[CODE4LIB] Job: Supervisor of Technology and Information Management at Watertown Free Public Library Central Library
The Supervisor of Technology and Information Management is responsible for operations and maintenance of all library computer systems and equipment, recommends changes and updates to systems, coordinates technology training and documentation, coordinates database purchases, licensing, and associated activities, oversees acquisitions fund accounting, catalogs and classifies library materials, conducts performance appraisals of staff, supervises 3 staff members, occasionally works on public service desk and other work as necessary. Brought to you by code4lib jobs: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/5890/
[CODE4LIB] Job: Applications Developer (Research Computing) at University of St Andrews
IT Services is looking for a highly motivated individual with a strong interest in e-Research to join the Research Computing Team as Applications Developer (Research Computing). The Team currently consists of two staff and several volunteers. It forms part of the Service Delivery Group within IT Services. The development of technical solutions to meet the needs of research projects within the Faculty of Arts is central to this role. The successful candidate will possess a degree or equivalent in Computer Science or in another relevant subject with a significant IT component. Experience in designing, developing and testing software using a range of technologies and programming languages is essential. The role also requires a through and methodical approach and the ability to communicate technical information to a range of technical and non-technical audiences. Preferably the successful candidate will have experience in developing e-Research solutions and will have worked in a research context within UK Higher Education. Knowledge of technical standards like TEI, RDF and OWL, the W3C Linked Data standard; and of relevant metadata standards such as TEI header, VRA Core 4, Dublin Core, among others is an advantage, as is an understanding of the role of open source software and open standards in e-Research. Informal queries can be directed to Birgit Plietzsch, Research Computing Teamleader - Email: b...@st-andrews.ac.uk, Tel: 01334 462315. Closing Date: 1 March 2013 Reference No: ME1091 Further Particulars: ME1091AD FPs.doc Brought to you by code4lib jobs: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/5895/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Answer to your question Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia)
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Becky Yoose b.yo...@gmail.com wrote: So that's my answer. In Real Life people will have opinions about how the CoC is enforced. People will argue that a particular decision was unfair, and others will say that it didn't go far enough. We really can't stop people having opinions, but what we could do here is have constructive discussions that lead to something tangible (affirmation of decision, change in CoC, modify decision, etc,), instead of reproducing the comments section of a story on a news site. I can add this as a new issue to the CoC Github, as supporting documentation to the code later today. becky++ I like the proposed approach. -mark
Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia)
This sounds like a more constructive approach than creating a sweeping harassment policy. Perhaps we're getting somewhere after all. I don't think either the assumption that no Code4Lib members would intentionally harass people or the assumption that no Code4Lib members would spuriously claim to be harassed is safe. Any approach has to regard both as possibilities. I'm involved with a non-professional convention that has dealt with similar issues; it started out with a proposal of a seriously overblown harassment policy before coming up with a reasonable one. Organizations are generally poor at dealing with issues that are separately minor but add up to a concern. Official responses face the choice between overreacting and not doing anything. Building individual and cultural awareness is a better approach. This means building a culture in which people consider it safe and legitimate to respond to a perceived insult, and where the result hopefully is dialogue rather than official censure or threats (even as jokes) to beat people up. It means that when people notice this sort of thing by their presumed friends, they should consider it reasonable to take them aside and say quietly, You came across as a bit of a jerk. At science fiction conventions I've often seen BACK UP buttons to encourage this kind of culture. As a computer person, I did a double-take on this at first (and it's good advice in both senses), but it's a constructive approach to a problem usually best dealt with on a person-to-person basis. Threats, stalking, and overt aggression are a different matter, of course; there it's necessary to step in and take definite action. On 1/28/13 10:55 PM, Fitchett, Deborah wrote: Firstly, there seems to be an assumption (explicit by some, implicit by others) that Code4Lib members wouldn't intentionally harass people. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption and I'm more than happy to go along with it. I just want there to be a reciprocal assumption that Code4Lib members wouldn't intentionally make spurious claims of having been harassed. That's fair, right? We're all nice people. So, given that we're all nice people who wouldn't intentionally harass or make spurious claims of harassment against each other, nevertheless sometimes someone will unintentionally say or do something that (especially given the concept of microagressions that Karen and I have alluded to and Kathryn named) really hurts someone else. This is, whatever else you want to call it, a problem because it decreases the feeling of community. So, how as a community should we respond when this happens? That's my question. It's the question I've been asking over and over, and every time I’ve asked it people have derailed the conversation to their own fears of being labelled *ist. This is an absolute straw argument. One thing the code of conduct doesn’t include as a