[CODE4LIB] Migrating from DSpace to ContentDM
We are migrating our IR from DSpace to ContentDM, and I am having a difficult time finding any way to batch import our records. I tried exporting a collection to DSpace's Simple Archive Format, but ContentDM doesn't seem to have any way to ingest that format, either through the various clients or web interface. OCLC's support staff said it would probably involve a bunch of manual re-entry. Does anyone have a technique they can recommend? I do have scripting experience if it will help. Joshua Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Website KPIs
Thanks. That is a helpful start. So in that case the KPI is the number of interactions with the library per student? Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 5:44 PM, Will Martin <w...@will-martin.net> wrote: > The University of Minnesota has a fairly intricate process for recording > patron interactions with their library that yields very detailed > information of the sort you're looking for. For example, they can tell you > -- based on statistically significant data -- the exact amount by which a > student's GPA rises on average for each point of contact with the library. > I've been working (slowly) towards doing the same kind of thing at my > institution. > > In brief, they log personally identifiable information about patron > interactions. Say Sally Student checks out Moby Dick. They would log her > name, student number, and the type of activity -- "checked out a book", or > "accessed a database" or "logged into a lab computer" and so on. Then, > each year, they package up that data and send it to the Office of > Institutional Research. The OIR connects all of the student library data > with their student records, and conducts statistical analysis on it, > focusing on measures of student success. > > They've published some aggregate results. The person to talk to at UMN > about this is Shane Nackerud. > > This may be larger than you're looking for, because it touches on overall > library performance rather than just the website. But you did ask for big > picture stuff. > > Hope this helps. > > Will Martin > > Chester Fritz Library > University of North Dakota > > > On 2015-09-16 10:50, Joshua Welker wrote: > >> We are in the middle of a large strategic alignment effort at our >> university. A big part of that is developing KPIs (key performance >> indicators) to use as a benchmark for self-assessment and budget >> allocation. The goal is to develop "scorecards" of sorts to help us track >> our success. >> >> Our website and other web platforms are of vital importance to us, but I >> really don't know what would make good KPIs to help us evaluate them. We >> collect loads of website usage data, but I don't know what kind of metrics >> could serve as a scorecard. Looking at raw sessions and pageviews is >> simple >> but not particularly meaningful. >> >> There are two ways to approach KPIs. There is a data-based approach that >> correlates performance with data and then just tracks the data, like >> pageviews. Then there is an outcomes-based approach that is more >> qualitative in nature and simply states the outcome we want to achieve, >> and >> then a variety of types of data are examined to determine whether we are >> achieving the outcome. >> >> Long story short, I am curious about how other libraries assess the >> success >> or failure of their websites. I am not looking for usability testing >> strategies. I am thinking more big picture. Any help is appreciated. >> >> Josh Welker >> Information Technology Librarian >> James C. Kirkpatrick Library >> University of Central Missouri >> Warrensburg, MO 64093 >> JCKL 2260 >> 660.543.8022 >> >
[CODE4LIB] Website KPIs
We are in the middle of a large strategic alignment effort at our university. A big part of that is developing KPIs (key performance indicators) to use as a benchmark for self-assessment and budget allocation. The goal is to develop "scorecards" of sorts to help us track our success. Our website and other web platforms are of vital importance to us, but I really don't know what would make good KPIs to help us evaluate them. We collect loads of website usage data, but I don't know what kind of metrics could serve as a scorecard. Looking at raw sessions and pageviews is simple but not particularly meaningful. There are two ways to approach KPIs. There is a data-based approach that correlates performance with data and then just tracks the data, like pageviews. Then there is an outcomes-based approach that is more qualitative in nature and simply states the outcome we want to achieve, and then a variety of types of data are examined to determine whether we are achieving the outcome. Long story short, I am curious about how other libraries assess the success or failure of their websites. I am not looking for usability testing strategies. I am thinking more big picture. Any help is appreciated. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] state of the art in virtual shelf browse?
+1 to Sean's questions. I've considered implementing a shelf browse system myself, but I am wary. It's a huge amount of work, and I have no idea who it will benefit or how much. It's one of those things that certainly seems cool to me, but unfortunately I am not the target audience of our website (but it would be much easier if I were). Any usage stats would be greatly appreciated. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sean Hannan Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2015 8:29 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] state of the art in virtual shelf browse? For those investigating a shelf browse (and for those that have implemented one), I have a few questions: Where is the feature demand originating? Staff? Faculty? Students? Grad students? Undergrad students? (Not to exclude publics or special libraries, but this seems to be an academic catalog feature, when it shows up.) What is the level of familiarity with library/library services/library systems for those that request this feature? Is implementing shelf browse an attempt to work around some other catalog deficiency (e.g. weak subject cataloging)? Does the corpus have the cataloging data to support such a feature? (A lot of ebook packages do not have call numbers, for example.) What零 the percentage? Is that reasonable? How do you plan on tracking use of the feature? What would you consider to be a success rate? 20% of sessions? 5%? 1%? At what point do you sunset the feature? Expand upon it? How long will the feature take to implement? How many staff will be involved? What is the ROI? Will all of your users understand the visual implementation on the page? How do you plan on testing it? Does the shelf metaphor still hold for your users? How do you know? -Sean On 1/28/15, 8:30 AM, Darylyne Provost dprov...@colby.edu wrote: We're interested in implementing a virtual browse feature as well, so I was glad to find this post. Since we have a shared catalog and the feature is currently under discussion by our partner institutions, we're also considering implementing it for our installation of Summon first. I've seen U of Huddersfield, but am wondering if there are additional examples? Thanks, Darylyne ** Darylyne Provost Assistant Director for Systems, Web, Emerging Technologies Colby College 207.859.5117 dprov...@colby.edu On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 3:48 PM, Gerritsma, Wouter wouter.gerrit...@wur.nl wrote: Beautiful to see that the meticulously recorded book height is put into use. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Harper, Cynthia Sent: dinsdag 27 januari 2015 21:27 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] state of the art in virtual shelf browse? What testimony to what a difference presentation can make! So much better than basically the same functionality, but in a text list, as shown in our old III Webpac. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cole Hudson Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2015 9:57 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] state of the art in virtual shelf browse? Hi Jenn, Just to add one example more to the mix, we've built a shelf browser based on Harvard's Stackview/Stacklife project--adding to it a z39.50 connector and organizing results by call number. This search works across all of holdings, regardless of the books' locations. (Click the link, then under the Books and Media box, click See on Shelf to look at our shelf browser.) http://library.wayne.edu/quicksearch/#q=the%20hobbit Also, our code is on Github: https://github.com/WSULib/SVCatConnector Cole
[CODE4LIB] Library Community Web Guidelines
Library Community Web Guidelines Back in October, there was interest on the Code4Lib and LITA listservs in creating a document about best practices for library websites. The goal is to publish a document that is stamped by ALA via LITA that librarians can use to guide web-related decision-making and to justify those decisions to colleagues and administrators. A good summary of the project is on the front page of the repo. At this early stage, the focus is on research. We want to compile as many sources as possible that are related to various aspects of usability, accessibility, and website management. We want books, scholarly articles, and web articles. Once we’ve reached a critical mass, we will start to evaluate the sources. Now that the inter-semester lull is about to begin, this is an opportune time for many of us in the academic world to work on such a project. Rather than congest the listservs with dozens of back-and-forth messages, I created a Github repo that can be used by anyone interested in contributing. If you are not a Git person, no worries. Most of the work and communication is going to take place in the project’s wiki and issue tracker, which both require no Git knowledge. If you’d like to volunteer, please reply at the link below. I will add you as a collaborator. Since interest in this project spans multiple listservs, let’s try to keep most communication either in the Github issue tracker or the Ost.io discussion forum that is linked to the Github repo. Volunteer Signup: *https://github.com/jswelker/library-web-guidelines/issues/3* https://github.com/jswelker/library-web-guidelines/issues/3 Github repo: *https://github.com/jswelker/library-web-guidelines* https://github.com/jswelker/library-web-guidelines Ost.io discussion forum: *http://ost.io/@jswelker/library-web-guidelines* http://ost.io/@jswelker/library-web-guidelines Apologies for cross-posting. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy
Brute force attacks aren't the problem. There's a simple param in EZproxy that blocks an IP and/or user account after a certain number of failed logins. I suspect that the problem is that attackers already have valid login credentials from one of the thousands of security breaches in the last few years. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 2:15 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy On Nov 19, 2014, at 11:47 PM, Dan Scott wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: There are a number of technical approaches that could be used to identify which accounts have been compromised. But it's easier to just make the problem go away by setting usage limits so EZP locks the account out after it downloads too much. But EZProxy still doesn't let you set limits based on the type of download. You therefore have two very blunt sledge hammers with UsageLimit: - # of downloads (-transfers) - # of megabytes downloaded (-MB) [trimmed] I'm not familiar with EZProxy, but if it's running on an OS that you have control of (and not some vendor locked appliance), you likely have other tools that you can use for rate limiting. For instance, I have a CGI on a webserver that's horribly resource intensive and takes quite a while to run. Most people wonder what's taking so long, and reload multiple times, thinking the process is stuck ... or they know what's going on, and will open up multiple instances in different tabs to reduce their wait. So I have the following IP tables rule: -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,ACK SYN -m connlimit --connlimit-above 5 --connlimit-mask 32 -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset I can't remember if starts blocking the 5th connection, or once they're above 5, but it keeps us from having one IP address with 20+ copies running at once. ... And back from my days of managing directory servers -- brute forcing was a horrible problem with single sign-on. We didn't have a good way to temporarily lock accounts for repeatedly failing passwords at the directory server (which would also cause a denial of service, as you could lock someone else) ... so it had to be up to each application to implement ... which of course, they didn't. ... so you'd have something like a webpage that required authentication that someone could brute force ... and then they'd also get access to a shell account and whatever else that person had authorization for. -Joe (and on that 'wow, I feel old' note ... it's been 10+ years since I've had to manage an LDAP server ... it's possible that they've gotten better about that issue since then)
Re: [CODE4LIB] Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy
Blocking the IP is the obvious solution but not ideal at all. First off, it's trivially easy to bypass IP blacklists using proxies. I don't want to play a game of never-ending IP whack-a-mole. Second, it notifies the attacker that we are onto them, which makes it less likely for us to catch them. We want to figure out which accounts are compromised so that we can fix the problem at the source rather than fixing symptoms. If EZproxy is being abused, then it's just as likely that other, more valuable systems at the university are being abused as logins are shared between many systems. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 12:07 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy Personally, I'd be tempted to go the IP lockout route myself since the patterns should be clear in the logs, but be aware that # megabytes gives a reasonable level of control because you can set to log rather than lock out. I think the risk of locking legitimate users is low. Although people can download mixed materials, my guess is that your abusing accounts are not watching loads of video. There are things you can do with user names that would make it easy enough to uncover abuse without unduly compromising privacy. For example, you could flush your logs frequently while extracting the number of downloads you're interested from individual users. Abuse accounts will be immediately obvious. BTW, you can do some funky things with EZP that include conditional logic, regexp searches, and rewriting that might be helpful. Any path you take will protect user privacy far more than just about any other site they visit. Plus, whoever maintains your network will occasionally need to monitor specific computers to mitigate a wide variety of problems. Systems used as a platform for abusive behavior, harassment, or activity that causes harm to others get locked out and/or blacklisted which will really hose your users. Getting that kind of thing cleared up takes time because most places aren't nearly as forgiving as libraries. kyle On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 8:47 PM, Dan Scott deni...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: There are a number of technical approaches that could be used to identify which accounts have been compromised. But it's easier to just make the problem go away by setting usage limits so EZP locks the account out after it downloads too much. But EZProxy still doesn't let you set limits based on the type of download. You therefore have two very blunt sledge hammers with UsageLimit: - # of downloads (-transfers) - # of megabytes downloaded (-MB) # of downloads is effectively useless because many of our electronic resource platforms (hi Proquest and EBSCOHost) make between 50 and 150 requests for JavaScript, CSS, and images per page, so you have to set your thresholds incredibly high to avoid locking out users who might be actively paging through search results. Any savvy abuser will just script their requests to avoid all of the JS/CSS/images to derive a list of PDFs, and then download just the PDFs, thereby staying well under the usage limits that legit users require... and I've seen exactly that happen through our proxy. # of megabytes downloaded is a pretty blunt tool as well, given that our multimedia-enriched databases now often serve up video and audio as well as HTML, images, and PDF files. For the pure audio and video streaming sites such as Naxos or Curio, you can set higher limits; but as vendors increasingly enrich their databases with audio and video, you're going to have to increase your general limits as well... and you can pull down a ton of PDFs under that cover. So no, I don't think it's easy to make the problem go away through the suggested approach, unless you're willing to err on the side of locking out legitimate users.
