the person on duty and stayed to help with a question or because we're switching over shifts. One person sits at the computer, typing and searching and browsing, and the other has more time to think, talk, ponder, reach into memory, and kibitz. It struck me, while reading Andy Hunt's PRAGMATIC THINKING AND LEARNING: REFACTOR YOUR WETWARE [1], that this was applying pair programming to reference. Then I thought: how else could extreme programming be applied to the ref desk? Do any of you who've used extreme/agile programming techniques see other parallels to the desk? Extreme reference would be less dangerous and exciting than extreme ironing, but perhaps more satisfactory to users than regular one-person ref desk encounters. Bill [1] http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/ -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4lib mugs?
On 3 November 2008, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: Yeah, I'd rather the money were spent for a scholarship than for a travel mug. I don't need any more travel mugs. Thanks for making this point, Erik. It'd be nice if there was a box of them for people that need one, but I already have all the travel mugs I want. Funding someone's attendance--or paying a student to get the audio and video online quickly--would be great. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Authority Data
On 29 September 2008, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: I thought I remembered something about Casey Bisson doing exactly that with a grant/award he received? I forget what happened to it. A snapshot would just be a snapshot of course, it wouldn't include records created or modified after the snapshot. http://www.archive.org/details/marc_records_scriblio_net Ed Summers said on this list in April: On a whim I created a bittorrent of the concatenated MARC files donated to the Internet Archive by Scriblio (7,030,372 records): http://inkdroid.org/torrents/lc-bib.torrent My share ratio is 9.538. :) Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] planet.code4lib.org -- 3 suggestions
On 21 May 2008, Kevin S. Clarke wrote: I hope we don't do this. I really like being able to read the post in my feed rather than having to click through to read it. I read it at planet.code4lib.org, and depend on it (and planetcataloguing.org) to bring together all that stuff without my having to bother. (I have two local planets to bring together all the other stuff I follow, one for library/tech and one for personal stuff. I like never having to see that I have n hundred blog posts unread.) It works fine as is for me. I don't bring the feed into a reader, so I like that the web site has the full contents of all posts. I'd rather scroll than click. If people post predominatly library geek stuff, some personal stuff is fine. If it's the other way around, use a per-category or per-tag feed, and if that can't be done, drop them. A changelog would be good to keep track of deletes. Could have a Recently Removed section maintained by hand, too. Heh. Jonathan and Antonio: I think asking in channel at a busy time and then sending a note here if you remove someone would be fine. We all maintain our own aggregators. Planet Code4Lib: Generous, but not exhaustive. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Multiple ISBNs in COInS?
I'm hep to the COInS scene now and am using it in some lists of books I'm generating. For some of the books I know multiple ISBNs. Can I include them all in one COInS span somehow? Doing one individually makes my OpenURL Referrer extension clutter up the page with a lot of links. I looked at the specification but it didn't seem to cover this. generator.ocoins.info only seems to want one one ISBN. Putting multiple rft.isbn variables just makes the last one overpower the earlier ones. Any tips appreciated! Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] code4lib hosting/future
On 2 August 2007, Edward Corrado wrote: 1) Where to permanently host code4lib.org. Right now we have two serious proposals. One is at OSU and one is ibiblio. I don't think anyone at all is concerned about the current people at OSU doing a good job. I know I am not. That said, Dan Chudnov brings up some good issues about what happens if things change at OSU. Maybe we should use Karen's list and some of the other points to issue an RFP, to which Oregon State and ibiblio and others could respond? That may seem overly formal, but it would keep things clear and straightforward, and everyone would know where they stood. Dan and Ross make good points. Overall, I'm for rough consensus and a working box. Oregon State's generous offer certainly seems good enough for the next year, say, during which we can plan more and after which we can move if we want. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] code4lib.org site down
A brief note: anvil.lisforge.net, the server on which www.code4lib.org, planet.code4lib.org, and some other blogs and sites are hosted, got cracked. It's been shut down. The Planet is back up now, running elsewhere, but if you depended on anything else on that box, get in touch with the site's owner or go into #code4lib and ask. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] more metadata from xISBN
On 8 May 2007, Eric Hellman wrote: xISBN is free for non-commercial, low volume use. The xISBN web site clarifies this as meaning = 500 queries per day for non-commercial purposes. Over 500 queries in a day for non-commercial use, or any number of queries for commercial use, requires paying: http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/doc/price.htm A library would pay $3,000 USD a year to be able to do 10,000 queries a day. That's a lot of queries, but I could imagine a big academic library doing a bunch if they pushed out web tools to their students to make it easy to check if any edition of a given book (seen at Amazon or in a blog, etc.) is available in its collection. 1,000 queries a day (which used to be free) is now $500 USD per year. It's 20% off for OCLC members. I'm not sure how to read the commercial price rates, or who would need 10,000,000 xISBN queries, but the prices push the service out of the reach of the devoted library hacker as well as the small start-up or basement business. xISBN's availability, even to and through free and open source tools, is now more limited. On reflection, this is one of the rare times on code4lib when an announced API offers less and not more. Also, it's the first big commodification of FRBR, which is intriquing. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Free MARC records: I want them, but who has them?