sanction is for admin/helpers to stick a “Kick me, I’m a *ist” label on offenders’ backs. Can we stop worrying about being labelled *ist and start worrying about how we're going to concretely demonstrate that we're not *ist? Deborah (Excuse the html format and bolding. But if one more person replies to my email without replying to my actual question I might resort to all-caps. And possibly quote liberally from https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/resources/mirror-derailing-for-dummies/.) -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Gary McGath Sent: Tuesday, 29 January 2013 7:35 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia) Establishing any principle has consequences beyond the situations people immediately think of. In this case, the principle is that harassment is defined by the emotions of the person claiming to be harassed. Compounding this by declaring that acts which are judged subjectively and are insignificant in themselves constitute harassment because they add up creates a situation in which anyone can be charged with harassment and no defense is possible. You've said as much in saying So excluding types of situations from even being considered as problems is unnecessary. _Any_ type of situation might be considered a harassment situation. Of course, not just any type will be. That would result in a situation where anyone could bring charges and counter-charges on a whim, bringing the whole system down. What happens in practice is that the people with the best connections or the greater skill in manipulating the system will use it to intimidate others. Here's an example: At IUPUI, a janitor was reading a book called Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. A union official, for reasons I don't know -- maybe he just didn't like the janitor -- brought charges of racial harassment against the
Re: [CODE4LIB] personal name api
On Jan 28, 2013, at 5:56 PM, Misty De Meo misty.de@museumforhumanrights.ca wrote: This service uses Freebase to determine the gender of names, and offers a JSON API: http://genderednames.freebaseapps.com/ This looks like it will work quite well. Thank you. Using the API and for a good time, I plan to extract the first names of subscribers from the Code4Lib mailing list and generate a pie chart illustrating the proportion of males to females. Sort of like digital humanities? -- ELM
Re: [CODE4LIB] personal name api
. sounds like fun eric. can't wait to see the results! On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Eric Lease Morgan emor...@nd.edu wrote: On Jan 28, 2013, at 5:56 PM, Misty De Meo misty.de@museumforhumanrights.ca wrote: This service uses Freebase to determine the gender of names, and offers a JSON API: http://genderednames.freebaseapps.com/ This looks like it will work quite well. Thank you. Using the API and for a good time, I plan to extract the first names of subscribers from the Code4Lib mailing list and generate a pie chart illustrating the proportion of males to females. Sort of like digital humanities? -- ELM
Re: [CODE4LIB] Answer to your question Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia)
+1 to the proposed approach. Thank you, Becky. ranti. On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Mark A. Matienzo mark.matie...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Becky Yoose b.yo...@gmail.com wrote: So that's my answer. In Real Life people will have opinions about how the CoC is enforced. People will argue that a particular decision was unfair, and others will say that it didn't go far enough. We really can't stop people having opinions, but what we could do here is have constructive discussions that lead to something tangible (affirmation of decision, change in CoC, modify decision, etc,), instead of reproducing the comments section of a story on a news site. I can add this as a new issue to the CoC Github, as supporting documentation to the code later today. becky++ I like the proposed approach. -mark -- Bulk mail. Postage paid.
[CODE4LIB] Adding authority control to IR's that don't have it built in
How are libraries doing this and how well is it working? Most systems that even claim to have authority control simply allow a controlled keyword list. But this does nothing for the see and see also references that are essential for many use cases (people known by many names, entities that change names, merge or whatever over time, etc). The two most obvious solutions to me are to write an app that provides this information interactively as the query is typed (requires access to the search box) or to have a record that serves as a disambiguation page (might not be noticed by the user for a variety of reasons). Are there other options, and what do you recommend? Thanks, kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia)
Gary, thanks so much - this is basically what I was hoping for as an operating principle. I didn't get the BACKUP reference, but found this: Our way of doing so was to offer up con badge ribbons that were printed with the word “Backup” in large letters. It was, in essence, a way for people to signify that they wanted to help and would do so. It reminds me of the safety monitors that we had in the anti-war marches in the 60's -- not a police force, but people who had volunteered to keep an eye out for trouble and to step in where needed. What we're talking about here obviously is not a situation where we have a high probability of fist fights, but I love the idea of knowing that you can rely on others to back you up. Backing people up, then, is an important skill that we need to learn and to exercise. It doesn't mean stopping the proceedings -- as I think I said in a post some eons ago, it's like the management skill where you pay attention to the interaction in a meeting and make it your goal to have everyone participate equally and with respect. If you notice someone trying to get a word in while others talk over him/her, you can say: I think X is trying to speak, let's hear from him/her. It's often NOT possible to make that difference at the very moment that something happens. Conversations are fast; words go by quickly; groups shift focus on a dime. I can't tell you, though, how often