Re: [CODE4LIB] Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy
That looks promising, but I can't make heads or tails of how to implement any of those rules. Is there a way I can set up the logger to only record usernames if the IP address matches a list of malicious IPs? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Berkowski Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 1:02 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Here's some of the relevant documentation of the user.txt expressions Kyle mentioned. It is possible to set session variables and get them to be logged - we're doing this with certain Shibboleth attributes for business analysis. I have not had luck getting variables other than session vars set at the user's moment of login to be logged though. http://oclc.org/support/services/ezproxy/documentation/expressions.en.html On Thu, 20 Nov 2014, Kyle Banerjee said: I can't remember the details because I haven't worked with EZP for years and unfortunately, this stuff isn't documented. Where I used it was in the user.txt file when authenticating. Things you can do include setting/modifying session, regular EZP, and arbitrary variables, as well as doing comparisons and file I/O. You can nest expressions and perform reasonably sophisticated comparisons and manipulations. On 11/20/14 1:06 PM, Kyle Banerjee wrote: BTW, you can do some funky things with EZP that include conditional logic Can you say more about funky things you can do with EZProxy involving conditional logic? Cause I've often wanted that but haven't found any! Are you talking about a particular part/area of EZProxy? (Logging?). - -- 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 iEYEARECAAYFAlRuOowACgkQ01KJk46VC2YL9QCgpyv7ByxUIgnOFcqUT4iFEPLV 0MgAmQHPrDMyVu0x2dgtqE84e9IS1rdV =lkc4 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library Hours Fail
I have a solution running that is compatible with API V3 but it is pretty specific to Ruby on Rails. The idea is to use Google's iCal interface rather than the API. iCal is going to stay the same no matter how many iterations the API goes through. You basically just need to find an iCal parsing library for whatever language you are using. The only problem is that Google does a bad job with exceptions to recurrence rules (rrules). Instead of editing a single event in a repeating series, you have to delete that event and re-add it as a separate event. https://gist.github.com/jswelker/04997f378d9bc02311d2 In this example, I have a MySQL table listing several Google Calendars and the URL given for their iCal files in the calendar settings page. It loops through each calendar, fetches the iCal, parses it, and saves the resulting hours to a separate Events table. This might be more complicated than people are wanting. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Heller, Margaret Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2014 4:51 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library Hours Fail Wish I had checked the list this morning, as I just discovered we had the same problem. We have been using Andrew Darby's method outlined here: http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/46. Is there by any chance someone using this method who happened to know the V2 API was being deprecated who already updated their app to V3? If not anyone who wants to work on getting this to work tomorrow? 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 Mary E. Hanlin Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2014 8:19 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Library Hours Fail Hi All, I know this has been covered a bit here, but I have a rather exigent conundrum, and I'm hoping to figure out the best/easiest solution. Yesterday, the script to hour library hours (on our front page) which pulls from Google calendar stopped working (Error at line undefined in undefined[!] - the exclamation point is mine; it seemed like it needed one.) Basically, the code came from a site that walked one through how to call daily hours (javascript) using Google's V2 API, but the V2 is fully deprecated (as I abruptly discovered), and I need to figure out another solution. (I haven't been able to find similar documentation for V3's API.) Some constraints: 1. Our IT will not support php.We are an .NET shop with IIS servers. 2. We may not have the dough to pay for something like LibCal which seems to me the easiest solution. 3. I'm semi-new to this Internets/webmaster thing, and really only know front-end coding, so a solution involving something like .NET, Python, etc. would have to have, How to make a peanut butter sandwich, kind of documentation. Right now, I've just manually coded our hours, which is fine until Saturday when our hours change, and I'm not here (hopefully). I will be super grateful for insight or knowledge. Mary. Mary Hanlin Electronic Resources and Web Librarian J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College Phone:804.523.5323 Email: mhan...@reynolds.edu
[CODE4LIB] Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy
Balancing security and privacy with EZproxy In recent months, we have been contacted several times by one of our vendors about our databases being accessed by rogue Chinese IP addresses. With the massive proliferation of online security breaches and password dumps, attackers are gaining access to student accounts and using them to access subscription resources through EZproxy. The vendor catches this happening and alerts us sometimes, but probably more often than not we have no idea. When we do find out, we force the students to change their passwords. We currently log IP addresses in EZproxy and can see when one of these rogue IP addresses is accessing a resource. However, we do not log user IDs in EZproxy, so we can’t tell which student account was compromised. Logging the user IDs would be a quick fix, but it has major privacy implications for our patrons, as we would have a record of every document they access. Have any other institutions encountered this problem? Are any best practices established for how to deal with these security breaches? I apologize for cross-posting. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Stack Overflow
The concept of a library technology Stack Exchange site as a google-able repository of information sounds great. However, I do have quite a few reservations. 1. Stack Exchange sites seem to naturally lead to gatekeeping, snobbishness, and other troll behaviors. The reputation system built into those sites really go to a lot of folks' heads. High-ranking users seem to take pleasure in shutting down questions as off-topic, redundant, etc. Argument and one-upmanship are actively promoted--The previous answer sucks. Here's my better answer! This tends to attract certain (often male) personalities and to repel certain (often female) personalities. This seems very contrary to the direction the Code4Lib community has tried to move in the last few years of being more inclusive and inviting to women instead of just promoting the stereotypical IT guy qualities that dominate most IT-related discussions on the Internet. More here: http://www.banane.com/2012/06/20/there-are-no-women-on-stackoverflow-or-ar e-there/ http://michael.richter.name/blogs/why-i-no-longer-contribute-to-stackoverf low 2. Having a Stack Exchange site might fragment the already quite small and nascent library technology community. This might be an unfounded worry, but it's worth consideration. A lot of QA takes place on this listserv, and it would be awkward to try to have all this information in both places. That said, searching StackExchange is much easier than searching a listserv. 3. I echo your concerns about vendors. Libraries have a culture of protecting vendors from criticism. Sure, we do lots of criticism behind closed doors, but nowhere that leaves an online footprint. Often, our contracts include a clause that we have to keep certain kinds of information private. I don't think this is a very positive aspect of librarian culture, but it is there. I think a year or two ago that there was a pretty long discussion on this listserv about creating a Stack Exchange site. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Schulkins, Joe Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2014 8:12 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Stack Overflow Presumably I'm not alone in this, but I find Stack Overflow a valuable resource for various bits of web development and I was wondering whether anyone has given any thought about proposing a Library Technology site to Stack Exchange's Area 51 (http://area51.stackexchange.com/)? Doing a search of the proposals shows there was one for 'Libraries and Information Science' but this closed 2 years ago as it didn't reach the required levels during the beta phase. The reason I think this might be useful is that instead of individual places to go for help or raise questions (i.e. various mailing lists) there could be a 'one-stop' shop approach from which we could get help with LMSs, discovery layers, repository software etc. I appreciate though that certain vendors aren't particularly open (yes, Innovative I'm looking at you here) and might not like these things being discussed on an open forum. Does anybody else think this might be useful? Would such a forum be shot down by all the vendors legalese wrapped up in their Terms and Conditions? Or are you happy with the way you go about getting help? Joe Joseph Schulkins| Systems Librarian| University of Liverpool Library| PO Box 123 | Liverpool L69 3DA | joseph.schulk...@liverpool.ac.uk|mailto:joseph.schulk...@liverpool.ac.uk| T 0151 794 3844 Follow us: @LivUniLibraryhttps://twitter.com/LivUniLibrary Like us: LivUniLibraryhttps://www.facebook.com/livunilibrary Visit us: http://www.liv.ac.uk/library Special Collections Archives blog: http://manuscriptsandmore.liv.ac.ukhttp://manuscriptsandmore.liv.ac.uk/ [image001]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Stack Overflow
It sounds like the people running Stack Exchange are the same people running Wikipedia. They have received a lot of publicity for similar problems, especially removing edits from new users without explanation. StackExchange, like Wikipedia, is a poor fit for libraries. Even though these are great resources, the culture of the people in charge is too different. We do share a common interest in open information. We do not share the laissez-faire libertarian philosophy that is the mantra of Internet culture. Librarians believe in helping people with very few qualifications. Internet culture believes in forcing people to help themselves before giving any help. Once you have RTFM'ed, scoured the entire web for even remotely similar versions of your question, and spent hours crafting your question in such a way that it is generalizable and without any basis in opinion, one of the (young white male middle-class) True Internet People will float down from the clouds and reveal to the world their unique and profound wisdom. 99% of people give up before reaching this point, which is good because it separates the wheat from the chaff. Hosting our own community QA site sounds like the best option. OSQA is a FOSS QA platform, but it is a Stack Exchange clone and has the unfortunate reputation system built in. How hard would it be for us to build a simple QA site using something like Ruby on Rails? It's such a simple use case that a prototype could probably be whipped up in a few hours. It would mostly be the kind of simple, canned CRUD pages that can be generated automatically. Then you just add search functionality and authentication, and voila. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2014 8:54 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Stack Overflow On Nov 4, 2014, at 9:12 AM, Schulkins, Joe wrote: Presumably I'm not alone in this, but I find Stack Overflow a valuable resource for various bits of web development and I was wondering whether anyone has given any thought about proposing a Library Technology site to Stack Exchange's Area 51 (http://area51.stackexchange.com/)? Doing a search of the proposals shows there was one for 'Libraries and Information Science' but this closed 2 years ago as it didn't reach the required levels during the beta phase. Some history on the Stack Exchange site: 1. Before 'Stack Exchange 2.0', they used to let other sites pay them to host QA sites. There had been a library-focused site on Unshelved: http://www.unshelved.com/2010-7-15 2. We got *hundreds* of people from Unshelved Answers to sign up on Area 51 ... but they wouldn't start up the site unless enough people with high enough reputation on existing 'Stack Exchange 2.0' sites expressed interest, claiming that they needed sufficient people with knowledge of the system. I tried lobbying for them to count people w/ experience from Unshelved Answers, but they wouldn't do it. 3. It took over a year for the 'Libraries' proposal to get enough support to be accepted; by then, I assume most library folks had moved on. 4. They then named the site 'Library and Information Science', not 'Libraries'. http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/q/3846/5710 After my complaining, they changed it to 'Libraries and Information Science', but there was still a major problem: 5. As if all of the rest wasn't bad enough, we then had a bunch of non-library people closing answers because there wasn't a single definite answer, which was a large number of the questions on Unshelved Answers ... and most of the 'example' questions were in that category as well: https://web.archive.org/web/20120325030045/http://area51.stackexchange.com /proposals/12432/libraries-information-science The reason I think this might be useful is that instead of individual places to go for help or raise questions (i.e. various mailing lists) there could be a 'one-stop' shop approach from which we could get help with LMSs, discovery layers, repository software etc. I appreciate though that certain vendors aren't particularly open (yes, Innovative I'm looking at you here) and might not like these things being discussed on an open forum. Does anybody else think this might be useful? Would such a forum be shot down by all the vendors legalese wrapped up in their Terms and Conditions? Or are you happy with the way you go about getting help? I think that the Stack Exchange culture policies make it a bad fit for our community. I think that yes, there is a need for such a site, but that the issues with immediately closing questions without a clear answer are a *huge* problem. If questions were easily answered, we'd have done the research and answered it outselves (most of us have LIS degrees and know how to research things!). You might also be able to get support from Unshelved again, and if we the community can
Re: [CODE4LIB] Stack Overflow
The two don't need to be exclusive. I wonder if we could set up a QA site that would email new posts to the Code4Lib listserv. Then we get to keep the existing community and inertia but we get the nice, searchable database of answers. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2014 10:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Stack Overflow On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 7:34 AM, Schulkins, Joe joseph.schulk...@liverpool.ac.uk wrote: To be honest I absolutely hate the whole reputation and badge system for exactly the reasons you outline, but I can't deny that I do find the family of Stack Exchange sites extremely useful and by comparison Listservs just seem very archaic to me as it's all too easy for a question (and/or its answer) to drop through the cracks of a popular discussion. Are Listservs really the best way to deal with help? I would even prefer a Drupal site... The advantage of a list that gets pushed out to everyone is that it is an ongoing conversation that helps the community keep connected and grow. Even if technical assistance is a part of that conversation, I see that as a secondary benefit. That basic questions get repeated and that questions/answers sometimes get off track is not a problem. Quite the opposite, this format draws more people into the conversation and makes it easier for them to connect with others, contribute, and be inspired to do more. kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] Why learn Unix?
There are 2 reasons I have learned/am learning Linux: 1. It is cheaper as a web hosting platform. Not substantially, but enough to make a difference. This is a big deal when you are a library with a barebones budget or an indie developer (I am both). Note that if you are looking for enterprise-level support, the picture is quite different. 1a. A less significant reason is that Linux is much less resource-intensive on computers and works well on old/underpowered computers and embedded systems. If you want to hack an Android device or Chromebook to expand its functionality, Linux is what you want. I am running Ubuntu on my Acer C720 Chromebook using Crouton, and now it has all the functionality of a full-fledged laptop at $200. 2. Many scripting languages and application servers were born in *nix and have struggled to port over to non-*nix platforms. For example, Python and Ruby both are a major pain to set up in Windows. Setting up a production-level Rails or Django server is stupidly overcomplicated in Windows to the point where it is probably easier just to use Linux. It's much easier to sudo apt-get install in Ubuntu than to spend hours tweaking environment variables and config files in Windows to achieve the same effect. I will go out on a limb here and say that *nix isn't inherently better than Windows except perhaps the fact that it is less resource-intensive (which doesn't apply to OSX, the most popular *nix variant). #1 and #2 above are really based on historical circumstances rather than any inherent superiority in Linux. Back when the popular scripting languages, database servers, and application servers were first developed in the 90s, Windows had a very sucktastic security model and was generally not up to the task of running a server. Windows has cleaned up its act quite a bit, but the ship has sailed, at this point. If you compare Windows today to Linux today, they are on very equal footing in terms of server features. The only real advantage Linux has at this point is that the big distros like Ubuntu have a much more robust package ecosystem that makes it much easier to install common server-side applications through the command line. But when you look at actually using and managing the OS, Linux is at a clear disadvantage. And if you compare the two as desktop environments, Windows wins hands-down except for a very few niche use cases. I say this as someone who uses a Ubuntu laptop every day. (Anyone who has read this far might be interested to know that Windows 10 is going to include an official MS-supported command line package management suite called OneGet that will build on the package ecosystem of the third-party Chocolatey suite.) Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Siobhain Rivera Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 9:02 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Why learn Unix? Hi everyone, I'm part of the ASIST Student Chapter and Indiana University, and we're putting together a series of workshops on Unix. We've noticed that a lot of people don't seem to have a good idea of why they should learn Unix, particularly the reference/non technology types. We're going to do some more research to make a fact sheet about the uses of Unix, but I thought I'd pose the question to the list - what do you think are reasons librarians need to know Unix, even if they aren't in particularly tech heavy jobs? I'd appreciate any input. Have a great week! Siobhain Rivera Indiana University Bloomington Library Science, Digital Libraries Specialization ASIST-SC, Webmaster
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
Code4Lib is certainly respected among techy librarians, but I would bet that 90% of my coworkers have never heard of it and would not care especially much about a document they publish. Not to disparage the group. I think it's great. I just think that official, institutionalized channels are going to be most effective in this case. I will be gone several days but will start throwing some things together soon. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sean Hannan Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 2:30 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I'm just going to jump in here and question the need for it to be ALA or LITA affiliated. Plenty of stuff has been accomplished and respected (like, oh, hey, code4lib) without an attachment of ALA or LITA. Ad...discuss. -Sean From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joshua Welker [wel...@ucmo.edu] Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 3:19 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Bohyun, That sounds like it could be a great fit. There would be two final products for what I have in mind: 1. A wiki site (ideally attached to an ALA-affiliated domain name) where we can collaborate and break all this down at the topic level. This is the source that would be used by the boots-on-the-ground librarians who are actually doing UX work and need practical information. It would be continually updated. The content would be curated, and there would be a very basic approval process for creating new editor accounts. 2. An annually-revised document (again, attached to an ALA-affiliated domain name) that compiles everything from the wiki together in a format that can easily be presented to other librarians and administrators. In my experience, a bureaucratically approved document carries a lot more weight in libraries than a website, at least in academic libraries. Topics that would be addressed: 1. Accessibility 2. Layout patterns 3. Typography and readability 4. Best practices for specific library web platforms 5. Recommendations for how libraries should implement the guidelines at a management level (non-technical) Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kim, Bohyun Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 1:42 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Jumping into this discussion late. Just wanted to let everyone know that LITA UX IG would be more than happy to provide a venue for this type of discussion since it would fit the interest of UX IG perfectly. (I am chairing the IG this year; ping me if that sounds interesting and if there is anything LITA UX IG can help.) LITA IGs are super flexible. Cheers, Bohyun -- Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS Associate Director for Library Applications and Knowledge Systems University of Maryland, Baltimore Health Sciences and Human Services Library -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Megan O'Neill Kudzia Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 1:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I've been following with interest, and I think some really important points are coming out here. John, what you said about Tomcat vs. Jetty really resonated with me - maybe this is *yet another* place where we could split this thread, but I think for those of us straddling the gap between web design and web development, something like a reference guide for what the questions to ask even are, would be extremely helpful. As you said, the answer to many many questions is, it depends, and knowledge of those topics comes with experience. However, maybe (and I volunteer to help with this project, inasmuch as I can) a sort of expansion of the Guide for the Perplexed would be really useful for those of us who are no longer total beginners, but are sort of struggling to level up? That is, those of us with some experience of various projects could contribute anything public-share-able from our post mortem project conversations, relevant to each type of project? It's something I've been thinking about for some time, and I'm still not sure what an optimal structure would be, but I keep thinking it would be a really worthwhile project. I will also say that everything I've found on alistapart and libux has been incredibly useful! On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: How many folks following this discussion are LITA members? Would anyone be willing to join LITA to be a part of an interest group on this subject? I will renew my
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
Cornel, With the data models, are you referring to the mechanism used to present the standards on the web? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cornel Darden Jr. Sent: Monday, September 29, 2014 11:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Hello, I don't think that there is anything like this. I think there are some lone wolves out there who have suggested standards, but I haven't seen anything similar to what has been discussed. If there were, I'd think one of us would know about it. Count me in! I say we create flexible data models: It would be nice if the general flow looked like this data - [library standards] - search backend - result - [web design presentation standards] - view of result Thanks, Cornel Darden Jr. MSLIS Library Department Chair South Suburban College 7087052945 Our Mission is to Serve our Students and the Community through lifelong learning. Sent from my iPhone On Sep 29, 2014, at 12:17 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: As Brad mentioned, one of the most interesting takeaways from this conversation on LibGuides is the (lack of) recognized best practices in the library community. If the folks here are representative at all, this is a big void in our profession. This is not an acceptable state, IMO, because as more and more library resources become web-based, more and more librarians are having to curate web-based content (e.g. LibGuides). Yet, most of us lack the time and expertise to figure out how to do it well. It seems like every organization is trying to reinvent the wheel themselves (or just forgoing wheels altogether). It would also be a great help for web librarians if there were some sort of official library web standards that could be used to help get buy-in from other librarians and administrators who otherwise would not be cooperative. (Yes, I know that there are all sorts of general accessibility standards, but something with a librarian stamp of approval would be most helpful.) I have two questions: 1. Does anyone know if anything like this already exists? I know there are about 8 trillion library groups, so there's a good chance, but I didn't find anything in a few minutes of searching. 2. If not, does anyone think it would be a good idea for a group like this to get the ball rolling on creating some official best practices for web design and web content for the library community? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 1:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav On a different note, just wanted to say that I have found this entire thread massively interesting and very useful. *pats self on back for starting it* lol Thanks to all who've been chiming in. (not trying to shut it down) I'll probably be starting another thread eventually on something that was discussed in here: best practices and creating rules for guide creators. We're a small school and everyone who needs to be on board is on board with creating a style guide and a peer-review process to ensure the style guide is followed. I've been tapped to be the one to create the style guide which is both exciting and daunting. I want to cover all the little stuff - some naming conventions etc. but also want to build something that will help us all follow best practices for web design and accessibility.I'll likely lean on the group's expertise for these at some point this semester. Many of our guides aren't getting the usage they should to justify the time spent creating and maintaining them. Beyond the time issue to properly develop them I think that a real part of the reason is that they are just so user-unfriendly and difficult to navigate. There were some hilarious comments earlier in this thread about others' school's out-of-control styles and we have that too but its even just more than that. I think we were operating under a let's get all kindsa stuff up here and it's gonna be awesome! paradigm and now we need to restructure and look at these as real websites that happen to be guides. The v2 migration is a great time to do it. /ramble On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: I also think all of these ideas are awesome. The idea of a third-party space, or even someplace sponsored by springshare, to share customizations etc. could help so many of us. Even short of developing a plug-in system, having someplace to share template customizations, CSS, etc. would be HUGE. Github seems like a very reasonable option though it's true the tech bar for admission is pretty high. It would be great if we had a place where those admins Cindi mentioned who aren't
