[CODE4LIB] Natural language programming
Hello, Has anyone here experience in the world of natural language programming (while applying information retrieval techniques)? I'm currently trying to develop a tool that will: 1. take a pdf and extract the text (paying no attention to images or formatting) 2. analyze the text via term weighting, inverse document frequency, and other natural language processing techniques 3. assemble a list of suggested terms and concepts that are weighted heavily in that document Step 1 is straightforward and I've had much success there. Step 2 is the problem child. I've played around with a few APIs (like AlchemyAPI) but they have character length limitations or other shortcomings that keep me looking. The background behind this project is that I work for a digital library with a large pre-existing collection of pdfs with rudimentary metadata. The aforementioned tool will be used to classify and group the pdfs according to the themes of the library. Our CMS is Drupal so depending on my level of ambition, this *might* develop into a module. Does this sound like a project that has been done/attempted before? Any suggested tools or reading materials?
[CODE4LIB] Book Club software tools and approaches?
Hi all, I've been musing on software tools that might be useful for book clubs. I'm not necessarily looking for a turnkey solution explicitly geared towards book clubs, but more a thought experiment of what tools might be useful for an ongoing in the real world book club. Some needs that software tools might help keep track of: * A way to vote for what books to read next * Schedule of times * An estimator calculator (reading level of book + length of book, estimated sessions). * way to add notes or linked materials * online discussions to supplement in person meetings * glossary/dictionary functionality perhaps? In my own thoughts some of the online services like GoodReads, Shelfari and LibraryThing seems to at least offer some tools and information. A system that I haven't had a chance to explore enough, Loomis, might help with the decision making parts. Part of the impetus for this is I've recently joined a technical book club. At the moment we're using a wiki, which is working fine, but in particular the voting is clunky. I could picture something where members can add/link to something like librarything in a list and the book with the most votes (w/ ties being broken randomly) is the next book in the queue. So anyone out there already doing something similar? Thoughts? Ideas? Jon Gorman University of Illinois
Re: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code!
Hey Jennie, I'm waaay south of MA but I'm pretty addicted to talking about coding as a library job O_o. If you are still in want of guinea-pigs, I'd love to skype / hangout. Michael Schofield // mschofi...@nova.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jennie Rose Halperin Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 3:58 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code! hey Code4Lib, Do you work in a library and also like coding? Do you do coding as part of your job? I'm writing my masters paper for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and I'd like to shadow and interview up to 10 librarians and archivists who also work with code in some way in the Boston area for the next two weeks. I'd come by and chat for about 2 hours, and the whole thing will not take up too much of your time. Not in Massachusetts? Want to skype? Let me know and that would be possible. I know that this list has a pretty big North American presence, but I will be in Berlin beginning July 14, and could potentially shadow anyone in Germany as well. Best, Jennie Rose Halperin jennie.halpe...@gmail.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] Natural language programming
On Jul 1, 2014, at 9:12 AM, Katie konrad.ka...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone here experience in the world of natural language programming (while applying information retrieval techniques)? I'm currently trying to develop a tool that will: 1. take a pdf and extract the text (paying no attention to images or formatting) 2. analyze the text via term weighting, inverse document frequency, and other natural language processing techniques 3. assemble a list of suggested terms and concepts that are weighted heavily in that document Step 1 is straightforward and I've had much success there. Step 2 is the problem child. I've played around with a few APIs (like AlchemyAPI) but they have character length limitations or other shortcomings that keep me looking. The background behind this project is that I work for a digital library with a large pre-existing collection of pdfs with rudimentary metadata. The aforementioned tool will be used to classify and group the pdfs according to the themes of the library. Our CMS is Drupal so depending on my level of ambition, this *might* develop into a module. Does this sound like a project that has been done/attempted before? Any suggested tools or reading materials? You have, more or less, just described my job. Increasingly, I: * create or are given a list of citations * save the citations as a computer-readable list (database) * harvest the full text of the each cited item * extract the plain text from the harvested PDF file * clean up / post-process the text, maybe * do analysis against individual texts or the entire corpus * provide interfaces to “read” the corpus from “a distance” The analysis is akin to descriptive statistics but for “bags of words”. I create lists of both frequently use as well as statistically significant words/phrases. I do parts-of-speach (POS) analysis and create lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. I then create more lists of the frequently used and significant POS. I sometimes do sentiment analysis (or alternative called “opinion mining”) against the corpus. Sometimes I index the whole lot and provide a search interface. Through named-entity extraction I pull out names of people, places, and things. The meaning of these things can then be elaborated upon