my sanity has been saved by someone coming to me afterward and saying: I just want you to know that I didn't think you were treated fairly. I'm sorry it happened that way, but I didn't think there was anything I could do at the time. That affirmation alone really, really matters. What I get so far from this is a set of steps (Deborah, let me know if this fits what you were looking for): - back up; pay attention to how those around you are faring - try to move situations toward greater equality, less inequality, whether in words or deeds; take care of each other - if necessary, speak privately and politely to reconcile issues. (Take a BACKUP volunteer with you if you feel unsafe doing this alone) - [here's the hard one] if someone appears to be belligerent, or to be actively harassing, at a conference, go to any of the conference organizers. It will be their duty to determine whether an action has to be taken. If it's not at a conference (email, irc) ... then I think we need to create a small group of backup volunteers who will monitor the situation (not make a snap judgment) and who will have the authority to remove the person from the channel after a warning. - if there is an actual threat to someone's safety, do not hesitate to call police or whatever is the appropriate authority These steps probably need to be refined, but if they meet most people's semi-nod, perhaps they should be added to the policy in github? kc On 1/29/13 7:21 AM, Gary McGath wrote: This sounds like a more constructive approach than creating a sweeping harassment policy. Perhaps we're getting somewhere after all. I don't think either the assumption that no Code4Lib members would intentionally harass people or the assumption that no Code4Lib members would spuriously claim to be harassed is safe. Any approach has to regard both as possibilities. I'm involved with a non-professional convention that has dealt with similar issues; it started out with a proposal of a seriously overblown harassment policy before coming up with a reasonable one. Organizations are generally poor at dealing with issues that are separately minor but add up to a concern. Official responses face the choice between overreacting and not doing anything. Building individual and cultural awareness is a better approach. This means building a culture in which people consider it safe and legitimate to respond to a perceived insult, and where the result hopefully is dialogue rather than official censure or threats (even as jokes) to beat people up. It means that when people notice this sort of thing by their presumed friends, they should consider it reasonable to take them aside and say quietly, You came across as a bit of a jerk. At science fiction conventions I've often seen BACK UP buttons to encourage this kind of culture. As a computer person, I did a double-take on this at first (and it's good advice in both senses), but it's a constructive approach to a problem usually best dealt with on a person-to-person basis. Threats, stalking, and overt aggression are a different matter, of course; there it's necessary to step in and take definite action. On 1/28/13 10:55 PM, Fitchett, Deborah wrote: Firstly, there seems to be an assumption (explicit by some, implicit by others) that Code4Lib members wouldn't intentionally harass people. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption and I'm more than happy to go along with it. I just want there to be a reciprocal assumption that Code4Lib members wouldn't intentionally make
[CODE4LIB] Tracking database trials via project management software
I am hearing from some of our librarians that they would like an improved way to track trial databases. This could include a checklist and notifications for setting up authentication, adding and removing them from the trail database web page, etc.). One possibility could be to try to do this through an ERM but the ones that we have been looking at don't seem to have all of the functionality we'd want for this purpose. My question is, has anyone use any project management or similar software to do thus. If so, can you provide some details on what software you use(d) and how well it worked (or not), Thanks, Edward
[CODE4LIB] metadata vocab re-use question?
Hello fine code4libbers, I have a technical question about metadata vocab reuse, and the best way to do something I'm doing. I'm working on an API for returning a list of scholarly articles. I am trying to do as much as I can with already existing technical metadata devices. In general, I am going to do this as an Atom XML response, with some 'third party' XML namespaces in use too for full expression of what I want to express. Using already existing vocabularies, identified by URI. In general, this is working fine -- especially using the PRISM vocabulary for some scholarly citation-specific metadata elements. Also some things that were already part of Atom, and may be a bit of DC here or there. I am generally happy with this approach, and plan to stick to it. But there are a few places where I am not sure what to do. In general, there's a common pattern where I need to express a certain 'element' using _multiple_ vocabularies simultaneously (and/or no vocabulary at all, free text). For instance, let's take the (semantically vague, yes) concept of type/genre. I have a schema.org type URI that expresses the 'type'. I can _also_ express the 'type' using the dcterms 'type' vocabulary. I could theoretically have a couple more format/type vocabularies I'd like to expose, but let's stop there as an example. And on top of this, I _also_ have a free text 'type' string (which may or may not be derivable from the controlled vocabs), which I'd like to make available to API consumer too. Any individual item may have some, all, or none of these data associated with it. Now, the dcterms 'type' element is capable of holding any or all of these. http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-type Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the DCMI Type Vocabulary [DCMITYPE]. To describe the file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource, use the Format element. See, _recommended_ is to use a controlled vocab _such as_ DCMI Type Vocab, but this makes it clear you can also use the 'type' element for another controlled vocab, or no controlled vocab at all. So it's _legal_ to simply do something like this: !