On 19 April 2007, Richard Wallis wrote: Without reading any of that you can see the results of the query for your ISBN here: http://api.talis.com/bf/stores/ukbib/items?query=isbn%3A0195024028max=1 0offset=0xsl=content-type= Thanks, Richard. Stripped of all the wrapping, that looks like so, with ns.0 as the Dublin Core namespace: titleThe timeless way of building/title ns.0:subjectDDC: 720/.1/ns.0:subject ns.0:creatorAlexander, Christopher./ns.0:creator ns.0:titleThe timeless way of building/ns.0:title ns.0:identifier008274360/ns.0:identifier ns.0:subjectArchitecture./ns.0:subject ns.0:subjectPattern perception./ns.0:subject ns.0:date1979/ns.0:date ns.0:typetext/ns.0:type ns.0:publisherNew York : Oxford University Press,/ns.0:publisher ns.0:subjectLLC: NA2500/ns.0:subject That's your basic Dublin Core metadata. Depending on how much I need, that may be good enough as a last resort, or I may try running it through a DC-to-MARC crosswalk. At the very least, as a final resort, it's certainly better than nothing, and a large union catalogue is a very useful data source. What you don't get (today) is the full Marc record back - the underling reason for this being is that we are addressing the tricky problem of the assertion of ownership of Marc records and the data they contain as you may have noticed from my recent blog post http://blogs.talis.com/panlibus/archives/2007/04/when_is_data_no.php. Good Lord, was that only nine days ago? I'd read it, but forgotten about it. The amount of blog entries we library types post gets overwhelming sometimes. Your post reminded me of Casey Bisson's plan to use the Mellon award to buy LC MARC records, the MIT library data dump that was shared, and so on. I agree with you and others who want more openness with this kind of data. I think it is wrong that publicly-funded institutions do not make their metadata available to everyone. I realize there are legal issues, and I realize that adding for non-commercial use may be necessary. It's still wrong. I can't do anything to change it right now, but I can work around it. Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
[CODE4LIB] Free MARC records: I want them, but who has them?
Is there a guide to getting free MARC records in the common programming languages, covering what libaries and modules to use and where to look, and giving code examples? If you're like me then sometimes you have an ISBN and you say to yourself, Bill--though why you'd say that if your name isn't Bill, I don't know--Bill, I would like a full MARC record for this book. But I'm not at a library that's a member of OCLC, so I can't get into WorldCat, and I don't want to use Amazon's API because I don't want to have to link to them. What do I do? I looked around and didn't see anything obvious about this, so I hacked up a Ruby script that solves most of the problem for me. Given an ISBN, it searches a series of open Z39.50 servers until it gets an answer. It uses ruby-zoom for the Z39.50 business, and gets MARCXML which it hands over to ruby-marc. (Thanks for Ed Summers and Jason Ronallo in #code4lib this aft for help with this.) I put a copy here, in case anyone wants to see it: http://www.miskatonic.org/files/zmarc.rb Run 'zmarc.rb 0195024028' to see it in action. There must be something better than this, though. I have some ISBNs (of recent English-language books) that aren't found at the Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, U of Toronto, Oxford, Yale, New York Public Library, the national libraries of Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand, and others. One would think they would give pretty good coverage. I want tools (in Perl, Ruby, Python, etc.) that will give me back something in MARC for any book, in any language, that has an ISBN. Am I doomed to sometimes not getting any good results? Has anyone written up details on how close one can come right now with what's available? What do you folks do when you need free MARC records or other information about books? Bill -- William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org