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
I definitely agree that we should adhere to larger web standards and that we should actively discourage conventions that libraries have adopted over the years that have nothing to do with wider standards and best practices (e.g. tabbed search boxes, content in sidebar regions). In fact, much of our work would just be bringing together information from several standards into a common location and putting a librarian stamp of approval on it. Some topics I had in mind: -Accessibility standards: screen readers, color blindness, keyboard navigation, alt tags, etc. -Text: readable fonts, colors, text alignment -Page layout: navigation location, sidebars, headings and subheadings, search box designs, database pages, mobile friendliness -Best practices for specific library platforms: LibGuides, DSpace, etc. Some official name would be required, of course. I also think it would be great if we could write a draft, bring it to an official ALA group like LITA, and get them to adopt it after making their own tweaks. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:01 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I am interested but I am a little hazy about what kind of standards you all are suggesting. I would warn against creating standards that conflict with any actual web standards, because I--and, I think, many others--would honestly recommend that the #libweb should aspire to and adhere more firmly to larger web standards and best practices that conflict with something that's more, ah, librarylike. Although that might not be what you folks have in mind at all : ). Michael S. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Josh, thanks for separating this topic out and starting this new thread. I don't know of any such library standards that exist on the web. I agree that this sounds like a great idea. As for this group or not... why not! It's 2014 and they don't exist yet and they would be incredibly useful for many libraries, if not all. Now all we need is a cool 'working group' title for ourselves and we're halfway done! Right??? But seriously, I'd love to help. Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
John, I see your point. What I had in mind would be focusing on front-end technologies, mainly user interface and design patterns. Backend tech trends change so often that any document would be obsolete by the time it is finished. There would also have to be a group committed to regularly updating this information. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Scancella, John Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Hey guys I am new to this list so I beg your pardon if I am responding to the wrong people. I have been trying to follow the conversation below and agree with Michael, I am still not clear what the end goal is. Having been developer for a number of years now(and looking at this from that perspective), I worry that any suggestions/best practices now will be wrong in the near future (change is constant). I know it stinks, but I don't see any other way but wade through lots of technical documents to understand WHY they(document writer) suggest something. What is applicable now to someone is not the case for someone else/ or in the future. Case in point, which is better to use for hosting a web application Tomcat or Jetty? The answer is it really depends. Until we have computers that can write/manage code for you, I don't see this changing. John Scancella -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 10:23 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I agree that it would be a bad idea to endeavor to create our own special standards that deviate from accepted web best practices and standards. My own thought was more towards a guide for librarians, curated by librarians, that provides a summary of best practices. On the one hand, something to help those without a deep tech background to quickly get up to speed with best practices instead of needing to conduct a lot of research and reading. But beyond that, it would also be a resource that went deeper for those who wanted to explore the literature. So, bullet points and short lists of information accompanied by links to additional resources etc. (So, right now, it sounds like a libguide lol) Though I do think there would potentially be additional information that did apply mostly/only to libraries and our particular sites etc. Off the top of my head: a thorough treatment and recommendations regarding libguides v2 and accessibility, customizing common library-used products (like Serial Solutions 360 link, Worldcat Local and all their competitors) so that they are most usable and accessible. At it's core, though, what I'm picturing is something where librarians get together and cut through the noise, pull out best web practices, and display them in a quickly digested format. Everything else would be the proverbial gravy. On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: I am interested but I am a little hazy about what kind of standards you all are suggesting. I would warn against creating standards that conflict with any actual web standards, because I--and, I think, many others--would honestly recommend that the #libweb should aspire to and adhere more firmly to larger web standards and best practices that conflict with something that's more, ah, librarylike. Although that might not be what you folks have in mind at all : ). Michael S. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Josh, thanks for separating this topic out and starting this new thread. I don't know of any such library standards that exist on the web. I agree that this sounds like a great idea. As for this group or not... why not! It's 2014 and they don't exist yet and they would be incredibly useful for many libraries, if not all. Now all we need is a cool 'working group' title for ourselves and we're halfway done! Right??? But seriously, I'd love to help. 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
To elaborate a bit more, there are two end goals in my mind: 1. An information resource for how to apply good design and usability principles to library websites. 2. To have a widely adopted set of web standards in the library community, which would be a big help in getting buy-in from librarians and administrators for making large user-centered changes to the library's web presence. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Joshua Welker [mailto:wel...@ucmo.edu] Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:43 AM To: Code for Libraries Subject: RE: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) John, I see your point. What I had in mind would be focusing on front-end technologies, mainly user interface and design patterns. Backend tech trends change so often that any document would be obsolete by the time it is finished. There would also have to be a group committed to regularly updating this information. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Scancella, John Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Hey guys I am new to this list so I beg your pardon if I am responding to the wrong people. I have been trying to follow the conversation below and agree with Michael, I am still not clear what the end goal is. Having been developer for a number of years now(and looking at this from that perspective), I worry that any suggestions/best practices now will be wrong in the near future (change is constant). I know it stinks, but I don't see any other way but wade through lots of technical documents to understand WHY they(document writer) suggest something. What is applicable now to someone is not the case for someone else/ or in the future. Case in point, which is better to use for hosting a web application Tomcat or Jetty? The answer is it really depends. Until we have computers that can write/manage code for you, I don't see this changing. John Scancella -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 10:23 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I agree that it would be a bad idea to endeavor to create our own special standards that deviate from accepted web best practices and standards. My own thought was more towards a guide for librarians, curated by librarians, that provides a summary of best practices. On the one hand, something to help those without a deep tech background to quickly get up to speed with best practices instead of needing to conduct a lot of research and reading. But beyond that, it would also be a resource that went deeper for those who wanted to explore the literature. So, bullet points and short lists of information accompanied by links to additional resources etc. (So, right now, it sounds like a libguide lol) Though I do think there would potentially be additional information that did apply mostly/only to libraries and our particular sites etc. Off the top of my head: a thorough treatment and recommendations regarding libguides v2 and accessibility, customizing common library-used products (like Serial Solutions 360 link, Worldcat Local and all their competitors) so that they are most usable and accessible. At it's core, though, what I'm picturing is something where librarians get together and cut through the noise, pull out best web practices, and display them in a quickly digested format. Everything else would be the proverbial gravy. On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: I am interested but I am a little hazy about what kind of standards you all are suggesting. I would warn against creating standards that conflict with any actual web standards, because I--and, I think, many others--would honestly recommend that the #libweb should aspire to and adhere more firmly to larger web standards and best practices that conflict with something that's more, ah, librarylike. Although that might not be what you folks have in mind at all : ). Michael S. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Josh, thanks for separating this topic out and starting this new thread. I don't know of any such library standards that exist on the web. I agree that this sounds like a great idea. As for this group or not... why not! It's 2014 and they don't exist yet and they would be incredibly useful for many libraries, if not all. Now all we need is a cool 'working group' title for ourselves
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
Cindi, A LITA interest group sounds like it would be ideal. I think it is very important for this document to be associated with an official professional library organization if it is going to carry any weight or credibility with rank-and-file librarians. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:44 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) *puts on LITA hat* There are several ways that LITA/ALA could play a role here. Publications: There is a series of books called LITA Guides. Great way to get the word out widely, but a static format. http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?KeyWords=lita There are also Library Technology Reports - a periodical. Still static, but published more regularly: http://alatechsource.org/ltr/index There is also the LITA UX Interest Group. IGs are fluid, volunteer-run (not appointed), and can pretty much do what they want. Publish and update something? Sure! Establish and run a virtual conference? Definitely! Have meetings and programs at conferences? Yes! Caveat: must be a LITA member. Happy to provide more info if needed. -Cindi of the many hats On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I definitely agree that we should adhere to larger web standards and that we should actively discourage conventions that libraries have adopted over the years that have nothing to do with wider standards and best practices (e.g. tabbed search boxes, content in sidebar regions). In fact, much of our work would just be bringing together information from several standards into a common location and putting a librarian stamp of approval on it. Some topics I had in mind: -Accessibility standards: screen readers, color blindness, keyboard navigation, alt tags, etc. -Text: readable fonts, colors, text alignment -Page layout: navigation location, sidebars, headings and subheadings, search box designs, database pages, mobile friendliness -Best practices for specific library platforms: LibGuides, DSpace, etc. Some official name would be required, of course. I also think it would be great if we could write a draft, bring it to an official ALA group like LITA, and get them to adopt it after making their own tweaks. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:01 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I am interested but I am a little hazy about what kind of standards you all are suggesting. I would warn against creating standards that conflict with any actual web standards, because I--and, I think, many others--would honestly recommend that the #libweb should aspire to and adhere more firmly to larger web standards and best practices that conflict with something that's more, ah, librarylike. Although that might not be what you folks have in mind at all : ). Michael S. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Josh, thanks for separating this topic out and starting this new thread. I don't know of any such library standards that exist on the web. I agree that this sounds like a great idea. As for this group or not... why not! It's 2014 and they don't exist yet and they would be incredibly useful for many libraries, if not all. Now all we need is a cool 'working group' title for ourselves and we're halfway done! Right??? But seriously, I'd love to help. Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
How many folks following this discussion are LITA members? Would anyone be willing to join LITA to be a part of an interest group on this subject? I will renew my membership in LITA if that is the best route to take. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:46 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Oh, and if UX doesn't fit, y'all can establish the LITA Web Standards IG, or the LITA Code4Lib Web Best Practices IG, or whatever you want to call it. You need 10 LITA Member signatures: http://www.ala.org/lita/sites/ala.org.lita/files/content/about/manual/forms/e5-igformation.pdf http://www.ala.org/lita/about/igs On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: *puts on LITA hat* There are several ways that LITA/ALA could play a role here. Publications: There is a series of books called LITA Guides. Great way to get the word out widely, but a static format. http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?KeyWords=lita There are also Library Technology Reports - a periodical. Still static, but published more regularly: http://alatechsource.org/ltr/index There is also the LITA UX Interest Group. IGs are fluid, volunteer-run (not appointed), and can pretty much do what they want. Publish and update something? Sure! Establish and run a virtual conference? Definitely! Have meetings and programs at conferences? Yes! Caveat: must be a LITA member. Happy to provide more info if needed. -Cindi of the many hats On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I definitely agree that we should adhere to larger web standards and that we should actively discourage conventions that libraries have adopted over the years that have nothing to do with wider standards and best practices (e.g. tabbed search boxes, content in sidebar regions). In fact, much of our work would just be bringing together information from several standards into a common location and putting a librarian stamp of approval on it. Some topics I had in mind: -Accessibility standards: screen readers, color blindness, keyboard navigation, alt tags, etc. -Text: readable fonts, colors, text alignment -Page layout: navigation location, sidebars, headings and subheadings, search box designs, database pages, mobile friendliness -Best practices for specific library platforms: LibGuides, DSpace, etc. Some official name would be required, of course. I also think it would be great if we could write a draft, bring it to an official ALA group like LITA, and get them to adopt it after making their own tweaks. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:01 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I am interested but I am a little hazy about what kind of standards you all are suggesting. I would warn against creating standards that conflict with any actual web standards, because I--and, I think, many others--would honestly recommend that the #libweb should aspire to and adhere more firmly to larger web standards and best practices that conflict with something that's more, ah, librarylike. Although that might not be what you folks have in mind at all : ). Michael S. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Josh, thanks for separating this topic out and starting this new thread. I don't know of any such library standards that exist on the web. I agree that this sounds like a great idea. As for this group or not... why not! It's 2014 and they don't exist yet and they would be incredibly useful for many libraries, if not all. Now all we need is a cool 'working group' title for ourselves and we're halfway done! Right??? But seriously, I'd love to help. Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
Bohyun, That sounds like it could be a great fit. There would be two final products for what I have in mind: 1. A wiki site (ideally attached to an ALA-affiliated domain name) where we can collaborate and break all this down at the topic level. This is the source that would be used by the boots-on-the-ground librarians who are actually doing UX work and need practical information. It would be continually updated. The content would be curated, and there would be a very basic approval process for creating new editor accounts. 2. An annually-revised document (again, attached to an ALA-affiliated domain name) that compiles everything from the wiki together in a format that can easily be presented to other librarians and administrators. In my experience, a bureaucratically approved document carries a lot more weight in libraries than a website, at least in academic libraries. Topics that would be addressed: 1. Accessibility 2. Layout patterns 3. Typography and readability 4. Best practices for specific library web platforms 5. Recommendations for how libraries should implement the guidelines at a management level (non-technical) Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kim, Bohyun Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 1:42 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Jumping into this discussion late. Just wanted to let everyone know that LITA UX IG would be more than happy to provide a venue for this type of discussion since it would fit the interest of UX IG perfectly. (I am chairing the IG this year; ping me if that sounds interesting and if there is anything LITA UX IG can help.) LITA IGs are super flexible. Cheers, Bohyun -- Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS Associate Director for Library Applications and Knowledge Systems University of Maryland, Baltimore Health Sciences and Human Services Library -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Megan O'Neill Kudzia Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 1:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I've been following with interest, and I think some really important points are coming out here. John, what you said about Tomcat vs. Jetty really resonated with me - maybe this is *yet another* place where we could split this thread, but I think for those of us straddling the gap between web design and web development, something like a reference guide for what the questions to ask even are, would be extremely helpful. As you said, the answer to many many questions is, it depends, and knowledge of those topics comes with experience. However, maybe (and I volunteer to help with this project, inasmuch as I can) a sort of expansion of the Guide for the Perplexed would be really useful for those of us who are no longer total beginners, but are sort of struggling to level up? That is, those of us with some experience of various projects could contribute anything public-share-able from our post mortem project conversations, relevant to each type of project? It's something I've been thinking about for some time, and I'm still not sure what an optimal structure would be, but I keep thinking it would be a really worthwhile project. I will also say that everything I've found on alistapart and libux has been incredibly useful! On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: How many folks following this discussion are LITA members? Would anyone be willing to join LITA to be a part of an interest group on this subject? I will renew my membership in LITA if that is the best route to take. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:46 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Oh, and if UX doesn't fit, y'all can establish the LITA Web Standards IG, or the LITA Code4Lib Web Best Practices IG, or whatever you want to call it. You need 10 LITA Member signatures: http://www.ala.org/lita/sites/ala.org.lita/files/content/about/manual/ forms/e5-igformation.pdf http://www.ala.org/lita/about/igs On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: *puts on LITA hat* There are several ways that LITA/ALA could play a role here. Publications: There is a series of books called LITA Guides. Great way to get the word out widely, but a static format. http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?KeyWords=lita There are also Library Technology Reports - a periodical. Still static, but published more regularly: http://alatechsource.org/ltr/index There is also the LITA UX Interest Group. IGs
[CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
As Brad mentioned, one of the most interesting takeaways from this conversation on LibGuides is the (lack of) recognized best practices in the library community. If the folks here are representative at all, this is a big void in our profession. This is not an acceptable state, IMO, because as more and more library resources become web-based, more and more librarians are having to curate web-based content (e.g. LibGuides). Yet, most of us lack the time and expertise to figure out how to do it well. It seems like every organization is trying to reinvent the wheel themselves (or just forgoing wheels altogether). It would also be a great help for web librarians if there were some sort of official library web standards that could be used to help get buy-in from other librarians and administrators who otherwise would not be cooperative. (Yes, I know that there are all sorts of general accessibility standards, but something with a librarian stamp of approval would be most helpful.) I have two questions: 1. Does anyone know if anything like this already exists? I know there are about 8 trillion library groups, so there's a good chance, but I didn't find anything in a few minutes of searching. 2. If not, does anyone think it would be a good idea for a group like this to get the ball rolling on creating some official best practices for web design and web content for the library community? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 1:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav On a different note, just wanted to say that I have found this entire thread massively interesting and very useful. *pats self on back for starting it* lol Thanks to all who've been chiming in. (not trying to shut it down) I'll probably be starting another thread eventually on something that was discussed in here: best practices and creating rules for guide creators. We're a small school and everyone who needs to be on board is on board with creating a style guide and a peer-review process to ensure the style guide is followed. I've been tapped to be the one to create the style guide which is both exciting and daunting. I want to cover all the little stuff - some naming conventions etc. but also want to build something that will help us all follow best practices for web design and accessibility.I'll likely lean on the group's expertise for these at some point this semester. Many of our guides aren't getting the usage they should to justify the time spent creating and maintaining them. Beyond the time issue to properly develop them I think that a real part of the reason is that they are just so user-unfriendly and difficult to navigate. There were some hilarious comments earlier in this thread about others' school's out-of-control styles and we have that too but its even just more than that. I think we were operating under a let's get all kindsa stuff up here and it's gonna be awesome! paradigm and now we need to restructure and look at these as real websites that happen to be guides. The v2 migration is a great time to do it. /ramble On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: I also think all of these ideas are awesome. The idea of a third-party space, or even someplace sponsored by springshare, to share customizations etc. could help so many of us. Even short of developing a plug-in system, having someplace to share template customizations, CSS, etc. would be HUGE. Github seems like a very reasonable option though it's true the tech bar for admission is pretty high. It would be great if we had a place where those admins Cindi mentioned who aren't super tech-expert but do some customizations and would like to do more (and I would put myself in that group) could go to download custom templates, CSS mods to tweak etc.. Even if it was just screenshots and text files for download. Springshare's Best Of guide is really handy and has been useful to me in the past but I think what we're all talking about transcends the capabilities of that site Or maybe not? Could all of this be housed on a regular old libguide?? Different sections for different types of customizations and boxes with individual submissions? Someone would have to manage it and the submissions which might make it untenable. On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 10:30 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: If we are talking about a set of _curated_ community plugins, Github (or any of umpteen git platforms) would be fine. A Springshare person and/or designated community persons could control the repos, approving pull requests and managing releases and all that. A new release would be sent to an approval process that would check for bugs, performance problems, security, etc., and this part would have to be done by a Springshare person most likely
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
question! I would surmise that a plug-in system and
other advanced tech features don't exist yet for a couple of reasons.
First, we're a small company. We have eight products and a small
development team; right now the priority is getting out v2 apps.
Second, we have more than 4500 LibGuides customers, and some have
more than one site. The vast, vast majority of those folks use
LibGuides out of the box, with a few color customizations that they
accomplish with the UI (or a lot, as you've seen...). Some folks are
advanced enough to figure out and alter the default CSS and put their
customizations in the Custom JS/CSS field. Then there is this group.