-- schema.org: -- dcterms:typehttp://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle/dcterms:type !-- dcterms type vocab: -- dcterms:typehttp://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text/dcterms:type !-- free text not from a controlled vocab: -- dcterms:typeScholarly Book Review/dcterms:type And I've been the _consumer_ of API's which do something like that: Just throw a grab bag of differnet things into repeated dcterms:type elements, including URIs representing values from different vocabs, and free text. They figure, hey, it's legal to use dcterms:type that way according to the docs for the dcterms vocab. And as a consumer of services that do that... I do not want to do it. It is too difficult to work with as a consumer, when you don't know what the contents of a dcterms:type element might be, from any vocab, or none at all. It kind of ruins the utility of the controlled vocabs in the first place, or requires unreasonably complex logic on the client side. So. Another idea that occurs is just to add some custom attributes to the dcterms:type element. dcterms:type vocab=schema.orghttp://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle/dcterms:type dcterms:type vocab=dctermshttp://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text/dcterms:type dcterms:typeScholarly Book Review/dcterms:type Now at least the client can a lot more easily write logic for Is there a dcterms value? If so what is it. But I can't really tell if this is legal or not -- attributes are handled kind of inconsistently by various XML validators. Maybe I'd need to namespace the attribute with a custom namespace too: ... xmlns:mine=http://example.org/vocab ... dcterms:type mine:vocab=schema.orghttp://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle/dcterms:type But namespaces on attributes are handled _very_ inconsistently and buggily by various standard XML parsing libraries I've used, so I don't really want to do that, it's going to make things too hard on the client to use namespaced attributes. But I kind of like the elegancy of that 'add attributes to dcterms:type' approach. I suppose you could even use full URIs instead of random terms to identify the vocab, for the elegance of it: dcterms:type vocab=http://schema.org;http://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle/dcterms:type dcterms:type vocab=http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms;http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text/dcterms:type But another option, especially if that isn't legal, is to give up dcterms entirely and use only my own custom namespace/vocab for 'type' elements: mine:schema-typehttp://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle/dcterms:type mine:dcterms-typehttp://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text/dcterms:type mine:uncontrolled-typeScholarly Book Review/dcterms:type Which is kind of 'inelegant', but would probably work fine too. Realistically, any consumer of my response is
Re: [CODE4LIB] code4lib 2013 location
Thanks for pointing it out. So, there is no shuttle? I don't mind either way if someone hadn't said that there would be one and now the wiki is saying there won't be one. It's just a bit confusing and doesn't help with planning... On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Tracy Seneca tracy.sen...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I'm responding to this older thread to point you to a travel logistics page on the Code4Lib wiki for the conference: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2013_travel We'll add further info to this page as needed. I hope this helps with conference navigation! Best, Tracy Seneca On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Erik Hetzner erik.hetz...@ucop.eduwrote: Hi all, Apparently code4lib 2013 is going to be held at the UIC Forum http://www.uic.edu/depts/uicforum/ I assumed it would be at the conference hotel. This is just a note so that others do not make the same assumption, since nowhere in the information about the conference is the location made clear. Since the conference hotel is 1 mile from the venue, I assume transportation will be available. best, Erik Hetzner Sent from my free software system http://fsf.org/.
Re: [CODE4LIB] code4lib 2013 location
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 03:27:07PM -0500, Cynthia Ng wrote: Thanks for pointing it out. So, there is no shuttle? I don't mind either way if someone hadn't said that there would be one and now the wiki is saying there won't be one. It's just a bit confusing and doesn't help with planning... Yes we said there would be one but *as I type* we cannot say that there will be one for one very simple reason. We are guessing. We budgeted for 400 people (lower limit and not including the bus) and we are barely cracking that. Cost of UIC Forum is a fixed number. Cost of food is also an estimate of 400 and also a fixed number. Failing to reach that 400 number makes it an arithmetic problem. If we have to pay for rent and food. Transport becomes a luxury. We have quotes ranging from ~700 - 3500. Again our fault for never factoring that in. We still feel using CTA is environmentally (see what I did there? :-)) the right thing to do given the distance, cost. Again we may sell the remaining 40 tickets or so which may give us room to breathe. We are not deliberately misleading. This I will hazard is the problem of the conference not selling out as it did in the past and leaving little room to estimate. Again these are problems we brought on ourselves but please know if there is no shuttle it is because we can't afford it and no other reason. ./fxk On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Tracy Seneca tracy.sen...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I'm responding to this older thread to point you to a travel logistics page on the Code4Lib wiki for the conference: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2013_travel We'll add further info to this page as needed. I hope this helps with conference navigation! Best, Tracy Seneca On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Erik Hetzner erik.hetz...@ucop.eduwrote: Hi all, Apparently code4lib 2013 is going to be held at the UIC Forum http://www.uic.edu/depts/uicforum/ I assumed it would be at the conference hotel. This is just a note so that others do not make the same assumption, since nowhere in the information about the conference is the location made clear. Since the conference hotel is 1 mile from the venue, I assume transportation will be available. best, Erik Hetzner Sent from my free software system http://fsf.org/. -- Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
