[CODE4LIB] NOW AVAILABLE: The April-June 2014 Quarterly Report from Fedora
Sept. 16, 2014 Read it online: http://bit.ly/Xvy9up Contact: David Wilcox dwil...@duraspace.org From The Fedora Steering Group The Quarterly Report from Fedora April-June 2014 Fedora Development - In the past quarter, the development team released one Alpha and three Beta releases of Fedora 4; detailed release notes are here: * Fedora 4.0 Alpha 5 Release Notes * Fedora 4.0 Beta 1 Release Notes * Fedora 4.0 Beta 2 Release Notes * Fedora 4.0 Beta 3 Release Notes These four releases bring us much closer to the Fedora 4.0 production release. Features of note include enhanced object and datastream versioning, improved support for linked data, a XACML authorization implementation, REST-API improvements, transparent file system export, and many other improvements. In addition to these features, a great deal of effort has been put into improving the test coverage and overall performance of Fedora 4. We encourage the community to download and install Fedora 4 (a one-click installer is available) and test out the new features. Fedora 4.0 is only the first release in the 4.x line - a number of features, including support for Fedora 3 to Fedora 4 migrations, are planned for subsequent 4.x releases. While releasing Fedora 4.0 into production is our top development priority, we must also start scheduling the 2015 January to June block of code sprints to work on the next 4.x release. Please consider contributing developer time to these sprints by contacting Andrew Woods (awo...@duraspace.org), the Fedora Technical Lead. Fundraising We are in the midst of our annual membership campaign, which runs from early May until the end of October. The annual membership goal for 2014 is $500,000, and as of this report we have raised $478,000. The Fedora project has a total of 51 members; this includes 13 new members and 38 renewals from last year's members. The Fedora Product Manager will continue to coordinate with members of the Fedora Steering Group to expand the pool of DuraSpace members supporting the Fedora project to reach the annual funding target for 2014. Community Engagement and Outreach In the past quarter, developers have continued to hold daily meetings in conjunction with development sprints, as well as weekly Fedora committer calls attended by the broader community. In June, the Fedora community came together for Open Repositories in Helsinki, Finland. Fedora featured prominently at the conference, with workshops, presentations, user group sessions, and the official announcement of Fedora 4.0 Beta. Fedora 4 Training As we approach the production release of Fedora 4.0, we expect members of the Fedora community to work toward deploying Fedora 4 locally. Consequently, many community members have raised the issue of training as a priority. In response to this demand, three Fedora 4 training workshops have been scheduled alongside events in October: * DC Fedora User Group Meeting (Oct. 6-7) * Islandora Camp Colorado (Oct. 16) * eResearch Australasia (Oct. 31) In preparation for these events, the Fedora Product Manager and Technical Lead have been building reusable training modules for a one-day curriculum. These training modules will serve as a basis for expanding to longer, more in-depth training workshops in 2015. Upcoming Conferences In September, Fedora will be featured in presentations at The Future of Information Infrastructure and PASIG in Karlsruhe, Germany, immediately followed by a Fedora User Group meeting. Members of the Fedora Leadership Group, along with the Fedora Product Manager, will also be present at the 4th RDA Plenary in Amsterdam to discuss the project with the research data community.
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edumailto:bcoffi...@francis.edu
[CODE4LIB] quiz software
Hello friends! I was wondering if anyone could point me towards web-based open source software for library instruction that would let me administer quizzes, grade the quizzes and return a score, and then, preferably, keep some basic statistics. We're looking into a Google Forms/Spreadsheets hack, but I didn't know if there was anything a bit more elegant out there that could do the job. Thanks ~val -- Valerie Forrestal Web Services Librarian/Asst. Professor City University of New York College of Staten Island Library 2800 Victory Blvd., 1L-109I Staten Island, N.Y. 10314 Phone: 718.982.4023 valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu Celebrate Italian Heritage with a Special Broadway Benefit Concert by the World’s Longest Running Phantom in support of the CSI Italian Studies programhttp://csitoday.com/events/franc-dambrosios-broadway-the-phantom-unmasked/
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edumailto:bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] quiz software
If your institution uses courseware (sakai/blackboard) you might be able to piggy back on that. -t On 9/16/14, 2:11 PM, Valerie Forrestal valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu wrote: Hello friends! I was wondering if anyone could point me towards web-based open source software for library instruction that would let me administer quizzes, grade the quizzes and return a score, and then, preferably, keep some basic statistics. We're looking into a Google Forms/Spreadsheets hack, but I didn't know if there was anything a bit more elegant out there that could do the job. Thanks ~val -- Valerie Forrestal Web Services Librarian/Asst. Professor City University of New York College of Staten Island Library 2800 Victory Blvd., 1L-109I Staten Island, N.Y. 10314 Phone: 718.982.4023 valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu Celebrate Italian Heritage with a Special Broadway Benefit Concert by the World¹s Longest Running Phantom in support of the CSI Italian Studies programhttp://csitoday.com/events/franc-dambrosios-broadway-the-phantom- unmasked/
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