:) There are a few LibGuides admins who do customization at this
group's level who aren't on this list (or are you?
:)
).
I'd also second the Lounge (springsharelounge.com) as a good group.
There's an academic libraries group there, which is quite active.
Cheers.
On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu
wrote:
The web content workflow and governance issues that were brought up
are
really important. I would love to discuss them at excruciating length.
But
content ownership conundrums and the frustrations of WYSIWYG editors
are broader issues that can be usefully taken up in other threads.
I de-lurked here because I saw an opening to discuss LibGuides with
other people who have a stake in it, especially as a lightweight
CMS. I think Josh's description of its limitations was very good.
His feature propositions, including that of a curated plugin system,
were even better.
I have a question though: Why doesn't it exist already?
LibGuides is limited, though the v2 API looks promising for
client-side stuff. We should be talking with Springshare about
improving workflows for admins -- such as (an example I came across
today) being able to upload more than one image at a time. And, in
the meantime, there's other stuff we can do now: community docs,
templates, themes, best practices, etc. I've been surprised by the
lack of this material, considering how widely LibGuides is
implemented.
Does anyone else find this stuff interesting?
Alex
On 09/25/2014 05:48 PM, Cindi Blyberg wrote:
One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in
Australia:
http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014
For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types
that's governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides
CMS, and this private guide is in its own group.
*back to lurking*
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com
wrote:
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste
from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft
nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the
RTE--I passed that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we
refer people to who break their formatting accidentally with a
massive paste. There's also a Paste as Plain Text button that
has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez
jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data
migration from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been
our design choice but complicates preexisting three- and
four-column layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes
on the guide or something with a simple flow/concise content --
it's a philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long
detailed pages or break down into sub-pages, which have their own
issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict
policies about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables,
content column layout w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking
LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating
appropriate best practices or suggestions whenever I field a
LibGuides question have birthed some improvements in guide
construction. It's an ongoing battle, of course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For
instance we've hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using
CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh)
from getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're
not supporting Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu
wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain.
Well, it is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in
particular is
an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But
unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of
the universities where
I've
worked that use
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav At my previous institution, I struggled with the same issues as you (and probably most libguides administrators that have a large number of people creating guides). The only really positive experience that I have had was a fairly time consuming one. Every year, I sat down with each content creators to talk through the goals of their individual libguides, the specific problems I saw with their libguides, the usage statistics for those guides and the amount of time they were putting into the guides themselves. I also had support from administration that the guidelines would be enforced or the guides would be removed. Having that conversation with the data to back it up helped the librarians see why those things were issues and where they might be wasting their time. It worked better than a large meeting because we could talk about their specific case. When I first starting having these conversations, many of the librarians didn't realize understand the full impact their design decisions were having on patrons actually using these guides. For some librarians, I would also show them a libguide from a subject area they were not familiar with similar design problems to theirs so they could experience what their user migh! t be experiencing with their guide. Although it was not universal and there are still problems like you described below, these problems are significantly smaller than they were. LibGuides biggest strength and weakness is ease of creation. Anyone can create, but creating *good* content for the web is hard. Emily King, MSLS Digital Services Librarian CSN Library Services Charleston Campus (702) 651-7511 http://www.csn.edu/library On 9/24/14 9:56 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Brad, Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides amazing support, but the platform itself is limited. There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc. There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP, no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description of my workflow, in the hopes of receiving suggestions for improvement.) A lot of what we do on LibGuides is a pretty stylesheet, precise content guidelines, and a lot of copy-pasting. I'm not trying to dissuade you. LibGuides has been incredible for us. I shudder to think where we would be without it. But we decided to build our site on LibGuides due to (ahem) local operational constraints. AFAICT, it seems that the bulk of your website is already on LibGuides. If you're reasonably happy with it, maybe take the plunge and see if it works for you :) Hope this helps, Alex On 2014-09-22 23:56, Brad Coffield wrote: Alex, Thanks so much for sharing your new site built in LG2. I love it. Simple, attactive, but very useable. It's very interesting to see an honest-to-goodness this actually looks like a real website and not like just some libguide library website built using lg. More and more I'm seriously considering LG2 as a feasible option for our library site. Thanks! Brad On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web usability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I don't think viewing LibGuides as a javascript application is going to do
much good. Angular and its ilk make sense when you want the javascript to
communicate with a backend. With LibGuides, there's no backend (at least not
one accessible to us via javascript). Yes, you can build a jQuery spaghetti
mountain to rewrite the DOM, but that is a hack more than a real solution
IMO. All it would take is one script error on your page to break the whole
thing. Then there is the no-js issue. And then there is the issue of older
browsers and older computers that can handle the javascript technically but
do so incredibly slowly so that the page looks like junk for 10 seconds
until the scripts run. Looking at you, IE 8. I tried doing something like
this in the past, and it was a massive fail.
But I do commiserate with your javascript problems. The admin controls in LG
seem to all be loaded dynamically via javascript, which makes them both very
hard to customize and very easy to break. I have also noticed that changing
the ID of certain HTML elements in your template can have the unintended
(and undocumented) effect of erasing particular admin features from your
template.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Michael Schofield
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:38 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
You folks are on ball.
Joshua sez: For instance, right now in 2.0 you can create templates (these
are great btw). But there's no way to my knowledge to limit editors to using
several of them. I'd like to create official one, two, and three column
templates for our library. However, my options are either to lock all guides
site-wide into a single template, or to allow access to all templates, which
includes the default templates that do not match very well with our site's
branding.
I could see Springshare fixing this in the future, as it is a relatively
small tweak to an existing feature. (Okay, it would probably require
database table changes, but not huge ones.)
Another big peeve for me is that there is no way to limit the types of HTML
that go into a rich text box. This means editors are free to add whatever
whacky styling they want. We have a lot of guides in our system (hopefully
not for much longer) that contain random font sizes, colors, weights, and
underlining. I can only assume that people are creating content in MS Word
and pasting it into LibGuides because it is full of all sorts of deprecated
HTML tags, manual line breaks and non-breaking spaces, and inline styles.
These are the two big ones for me. I think Springshare's plans for robust
templating are in line with your thinking. I'm in a similar boat: I want to
make, say, three templates available - and lock everyone down to those. I am
not too worried about LG2's out-of-the-box accessibility issues. Since you
have control over [most] of the markup, you can write your own skip links,
semantic tags, add aria roles when necessary, even schema microdata. There
isn't granular control over {{guide_nav}}, but if you're feeling really
gung-ho you can do a little DOM scripting and rewrite the menu as needed.
Since LG2 is almost solely a javascript application*, you can hook-up
handlebars / mustache templates, or even angular.
I do worry that there seems to be zero no-js fallback. We had an issue where
a bad script we wrote years ago carried over from LG1 and broke the entire
editor. There was no way to delete that box, because there were no editing
tools with javascript disabled. Something to think about.
Most importantly, I want to strip almost all of the options from LG2's
WYSIWYG. IDEALLY we could swap it out with a markdown editor, so staff
couldn't haplessly bold things, but if we could just get rid of the font
options entirely I'd be jumping for joy. :)
Michael
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Joshua Welker
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 10:27 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I agree with Alex. The LibGuides 2.0 platform is a big step up from 1.0 and
does a great job at what it is designed to do--easy creation of static
content, simple templating, and reusing common data elements like links,
databases, boxes, etc. The reusability of content IMO is the killer feature
for LibGuides that isn't really present in any other platform and is very
non-trivial to implement in a custom application. The LibGuides platform is
very fast and reliable, and Springshare provides great support.
Here are the main drawbacks I've encountered:
-
1. Inflexible menu building tools. The guide level navigation menu tools are
very functional but don't provide many options for customization aside from
cosmetic. There is also no way that I know of to build a site-wide
navigation menu except to copy/paste raw HTML
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. - A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes, Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic? Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle. - Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes. I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet, but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an effort to use friendly colors. - Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down submenus on most of them, naturally. - A few are nicely curated and easy to use, but they're in a distinct minority. I've tried. I've pushed peer-reviewed usability studies at them. I've reported on conference sessions explaining exactly why all these things are bad. I've brought them studies of our own analytics. I've had students sit down and get confused in front of them. Nothing has gotten through, and being the only web type at the library, I'm outnumbered. Just the thought of it makes me supremely tired. I'm sorry if this has digressed. LibGuides is not at fault, really. It's an organizational problem. LibGuides just seems to be the flash point for it. Will
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Cindi,
Thanks for hearing our feedback. As I've said before, I have always been
impressed by Springshare's service. Now I am getting help without even
having to ask. :)
Regarding 3, that sounds great. I have just been confused by the
documentation. It states that if my template uses {{content}} keyword, I
can't use the individual {{content_x}} keywords. But I thought the
{{content}} keyword had to be used to get page-specific boxes to appear. So
I need to remove {{content}} and replace it with {{content_col_1}} and
{{content_col_2}} etc? I will give that a try. I imagine it could solve a
lot of woes.
Regarding 2, the remote scripts box would indeed be useful for a lot of use
cases, and I will certainly be using it once it is implemented. However, it
isn't a solution for libraries who want to use LG as their only website, as
it requires that you have access to another website with server-side
scripting capabilities.
I still think a curated plugin ecosystem of some sort would be extremely
useful for a lot of things most libraries want on their website:
-a navigation menu builder like what is built into Wordpress and Drupal
(site-wide, not for a specific guide)
-a news feed that can show news in a slideshow format or in a blog-like list
format
-a new books feed that pulls books automatically from something like an ILS
or discovery service
I maintain websites for two libraries, and in both cases LG is used as a
secondary site alongside another web application platform (Wordpress for
one, Rails for another). These three features I think are making the
difference between using LG as the primary website and using LG as the
secondary website.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Cindi Blyberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:47 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey all, a few comments from the Springys. :) Thanks for this amazing
feedback on the tools that you need to make your jobs easier. We are
discussing internally and plan to come up with and add viable solutions to
the roadmap for v2--some of them will be CMS-only, be aware, when they
involve groups and such. Our goal with this product is to make it as
tech-friendly as possible and your feedback is extremely helpful. Keep it
coming!
On to Josh's post, with specific answers to a couple of things:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting.
This is a major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static,
manually-added content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and
javascript widgets from third-party sites, but if you want to do
anything more complicated than that, you are out of luck.
We do plan to reinstate the remote scripts capability that v1 had. It's
not plugins, but would this help with this issue?
3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste
per se, but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar
column in a large group of guides, I am going to have to manually add
and remove boxes on every single page.
Not so! :) You can create a template that has permanent boxes by calling
those individual content IDs. Go to Help Guide Templates Customize
Guide Templates Fine Tuning Content for more. Or
http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/customizeguidetemplates#s-lg-box-3819
(requires login--it's not a secret per se, but we can add more detailed
documentation up if we're not giving it away to competitors. ;) ).
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Alex Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 4:50 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Brad,
Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than
with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're
considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides
amazing support, but the platform itself is limited.
There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc.
There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP,
no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description
of my workflow, in the hopes of receiving suggestions for
improvement.) A lot of what we do on LibGuides is a pretty stylesheet,
precise content guidelines, and a lot of copy-pasting.
I'm not trying to dissuade you. LibGuides has been incredible for us.
I shudder to think where we would be without it. But we decided to
build our site on LibGuides due to (ahem) local operational constraints.
AFAICT, it seems that the bulk of your website is already on LibGuides.
If you're reasonably happy with it, maybe take the plunge and see if
it works for you :)
Hope this helps,
Alex
On 2014-09-22 23:56, Brad
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web usability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens ( 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations. Good work. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to go with our new website. Here's the current status: http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide. We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content should come first
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is entirely built on LibGuides 2. You can see it here: http://library.acg.edu/ For simplicity’s sake we used only two templates: a full width template for single page guides (e.g., our home page). a content template that uses ~2/3 of the page for the content and ~1/3 for guide navigation. There are no dropdown menus anywhere, for the reasons people mentioned, nor do we use two columns for content. (Some of the landing pages use a small grid, but that’s about it.) We use LG’s built-in second column wrapped around an `aside` and placed at the bottom of the main content for related info. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see what I mean: http://library.acg.edu/citations/apa I decided to keep the navigation menu on the right to emphasize the main content. My guess is that this won’t work very well for sections with more narrative. My inspiration (GOV.uk) uses wizard navigation, which LG2 supports. That may be a way of handling this issue. I put the site together with almost no usability testing. I’ll have to grab some students in the coming weeks and find out how bad things really are :) You can see a slightly abstracted version of the content template, as well as other useful LG2 thingies in this gist: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/9f083aa03c287931d9f0 The design was written in Sass on top of an imported and customized Bootstrap 3.2. There's an option in the LG admin to disable the default Bootstrap and I only had to write a few hundred lines to override aspects of the default LG stylesheets. Because I built the design on top of Bootstrap there was very little tweaking necessary for the admin side to work properly. Hope this helps, Alex -- Alex Armstrong E-Resource/Reference Assistant The American College of Greece Libraries, John S. Bailey Library 6 Gravias Street | GR 153 42 Agia Paraskevi | Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 ext. 1274, 1267 | Fax: +30 210 601 7795 Email: aarmstr...@acg.edu On 2014-09-19 12:31 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: That's a good idea. I changed the template using Bootstrap classes so that the sidebar will appear below the main column on small screens ( 1024px roughly). But I might consider hiding the side completely. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 1:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I love your minimal template. We're experimenting with similar minimalism. If you all can't agree on the existence of the right column, you might compromise and use media queries to display: none; until the screen is sufficiently wide. E.g., 1140px so it will only pop on widescreen monitors and avoid almost all tablet orientations. Good work. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:43 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to go with our new website. Here's the current status: http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide. We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content should come first. The fact that users will not focus heavily on the right-hand content is actually a good thing in this instance. I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty adamant that there should only be one column for page content, although I am prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 5:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualization libraries for lib data
Definitely Highcharts. I have used it on a few projects, and it is fantastic. It's free for non-commercial use. Great documentation and support. It also has plugins for several web app frameworks like Rails, Django, Yii, etc. Very helpful if you are going to use one of those to build your dashboard. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kaile Zhu Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 11:05 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualization libraries for lib data I used google charts. Not as fancy as D3, but easier. You pass data to the chart API and it does the heavy lifting for you. https://developers.google.com/chart/ -Kelly Zhu Web Services Librarian University of Central Oklahoma -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Phetteplace Sent: 2014年9月19日 9:44 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualization libraries for lib data I've used D3 to build charts for a similar data dashboard. It's maybe a little less plug-and-play than other charting libraries but has tremendous adoption, is really flexible. http://d3js.org/ Best, Eric On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 7:25 AM, Michel, Jason miche...@miamioh.edu wrote: Hello all! We're in the process of centralizing all of our disparate data points (circ, door counts, chat ref, in-person interactions, db stats, instruction, web analytics, social analytics) into a single DB. We then plan on building interactive visualizations on top of this data. What are some visualization/charting/graphing libraries that would work for this? We have some ideas but wanted to hear what the c4l had to say about it. Thanks in advance! This is what we have so far (social stats only). We're using chart.js for this: http://dog.lib.muohio.edu/~jpmichel/apis/stats/ Jason Paul Michel User Experience Librarian Miami University Libraries 513.529.3935 *miche...@miamioh.edu miche...@miamioh.edu* @jpmichel https://twitter.com/jpmichel **Bronze+Blue=Green** The University of Central Oklahoma is Bronze, Blue, and Green! Please print this e-mail only if absolutely necessary! **CONFIDENTIALITY** -This e-mail (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information. Any unauthorized disclosure or use of this information is prohibited.
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I am in the middle of building a very minimalist LibGuides 2.0 template to
go with our new website. Here's the current status:
http://ucmo.beta.libguides.com/test-guide.
We are still torn on whether to have any side columns. We currently have a
right column just for important site-wide information. We used the right
rather than left with the rationale that it is not an essential navigation
menu and that we didn't want it to be the first thing users notice. Content
should come first. The fact that users will not focus heavily on the
right-hand content is actually a good thing in this instance.