Re: [CODE4LIB] code4lib 2013 location
Hi all, To add to what Francis said, we will send out final travel and logistics information in an email to all registered conference attendees after registration closes January 31. The local conference planning committee will also ensure the wiki and the website is completely up to date and accurate. As with all Code4Lib conferences, we try to flexible in responding to community requests, but paying for these items involves many moving parts. Please bear with us in the last few days as we finish up details. If you have specific questions about logistics, please ask on the Code4Lib conference planning group so that we don't clutter up the main list: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/code4libcon. Thanks, Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773.508.2686 Francis Kayiwa kay...@uic.edu 1/29/2013 2:36 PM On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 03:27:07PM -0500, Cynthia Ng wrote: Thanks for pointing it out. So, there is no shuttle? I don't mind either way if someone hadn't said that there would be one and now the wiki is saying there won't be one. It's just a bit confusing and doesn't help with planning... Yes we said there would be one but *as I type* we cannot say that there will be one for one very simple reason. We are guessing. We budgeted for 400 people (lower limit and not including the bus) and we are barely cracking that. Cost of UIC Forum is a fixed number. Cost of food is also an estimate of 400 and also a fixed number. Failing to reach that 400 number makes it an arithmetic problem. If we have to pay for rent and food. Transport becomes a luxury. We have quotes ranging from ~700 - 3500. Again our fault for never factoring that in. We still feel using CTA is environmentally (see what I did there? :-)) the right thing to do given the distance, cost. Again we may sell the remaining 40 tickets or so which may give us room to breathe. We are not deliberately misleading. This I will hazard is the problem of the conference not selling out as it did in the past and leaving little room to estimate. Again these are problems we brought on ourselves but please know if there is no shuttle it is because we can't afford it and no other reason. ./fxk On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Tracy Seneca tracy.sen...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I'm responding to this older thread to point you to a travel logistics page on the Code4Lib wiki for the conference: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2013_travel We'll add further info to this page as needed. I hope this helps with conference navigation! Best, Tracy Seneca On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Erik Hetzner erik.hetz...@ucop.eduwrote: Hi all, Apparently code4lib 2013 is going to be held at the UIC Forum http://www.uic.edu/depts/uicforum/ I assumed it would be at the conference hotel. This is just a note so that others do not make the same assumption, since nowhere in the information about the conference is the location made clear. Since the conference hotel is 1 mile from the venue, I assume transportation will be available. best, Erik Hetzner Sent from my free software system http://fsf.org/. -- Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
Re: [CODE4LIB] Adding authority control to IR's that don't have it built in
Hi Kyle, If you are thinking of doing name or subject authority control you might want to check out OCLC's VIAF AutoSuggest service [1] and FAST AutoSuggest [2]. There are also autosuggest searches for the name and subject authority files, that are lightly documented in their OpenSearch document [3]. In general, I really like this approach, and I think it has a lot of potential for newer cataloging interfaces. I'll describe two scenarios that I'm familiar with, that have worked quite well (so far). Note, these aren't IR per-se, but perhaps they will translate to your situation. As part of the National Digital Newspaper Program LC has a simple app so that librarians can create essays that describe newspapers in detail. Rather than making this part of our public website we created an Essay Editor as a standalone django app that provides a web based editing environment, for authority the essays. Part of this process is linking up the essay with the correct newspaper. Rather than load all the newspapers that could be described into the Essay Editor, and keep them up to date, we exposed an OpenSearch API in the main Chronicling America website (where all the newspaper records are loaded and maintained) [4]. It has been working quite well so far. Another example is the jobs.code4lib.org website that allows people to enter jobs announcements. I wanted to make sure that it was possible to view jobs by organization [5], or skill [6] -- so some form of authority control was needed. I ended up using Freebase Suggest [7] that makes it quite easy to build simple forms that present users with subsets of Freebase entities, depending on what they type. A nice side benefit of using Freebase is that you get descriptive text and images for the employers and topics for free. It has been working pretty well so far. There is a bit of an annoying conflict between the Freebase CSS and Twitter Bootstrap, which might be resolved by updating Bootstrap. Also, I've noticed Freebase's service slowing down a bit lately, which hopefully won't degrade further. The big caveat here is that these external services are dependencies. If they go down, a significant portion of your app might go down to. Minimizing this dependency, or allowing