through Wikipedia look-ups. The dates and be plotted on a timeline. I’m beginning to get into classification and clustering, but I haven’t seen any really exciting things come out of topic modeling, yet. Through all of these processes, I am able to supplement the original lists of citations to value-added services. What I’m weak at is the visualizations. Example projects have included: * harvesting “poverty tourism” websites, and learning how why people are convinced to visit slums * collecting as many articles from the history of science literature as possible, and analyzing how the use of word “practice” has changed over time * similarly, collecting as many articles from the business section of the New York Times to determine how the words “tariff” and “trade” have changed over time * analyzing how people’s perceptions of culture have changed based on pre- and post-descriptions of China * collecting and analyzing the transcripts of trials during the 17th century to see whether how religion affected commerce * finding the common themes in a set of 4th century Catholic hymns * looking for alternative genres in a corpus of mediaeval literature Trying to determine the significant words of a single document in iscolation is difficult. Instead, it is much easier to denote a set of significant words for a single document when the document is a part of a corpus. There seems to be never-ending and ever subtle differences on how to do this, but exploiting TF/IDF is probably one of the more common. [1] Consider also using the cosine similarity measure to compare documents for “sameness”. [2] The folks at Stanford have a very nice suite of natural language processors. [3] Albeit written in Perl, I have created a tiny library of routines and corresponding programs do much of this work from the command line of my desktop computer. [4] [1] TF/IDF - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf–idf [2] similarity - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosine_similarity [3] Stanford tools - http://www-nlp.stanford.edu [4] tiny library - https://github.com/ericleasemorgan/Tiny-Text-Mining-Tools — Eric “Librarians Love Lists Morgan
Re: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code!
Jennie, As with others, I'm not a librarian as I lack a library degree, but I do Digital Repository Development for the Boston Public Library (specifically: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/). Feel free to let me know you want to chat for your masters paper. Sincerely,Steven AndersonWeb Services - Digital Library Repository developer617-859-2393sander...@bpl.org Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2014 13:51:07 + From: mschofi...@nova.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code! To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Hey Jennie, I'm waaay south of MA but I'm pretty addicted to talking about coding as a library job O_o. If you are still in want of guinea-pigs, I'd love to skype / hangout. Michael Schofield // mschofi...@nova.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jennie Rose Halperin Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 3:58 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code! hey Code4Lib, Do you work in a library and also like coding? Do you do coding as part of your job? I'm writing my masters paper for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and I'd like to shadow and interview up to 10 librarians and archivists who also work with code in some way in the Boston area for the next two weeks. I'd come by and chat for about 2 hours, and the whole thing will not take up too much of your time. Not in Massachusetts? Want to skype? Let me know and that would be possible. I know that this list has a pretty big North American presence, but I will be in Berlin beginning July 14, and could potentially shadow anyone in Germany as well. Best, Jennie Rose Halperin jennie.halpe...@gmail.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code!
If you'd like to talk to someone who did a library degree, and currently works as a web developer supporting an academic library, I'd be happy to talk with you. - Dave Mayo Software Engineer @ Harvard HUIT LTS On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Steven Anderson stevencander...@hotmail.com wrote: Jennie, As with others, I'm not a librarian as I lack a library degree, but I do Digital Repository Development for the Boston Public Library (specifically: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/). Feel free to let me know you want to chat for your masters paper. Sincerely,Steven AndersonWeb Services - Digital Library Repository developer617-859-2393sander...@bpl.org Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2014 13:51:07 + From: mschofi...@nova.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code! To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Hey Jennie, I'm waaay south of MA but I'm pretty addicted to talking about coding as a library job O_o. If you are still in want of guinea-pigs, I'd love to skype / hangout. Michael Schofield // mschofi...@nova.edu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jennie Rose Halperin Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 3:58 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Let me shadow you, librarians who code! hey Code4Lib, Do you work in a library and also like coding? Do you do coding as part of your job? I'm writing my masters paper for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and I'd like to shadow and interview up to 10 librarians and archivists who also work with code in some way in the Boston area for the next two weeks. I'd come by and chat for about 2 hours, and the whole thing will not take up too much of your time. Not in Massachusetts? Want to skype? Let me know and that would be possible. I know that this list has a pretty big North American presence, but I will be in Berlin beginning July 14, and could potentially shadow anyone in Germany as well. Best, Jennie Rose Halperin jennie.halpe...@gmail.com
[CODE4LIB] Using EZproxy to redirect users to an external survey ?