I go back and forth on whether to scrap the side column. I am pretty adamant
that there should only be one column for page content, although I am
prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad
Coffield
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 5:24 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
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
Re: [CODE4LIB] Informal survey regarding library website liberty
Brad, The situation here was very similar to yours. The library had its own web server for many years. After the previous library IT manager retired (and before I was hired to replace him), it was decided that all the library servers would be virtualized and live in the infrastructure provided by campus IT. Before I started, the plan was tentatively to merge the library website with the campus website, which uses Adobe Contribute and Coldfusion (not fun). At the same time, the library had been planning internally to redesign its website for years and to implement Drupal. We wanted more access to the web server to do more complex stuff than static web pages. When I resisted moving to the campus website, we were told that the library would not be able to have its own server for our website because it would be a security problem for us to have full OS-level access to a server that lives in the infrastructure of campus IT. We ended up outsourcing and renting a virtual server from Linode, and campus IT agreed to point the library subdomain to that server. In the theoretical future where the website is 100% finished and feature-complete (read: never), we will create a design spec fully documenting what we need and how to manage it at the OS level, and we will move back to an on-campus server. There was definitely tension between the library and the campus IT department throughout this whole process, although it remained very civil. In part, we were able to pull this off because there were some major personnel changes going on in the IT department, and they didn't have the time to devote to figuring out an approach that they better preferred. (As a side note, I ended up making an executive decision to drop Drupal because it was causing way more problems than it was fixing, but that is another story.) Josh Welker James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2014 10:40 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Informal survey regarding library website liberty Hi all, I would love to hear from people about what sort of setup they have regarding linkage/collaboration/constrictions/freedom regarding campus-wide IT practices and CMS usage and the library website. Some history: For a very long time our library ran its own server and its own website, completely independent of campus-wide concerns (save for occasional requests for help from IT with server issues). A few years ago the server began to reach EOL and it was determined that we couldn't afford to get another. Also around the same time it was deemed that the library website needed a complete re-do. I was tapped to do that re-do. During that process the Marketing dept got involved and it was agreed upon that the library's general look should be aligned with the university's public site (which I think was a good idea). Then it was determined that because of that decision that the simplest way to achieve it was to put us inside their existing CMS which was already setup etc etc. Part of the problem is that the existing CMS is Ektron... The revised library site went live in Ektron 2 years ago. My marketing contact was a massive help in getting it live and training me in ektron etc. He is now no longer with the university and we are in the middle of a transition period. My inclination and desire is to regain some level of independence wherein we collaborate with IT in getting our own server space on their servers but are not tied to their decisions regarding CMS, how and when to go mobile-friendly, etc. Our site is still not fully, truly what it should be because of limitations with Ektron and I would like to get out of it. I would like to have the option to either run a CMS of my choice or go CMS-less (since I'm the only editor). I fear that the site will be held back from being able to do the things that it needs to do. I'm hoping that I can get some responses from you all that way I can informally say of x libraries that responded y of them are not firmly tied to IT. (or something to that effect) I'm also very curious to read responses because I'm sure they will be educational and help me to make our site better. THE QUESTION: What kind of setup does your library have regarding servers, IT dept collaboration, CMS restrictions, anything else? I imagine that there are many unique situations. Any input you're willing to provide will be very welcome and useful. Thank you! Warm regards, Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] Excel to XML (for a Drupal Feeds import)
This should be quite doable in most programming languages with
out-of-the-box tools and no tricky parsing code. The gist is to save in
Excel as a delimited text file (tab is a good choice), then have your script
ingest the document and turn it into an array, and then turn the array into
XML. In Python, it could be something like the code below (not tested but
the principles should be sound):
import 'csv'
from elementtree.ElementTree import Element, SubElement
#create a list
mylist = []
#open your delimited file with a csv reader
with open('myfile.txt', 'rb') as textfile:
reader = csv.reader( textfile, delimiter='\t', quotechat='') #this
assumes your file is tab-delimited (\t)
#loop through rows in your file and save each row as a key/value pair
(dictionary)
for row in textfile:
fields = {
'field1': row[0]
'field2': row[1]
'field3': row[2]
'field4': row[3]
}
#append this row to our master list
mylist.append( fields )
#create an xml root node
rootNode = Element(XmlRoot)
#loop through our list of rows from the text file and create xml nodes
for row in mylist:
rowNode = Element(record)
#loop through all the fields on this row and turn them into xml nodes
for fieldName, fieldValue in row:
fieldNode = Element(fieldName)
fieldNode.text = fieldValue
#append each field node to the parent row node
rowNode.append(fieldNode)
#append each row node to the document root node
rootNode.append(rowNode)
#now save the whole thing as an xml file
with open('myfile.xml', 'wb') as file
ElementTree(rootNode).write(file)
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle
Banerjee
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 1:04 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Excel to XML (for a Drupal Feeds import)
I'd just do this the old fashioned way. Awk is great for problems like this.
For example, if your file is tab delimited, the following should work
awk '{FS=\t}{if ($2 != ) question = $2;}{print $1,question,$3}''
yourfile
In the example above, I just print the fields but you could easily encase
them in tags.
kyle
On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Ryan Engel rten...@wisc.edu wrote:
Thanks for the responses, on the list and off, so far.
As I'm sure is true for so many of us, my interest in learning more
about how to solve this type of problem is balanced against my need to
just get the project done so I can move on to other things. One of
the great things about this list is the ability to learn from the
collective experiences of colleagues. For this project specifically,
even clues about better search terms is useful; as Chris Gray pointed
out, basic Google searches present too many hits.
I did try following the Create an XML data file and XML schema file
from worksheet data instructions on the Microsoft site. And it did
produce an XML document, but it wasn't able to transform this:
Row1Question1Q1Answer1
Row2Q1Answer2
...into something like this:
row1Row One Data/row1
question1This is a question/question1 answers q1answer1Answer
1/q1answer1 q1answer2Answer2/q1answer2 /answers
Instead, I could get it to either convert every row into its own XML
entry, meaning that I had a lot of answers with no associated
questions, or I got an XML file that had 1 question with EVERY SINGLE
answer nested beneath it -- effectively all questions after the first
question were ignored. Based on those results, I wasn't sure if there
is more tweaking I could do in Excel, or if there is some programmed
logic in Excel that can't be accounted for when associating a schema.
Another suggestion I received was to fill the question column so
that every row had a question listed. I did consider this, but the
problem then is during the data import, I'd have to convince my CMS to
put all the answers back together based on the question, something I'm
sure Drupal COULD do, but I'm not sure how to do that either.
Finally, this project is a spreadsheet with 225,270 rows, so you can
imagine why I'd like a process that is reasonably trustworthy AND that
can run locally.
Anyway, any/all additional suggestions appreciated, even if they are
try searching for blah blah python parser, or I made something
that solves a similar process, and you can download it from Git.
Ryan
___
Ryan Engel
Web Stuff
UW-Madison
Dana Pearson mailto:dbpearsonm...@gmail.com June 13, 2014 at 7:14
PM I don't use Excel but a client did who wanted to use XSL I had
created ONIX to MARC to transform bibliographic metadata in Excel to
XML. The built in Excel XML converter was not very helpful since
empty cells were skipped so that it was impossible to use that
result.
There is an add on that allow you to map your data to XML elements by
creating a schema which is pretty cool.
http://bit.ly/1jpwtqM
This might be helpful.
regards,
dana
Re: [CODE4LIB] Excel to XML (for a Drupal Feeds import)
Sorry, the last line got messed up by outlook.
#now save the whole thing as an xml file
with open('myfile.xml', 'wb') as file
ElementTree(rootNode).write(file)
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Joshua Welker [mailto:wel...@ucmo.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 2:32 PM
To: Code for Libraries
Subject: RE: [CODE4LIB] Excel to XML (for a Drupal Feeds import)
This should be quite doable in most programming languages with
out-of-the-box tools and no tricky parsing code. The gist is to save in
Excel as a delimited text file (tab is a good choice), then have your script
ingest the document and turn it into an array, and then turn the array into
XML. In Python, it could be something like the code below (not tested but
the principles should be sound):
import 'csv'
from elementtree.ElementTree import Element, SubElement
#create a list
mylist = []
#open your delimited file with a csv reader with open('myfile.txt', 'rb') as
textfile:
reader = csv.reader( textfile, delimiter='\t', quotechat='') #this
assumes your file is tab-delimited (\t)
#loop through rows in your file and save each row as a key/value pair
(dictionary)
for row in textfile:
fields = {
'field1': row[0]
'field2': row[1]
'field3': row[2]
'field4': row[3]
}
#append this row to our master list
mylist.append( fields )
#create an xml root node
rootNode = Element(XmlRoot)
#loop through our list of rows from the text file and create xml nodes for
row in mylist:
rowNode = Element(record)
#loop through all the fields on this row and turn them into xml nodes
for fieldName, fieldValue in row:
fieldNode = Element(fieldName)
fieldNode.text = fieldValue
#append each field node to the parent row node
rowNode.append(fieldNode)
#append each row node to the document root node
rootNode.append(rowNode)
#now save the whole thing as an xml file with open('myfile.xml', 'wb') as
file
ElementTree(rootNode).write(file)
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle
Banerjee
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 1:04 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Excel to XML (for a Drupal Feeds import)
I'd just do this the old fashioned way. Awk is great for problems like this.
For example, if your file is tab delimited, the following should work
awk '{FS=\t}{if ($2 != ) question = $2;}{print $1,question,$3}''
yourfile
In the example above, I just print the fields but you could easily encase
them in tags.
kyle
On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Ryan Engel rten...@wisc.edu wrote:
Thanks for the responses, on the list and off, so far.
As I'm sure is true for so many of us, my interest in learning more
about how to solve this type of problem is balanced against my need to
just get the project done so I can move on to other things. One of
the great things about this list is the ability to learn from the
collective experiences of colleagues. For this project specifically,
even clues about better search terms is useful; as Chris Gray pointed
out, basic Google searches present too many hits.
I did try following the Create an XML data file and XML schema file
from worksheet data instructions on the Microsoft site. And it did
produce an XML document, but it wasn't able to transform this:
Row1Question1Q1Answer1
Row2Q1Answer2
...into something like this:
row1Row One Data/row1
question1This is a question/question1 answers q1answer1Answer
1/q1answer1 q1answer2Answer2/q1answer2 /answers
Instead, I could get it to either convert every row into its own XML
entry, meaning that I had a lot of answers with no associated
questions, or I got an XML file that had 1 question with EVERY SINGLE
answer nested beneath it -- effectively all questions after the first
question were ignored. Based on those results, I wasn't sure if there
is more tweaking I could do in Excel, or if there is some programmed
logic in Excel that can't be accounted for when associating a schema.
Another suggestion I received was to fill the question column so
that every row had a question listed. I did consider this, but the
problem then is during the data import, I'd have to convince my CMS to
put all the answers back together based on the question, something I'm
sure Drupal COULD do, but I'm not sure how to do that either.
Finally, this project is a spreadsheet with 225,270 rows, so you can
imagine why I'd like a process that is reasonably trustworthy AND that
can run locally.
Anyway, any/all additional suggestions appreciated, even if they are
try searching for blah blah python parser, or I made something
that solves a similar process, and you can download it from Git.
Ryan
___
Ryan Engel
Web Stuff
UW-Madison
Dana Pearson mailto:dbpearsonm...@gmail.com June 13, 2014 at 7:14
PM I don't use Excel but a client did who wanted to use XSL I had
created ONIX
Re: [CODE4LIB] College Question!
Riley, Like many others here, I came from the humanities and stumbled into this line of work. I have BAs in philosophy and religion. There were virtually zero job opportunities with those degrees, so for various reasons I did an MLS program and at the same time got an entry-level IT job, and from there I have just learned through experience and self-teaching. If I could go back, I would definitely have majored in something computer-science related. There are usually (at least) two tracks of computer science offered at schools: the hard computer science that learns about the inner workings of processors, languages, etc, and the applied computer science that focuses on learning how to design software or administer systems. Personally, I would definitely lean towards the applied branch. As a systems librarian, I don't need to know how to write a kernel or anything, I just need to know how to write web apps and actually do stuff with the computer. Also, there is a pretty huge chance that by the time you get to the end of college you will have changed your mind several times about what kind of career you want. A degree related to software development or systems administration pretty much guarantees you job security _forever_ in the event that you are no longer interested in library work. And, as others have stated, under no circumstances should you major in library science as an undergrad. You can't do anything with that degree except library work, so you have effectively pigeonholed yourself in the event that you are not interested in libraries in the future. There is a strong sentiment among many librarians that even the MLS degree is of questionable value, and an undergraduate library science degree is even more questionable. I'd say get an IT- or CS-related bachelor's degree, and later _if_ you are still interested in working in libraries, _consider_ getting an MLS degree. Something to keep in mind is that you make a lot more money in an entry-level programming job with just a BA as you would in an entry-level librarian job with an MLS. At least in the Midwest, programmer salaries typically start in the $50k range, and library jobs pay something in the low $40k range for professional librarian positions and somewhere between $18k - $30k for a paraprofessional staff job. And then you also have to pay off student loans for the MLS. In perspective, my (very cheap) MLS cost about $20,000, and my loan payments for a 10-year payment plan are $240/month or $2880/year. And that is on top of whatever debt you incur as an undergrad. As far as which school, I'd just look for an affordable public university that has smallish class sizes. IMO the big-wig Ivy-League type schools are good for graduate studies because you get to study with leading scholars, but as an undergrad you will probably be taking classes with TAs and adjuncts. The massive amount of debt you will incur at those schools is not worth the extra bit of prestige that will come from your degree. You want a school that has an established program in your field of study and not huge class sizes. Look for somewhere with 3 or more CS profs and class sizes less than 20 if possible. All my best learning in college occurred when I got to interact with my profs, and that is a lot easier when they don't have 100 other students competing for their time. Well this message got long. Sorry for the textwall. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 10:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] College Question! I was curious about the type of degrees people had. I am heading off to college next year (class of 2015) and am trying to figure out what to major in. I want to be a systems librarian, but I can't tell what to major in! I wanted to hear about what paths people took and how they ended up where they are now. BTW Y'All at NC State need a better tour bus driver (not the c4l tour, the admissions tour) ;) the bus ride was like a rickety roller coaster... Also, if you know of any scholarships please let me know ;) you would be my BFF :P 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] College Question!
Yes, experience trumps education completely in my experience as far as developing skills in libraries and technology. Some employers will demand the degree, but it is really of secondary value to hands-on experience. One possibility would be talking to a systems librarian or anyone else at your university whose job interests you and explain to them that you are looking for some mentoring and experience. It is quite likely that they could whip up a student worker position just for you. At least I know I would if a student approached me that way. All the libraries where I've worked have had fairly free reign with student worker hours. Chances are you are going to end up doing some kind of student work position anyway, so you might as well use it learning something valuable rather than raking leaves or cooking pizza. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Fleming, Declan Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 1:05 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] College Question! Hi - I'm also an English undergrad. This was after miserably failing out of a Math/CS program (although I learned a lot). The English degree forced me to write a lot while in college - a time when one's mind needs some expanding lest it get caught in ruts. This helped my communication skills immensely. Despite what Giarlo says. I also agree that a background in informatics is going to be really helpful in the years to come. We are awash in data, yet little of it has the semantics needed to automate the extraction of meaning. I think there are going to be many years of smart people plowing meaning back into the data sets that we're struggling to put away at the bit level now, and I think it sounds like fun work. Another common thread I agree with, and one my kids have heard since they were in diapers, is GET A JOB! Especially in the area you think you're interested in. You'll learn more practical things there than in any class. You may suck at it at first, but hey, they're paying you anyway! If you like doing it, you'll get better, build your resume, and be better able to see if it's something you want to do long term. Year later, after working in corporate IT for a while and getting sick of my profession being treated like an expendable commodity, I went back and got an MBA to better understand business - and learned that corporate IT is an expendable commodity... I wasn't really OK with that, so I came back to academia to do more meaningful work for far less money ;) With the MBA, I was able to come back at a director level and influence change, so that's kinda cool. Good job getting ahead of this! You're a neat person and I appreciate what you do for the community! Declan -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Henry, Laura Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 5:51 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] College Question! My undergrad degree is in English, and it actually has come in handy at times. Good communication is important, regardless of what you end up doing. If I could do it again, I'd seriously consider informatics - but I didn't know it was a thing until I started library school. http://www.soic.indiana.edu/informatics/ As far as IT, I learned a lot from the tech-support job I had right out of college, and after that I'm self-taught. I imagine it's a steeper learning curve than if I had some sort of tech degree. If you're going for an ML(I)S, major in whatever interests you. Librarians come from all kinds of backgrounds. In my class there were a ton of English and History degrees, but we also had people with degrees in astrophysics, soil science, and accounting. Laura C. Henry, MLS Assistant Systems Librarian Beaufort County Library 311 Scott Street, Beaufort, SC 29902 Phone 843.255.6444 lhe...@bcgov.net www.beaufortcountylibrary.org For Learning ♦ For Leisure ♦ For Life -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Amy Drayer Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 12:50 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] College Question! Dear Riley et al: I was thinking the same thing as Coral. I have a humanities undergrad degree; a computer science oriented degree would certainly have been beneficial, especially with an emphasis on network and server administration, or even web development depending on your interest (as a systems librarian I also managed the website and catalog). The library-oriented education can wait until grad school. Honestly, I think we come from a variety of backgrounds. My liberal arts foundation works for me (I feel my education was well rounded in a way a science or IT degree may not have been), but I would definitely have wanted some more technical classes such as I mentioned above if I had known I would be in this field. In peace, Amy In peace, Amy M. Drayer, MLIS
Re: [CODE4LIB] Jobs Digest
This thread is certainly not dry. It could stand to dry out quite a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Forrest, Stuart Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 2:10 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Jobs Digest That which is not dry... Stuart Forrest PhD Library Systems Specialist Beaufort County Library 843 255 6450 sforr...@bcgov.net http://www.beaufortcountylibrary.org For Liesure, For Learning, For Life -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Salazar, Christina Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 2:44 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Jobs Digest Define wet. Christina Salazar Systems Librarian John Spoor Broome Library California State University, Channel Islands 805/437-3198 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Forrest, Stuart Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 11:43 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Jobs Digest A but it is also wet in its gaseous form. Stuart Forrest PhD Library Systems Specialist Beaufort County Library 843 255 6450 sforr...@bcgov.net http://www.beaufortcountylibrary.org For Liesure, For Learning, For Life -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Baxter Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 2:38 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Jobs Digest On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Lisa Rabey academichu...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 11:50 AM, Valerie Forrestal valerie.forres...@csi.cuny.edu wrote: lord help us all can someone just set up an online poll and we can be done with it? Water is wet. Discuss. In its liquid form.