things degrade well is good to keep in mind. Also, it's worth remembering identifiers (if they are available) for the selected matches, so that they can be used for linking your data with the external resource. A simple string might change. I hope this helps. Thanks for the question, I think this is an area where we can really improve some of our back-office interfaces and applications. //Ed [1] http://www.oclc.org/developer/documentation/virtual-international-authority-file-viaf/request-types#autosuggest [2] http://experimental.worldcat.org/fast/assignfast/ [3] http://id.loc.gov/authorities/opensearch/ [4] http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/#autosuggest [5] http://jobs.code4lib.org/employer/university-of-illinois-at-urbana-champaign/ [6] http://jobs.code4lib.org/jobs/ruby/ [7] http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Freebase_Suggest On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: How are libraries doing this and how well is it working? Most systems that even claim to have authority control simply allow a controlled keyword list. But this does nothing for the see and see also references that are essential for many use cases (people known by many names, entities that change names, merge or whatever over time, etc). The two most obvious solutions to me are to write an app that provides this information interactively as the query is typed (requires access to the search box) or to have a record that serves as a disambiguation page (might not be noticed by the user for a variety of reasons). Are there other options, and what do you recommend? Thanks, kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] Adding authority control to IR's that don't have it built in
Has anyone created a nice little wrapper around FAST? I'd like to test out including FAST subjects in our catalog, but am hoping someone else went through the work of building the code to do it :-) I know FAST has a web interface, but I've got about 10M records and would rather use something local. On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Ed Summers e...@pobox.com wrote: Hi Kyle, If you are thinking of doing name or subject authority control you might want to check out OCLC's VIAF AutoSuggest service [1] and FAST AutoSuggest [2]. There are also autosuggest searches for the name and subject authority files, that are lightly documented in their OpenSearch document [3]. In general, I really like this approach, and I think it has a lot of potential for newer cataloging interfaces. I'll describe two scenarios that I'm familiar with, that have worked quite well (so far). Note, these aren't IR per-se, but perhaps they will translate to your situation. As part of the National Digital Newspaper Program LC has a simple app so that librarians can create essays that describe newspapers in detail. Rather than making this part of our public website we created an Essay Editor as a standalone django app that provides a web based editing environment, for authority the essays. Part of this process is linking up the essay with the correct newspaper. Rather than load all the newspapers that could be described into the Essay Editor, and keep them up to date, we exposed an OpenSearch API in the main Chronicling America website (where all the newspaper records are loaded and maintained) [4]. It has been working quite well so far. Another example is the jobs.code4lib.org website that allows people to enter jobs announcements. I wanted to make sure that it was possible to view jobs by organization [5], or skill [6] -- so some form of authority control was needed. I ended up using Freebase Suggest [7] that makes it quite easy to build simple forms that present users with subsets of Freebase entities, depending on what they type. A nice side benefit of using Freebase is that you get descriptive text and images for the employers and topics for free. It has been working pretty well so far. There is a bit of an annoying conflict between the Freebase CSS and Twitter Bootstrap, which might be resolved by updating Bootstrap. Also, I've noticed Freebase's service slowing down a bit lately, which hopefully won't degrade further. The big caveat here is that these external services are dependencies. If they go down, a significant portion of your app might go down to. Minimizing this dependency, or allowing things degrade well is good to keep in mind. Also, it's worth remembering identifiers (if they are available) for the selected matches, so that they can be used for linking your data with the external resource. A simple string might change. I hope this helps. Thanks for the question, I think this is an area where we can really improve some of our back-office interfaces and applications. //Ed [1] http://www.oclc.org/developer/documentation/virtual-international-authority-file-viaf/request-types#autosuggest [2] http://experimental.worldcat.org/fast/assignfast/ [3] http://id.loc.gov/authorities/opensearch/ [4] http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/#autosuggest [5] http://jobs.code4lib.org/employer/university-of-illinois-at-urbana-champaign/ [6] http://jobs.code4lib.org/jobs/ruby/ [7] http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Freebase_Suggest On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: How are libraries doing this and how well is it working? Most systems that even claim to have authority control simply allow a controlled keyword list. But this does nothing for the see and see also references that are essential for many use cases (people known by many names, entities that change names, merge or whatever over time, etc). The two most obvious solutions to me are to write an app that provides this information interactively as the query is typed (requires access to the search box) or to have a record that serves as a disambiguation page (might not be noticed by the user for a variety of reasons). Are there other options, and what do you recommend? Thanks, kyle -- Bill Dueber Library Systems Programmer University of Michigan Library
Re: [CODE4LIB] Adding authority control to IR's that don't have it built in