Hello, My question primarily concerns an EZproxy issue I am working on but posting here in the hope someone on the list may have had related experience or suggestions. We are going to be launching a survey to assess e-resource usage the end of this month and plan to use EZproxy to redirect users to the survey following the method outlined here http://usefulutilities.com/support/example/survey.txt What we want to happen is: A) User clicks a proxied link and is redirected to our survey; B) User completes the survey and submits, their responses are written to a database; C) User is forwarded through to their original destination URL; D) After completing the survey once, a cookie is set locally so that next time a user clicks a proxied resource a PHP script (Drupal module) redirects the user to that resource, writing an additional survey submission to the database, replicating all answers from the user's latest response to the survey. It is at Step D that we are currently hung up. The script we have written at all times checks for the existence of both the EZproxy cookie, and the locally set cookie. If the EZproxy cookie is set but the local cookie is not then the user is prompted to take the survey. If both cookies are set, then the user's latest survey results are replicated for that resource in the results database. *If the EZproxy cookie is NOT set (something that should not really happen) then the script will redirect the user to the library homepage. * In our testing so far the script constantly redirects to the homepage which seems to indicate that the EZproxy cookie is not set, or that the script is unable to see it. I have done a header dump and can see that the EZproxy cookie appears to be getting set in my browser when I click on proxied links. But again the script behaves as if the EZproxy cookie is not set... Assuming this has something to do with the way EZproxy handles cookies but I cannot find anything in the documentation to help me find a solution to this issue. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions please feel free to reply on or off list. Thanks, Jim -- James Bongiovanni Systems Librarian Library Technology Services Temple University Libraries jimeb...@temple.edu Office 215-204-6005 Cell 215-817-5356
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
I was thinking about this in Craig's line of thought as well - would it be plausible to just use your phone, a little code and develop your own scanning software? I can't speak much on Android development, but there are established libraries in iOS7 you could program/plugin/develop to read barcodes. I realize this might be out of scope of your immediate need - but you know, if you wanted a challenge .m On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 5:38 AM, craig boman craig.bo...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Riley, We have metroset voyagers too. They are great, but have you tried extending the functionality of the voyager (or any scanner)? If you haven't, try connecting a USB barcode scanner to an android phone, via a USB OTG adapter cable. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/179-6049859-1069161?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=usb%20otgsprefix=usb+ot%2Capsrh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ausb%20otg This opens up a world of possibilities (scanning barcodes directly into a Google spreadsheet, or an ILS API, etc). Good luck, Craig Boman Applications Support Specialist University of Dayton Libraries 937-229-3674 cbom...@udayton.edu On Jun 30, 2014 9:24 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.com wrote: I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
If someone can do this easily, I'd love to get access to the code. The last time we dabbled in Android and iOS barcode reading, it was difficult enough to make us switch to USB scanners that emulate keyboard entry. On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Mark Pernotto mark.perno...@gmail.com wrote: I was thinking about this in Craig's line of thought as well - would it be plausible to just use your phone, a little code and develop your own scanning software? I can't speak much on Android development, but there are established libraries in iOS7 you could program/plugin/develop to read barcodes. I realize this might be out of scope of your immediate need - but you know, if you wanted a challenge .m On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 5:38 AM, craig boman craig.bo...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Riley, We have metroset voyagers too. They are great, but have you tried extending the functionality of the voyager (or any scanner)? If you haven't, try connecting a USB barcode scanner to an android phone, via a USB OTG adapter cable. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/179-6049859-1069161?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=usb%20otgsprefix=usb+ot%2Capsrh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ausb%20otg This opens up a world of possibilities (scanning barcodes directly into a Google spreadsheet, or an ILS API, etc). Good luck, Craig Boman Applications Support Specialist University of Dayton Libraries 937-229-3674 cbom...@udayton.edu On Jun 30, 2014 9:24 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.com wrote: I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