We didn't modify the templates much, but I did do a few things with them to make them feel like our own, plus experiment with some ideas for the main library website which is due for a slight update. Here's an example of a guide: http://libguides.luc.edu/anthropology1. The major thing I changed was to modify the header to exactly mirror the university website main header. This is different from the library website, which I did on purpose. I also had hoped to move to left nav to mirror other sites on the university and library site, but everyone wanted to stick with tab navigation. As an attempt to aid navigation and mirror the university's use of tabs, I used a built-in Bootstrap function to float the tabs above the content after scrolling down past them. I set a few media queries so this doesn't happen on a phone size, as well as modifying a few other elements for tablet and phone size. I accomplished most of what I wanted to do with CSS (s much display:none for things I didn't like...) and changing the header, only had to modify a few items in the template itself. Mostly this was adding in new divs I needed for styling and so on. I didn't modify the structure of the columns at all. If you have the higher end version (LibGuides CMS I ! think) you have a lot more options for templates, though I still don't think this would address Will's issue. As a side note, I am working on a piece for ACRL TechConnect on this topic right now and looking for examples, so if anyone would be interested in featuring their guides in that, please get in touch with me. Best, Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773-508-2686 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 2:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Have you tried assigning the Health Sciences guides to their own groups and adding custom header HTML at the group-level (Admin Groups Header/Footer/Tabs/Boxes)? You can't use the new mustache-based templating inside the headers, but you can use plain-jane HTML. On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:14 PM, Will Martin w...@will-martin.net wrote: My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie Graham Jeannie Graham California State University, Chico Meriam Library - Library Technology Specialist Chico, CA 95929-0295 jgra...@csuchico.edu 530-898-4311 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Hi all, I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding templating. (Or even some code!) I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning box atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas? We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides authors to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the style guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to choose from. Any thoughts are much appreciated! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edumailto:bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey everyone! Just wanted to de-lurk and answer a couple of questions here. :) Templates are customizable, and those customizations apply to the entire page, not just to the content area, although Will's right that with regular LibGuides the entire system and all the guides have a single look feel. You can create groups of guides in the LibGuides CMS upgrade, and each group of guides can have its own look and feel. There are actually templates not only for guide pages, but for the system homepage, the A-Z databases page, and other public pages. LibGuides 2 is based on Bootstrap 3, which you can choose to not apply if you like. Something else this group might be interested in is the RESTful API offered by LibGuides 2 CMS. For Margaret, here are a few systems that have come to our attention in recent weeks. If you'd like more examples, you can see most of the 623 live LibGuides 2 sites by exploring the LibGuides Community at libguides.com--just choose LibGuides v2 from the Product menu. http://libguides.gvsu.edu/ http://thegordon.libguides.com/library http://libguides.ashland.edu/ http://furman.beta.libguides.com/wexler/home http://libguides.usask.ca/ http://guides.library.georgetown.edu/researchcourseguides Hope this helps! Happy to answer questions. Cheers, -Cindi -- Cindi Trainor Blyberg (who works for Springshare) :D On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Heller, Margaret mhell...@luc.edu wrote: We didn't modify the templates much, but I did do a few things with them to make them feel like our own, plus experiment with some ideas for the main library website which is due for a slight update. Here's an example of a guide: http://libguides.luc.edu/anthropology1. The major thing I changed was to modify the header to exactly mirror the university website main header. This is different from the library website, which I did on purpose. I also had hoped to move to left nav to mirror other sites on the university and library site, but everyone wanted to stick with tab navigation. As an attempt to aid navigation and mirror the university's use of tabs, I used a built-in Bootstrap function to float the tabs above the content after scrolling down past them. I set a few media queries so this doesn't happen on a phone size, as well as modifying a few other elements for tablet and phone size. I accomplished most of what I wanted to do with CSS (s much display:none for things I didn't like...) and changing the header, only had to modify a few items in the template itself. Mostly this was adding in new divs I needed for styling and so on. I didn't modify the structure of the columns at all. If you have the higher end version (LibGuides CMS I ! think) you have a lot more options for templates, though I still don't think this would address Will's issue. As a side note, I am working on a piece for ACRL TechConnect on this topic right now and looking for examples, so if anyone would be interested in featuring their guides in that, please get in touch with me. Best, Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773-508-2686 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 2:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie
Re: [CODE4LIB] quiz software