Re: [CODE4LIB] jobs digest for 2014-05-16
I honestly have no opinion as to whether we have full job postings, a digest, a separate mailing list, or whatever. I just want this conversation to be over. http://youtu.be/ju4-bw3a48E http://impossiblehq.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Final-Form.jpg Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Friday, May 23, 2014 5:49 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] jobs digest for 2014-05-16 Should we put this to a vote? 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 From: Chris Fitzpatrickmailto:chrisfitz...@gmail.com Sent: 5/23/2014 5:51 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDUmailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] jobs digest for 2014-05-16 more cowbell On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 9:05 PM, Wilhelmina Randtke rand...@gmail.comwrote: I prefer full ads also. -Wilhelmina Randtke On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 7:53 AM, Dunn, Katie dun...@rpi.edu wrote: On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 10:06 PM, Joe Hourcle wrote: It looks to me like it's a change in the messages that ' jobs.code4lib.org' generates and sends to the list ... I much preferred receiving the full ads in separate messages, because they were easy to archive and search in my email without having to copy/paste from the website, but I can just subscribe to the Atom feed instead. Katie
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
You make great points, and that is why I am hesitant to make custom applications. I think I figured out a nice middle ground using the Data module. That module apparently lets you create custom (ie sane) database tables and do CRUD operations through Drupal. My current thinking is to use this setup to allow the Drupal site users to manage the data for custom applications and then access that same data using a custom app that can do things with it that would be too difficult in Drupal. The big use case I have in mind is a real-time interactive map application that shows study room and computer availability, classroom bookings, and room descriptions. There are two parts to this: inputting the data that is displayed on the map (registering rooms, computers, etc) and outputting that data into the thing the end user sees. I am hoping to use Drupal for the input part and a lightweight framework of some sort for the output part. I could theoretically put together a Drupal module for the output part to keep everything in Drupal, but honestly maintenance of that module would be considerably more difficult than maintenance of a simple standalone app because the module would have to integrate with the entire Drupal API. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Hagedon, Mike - (mhagedon) Sent: Friday, May 16, 2014 12:39 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal I can see why a programmer would be frustrated with Drupal. I've been confused by it on a number of occasions. I'm not very deep into the Drupal community, and I've only tried some aspects of Drupal development. So I'm maybe not the most likely person to say the following. If you go the route of CMS for the basic site and then a framework for all complex functions, I'd recommend being brutally honest with yourself about what is part of the basic site and what isn't. When you're a programmer, every problem can be solved by a new application (or so we think). I don't know what sort of complex functions you're thinking of (I haven't fully digested this epic thread), but my library is actually in the middle of a major website overhaul that involves (among other things) integrating into Drupal all the custom functionality that we have made apps for over the years. For instance, our main website is a Drupal (6) site. Our library hours, however, are handled by a custom app. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense architecturally -- it re-implements (with a framework) a bunch of CRUD functionality, a user system, templating, etc. Drupal is capable of handling all of that. And we have an app of which the sole purpose is to export our Drupal theme so that other applications can look like they're part of the site without being in Drupal. While that is valid at times, it might have signaled to us that those things should have been a part of Drupal. We're finding that, while Drupal does certainly have different way of doing things, if we w! ork with Drupal rather than trying to circumvent it, it can be a great help. Every problem can be solved by a new application, except the problem of too many applications or a confusing overlap between a few. I don't know what your scale is, but I'd suggest paying attention to the overall architecture and thinking 5 years down the road. And I say all this as one who is primarily a programmer (Symfony [1] is my current framework choice, and Doctrine [2] is amazing), and who prefers to have all the resources of object-oriented design and development at my disposal. Drupal isn't working that way (though D8 is moving that direction), and it does have a learning curve, but it moves traditionally programmer-only tasks within the reach of those who aren't programmers. We can view that as competition, or we can embrace it. But if you honestly can't bring yourself to invest in learning the Drupal Way -- no judgment there, it *is* different! -- and your organization is willing to commit to always carefully hiring programmers, building something might be an excellent choice. That might be a very healthy and freeing realization. If you are willing to dive in deep, consider attending DrupalCon. Amazing community. :-) Mike Hagedon University of Arizona Libraries [1] http://symfony.com/ [2] http://www.doctrine-project.org/ -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:42 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Hmm using a CMS for the basic site and then a framework for all complex functions might be a good idea. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Wiegand, Laura K. Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:20 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal For me the main benefit
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
that their quality can vary just as much as modules and themes. Now for something completely different. Depending on what your requirements are, you may have better luck using a narrower-purpose tool for the job. Have you considered something like SubjectPlus? http://www.subjectsplus.com/ On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 8:35 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Warning: incoming wall of text. I've been working for the past several months on building a library website with Drupal. This is my second try building a website with Drupal. I chose Drupal for two main reasons: CCK/content types, and its ubiquity in the library community. Theme development was going relatively well, if a little overly complicated. But once I started trying to do anything beyond developing static pages, I have become more and more frustrated with Drupal. Drupal supports custom content types out-of-the-box, which is great, but if you want to actually do anything with that custom content other than have it function as a plain page, you have to use the Views module. Views is great, but views can easily become very complicated, with custom rewrites, grouping, relations, contextual filters, etc. Plus, a lot of functionality in Views requires more modules (for instance, basic data manipulation). This is to build rather run-of-the-mill list features like a database list or a list of events. And a lot of the advanced features in Views require a solid understanding of SQL (groups, distinct, joins, etc), which kind of defeats the notion that it is easy for non-developers to administer. Now, at this point, I have modules extending my modules. And those modules have multiple dependencies on other modules. I am getting worried now. It feels like my website is a house of cards. I've run into several instances already where one of these plugins is updated and breaks compatibility with the whole stack, and there is nothing to do in this case but open an issue on the project tracker and pray for the best. I have looked into building my own modules, but the umpteen APIs and hooks required to do something simple as perform some regex on field data completely overwhelmed me (and I am fairly experience with web app development). It's not just Views, either. Anything more complicated than static pages and navigation menus requires relying on the module ecosystem. Not only is the whole thing quite precarious, but it defeats one of the two main purposes of a CMS: ease of administration. I want to know that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, someone will be able to come in and take over without too much difficulty. But when I go back and look at my views, I can sometimes barely understand the work I did a week ago. It is very difficult to keep straight which functions are coming from which modules, and all those modules have separate (often poor) documentation. At this point, I am seriously contemplating dumping Drupal and moving to a full-fledged framework like Django, Flask, or Laravel and adding some WYSIWYG CRUD controls for pseudo-CMS functionality. ActiveRecord-like systems are much easier to use IMO than fiddling for hours with Views, and I have full control of what is happening. I honestly think it would be just as easy for someone to inherit a custom-built framework app as it would be to inherit my already-convoluted Drupal site. At least the framework is well-documented and should allow my app to be understandable to anyone with some programming experience. Does anyone want to talk me off the ledge here? I know a lot of you are using Drupal for your websites. What are the killer features that keep you using Drupal? If any of you have experience building websites using frameworks, what are your experiences? I really want to like Drupal, but it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. -- Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -- Jason Sherman Systems Librarian University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma 405.574.1340 -- Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
That sounds like just what I'm looking for! I will check it out. Thanks. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ian Walls Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:09 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Josh, I'd like to take this opportunity to hock SilverStripe [http://www.silverstripe.org/], a PHP-based MVC framework and CMS. I'm using it for my library's website redesign, and it's proving very capable. This redesign includes not only migrating our pages, but also integrating our database list and our building hours tools, which had previously been independent home-brew systems. Building new data models does happen at the PHP level, rather than in the GUI via an abstraction layer. This gives very nice access to inheritance, extension and interface implementation There are modules for core things like Blogs, Events Calendars, and tons more, but as this is a somewhat non-standard CMS, the community isn't as robust as you get with Drupal. But, I feel the ease of use and understanding of the code offsets the availability of packaged modules. I can just build what I need and then post it to GitHub in the time it'd take me to find, install and configure someone else's not-quite-what-I-needed module (not to mention time spent maintaining down the road). I don't have any experience yet with handing a SilverStripe site off to someone else for maintenance, but talk to me again in a year, and I should. Cheers, -Ian Walls Web Services Emerging Technologies Librarian UMass Amherst Libraries -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:47 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Thank you all for the responses. I hope my original email did not come off as too abrasive. The issue for me is that I am having a hard time figuring out what exactly is the use case for Drupal. Do you want a dead-simple website? Use Wordpress. Do you want to add some complex custom apps? Use a framework. Do you want the worst of both worlds? Use Drupal. Getting a non-trivial Drupal site up and running requires as much work as learning a full-fledged framework like Rails, Laravel, or Django. And the experience you gain using Drupal is not going to carry over at all into any future non-Drupal endeavors because the Drupal platform is completely unique and doesn't seem to follow any basic paradigms like MVC. When doing something like basic data manipulation requires overriding core functions using custom PHP functions in my theme, the entire point of using a CMS in the first place has just been defeated. If I get hit by a bus, not only will someone have to relearn Drupal and all its modules, but they will also have to wade through my spaghetti-code efforts at patching! functionality into Drupal. What I would love is a CMS based on plain SQL tables, ActiveRecord, and simple CRUD controls instead of abstract entities and fields that try to be everything to everyone (and fail to be anything for anyone). But I don't think such a thing exists, so I am interested in rolling my own with a framework. Right now, my framework choices are narrowed down to Ruby on Rails, Laravel (PHP), Django (Python), and Flask (Python). For anyone who has used these, do you have any insight into how maintainable your projects are and how easily they are managed/inherited by others? Josh On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Jason Bengtson j.bengtson...@gmail.comwrote: When I came into this position I inherited some work the former tech manager had done in installing and experimenting with Drupal as a tool to replace our current CMS-less ColdFusion environment. I also quickly grew unhappy with it. I've been experimenting with MODX, which I like so far. If you're a PHP developer, MODX will be of particular interest (and PHP is a pretty common server-side technology if you worry about the bus factor). I haven't had as much time to mess with it as I'd like, but I've built some wireframes with it and so far I like it. I second the low quality of most of the commercial, enterprise stuff. We used Cascade Server at UNM and it was absolutely wretched. It's been a long time, but when I last built a WordPress site I remember that as being easy to use and I think it's gotten more flexible/powerful. I've got a fiend who's really sold on it and HAM/TMC uses it for their website. Best regards, *Jason Bengtson, MLIS, MA* Head of Library Computing and Information Systems Assistant Professor, Graduate College Department of Health Sciences Library and Information Management University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center 405-271-2285, opt. 5 405-271-3297 (fax) *jason-bengt...@ouhsc.edu jason-bengt...@ouhsc.edu* *http://library.ouhsc.edu http://library.ouhsc.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
Hmm using a CMS for the basic site and then a framework for all complex functions might be a good idea. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Wiegand, Laura K. Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:20 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal For me the main benefit of Drupal has been that, as a wanna-be coder, I can do some very powerful things simply through logic - I may have to carefully think about structure, relationships, experiment with views, evaluate modules carefully, problem-solve during updates, document my work, etc, but I don’t *have* to code a single thing (although I do). (yes, I know this is the code4lib listserv not the drupal4lib listserv where this statement might be more well received :) This was really important to me when we started using Drupal 5-6 years ago and we did not (at the time) have a programmer on staff. Yes, Drupal has a steep learning curve but once you get past that and figure things out for the first time, it's easier to apply them as you add new features. And it's just so powerful. Regarding the module dependencies, I think the key is to carefully choose your modules. Over the last 6 years I've only run into trouble a couple times. Sometimes you can't update to the latest version of a module because it isn't (yet) compatible with another dependent or related module. So I just leave it until the other modules catch up. Security updates rarely cause the conflict you describe, so those can almost always be applied. In my experience, once you get your site established the turmoil you describe dies down. In terms of business continuity, the fact that there is such a strong Drupal community, both in the library world and beyond, means that there are plenty of people who could figure out what you had put together. I use Wordpress for other, more simple, web development and I see the advantages to Wordpress - it's a lot less clunky on the admin side. It feels more lightweight and streamlined. But I feel that Drupal is more powerful. While we use Drupal for our website development, our developer uses other php frameworks for other more internal web applications for the reasons you state. I think it might just come down to preference (both personal and shop) and skills. Laura K. Wiegand Coordinator of Discovery Services William M. Randall Library University of North Carolina Wilmington 601 South College Road Wilmington, NC 28403-5616 wiega...@uncw.edu Phone: (910) 962-3680 -- Date:Wed, 14 May 2014 20:35:05 -0500 From:Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu Subject: Very frustrated with Drupal Warning: incoming wall of text. I've been working for the past several months on building a library website with Drupal. This is my second try building a website with Drupal. I chose Drupal for two main reasons: CCK/content types, and its ubiquity in the library community. Theme development was going relatively well, if a little overly complicated. But once I started trying to do anything beyond developing static pages, I have become more and more frustrated with Drupal. Drupal supports custom content types out-of-the-box, which is great, but if you want to actually do anything with that custom content other than have it function as a plain page, you have to use the Views module. Views is great, but views can easily become very complicated, with custom rewrites, grouping, relations, contextual filters, etc. Plus, a lot of functionality in Views requires more modules (for instance, basic data manipulation). This is to build rather run-of-the-mill list features like a database list or a list of events. And a lot of the advanced features in Views require a solid understanding of SQL (groups, distinct, joins, etc), which kind of defeats the notion that it is easy for non-developers to administer. Now, at this point, I have modules extending my modules. And those modules have multiple dependencies on other modules. I am getting worried now. It feels like my website is a house of cards. I've run into several instances already where one of these plugins is updated and breaks compatibility with the whole stack, and there is nothing to do in this case but open an issue on the project tracker and pray for the best. I have looked into building my own modules, but the umpteen APIs and hooks required to do something simple as perform some regex on field data completely overwhelmed me (and I am fairly experience with web app development). It's not just Views, either. Anything more complicated than static pages and navigation menus requires relying on the module ecosystem. Not only is the whole thing quite precarious, but it defeats one of the two main purposes of a CMS: ease of administration. I want to know that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, someone will be able to come
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
Thank you for the detailed response. Feel free to quote me about Drupal :) It sounds like you have experienced just what I'm afraid of: I will spend all this time making a Drupal site with the intention that it will be easy to inherit, and then my theoretical successor scraps it. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Christian Pietsch Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:39 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Hi Joshua, On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 09:47:06AM -0500, Joshua Welker wrote: Thank you all for the responses. I hope my original email did not come off as too abrasive. No worries, I find it a fair depiction, and I share your Drupal pain. The issue for me is that I am having a hard time figuring out what exactly is the use case for Drupal. Do you want a dead-simple website? Use Wordpress. Do you want to add some complex custom apps? Use a framework. Do you want the worst of both worlds? Use Drupal. Right. May I quote you on this? I prefer static site generators such as Jekyll for dead-simple websites and blogs. If I get hit by a bus, not only will someone have to relearn Drupal and all its modules, but they will also have to wade through my spaghetti-code efforts at patching functionality into Drupal. After I decided to leave a project where I had developed a Drupal intranet site, my successor scrapped it and started from scratch using Owncloud. And I do not blame him. I would have preferred using something other than Drupal, too, but was not allowed to at the time. (In case you wonder how Drupal and Owncloud can fit the same purpose: The goal was to develop a Virtual Research Environment, and nobody knows for sure what this is supposed to be, so there is room for interpretation.) Right now, my framework choices are narrowed down to Ruby on Rails, Laravel (PHP), Django (Python), and Flask (Python). For anyone who has used these, do you have any insight into how maintainable your projects are and how easily they are managed/inherited by others? In my new role, I inherited some Flask applications, and I find maintaining, debugging and extending them pure joy. If you have to use Perl instead of Python, use Dancer instead. I also tried Django, but it I feel it forces me into a corset that is a odd re-interpretation (or misunderstanding) of the MVC model. Cheers, Christian -- Christian Pietsch http://purl.org/net/pietsch
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