To build on Mark's recommendations, you might try altering Google's open source checkout software https://code.google.com/p/open-source-self-check/ to do on-the-fly inventory via a smartphone. The software can interface with most mobile browsers, but it may need some responsive design html updates. Riley, you have some coding experience, right? Let me know if you need any help. Good luck, Craig Boman On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 12:50 PM, Mark Pernotto mark.perno...@gmail.com wrote: I was thinking about this in Craig's line of thought as well - would it be plausible to just use your phone, a little code and develop your own scanning software? I can't speak much on Android development, but there are established libraries in iOS7 you could program/plugin/develop to read barcodes. I realize this might be out of scope of your immediate need - but you know, if you wanted a challenge .m On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 5:38 AM, craig boman craig.bo...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Riley, We have metroset voyagers too. They are great, but have you tried extending the functionality of the voyager (or any scanner)? If you haven't, try connecting a USB barcode scanner to an android phone, via a USB OTG adapter cable. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/179-6049859-1069161?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=usb%20otgsprefix=usb+ot%2Capsrh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ausb%20otg This opens up a world of possibilities (scanning barcodes directly into a Google spreadsheet, or an ILS API, etc). Good luck, Craig Boman Applications Support Specialist University of Dayton Libraries 937-229-3674 cbom...@udayton.edu On Jun 30, 2014 9:24 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.com wrote: I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
Hi, On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 10:09 AM, craig boman craig.bo...@gmail.com wrote: To build on Mark's recommendations, you might try altering Google's open source checkout software https://code.google.com/p/open-source-self-check/ to do on-the-fly inventory via a smartphone. Rather, it looks like that project is by Eric Melton from the Kirkendall Public Library; it just happens to be hosted on Google Code. Please excuse the derail, but I just wanted to attribute it correctly. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: g...@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web:http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org http://evergreen-ils.org
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
It just so happens that CDW's deal of the week is the Motorola LI2208 Barcode Scanner on sale until 7/3 @ 3pm CT for $104.99. I've had no experience with it, but the specs look great. It also supports scanning from a tablet or phone display as well as from printed barcodes. http://www.cdw.com/content/products/cdw-best-deals.aspx?cm_mmc=email-_-DOW_DOWWeekly-_-ImageShop-_-Email Other than that, we've been using Metrologic Voyager scanners and have been quite satisfied with them. John Lolis Information Technology Manager White Plains Public Library 100 Martine Avenue White Plains, NY 10601 http://whiteplainslibrary.org/ On 6/30/2014 at 9:23 PM, in message 6236e05186ea324890283f625d098691ac5738a...@garrmail.garr.org, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.com wrote: I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
Re: [CODE4LIB] Using EZproxy to redirect users to an external survey ?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 01 Jul 2014, James Bongiovanni said: I have done a header dump and can see that the EZproxy cookie appears to be getting set in my browser when I click on proxied links. But again the script behaves as if the EZproxy cookie is not set... Assuming this has something to do with the way EZproxy handles cookies but I cannot find anything in the documentation to help me find a solution to this issue. Absent any PHP code to examine, the first question I would have is whether the domain and path for both cookies are such that both cookies are accessible to the scripts which need to read them, and in this case it sounds like the EZproxy cookie isn't being sent to the PHP script. If the PHP script and EZproxy are running on the same subdomain, is the cookie being set for the root path '/', and if they are running on different subdomains, are the cookies being set for the parent domain, as in .example.com instead of ezp.example.com (which is not sent to php.example.com) - -- Michael Berkowski University of Minnesota Libraries m...@umn.edu 612.626.6137 PGP Public Key: http://z.umn.edu/mjbpubkey -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAlOy+QcACgkQ01KJk46VC2ZjfQCeMMUgh3SrQrYG96gfcbB5S8qs 4mUAn2Abcc4sEUF/MEL5nfBzVbnxOtks =NKu2 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