I think that Mike Giarlo and Michael Witt used the FAST AutoSuggest as part of their databib project [1]. But are you talking about bringing the data down for a local index? //Ed [1] http://databib.org/ On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Bill Dueber b...@dueber.com wrote: Has anyone created a nice little wrapper around FAST? I'd like to test out including FAST subjects in our catalog, but am hoping someone else went through the work of building the code to do it :-) I know FAST has a web interface, but I've got about 10M records and would rather use something local. On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Ed Summers e...@pobox.com wrote: Hi Kyle, If you are thinking of doing name or subject authority control you might want to check out OCLC's VIAF AutoSuggest service [1] and FAST AutoSuggest [2]. There are also autosuggest searches for the name and subject authority files, that are lightly documented in their OpenSearch document [3]. In general, I really like this approach, and I think it has a lot of potential for newer cataloging interfaces. I'll describe two scenarios that I'm familiar with, that have worked quite well (so far). Note, these aren't IR per-se, but perhaps they will translate to your situation. As part of the National Digital Newspaper Program LC has a simple app so that librarians can create essays that describe newspapers in detail. Rather than making this part of our public website we created an Essay Editor as a standalone django app that provides a web based editing environment, for authority the essays. Part of this process is linking up the essay with the correct newspaper. Rather than load all the newspapers that could be described into the Essay Editor, and keep them up to date, we exposed an OpenSearch API in the main Chronicling America website (where all the newspaper records are loaded and maintained) [4]. It has been working quite well so far. Another example is the jobs.code4lib.org website that allows people to enter jobs announcements. I wanted to make sure that it was possible to view jobs by organization [5], or skill [6] -- so some form of authority control was needed. I ended up using Freebase Suggest [7] that makes it quite easy to build simple forms that present users with subsets of Freebase entities, depending on what they type. A nice side benefit of using Freebase is that you get descriptive text and images for the employers and topics for free. It has been working pretty well so far. There is a bit of an annoying conflict between the Freebase CSS and Twitter Bootstrap, which might be resolved by updating Bootstrap. Also, I've noticed Freebase's service slowing down a bit lately, which hopefully won't degrade further. The big caveat here is that these external services are dependencies. If they go down, a significant portion of your app might go down to. Minimizing this dependency, or allowing things degrade well is good to keep in mind. Also, it's worth remembering identifiers (if they are available) for the selected matches, so that they can be used for linking your data with the external resource. A simple string might change. I hope this helps. Thanks for the question, I think this is an area where we can really improve some of our back-office interfaces and applications. //Ed [1] http://www.oclc.org/developer/documentation/virtual-international-authority-file-viaf/request-types#autosuggest [2] http://experimental.worldcat.org/fast/assignfast/ [3] http://id.loc.gov/authorities/opensearch/ [4] http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/#autosuggest [5] http://jobs.code4lib.org/employer/university-of-illinois-at-urbana-champaign/ [6] http://jobs.code4lib.org/jobs/ruby/ [7] http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Freebase_Suggest On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: How are libraries doing this and how well is it working? Most systems that even claim to have authority control simply allow a controlled keyword list. But this does nothing for the see and see also references that are essential for many use cases (people known by many names, entities that change names, merge or whatever over time, etc). The two most obvious solutions to me are to write an app that provides this information interactively as the query is typed (requires access to the search box) or to have a record that serves as a disambiguation page (might not be noticed by the user for a variety of reasons). Are there other options, and what do you recommend? Thanks, kyle -- Bill Dueber Library Systems Programmer University of Michigan Library
Re: [CODE4LIB] Answer to your question Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia)
I've submitted the request to add my post to the CoC github at https://github.com/code4lib/antiharassment-policy/issues/25. I have a couple of other thoughts roaming around my head atm, and might post a couple of additions/tweaks to what I wrote in the issue thread. Also, sorry for the typos in the last post. I wrote the post at 6 am before consuming tea. Lastly, to end your day... Puppies: http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/puppy-bowl/games-and-more/puppy-cam.htm and Kittens: http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/too-cute/games-more/kitten-cam.htm Thanks, Becky On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Ranti Junus ranti.ju...@gmail.com wrote: +1 to the proposed approach. Thank you, Becky. ranti. On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Mark A. Matienzo mark.matie...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Becky Yoose b.yo...@gmail.com wrote: So that's my answer. In Real Life people will have opinions about how the CoC is enforced. People will argue that a particular decision was unfair, and others will say that it didn't go far enough. We really can't stop people having opinions, but what we could do here is have constructive discussions that lead to something tangible (affirmation of decision, change in CoC, modify decision, etc,), instead of reproducing the comments section of a story on a news site. I can add this as a new issue to the CoC Github, as supporting documentation to the code later today. becky++ I like the proposed approach. -mark -- Bulk mail. Postage paid.
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Conference streaming?