, but if the modules don't exist, non-programmers aren't left with much. I'm especially concerned about this as D6 drifts toward EOL, since, the last time I really tallied things up, anyway, a lot of the really cool stuff that had been developed for libraries as modules in D6 hasn't made it to D7, with D8 now looming for late 2014/early 2015. (Previous practice has been to reti! re the second version behind the new release, i.e., 5 was laid to rest as 7 came out, although there has been some discussion about extending the live of 6 because there's such a critical mass of sites still using it.) Some of my evidence for this is anecdotal, too; at Drupalcons in Denver and Portland, and other birds-of-a-feather Drupal events, I've asked, Hey, what if we all coordinated and developed a module for X? (X=any number of common web functionality that libraries of any type would find useful.) And then several people in the room raise their hands and say, Yeah, I've done that/I'm working on that! I ask them if it's on d.o, and they say No, but I'll share it... and then their voices kinda drift off and they stop making eye contact. The thing is, if the code is just put on GitHub (I've got no beef with GitHub, but it's an audience/user problem) or shared in any way other The Drupal Way, you've lost a whole set of potential non-programmer users. (Sidenote: this is on my mind because I'm writing a proposal for the journal about library-specific Drupal module development. I think I've just written a good chunk of it. Thanks, Josh!) Finally, I can also add, FWIW, that all of these pains are felt by developers outside of our library sphere as well. I worked briefly for a Drupal dev firm, and the amount of time we spent discussing whether or not we should still be a dedicated Drupal shop, or build/look into other frameworks, surprised me. The split, as you might imagine, was typically between the backend developers and sysadmins who were tired of all the things discussed here, and the developers and graphic design/developer/UX folks who relied on their existing knowledge of the Drupal UI and theme layer to get their work done efficiently. Nina Nina McHale Digital Experience Consultant Colorado State Library From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Joshua Welker [wel...@ucmo.edu] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 8:47 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Thank you all for the responses. I hope my original email did not come off as too abrasive. The issue for me is that I am having a hard time figuring out what exactly is the use case for Drupal. Do you want a dead-simple website? Use Wordpress. Do you want to add some complex custom apps? Use a framework. Do you want the worst of both worlds? Use Drupal. Getting a non-trivial Drupal site up and running requires as much work as learning a full-fledged framework like Rails, Laravel, or Django. And the experience you gain using Drupal is not going to carry over at all into any future non-Drupal endeavors because the Drupal platform is completely unique and doesn't seem to follow any basic paradigms like MVC. When doing something like basic data manipulation requires overriding core functions using custom PHP functions in my theme, the entire point of using a CMS in the first place has just been defeated. If I get hit by a bus, not only will someone have to relearn Drupal and all its modules, but they will also have to wade through my spaghetti-code efforts at patching functionality into Drupal. What I would love is a CMS based on plain SQL tables, ActiveRecord, and simple CRUD controls instead of abstract entities and fields that try to be everything to everyone (and fail to be anything for anyone). But I don't think such a thing exists, so I am interested in rolling my own with a framework. Right now, my framework choices are narrowed down to Ruby on Rails, Laravel (PHP), Django (Python), and Flask (Python). For anyone who has used these, do you have any insight into how maintainable your projects are and how easily they are managed/inherited by others? Josh On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Jason Bengtson j.bengtson...@gmail.comwrote: When I came into this position I inherited some work the former tech manager had done in installing and experimenting with Drupal as a tool to replace our current CMS-less ColdFusion environment. I also quickly grew unhappy with it. I've been experimenting with MODX, which I like so far. If you're a PHP developer, MODX will be of particular interest (and PHP is a pretty common server-side technology if you worry about the bus factor). I haven't had as much time to mess with it as I'd like, but I've built some wireframes with it and so far I like it. I second the low quality of most of the commercial, enterprise stuff. We used Cascade Server at UNM and it was absolutely wretched. It's been a long time, but when I last built
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
Thanks for the suggestions about videos and the Services module. I will give it a look. I am still quite torn overall about whether to stick it out with Drupal or use a framework. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Shaun Ellis Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 2:16 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Josh, I welcome your initial rant, which was well articulated -- sometimes I can't find anything beyond 4-letter words to express my frustration. It surprises me that there has not been much discussion of Drupal on this list, or even on Drupal4Lib recently -- yet it's so prevalent in Libraries, which seems strange to me. I've been developing with it for about 5 months, and the key thing I've learned in that time is that you HAVE to have a community of other Drupalists to bounce questions at -- perhaps that means going to Meetups, Camps, Cons, etc. Whatever your trying to do, it's likely that someone has already done it. Books are not that helpful in my opinion. For example, in a 700 page book on Drupal 7 Development from Apress, Views does not even have an index entry -- so you can imagine how much information/noise is out there. I have found the BuildAModule videos to be exceptional and reasonably priced. I use that regularly. I have also had the benefit of a more experienced colleague helping me navigate, so I can't imagine going it alone. For scenario #2 (exposing your data to other apps), you should look at Services: http://www.lullabot.com/blog/article/content-syndication-using-services-and-feeds I, for one, am looking forward to easy RESTful Web Services in Drupal 8 [1], which will allow me to combine some of Drupal's content modeling power, syndication features, and out-of-the-box admin/permissions features with more cutting edge UI frameworks always seem behind the curve in Drupal. Scenario #1 (the hours page house of cards) is in some ways a feature. If there's a known bug in one of your modules, you can simply update that one little piece. That said, it can be fragile, so you should always test features/updates in a development environment first. You should also be making regular, automated backups of your production (and dev!) code and database so that you can roll back to one that works while you fix what broke. -Shaun [1] http://drupalize.me/blog/201401/introduction-restful-web-services-drupal-8 On 5/15/14 2:03 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nina, Thank you for your insights. I'm glad to get a response from someone with lots of relatively positive Drupal experience. As far as functionality problems, I can offer two examples: 1. I have a library hours page that pulls information from Google Calendars with Feeds and redisplays it using Views. In addition to these two modules, there are a handful more extending them: Dates (and a host of submodules), Dates iCal, Feeds Tamper, Computed Field, Better Exposed Filters, and Views Field View (just looking briefly at my modules page). The hours page works, which is a testament to the Drupal community, but the whole thing feels like a giant hack. I can barely remember how it all works. It's like a giant Rube Goldberg device. If it suddenly stops working, I have about 10 modules to look at to try to find the bug, and most of those modules are very poorly documented. 2. I want to allow a non-Drupal app to harvest some of my Drupal nodes to mashup into another app that is fairly complex. I have spent several hours looking at Drupal documentation trying to figure out how in the world to harvest this data via an API or basic SQL queries, but I am at a total loss. The Entity API is beyond me. And looking directly at the underlying MySQL tables, I have absolutely no idea what is what. Fields have their own tables, and content types are fields. I kid you not. It is the exact opposite of sane database design. I agree with you that rolling a full-fledges CMS is a bad idea and would be hard to inherit. But inheriting a framework app is apparently not so bad, from what others here have said. I would have a standard implementation of authentication in Rails, for instance, and my coworkers could edit pages, database links, news, etc using WYSIWYG controls. It would basically be CKEditor taped onto the front of standard CRUD pages that are one of the most basic tools available in most frameworks. I still am not sure what I will do, but I think there is a middle ground between using an established CMS and forcing anyone editing the website to dive into raw code. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of McHale, Nina Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:37 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Good morning, Josh and everyone, and thanks for the shoutout, Andromeda! Josh, I didn't take
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
That summarizes my feelings quite well. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Simon Spero Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 2:40 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal https://drupal.org/project/bad_judgement
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
This whole thing has given me quite the headache. At this point, due to time constraints, I am going to tough it out and stick with Drupal. I discovered the Data module, which looks like it will allow me to use custom (logical and sane) database tables and integrate them with the Drupal site. This will hopefully be a decent compromise that will let me use the database as an intermediate layer between Drupal and my other apps. Populate the tables with Drupal UI and access the database with my apps, and vice versa. The Data module looks like it could save Drupal for me. But if things fall apart once this site is in production, I am going to rebuild the site using some other platform at the next opportunity. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brent E Hanner Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 4:16 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Couple things. Drupal documentation has heavily gone the way of the screencast, while I personally think they move too slowly, but I'm like that. There have been times where I haven't been able to figure something out and I've watched a screencast on a module and not only find the solution to my problem but learn of two other features I didn't know about. The module problem you describe is the downside of a very conscious decision made by the community. There are several reasons. Firstly by having more but smaller modules for things it means that you can reduce the size of the code on the system, if every feature you might want was in the main modules you would have a lot of code you don't need being loaded into the system. Secondly it means someone working on a feature you don't use is unlikely to break your code by changing something higher up to fit their needs and breaks yours. Thirdly it allows individuals and groups of people to try doing things differently and let the community choose which best serves their needs. This brings up something else about modules. There is a reason the information about the number of sites using the module is on the webpage, the more you stick to modules heavily used the less likely you will run into update problems and the more likely someone will figure it out and fix it before you even notice it. Which brings me to the next thing. Google is your friend. Drupal throws you an error put it in Google and most of the time you will get the answer. Same goes with wanting to know about how to do something. Which brings me to the fact that there is a Drupal way of doing things that can seem odd from time to time for people who know how to code decently. The Drupal way isn't necessarily the right way something should be done, but the best way to do it with the peculiarities of Drupal. The more you do things the Drupal way instead of how you think they should be done the easier things become. If instead of writing your own module you find a way to use a Drupal module to accomplish what you want, that module may eventually do exactly what you want and in 2-3 years when you have to upgrade there is a decent chance the module will be upgraded and if not you will have a group of people using the same one you are trying to upgrade to help each other through the process. The reason I have no intention of leaving Drupal is actually its robust multi-user support. Your right pulling data out of databases and displaying it is easy. Giving people control of parts of a website's content is complicated. Stale content because its too difficult to change things is rarely a good thing. On a closing note, if a system comes along that does everything Drupal does and more with better performance and what not I would consider changing, but one thing noticeable in this thread is that outside of WordPress for simpler stuff there is no consensus on other products out there. Projects need a certain amount of mass to keep them going forward with enough momentum to continue to thrive. Drupal has that for the time being. The only book I have found that I like on Drupal is Drupal for Designers. It assumes you know how to make a webpage but aren't a programmer but want to leverage the things Drupal can do, so it is very different than other Drupal books I have or have come across. Brent Joshua Welker wrote: Thanks for the suggestions about videos and the Services module. I will give it a look. I am still quite torn overall about whether to stick it out with Drupal or use a framework.
[CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
Warning: incoming wall of text. I've been working for the past several months on building a library website with Drupal. This is my second try building a website with Drupal. I chose Drupal for two main reasons: CCK/content types, and its ubiquity in the library community. Theme development was going relatively well, if a little overly complicated. But once I started trying to do anything beyond developing static pages, I have become more and more frustrated with Drupal. Drupal supports custom content types out-of-the-box, which is great, but if you want to actually do anything with that custom content other than have it function as a plain page, you have to use the Views module. Views is great, but views can easily become very complicated, with custom rewrites, grouping, relations, contextual filters, etc. Plus, a lot of functionality in Views requires more modules (for instance, basic data manipulation). This is to build rather run-of-the-mill list features like a database list or a list of events. And a lot of the advanced features in Views require a solid understanding of SQL (groups, distinct, joins, etc), which kind of defeats the notion that it is easy for non-developers to administer. Now, at this point, I have modules extending my modules. And those modules have multiple dependencies on other modules. I am getting worried now. It feels like my website is a house of cards. I've run into several instances already where one of these plugins is updated and breaks compatibility with the whole stack, and there is nothing to do in this case but open an issue on the project tracker and pray for the best. I have looked into building my own modules, but the umpteen APIs and hooks required to do something simple as perform some regex on field data completely overwhelmed me (and I am fairly experience with web app development). It's not just Views, either. Anything more complicated than static pages and navigation menus requires relying on the module ecosystem. Not only is the whole thing quite precarious, but it defeats one of the two main purposes of a CMS: ease of administration. I want to know that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, someone will be able to come in and take over without too much difficulty. But when I go back and look at my views, I can sometimes barely understand the work I did a week ago. It is very difficult to keep straight which functions are coming from which modules, and all those modules have separate (often poor) documentation. At this point, I am seriously contemplating dumping Drupal and moving to a full-fledged framework like Django, Flask, or Laravel and adding some WYSIWYG CRUD controls for pseudo-CMS functionality. ActiveRecord-like systems are much easier to use IMO than fiddling for hours with Views, and I have full control of what is happening. I honestly think it would be just as easy for someone to inherit a custom-built framework app as it would be to inherit my already-convoluted Drupal site. At least the framework is well-documented and should allow my app to be understandable to anyone with some programming experience. Does anyone want to talk me off the ledge here? I know a lot of you are using Drupal for your websites. What are the killer features that keep you using Drupal? If any of you have experience building websites using frameworks, what are your experiences? I really want to like Drupal, but it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. -- Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal
I do have quite a bit of experience with Wordpress, and I generally like it more than Drupal for its simplicity. The reason I am wary of it is that it is heavily plugin-dependent in general and specifically with regards to custom content types. I want to avoid having to use third-party plugins for basic site functionality. The litmus test for me is if I can make a dynamic database list page using out-of-the-box functionality. Neither Drupal nor Wordpress can do this as far as I can tell. On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 8:43 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.comwrote: I am sure others have opinions: You just described WordPress as far as the bus scenario goes, and for ease of use WordPress gets a tick there, I don't know much about drupal, but WordPress has solved most of my issues (I hope Michael Scofield steps in on this one, he know a LOT more then me). My recommendation: Take WordPress for a spin. Especially if you are prone to bus accidents ;-). BTW: Something that works best for me, might not be best for others, and vise versa. 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 From: Joshua Welkermailto:wel...@ucmo.edu Sent: 5/14/2014 9:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDUmailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Very frustrated with Drupal Warning: incoming wall of text. I've been working for the past several months on building a library website with Drupal. This is my second try building a website with Drupal. I chose Drupal for two main reasons: CCK/content types, and its ubiquity in the library community. Theme development was going relatively well, if a little overly complicated. But once I started trying to do anything beyond developing static pages, I have become more and more frustrated with Drupal. Drupal supports custom content types out-of-the-box, which is great, but if you want to actually do anything with that custom content other than have it function as a plain page, you have to use the Views module. Views is great, but views can easily become very complicated, with custom rewrites, grouping, relations, contextual filters, etc. Plus, a lot of functionality in Views requires more modules (for instance, basic data manipulation). This is to build rather run-of-the-mill list features like a database list or a list of events. And a lot of the advanced features in Views require a solid understanding of SQL (groups, distinct, joins, etc), which kind of defeats the notion that it is easy for non-developers to administer. Now, at this point, I have modules extending my modules. And those modules have multiple dependencies on other modules. I am getting worried now. It feels like my website is a house of cards. I've run into several instances already where one of these plugins is updated and breaks compatibility with the whole stack, and there is nothing to do in this case but open an issue on the project tracker and pray for the best. I have looked into building my own modules, but the umpteen APIs and hooks required to do something simple as perform some regex on field data completely overwhelmed me (and I am fairly experience with web app development). It's not just Views, either. Anything more complicated than static pages and navigation menus requires relying on the module ecosystem. Not only is the whole thing quite precarious, but it defeats one of the two main purposes of a CMS: ease of administration. I want to know that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, someone will be able to come in and take over without too much difficulty. But when I go back and look at my views, I can sometimes barely understand the work I did a week ago. It is very difficult to keep straight which functions are coming from which modules, and all those modules have separate (often poor) documentation. At this point, I am seriously contemplating dumping Drupal and moving to a full-fledged framework like Django, Flask, or Laravel and adding some WYSIWYG CRUD controls for pseudo-CMS functionality. ActiveRecord-like systems are much easier to use IMO than fiddling for hours with Views, and I have full control of what is happening. I honestly think it would be just as easy for someone to inherit a custom-built framework app as it would be to inherit my already-convoluted Drupal site. At least the framework is well-documented and should allow my app to be understandable to anyone with some programming experience. Does anyone want to talk me off the ledge here? I know a lot of you are using Drupal for your websites. What are the killer features that keep you using Drupal? If any of you have experience building websites using frameworks, what are your experiences? I really want to like Drupal, but it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. -- Josh Welker Information Technology
Re: [CODE4LIB] Usage Statistics Question
We are planning to implement a small script that runs in the background on our public computers and pings a server-side script every few seconds. That data will be recorded to a database for stats and also used to generate a map of computer availability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2014 2:59 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Usage Statistics Question We track logons/logoffs to gauge usage with Active Directory. 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 From: Brian McBridemailto:brian.mcbr...@utah.edu Sent: 4/3/2014 2:18 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDUmailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Usage Statistics Question Code4lib Team, I was curious what software/systems other organizations are using to track computer usage statics in their computing labs and what stats are being collected? Thanks, Brian Brian McBride Head of Application Development J. Willard Marriott Library University of Utah O: 801.585.7613 F: 801.585.5549 brian.mcbr...@utah.edumailto:brian.mcbr...@utah.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] Windows XP EOL
Don't get too excited. IE8 is still the default browser in Windows 7. At the university where I work, upgrading to IE 9+ is not part of the base images, and users are left to upgrade on their own. Public machines still have IE 8. I am trying to get this fixed but no luck yet. Apparently, too many apps depend on IE 8 and don't work with newer versions. :( Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 8:59 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Windows XP EOL I'm kind of looking forward to exploiting XP EOL. Central IT is 86'ing all XP machines university-wide, which has the benefit that there will be no machines at the university using Internet Explorer 8. The EOL for IE8 is a little ambiguous and will continue to receive support from Microsoft, but for the library the big percentage of IE8 traffic (which all together is less than 7%) is from university staff. I'm already hemming and hawing and pulling stats together to see if I can make a case to drop aesthetic support for Internet Explorer 8 by April 2014, or at least by the end of 2014. Aesthetic, of course, doesn't mean functional, but it just means that IE8 users get the site as rendered before any media queries, and I'll pull IE-specific stylesheets and polyfills unless they're important (like form elements). Here's hoping the remaining IE8 traffic is low enough to fall below our threshold :). I'll throw a party. Michael Schofield / ns4lib.com -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2014 12:19 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Windows XP EOL Smart, too bad we can't do that in our learning lab! 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 From: John Palmermailto:writing2...@gmail.com Sent: 3/2/2014 12:14 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDUmailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Windows XP EOL We are migrating our oldest machines (Pentium, 64-128Mb, 30gb hdd) to TinyLinux. Our Pentium and Celeron machines with 256 Mb, 100gb machines are going to Xubuntu. Anything below 4GB RAM is going to Ubuntu 12.04 4GB+ goes to Windows 7. On Saturday, March 1, 2014, Justin Coyne jus...@curationexperts.com wrote: They won't be a security risk on April 8th, but the first time that MS publishes security patches after that date for newer version, security researchers will examine the patches. Doing so will give them an idea about how to exploit the problem the patch was for. They will then try to run the exploit on XP and see if it is vulnerable. Eventually they will find an exploit that works against XP. Even if you have a AV, people can exploit your machine without using a virus. Is that a risk you want to accept? -Justin On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Jimm Wetherbee j...@wingate.edujavascript:; wrote: Just because MS won't support XP any more doesn't mean those machines are instantly useless or a security risk come April 8th. We will not be doing anything with our lab computers until Summer because they are too old to run Windows 8 but we cannot do without them. --jimm On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 5:28 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.comjavascript:; wrote: Hi, I wanted to hear how people are dealing with the Windows XP End-of-Life (if anything at all :( Personally I am migrating the computers that can run it to Windows 8 (we ran out of 7 licenses and someone (years ago) bought SA, but that's another story), and when April 7th comes around: throw anything we can't use away (sigh). 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] Python CMSs