John, The biggest problem I can see with this, aside from the never-ending Android/iOS debate, is what to do with the data once it's scanned, as each library may have different needs and/or uses for this data; importing to a database, dump it in a text file, import it into another app, etc. Unless I'm not thinking about this correctly, it wouldn't be possible to build an 'all-in-one' web app that can then be used on platform-independent systems. There are some straightforward tutorials to build a simple scanning app that can retrieve various types of bar codes - that's the easy part. What to do with that data is, in my mind, the biggest variable. .m On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 10:08 AM, John Palmer writing2...@gmail.com wrote: If someone can do this easily, I'd love to get access to the code. The last time we dabbled in Android and iOS barcode reading, it was difficult enough to make us switch to USB scanners that emulate keyboard entry. On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Mark Pernotto mark.perno...@gmail.com wrote: I was thinking about this in Craig's line of thought as well - would it be plausible to just use your phone, a little code and develop your own scanning software? I can't speak much on Android development, but there are established libraries in iOS7 you could program/plugin/develop to read barcodes. I realize this might be out of scope of your immediate need - but you know, if you wanted a challenge .m On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 5:38 AM, craig boman craig.bo...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Riley, We have metroset voyagers too. They are great, but have you tried extending the functionality of the voyager (or any scanner)? If you haven't, try connecting a USB barcode scanner to an android phone, via a USB OTG adapter cable. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/179-6049859-1069161?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=usb%20otgsprefix=usb+ot%2Capsrh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ausb%20otg This opens up a world of possibilities (scanning barcodes directly into a Google spreadsheet, or an ILS API, etc). Good luck, Craig Boman Applications Support Specialist University of Dayton Libraries 937-229-3674 cbom...@udayton.edu On Jun 30, 2014 9:24 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.com wrote: I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
Riley, Basically ANY barcode scanner would work for you. Barcode scanners simply read in data as though it was typed in from a keyboard. What matters is that you have the symbologies you need enabled. Library barcodes tend to be Codabar (which is not always enabled by default), while stores often use UPC/EAN (which is usually enabled). And the barcodes for our students and staff at the College are in Code 128. If you can attach the barcode reader to a laptop and scan the barcodes into a blank text file, then it's enabled. If you grab a copy of the manual for the barcode reader you can see how to program in any prefixes or suffixes you need and more - things like being able to tell which symbology is being used. If all you're doing is scanning in barcode numbers to say that this piece of equipment is here, you don't even need a special program, just a text file that can be imported into Excel. We do something similar and upload data to our library system to update the inventory of our collection at the various Branches. There are indeed apps for Android and IOS devices that might enable you to use a phone to do it too. Just my .02 worth. Regards, Giles W. Riesner, Jr. | Lead Library Technician , Library Technology The Community College of Baltimore County | 800 South Rolling Road | Catonsville, MD 21228 USA Phone: 1-443-840-2736 | Fax: 1-410-455-6436 | Email: gries...@ccbcmd.edu CCBC. The incredible value of education. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 9:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
I agree with Giles' opinion that your regular handheld barcode scanner is sufficient for 95% of use cases and it's a very simple machine -- brand means almost nothing. If the issue is cost, when I wanted one for scanning my own home collection I got a used library barcode scanner (Symbol 1908T-X) on eBay for $9 (+$20 shipping) and then looked up the manual online to customize the settings. Riesner, Giles W. mailto:gries...@ccbcmd.edu July 1, 2014 at 3:42 PM Riley, Basically ANY barcode scanner would work for you. Barcode scanners simply read in data as though it was typed in from a keyboard. What matters is that you have the symbologies you need enabled. Library barcodes tend to be Codabar (which is not always enabled by default), while stores often use UPC/EAN (which is usually enabled). And the barcodes for our students and staff at the College are in Code 128. If you can attach the barcode reader to a laptop and scan the barcodes into a blank text file, then it's enabled. If you grab a copy of the manual for the barcode reader you can see how to program in any prefixes or suffixes you need and more - things like being able to tell which symbology is being used. If all you're doing is scanning in barcode numbers to say that this piece of equipment is here, you don't even need a special program, just a text file that can be imported into Excel. We do something similar and upload data to our library system to update the inventory of our collection at the various Branches. There are indeed apps for Android and IOS devices that might enable you to use a phone to do it too. Just my .02 worth. Regards, Giles W. Riesner, Jr. | Lead Library Technician , Library Technology The Community College of Baltimore County | 800 South Rolling Road | Catonsville, MD 21228 USA Phone: 1-443-840-2736 | Fax: 1-410-455-6436 | Email: gries...@ccbcmd.edu CCBC. The incredible value of education. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 9:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes Riley Childs mailto:rchi...@cucawarriors.com June 30, 2014 at 9:23 PM I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes -- Ruth Collings Web Librarian ruthcollings.ca http://ruthcollings.ca
Re: [CODE4LIB] Book Club software tools and approaches?