Val, It's old and unsupported, but If you can code php there are some good bones in Quirex. http://www.thomastsoi.com/software/quirex/ I put it through a bunch of modifications and used it for years, just retired it a year or so ago for less useful and functional software. Jeremy C. Shellhase Systems Librarian Bibliographer/Instructor for Business, Economics, Psychology Humboldt State University Library One Harpst Street Arcata, California 95521 707-826-3144 (voice) 707-826-3441 (fax) jeremy.shellh...@humboldt.edu On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Valerie Forrestal valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu wrote: Hello friends! I was wondering if anyone could point me towards web-based open source software for library instruction that would let me administer quizzes, grade the quizzes and return a score, and then, preferably, keep some basic statistics. We're looking into a Google Forms/Spreadsheets hack, but I didn't know if there was anything a bit more elegant out there that could do the job. Thanks ~val -- Valerie Forrestal Web Services Librarian/Asst. Professor City University of New York College of Staten Island Library 2800 Victory Blvd., 1L-109I Staten Island, N.Y. 10314 Phone: 718.982.4023 valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu Celebrate Italian Heritage with a Special Broadway Benefit Concert by the World's Longest Running Phantom in support of the CSI Italian Studies programhttp://csitoday.com/events/franc-dambrosios- broadway-the-phantom-unmasked/
Re: [CODE4LIB] quiz software
Just saw this on the NPR site by chance: http://www.socrative.com/ Not OSS, but appears to cover the functionality in mind at their free level. Anybody use Socrative? --DBL -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jeremy C. Shellhase Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 4:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] quiz software Val, It's old and unsupported, but If you can code php there are some good bones in Quirex. http://www.thomastsoi.com/software/quirex/ I put it through a bunch of modifications and used it for years, just retired it a year or so ago for less useful and functional software. Jeremy C. Shellhase Systems Librarian Bibliographer/Instructor for Business, Economics, Psychology Humboldt State University Library One Harpst Street Arcata, California 95521 707-826-3144 (voice) 707-826-3441 (fax) jeremy.shellh...@humboldt.edu On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Valerie Forrestal valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu wrote: Hello friends! I was wondering if anyone could point me towards web-based open source software for library instruction that would let me administer quizzes, grade the quizzes and return a score, and then, preferably, keep some basic statistics. We're looking into a Google Forms/Spreadsheets hack, but I didn't know if there was anything a bit more elegant out there that could do the job. Thanks ~val -- Valerie Forrestal Web Services Librarian/Asst. Professor City University of New York College of Staten Island Library 2800 Victory Blvd., 1L-109I Staten Island, N.Y. 10314 Phone: 718.982.4023 valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu Celebrate Italian Heritage with a Special Broadway Benefit Concert by the World's Longest Running Phantom in support of the CSI Italian Studies programhttp://csitoday.com/events/franc-dambrosios- broadway-the-phantom-unmasked/
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right
languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/).
Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due to
the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed people. But
the convention seems pretty set in stone. I am also not sure how screen
readers deal with right-nav - although i am guessing that there is no
problem there programming wise.
Blake
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus
left-nav... LOL
Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be
able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library
website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising.
Some more thoughts:
I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much
better choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide conventions
etc.
One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work it's
going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout. Which is
one of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking at it in a
principledness way - that is, Whatever is best for the patrons! No matter
what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, OMG we are all
so busy being awesome).
But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own, wonders
if three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user. How is one
supposed to scan the page? What's the prioritized information? For a couple
years now I've been eschewing three columns whenever possible. Do others
agree that three columns can be info overload?
Brad
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin
benjamin.flo...@gmail.com
wrote:
We've been tinkering with our LibGuides template in preparation for an
eventual redesign of our site and guides, e.g.:
http://libguides.bc.edu/libraries/babst/staff
Some of our guide authors weren't happy with the LibGuides
side-navigation's single-column limitation, so we made our own template,
moved {{guide_nav}} off to a left column, and wrote our own styles to
make
the default top-nav display as left-nav. We've found that a 50/50 or
75/25
split next to the left nav looks pretty good.
Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav...
In general the LibGuides templating has felt modern and easy to work
with.
Ben
On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Brad Coffield
bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Hi all,
I'm finally diving into our Libguides v2 migration and I'm wondering if
anyone would be willing to share their experience/choices regarding
templating. (Or even some code!)
I'm thinking left-nav is the way to go. Has anyone split the main
content
column into two smaller columns? Done that with a column-width-spanning
box
atop the main content area? Any other neato templates ideas?
We are in the process of building a style guide for all libguides
authors
to use. And also some sort of peer-review process to help enforce the
style
guide. I'm thinking we are going to want to restrict all authors to
left-nav templates but perhaps the ideal solution would be to require
left-nav of all but to have a variety of custom left-nav templates to
choose from.
Any thoughts are much appreciated!