Yes, thanks to the people at UIC Learning Environments Technology Services the conference will be streamed and archived. We are awaiting details, but certainly will publicize it widely when we have them. Margaret Heller Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773.508.2686 Tom Keays tomke...@gmail.com 01/29/13 20:36 PM I was wondering if talks from the conference would be streamed this year? It was really great to have it the last time I was unable to attend. Tom
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Conference streaming?
yayyy! I can't stress how valuable this is for those of us who can only attend a couple conferences a year. Best, Eric Phetteplace Emerging Technologies Librarian Chesapeake College Wye Mills, MD On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 9:41 PM, Margaret Heller mhell...@luc.edu wrote: Yes, thanks to the people at UIC Learning Environments Technology Services the conference will be streamed and archived. We are awaiting details, but certainly will publicize it widely when we have them. Margaret Heller Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773.508.2686 Tom Keays tomke...@gmail.com 01/29/13 20:36 PM I was wondering if talks from the conference would be streamed this year? It was really great to have it the last time I was unable to attend. Tom
Re: [CODE4LIB] Adding authority control to IR's that don't have it built in
Right -- I'd like to show the FAST stuff as facets in our catalog search (or, at least try it out and see if anyone salutes). So I'd need to inject the FAST data into the records at index time. On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Ed Summers e...@pobox.com wrote: I think that Mike Giarlo and Michael Witt used the FAST AutoSuggest as part of their databib project [1]. But are you talking about bringing the data down for a local index? //Ed [1] http://databib.org/ On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Bill Dueber b...@dueber.com wrote: Has anyone created a nice little wrapper around FAST? I'd like to test out including FAST subjects in our catalog, but am hoping someone else went through the work of building the code to do it :-) I know FAST has a web interface, but I've got about 10M records and would rather use something local. On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Ed Summers e...@pobox.com wrote: Hi Kyle, If you are thinking of doing name or subject authority control you might want to check out OCLC's VIAF AutoSuggest service [1] and FAST AutoSuggest [2]. There are also autosuggest searches for the name and subject authority files, that are lightly documented in their OpenSearch document [3]. In general, I really like this approach, and I think it has a lot of potential for newer cataloging interfaces. I'll describe two scenarios that I'm familiar with, that have worked quite well (so far). Note, these aren't IR per-se, but perhaps they will translate to your situation. As part of the National Digital Newspaper Program LC has a simple app so that librarians can create essays that describe newspapers in detail. Rather than making this part of our public website we created an Essay Editor as a standalone django app that provides a web based editing environment, for authority the essays. Part of this process is linking up the essay with the correct newspaper. Rather than load all the newspapers that could be described into the Essay Editor, and keep them up to date, we exposed an OpenSearch API in the main Chronicling America website (where all the newspaper records are loaded and maintained) [4]. It has been working quite well so far. Another example is the jobs.code4lib.org website that allows people to enter jobs announcements. I wanted to make sure that it was possible to view jobs by organization [5], or skill [6] -- so some form of authority control was needed. I ended up using Freebase Suggest [7] that makes it quite easy to build simple forms that present users with subsets of Freebase entities, depending on what they type. A nice side benefit of using Freebase is that you get descriptive text and images for the employers and topics for free. It has been working pretty well so far. There is a bit of an annoying conflict between the Freebase CSS and Twitter Bootstrap, which might be resolved by updating Bootstrap. Also, I've noticed Freebase's service slowing down a bit lately, which hopefully won't degrade further. The big caveat here is that these external services are dependencies. If they go down, a significant portion of your app might go down to. Minimizing this dependency, or allowing things degrade well is good to keep in mind. Also, it's worth remembering identifiers (if they are available) for the selected matches, so that they can be used for linking your data with the external resource. A simple string might change. I hope this helps. Thanks for the question, I think this is an area where we can really improve some of our back-office interfaces and applications. //Ed [1] http://www.oclc.org/developer/documentation/virtual-international-authority-file-viaf/request-types#autosuggest [2] http://experimental.worldcat.org/fast/assignfast/ [3] http://id.loc.gov/authorities/opensearch/ [4] http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/#autosuggest [5] http://jobs.code4lib.org/employer/university-of-illinois-at-urbana-champaign/ [6] http://jobs.code4lib.org/jobs/ruby/ [7] http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Freebase_Suggest On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: How are libraries doing this and how well is it working? Most systems that even claim to have authority control simply allow a controlled keyword list. But this does nothing for the see and see also references that are essential for many use cases (people known by many names, entities that change names, merge or whatever over time, etc). The two most obvious solutions to me are to write an app that provides this information interactively as the query is typed (requires access to the search box) or to have a record that serves as a disambiguation page (might not be noticed by the user for a variety of reasons). Are there other options, and what do you recommend? Thanks, kyle -- Bill Dueber