We've been using a G+ community for event announcements and discussions. It's been fine. We're pretty small so we don't need a lot in terms of management. https://plus.google.com/communities/113393567679559625537 For voting, we've used both a Google Drive Form and simply a discussion thread. On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 6:38 AM, Jon Gorman jonathan.gor...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I've been musing on software tools that might be useful for book clubs. I'm not necessarily looking for a turnkey solution explicitly geared towards book clubs, but more a thought experiment of what tools might be useful for an ongoing in the real world book club. Some needs that software tools might help keep track of: * A way to vote for what books to read next * Schedule of times * An estimator calculator (reading level of book + length of book, estimated sessions). * way to add notes or linked materials * online discussions to supplement in person meetings * glossary/dictionary functionality perhaps? In my own thoughts some of the online services like GoodReads, Shelfari and LibraryThing seems to at least offer some tools and information. A system that I haven't had a chance to explore enough, Loomis, might help with the decision making parts. Part of the impetus for this is I've recently joined a technical book club. At the moment we're using a wiki, which is working fine, but in particular the voting is clunky. I could picture something where members can add/link to something like librarything in a list and the book with the most votes (w/ ties being broken randomly) is the next book in the queue. So anyone out there already doing something similar? Thoughts? Ideas? Jon Gorman University of Illinois
Re: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner
Any barcode scanner will do is not true, some fail on certain code types others need large type as they are blind as a bat. I only mentioned the ones that worked on the tiny barcodes I use. I have a shelf.php screen that is either used on the main PC via USB or the same php via wifi, one selects the location field and scan it, the contents that were there are listed and the status changed from confirmed to located, then scan all the items in the box/on the shelf, all the items scanned are then marked confirmed, when finished at the end there is a button to set lost for all the items that were awol. If lucky they get located as one scans other shelves else...dont panic might turn up one day. Dave Caroline On 01/07/2014, Ruth Collings cont...@ruthcollings.ca wrote: I agree with Giles' opinion that your regular handheld barcode scanner is sufficient for 95% of use cases and it's a very simple machine -- brand means almost nothing. If the issue is cost, when I wanted one for scanning my own home collection I got a used library barcode scanner (Symbol 1908T-X) on eBay for $9 (+$20 shipping) and then looked up the manual online to customize the settings. Riesner, Giles W. mailto:gries...@ccbcmd.edu July 1, 2014 at 3:42 PM Riley, Basically ANY barcode scanner would work for you. Barcode scanners simply read in data as though it was typed in from a keyboard. What matters is that you have the symbologies you need enabled. Library barcodes tend to be Codabar (which is not always enabled by default), while stores often use UPC/EAN (which is usually enabled). And the barcodes for our students and staff at the College are in Code 128. If you can attach the barcode reader to a laptop and scan the barcodes into a blank text file, then it's enabled. If you grab a copy of the manual for the barcode reader you can see how to program in any prefixes or suffixes you need and more - things like being able to tell which symbology is being used. If all you're doing is scanning in barcode numbers to say that this piece of equipment is here, you don't even need a special program, just a text file that can be imported into Excel. We do something similar and upload data to our library system to update the inventory of our collection at the various Branches. There are indeed apps for Android and IOS devices that might enable you to use a phone to do it too. Just my .02 worth. Regards, Giles W. Riesner, Jr. | Lead Library Technician , Library Technology The Community College of Baltimore County | 800 South Rolling Road | Catonsville, MD 21228 USA Phone: 1-443-840-2736 | Fax: 1-410-455-6436 | Email: gries...@ccbcmd.edu CCBC. The incredible value of education. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 9:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Barcode scanner I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes Riley Childs mailto:rchi...@cucawarriors.com June 30, 2014 at 9:23 PM I am trying to find a barcode scanner that i can do inventory with, I was looking at the KDC20, but it is a tad out of my price range, what barcode scanner do you like? I have a Metroset Voyager (Honeywell branded) that i like, but am trying to see what others have and get some better suggestions. Riley Childs Student Asst. Head of IT Services Charlotte United Christian Academy (704) 497-2086 RileyChilds.net Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes -- Ruth Collings Web Librarian ruthcollings.ca http://ruthcollings.ca