Warm regards,
Brad
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian
Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
--
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian
Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
bcoffi...@francis.edu
--
Blake L. Galbreath
Systems Librarian
Eastern Oregon University
One University Boulevard
La Grande, OR 97850
(541) 962.3017
bgalbre...@eou.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I'm going to weigh-in a little before I leave for the day. We have made a few big templating customizations out of the box when we went live with LG2 as a transition for further customizations this fall (including replacing Bootstrap* entirely). If anyone is on the fence about LG2, back in March I wrote a pretty glowing preview (http://ns4lib.com/libguides-is-no-joke/) - which turned out to be a tad optimistic. There WERE some complications, but I think most libraries should be fine using LG2 out of the box. LG2 is leaps and bounds better than LG1. Thoughts: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Q2. Three-columns or single column? Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns. Q3. Left nav or right nav? Left nav, probably. Many sites have main content on the left, which I like just fine, but if it's a question of either / or, right-column stuff is considered ancillary and users will be less likely to look at it. Which might actually be what you want out of a nav. Actually, because of that, you might want to just do right nav. LibGuides 2 is mobile first (using Bootstrap 3), so when the grid collapses the left nav appear at the top of every guide, a right nav will slide underneath. Q4. No nav? Okay, nobody actually brought this up, but users don’t tend to look at sidebars at all. Most libraries have a top menu in the header. If this is the case, consider dropping sidebars entirely and positioning your single column of content with equal margins. Why? Well, white-space. People like white-space. Too much stuff on the page--stuff, by the way, people won't look at anyway--increases cognitive load, which might just put your patrons in a grumpy mood when looking for simple content. Also consider that libraries--like every industry--will eventually have their mobile moment. For some of us it might be pretty far away, but eventually mobile traffic will eclipse traditional desktop traffic (charts! http://talks.ns4lib.com/patrons-on-performance/images/mobile-web-usage.png and http://talks.ns4lib.com/patrons-on-performance/images/mobilemoment.png ). Removing sidebar content also forces your design committee / content creators to think harder about the quality of their content and be a little bit more choosy about screen real estate. If you're interested in trying the no-sidebar thing, you may consider customizing the template so that the side nav appears as good old fashioned links at the top of your content, like--well--a table of contents. This isn't the best example, but it's an idea: http://public.library.nova.edu/help/#content. Q5. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? LG2 makes it crazy easy to change number and percentage-based widths of the columns. So you could still use the tabs-across-the-top template and create a little 33% wide left sidebar column and a 66% wide right main column. Q6. Should I restrict all authors to XYZ template? I think so. IMHO, consistency is key. The arguments from here were, like, that our staff wanted to be creative; but users only appreciate creative insofar as it doesn't get in the way of their content. If every guide is different, the user will have to spend extra time parsing every guide. Not fun. You can create a bunch of different groups with their own styles or whatever, but IMHO lock those groups down, so groups are at least thematically consistent. Q7. Bootstrap? Bootstrap! Since LG2 is Bootstrapped, libraries should bootstrap responsibly (http://acrl.ala.org/techconnect/?p=4439) - not all responsive web design is created equal. :) Michael www.libux.co -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Blake Galbreath Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/). Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due to the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed
Re: [CODE4LIB] quiz software
Turns out, it's free for K-12 teachers only. My bad, but good for you if the shoe fits. --DBL From: David Lowe Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 4:49 PM To: jeremy.shellh...@humboldt.edu; CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: RE: [CODE4LIB] quiz software Just saw this on the NPR site by chance: http://www.socrative.com/ Not OSS, but appears to cover the functionality in mind at their free level. Anybody use Socrative? --DBL -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jeremy C. Shellhase Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 4:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] quiz software Val, It's old and unsupported, but If you can code php there are some good bones in Quirex. http://www.thomastsoi.com/software/quirex/ I put it through a bunch of modifications and used it for years, just retired it a year or so ago for less useful and functional software. Jeremy C. Shellhase Systems Librarian Bibliographer/Instructor for Business, Economics, Psychology Humboldt State University Library One Harpst Street Arcata, California 95521 707-826-3144 (voice) 707-826-3441 (fax) jeremy.shellh...@humboldt.edu On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Valerie Forrestal valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu wrote: Hello friends! I was wondering if anyone could point me towards web-based open source software for library instruction that would let me administer quizzes, grade the quizzes and return a score, and then, preferably, keep some basic statistics. We're looking into a Google Forms/Spreadsheets hack, but I didn't know if there was anything a bit more elegant out there that could do the job. Thanks ~val -- Valerie Forrestal Web Services Librarian/Asst. Professor City University of New York College of Staten Island Library 2800 Victory Blvd., 1L-109I Staten Island, N.Y. 10314 Phone: 718.982.4023 valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu Celebrate Italian Heritage with a Special Broadway Benefit Concert by the World's Longest Running Phantom in support of the CSI Italian Studies programhttp://csitoday.com/events/franc-dambrosios- broadway-the-phantom-unmasked/