Re: [CODE4LIB] Natural language programming
Since you maybe looking at Drupal intergratin down the path, I would look at using python znd the NLTK , and develop a web service that coild ghen be used by drupal On 01/07/2014 11:13 PM, Katie konrad.ka...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, Has anyone here experience in the world of natural language programming (while applying information retrieval techniques)? I'm currently trying to develop a tool that will: 1. take a pdf and extract the text (paying no attention to images or formatting) 2. analyze the text via term weighting, inverse document frequency, and other natural language processing techniques 3. assemble a list of suggested terms and concepts that are weighted heavily in that document Step 1 is straightforward and I've had much success there. Step 2 is the problem child. I've played around with a few APIs (like AlchemyAPI) but they have character length limitations or other shortcomings that keep me looking. The background behind this project is that I work for a digital library with a large pre-existing collection of pdfs with rudimentary metadata. The aforementioned tool will be used to classify and group the pdfs according to the themes of the library. Our CMS is Drupal so depending on my level of ambition, this *might* develop into a module. Does this sound like a project that has been done/attempted before? Any suggested tools or reading materials?
[CODE4LIB] Records management systems in NY area -- discussions
Hello, I'm the data analyst at the Open Society Archives in Budapest, Hungary --- and am going to be in NYC/the surrounding areas in the latter half of July, and hoping to meet with people from institutions/NGOs, etc that have implemented records keeping/management systems in their workplaces as part of some research for my own institution, and those we work with. If anybody would be willing to meet up while I'm there for a short chat, it would be very much appreciated. Will be continuing this research in the coming months, so if not in NY, and would be willing to talk over email or skype, that would also be great. Thanks, Gerty Nicole Friedman -- Gertrude Nicole Friedman friedman...@gmail.com +36.70.584.5877 (Hungary) +1 502.494.5807 (USA)
[CODE4LIB] [updated] Job: Web Developer at California State University San Marcos
[Apologies for reposting. The earlier one went out before it was ready.] Are you passionate about web development? The Library at California State University San Marcos seeks an entry-level web developer who is creative, user-focused, and wants to develop awesome web applications. The ideal candidate is a quick learner, well-versed in developing with languages such as PHP, and knowledgeable in the use of version control systems such as Git. With guidance from the Library Technology and Systems coordinator, the incumbent will dive into and take ownership of various upcoming web development projects. Projects in the pipeline include developing responsive web interfaces, creating Drupal modules, migrating Drupal sites, and building integrations between library systems and vendor applications. Highlights of desirable qualifications § 2-3 years of web development experience. § Demonstrated understanding of programming languages such as PHP and the principles of web development involved in applying those languages to complex problems. § Strong understanding of database systems such as MySQL. § Demonstrated experience working with content management systems such as Drupal and Wordpress. § Demonstrated understanding of a variety of Web technologies and applications, such as XML, CSS, JSON, and authentication services. Work environment § Agile and fast-paced § Focus on development and coding § Innovative ideas and creative solutions welcomed and encouraged! § Opportunities to build strong experience by working on complex solutions § Opportunities to explore new languages and technologies § Flexible working hours § Mac, Windows desktop and laptop with multiple displays § Access to multiple development servers Complete job description is available at http://www.csusm.edu/hr/jobs/ASA/Library/Analyst_Programmer_Found_AA_Library_Analyst_ProgrammerPS0620141873.pdf. To review job application guidelines and apply, go to https://www.csusm.edu/about/employment.html and select Job Openings under Staff and Management Opportunities. To locate the job listing for this position, search for 'Library' and set 'Posted' to 'Last Three Months.' The job title for this position is 'Analyst/Programmer (Foundation), Library.' California State University, San Marcos is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against persons on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, marital status, age, disability or veteran's status.