There are two conflicting issues here. If you want ease of development, you want a framework. If you want ease of content creation, you want a CMS. As a developer, it's always my preference to go for ease of development and use a framework. Designing plugins and modules just sucks. A simple plugin like displaying dates on a page is stupidly complicated when you have to integrate it with the entire CMS rendering engine. But I have to acknowledge that it is better for me as the developer to do a little extra legwork than requiring all the non-techie content creators to do the extra legwork. That said, it isn't _too_ hard to implement a basic wysiwyg editor like CKeditor in most frameworks that would eliminate much of the difficulty for content creators. The bigger issue for me is that, when you use a framework, you more or less guarantee that anyone inheriting your code is going to be facing a steep learning curve, possibly insurmountable depending on their level of programming knowledge. With a CMS, there is built-in documentation and a support community for 95% of functionality, and then you just have to document the 5% or so of code that you custom wrote. Having said all that, I have to point out the amazing Yii PHP framework. It is so extremely easy to build a data-driven app. If you ever want a PHP framework, use that. For Python, I'd go with Django just because it has a better support community and is slightly easier than Flask for database functionality like ORM. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Coral Sheldon-Hess Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Python CMSs Hi, everyone! I've gotten clearance to totally rewrite my library's website in the framework/CMS of my choice (pretty much :)). As I have said on numerous occasions, If I can get paid to write Python, I want to do that! So, after some discussion with my department head/sysadmin, we're leaning toward Django. Here's a broad question, re: Python and Django: If you've made the switch, what has your experience been? Has Django (or any other Python framework) given you something cool that was lacking in your previous language/framework/CMS? Has it helped you build something awesome? Have you found it enabling or limiting in any way? If you were going to sell people on (or against) using it, what would your arguments be? I'm a relative newbie to Python, and a total newbie to Django, so even if there was a tutorial you found useful, or some caveat you learned along the way, I'm interested. :) And then a more specific question: Given the following requirements, do you have a Django-based CMS you'd recommend? (Of course, I'll also do my own research, but I'd love to see what other libraries' experiences have been and what's popular, right now.) * There's a chance we'll want to offer other editors access to it, at some point, so it would be nice if I can provide a WYSIWYG interface, which I also am going to want the option to *turn off*, for my own sanity. * We're a Springshare-heavy library with Summon and big secret API-based plans, so easy JavaScript (preferably jQuery) integration is a must. * It should play nicely with MySQL. * Because I probably won't be here forever, it's of the utmost importance that whatever we end up with is easy to maintain. * I'm used to MODx's page-ID model, where I can move pages around, and as long as I don't delete/recreate a page (thereby changing its ID), I don't have to change any links anywhere else in the CMS. I'd really like something that will work equally well, since the odds that I'll nail the information architecture on the first try are probably slim. :) (Maybe this one should go without saying, since I know WordPress and many other CMSs do this, but if you have to err, err on the side of being explicit, right?) * A nice forms-builder plugin (module?) would be a great thing to have, as well. We use FormIt in MODx, and now I'm spoiled. And, I mean, if there's a CMS on top of another Python framework you think I should be considering, feel free to throw that out as a possibility, too! Thank you! -- Coral Sheldon-Hess http://sheldon-hess.org/coral @web_kunoichi
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python CMSs
to the CMS and put your django apps under an app. subdomain to make the experience more ore less seamless. Just my thoughts, I hope that helps some. Good luck and let us know what you end up doing, - Scott On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Jason Bengtson j.bengtson...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Josh. In the end it's really going to come down to balancing priorities. On my personal site I don't use any kind of content management system and have no interest in adopting one. This has left me free to do as I please without jumping through hoops to try and get things work with an often intentionally limiting CMS. At my last University we started with nothing but moved institutionally to Cascade Server (a horrible mistake if ever there was one). Still, as rotten as CS is, I was able to shoehorn a lot of web code through various mechanisms and the campus web team simply kept all the good apps and such on an application server and linked to them as needed. Of course, that meant that the pages of the site itself were pretty static and standardized, in most cases, to the point of McDevelopment, but it also allowed departmental admins to make changes without knowing a stitch of web code. I was in bad position there because I had little access to anything but t! he CMS, so I had to find ways to shoehorn web apps I built into the CMS and get them to work within its strictures. It didn't help that we had an upper leadership element that didn't understand the difference between a web page on our site and a purpose-built web app. Here at RMB, we don't currently use a CMS, but my predecessor built what, in some ways, amounted to a kind of CMS for some of the content using ColdFusion. We're evaluating a move to a CMS to put broader content editing in the hands of departments so that they can take charge of more than news items and the addition of database links. We'll see how that goes. Needless to say, the good stuff will be kept far away from the CMS. The biggest advantage to that arrangement on the computing side is that someone coming in to replace me wouldn't really need to have an in-depth understanding of php (which is the main server-side script I use) to get a handle on the majority of the site. When I was hired I quickly discovered that it was fortunate I had some ColdFusion in my background, or a lot of what our site did and how it worked would have been inaccessible until I got up to speed on the language. I guess what it comes down to for me, as we look at this decision, is how much CMS flexibility and tweakability I need for the main site, vs what I want in place for the real web apps that have been built or are underway (which I can locate separately and build using whatever framework I see fit). As such you may want to use Django as your framework on a separate application server, while employing a more normative CMS for most of your site content. Hopefully at least some of that wasn't too trite. Best regards, Jason Bengtson, MLIS, MA Head of Library Computing and Information Systems Assistant Professor, Graduate College Department of Health Sciences Library and Information Management University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center 405-271-2285, opt. 5 405-271-3297 (fax) jason-bengt...@ouhsc.edu http://library.ouhsc.edu www.jasonbengtson.com NOTICE: This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify us by replying to the original message at the listed email address. Thank You. On Feb 14, 2014, at 8:30 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: There are two conflicting issues here. If you want ease of development, you want a framework. If you want ease of content creation, you want a CMS. As a developer, it's always my preference to go for ease of development and use a framework. Designing plugins and modules just sucks. A simple plugin like displaying dates on a page is stupidly complicated when you have to integrate it with the entire CMS rendering engine. But I have to acknowledge that it is better for me as the developer to do a little extra legwork than requiring all the non-techie content creators to do the extra legwork. That said, it isn't _too_ hard to implement a basic wysiwyg editor like CKeditor in most frameworks that would eliminate much
Re: [CODE4LIB] EZProxy changes / alternatives ?
It is ubiquitous in the library community, so support is easy to find. There is also a lot of EZproxy support from vendors, who often post EZproxy config setups for their databases on their support sites. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Timothy Cornwell Sent: Friday, January 31, 2014 11:44 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] EZProxy changes / alternatives ? I have an IT background and some apache proxy experience, and it seems fairly easy - for me. I understand it may not be for libraries with limited IT resources. I am not at all familiar with EZProxy, so I have to ask: What is it about EZProxy that makes it attractive for those libraries with limited IT resources? -T -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee Sent: Friday, January 31, 2014 12:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] EZProxy changes / alternatives ? Many good ideas in this thread. One thing I'd just like to throw out there is that there are some ideas that may be good to distribute in the form of virtual machines and this might be one of them. Proxying is needed by practically all libraries and takes little in terms of systems resources. But many libraries with limited IT resources would have trouble implementing alternatives to ezproxy -- especially if they have to use authentication features not supported by Apache HTTPD. Even for those who do have enough staff time, it seems kind of nuts to have everyone spending time solving the same problems. kyle On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 5:43 AM, Ryan Eby ryan...@gmail.com wrote: There was actually a breakout in 2011? Code4lib discussing Apache and using it as a proxy. I believe Terry Reese and Jeremy Frumkin, then from Oregon?, were the ones leading it. There was lots of interest but I'm not sure if anything took off or if they have documentation somewhere of how far they got. I remember it being about getting something a consortia of libraries could use together so may have been more complex requirements than what is looked for here. http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Can_we_hack_on_this:_Open_Extensibl e_Proxy:_going_beyond_EZProxy%3F -- Ryan Eby
Re: [CODE4LIB] EZcheck: a java-based catalog link checking program
It works by using regular expressions to find a URL within a string of text such as an 856 field. It makes a list of all the links and then begins making HTTP HEAD requests to each link using the Jetty HTTP client library. The response status codes are recorded to a file. Multiple threads are spawned to make the HTTP requests to avoid bottlenecks caused by slow-responding servers. It started as a Python script that was very short, but after switching to Java, adding a GUI, and using multiple threads, it became a lot more complicated. Go figure. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Andrew Nisbet Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 5:41 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] EZcheck: a java-based catalog link checking program Hi Joshua, I have been looking for, and thinking about building one of these myself. I will be interested to see your detection technique. In the meantime Java applications are distributed as jar files which are then made executable with the inclusion of a manifest as shown at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek/cit597-2002/Pages/executable-jar-files. html. Then users need only execute the jar as they would any other executable on their OS. Edmonton Public Library Andrew Nisbet ILS Administrator, IT Services T: 780.496.4058 F: 780.496.8317 anis...@epl.ca Spread the words. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: January-08-14 3:48 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] EZcheck: a java-based catalog link checking program I put together a link checking program that searches through MARC 856 fields for broken links and generates a report spreadsheet. It was originally in Python, but I switched to Java for a variety of reasons (don't want to start a language flame war). The result is the EZcheck program above. If anyone would like to give it a whirl, feel free and let me know how it works for you. There is no documentation right now, but it is fairly self-explanatory and has tooltips if you mouse over each field. We used this at my library and found several thousand broken links in our catalog. https://github.com/jswelker/ezcheck https://github.com/jswelker/ezcheck/releases (It's an executable JAR file, which you should be able to double-click to launch on any platform, assuming you have Java 7.) The program accepts input in several formats. You can feed it a tab-delimited text file containing a record number, an 856 field, a title, and an author. You can feed it .MRC recorods. If you use the Sierra ILS and appropriate user permissions, you can use the Direct SQL Access interface to connect straight to the ILS without having to generate MARC files or create lists. This is my first multi-threaded program and my first major Java/JavaFX project, so if you have any feedback on the code quality or find any bugs, please let me know. I also have no clue how to package a Java app into a .exe file or the Mac equivalent, if anyone has any pointers on that subject. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
[CODE4LIB] EZcheck: a java-based catalog link checking program
I put together a link checking program that searches through MARC 856 fields for broken links and generates a report spreadsheet. It was originally in Python, but I switched to Java for a variety of reasons (don’t want to start a language flame war). The result is the EZcheck program above. If anyone would like to give it a whirl, feel free and let me know how it works for you. There is no documentation right now, but it is fairly self-explanatory and has tooltips if you mouse over each field. We used this at my library and found several thousand broken links in our catalog. https://github.com/jswelker/ezcheck https://github.com/jswelker/ezcheck/releases (It’s an executable JAR file, which you should be able to double-click to launch on any platform, assuming you have Java 7.) The program accepts input in several formats. You can feed it a tab-delimited text file containing a record number, an 856 field, a title, and an author. You can feed it .MRC recorods. If you use the Sierra ILS and appropriate user permissions, you can use the Direct SQL Access interface to connect straight to the ILS without having to generate MARC files or create lists. This is my first multi-threaded program and my first major Java/JavaFX project, so if you have any feedback on the code quality or find any bugs, please let me know. I also have no clue how to package a Java app into a .exe file or the Mac equivalent, if anyone has any pointers on that subject. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question
I gave SharePoint a fair shake once, but it is a lost cause. Don't bother trying if you have any other option. If you are having problems with campus IT giving you more visibility, you should work with your library to make one of its goals increasing discoverability, and then have your library director work with the higher-ups in IT or the provost's office and describe why discoverability is important to the library and how it fits into the university's goals, mentioning how the current setup makes those goals impossible. If you don't have luck when working directly with the IT people, it can help to get someone higher in the administration on your side and have that person make your case to IT. Or, if you want to be less diplomatic, just create a website on a third-party hosted server or even LibGuides, and then make the case that you've already invested significant resources into the website and that it needs to be integrated with the university's overall web presence. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matthew Sherman Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:11 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question This is actually becoming an announce to our employees because we have to spend so much time explaining where the library site is. We are pretty much an Ex Libris shop at the moment, Primo, Metalib, SFX, all locked behind Sharepoint. I am not sure what the main campus site is using for a CMS, but I suspect it is more flexible than Sharepoint for web development. We only get a moderate amount of non-student or staff traffic, but where the site currently is located is not intuitive and makes it hard for students to want to use. The make the UX/IA part of me die a little inside. We have definite interest among many of the library staff to get it freed and more visible, but we are having to figure out what it takes and how to sell it to all of the requisite parties involved. Thanks for the input. On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Nina McHale n...@atendesigngroup.comwrote: Matt, Not odd at all! I've dealt with this issue for most of my career. In the three academic libraries I've worked in, the library's site was NOT part of the overall college/university portal. In fact, it was more the case that we (me, the web person, and my supervisors) were establishing our autonomy apart from the overall institutional web presence with campus IT. Library sites need separate navigation, information architecture, and content management and strategy. Administrators outside of the library and campus IT don't always understand how complex library sites have become, so explaining this is a good first step. Find some sites for similar institutions that you like, and show them as examples. If you present it as a positive move--and point out that you might be able to take some work off your IT department's hands by taking on the library site yourself--they'll likely be more willing to consider it. Approach them as partners. As far as burying the library's site behind a log in, how much non-student traffic do you have in your building? You might be able to make a case, based on that and what your mission to serve your community is/might be, to bring it out from behind authentication. Other questions for you: -Do you have any kind of proxy authentication for journal/article databases in place in addition to the portal authentication? If not, you'll obviously have to consider that. -What platform is the school on? Would you choose something similar--another instance of the same software--or go out on your own? Do you have the skills/staff to do that? Where would you host it? Nina On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Matthew Sherman matt.r.sher...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Code4Libbers, Slightly odd question for you academic library folks. Why does your library have its website where it is on the university site? For context, the library I currently work at has our library site hidden within the campus intranet/portal, so that students have to log into a web portal to even see the search page. This was a decision by the previous director who was here before my time and an assortment of us librarians think this is a terrible setup. So I wanted to kick out to the greater community to give us good reasons for free to the website to more general access, or help us to understand why you would bury it behind a login like they did. All thoughts, insights, and opinions are welcome, they all help us develop our thinking on this and our arguments for any changes we want to make. Thanks everyone and have a good week. Matt Sherman -- Nina McHale @ninermac Developer, Aten Design Group atendesigngroup.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] Metadata generator (was: Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing?)
Okay, I see. Thanks. The OxygenXML software someone posted seems to do exactly what I was trying to accomplish but better, so I think I am going to call it a day with this project. http://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-editorEclipse/topics/xml-schema-instance-generator.html Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ben Companjen Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 11:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Metadata generator (was: Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing?) The MODS schema, like any other schema, defines elements and their contents (via contentTypes), so a processor could infer that modsCollection is the only element that is not part of any element's contentType[*]. I'm thinking of creating an XSL stylesheet (or maybe an XQuery) that finds these elements in a schema. It would find modsCollection, but not mods. The (few) generators that I looked at seem to take an element name to use as root as a parameter. That makes the generators more flexible and in the MODS example lets you create a single MODS record without a collection. Groeten van Ben [*] within the same schema at least; I could create a schema that has a modsCollectionCollection element that takes modsCollection as content. :) On 10-12-13 15:30, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I really like Ben's idea of programmatically reading the XML schema and generating the XML structure based on that rather than hard-coding each metadata schema. I've hit a snag. I'm using the MODS 3.5 schema as a starting point. http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-5.xsd By convention, it seems that a properly formed MODS file starts with a modsCollection element that wraps the whole file and then an individual mods element for each record. However, when you look at the schema file, there doesn't seem to be anything that specifies that structure. Every element, including the individual metadata fields and subfields, are globally defined top-level elements. As a result, I have no idea how I could tell my program which element to use as my document root without hard-coding that information for each schema. I couldn't even do something as simple as saying that the first defined element should be the document root because, in the case of MODS, the mods tag is defined before modsCollection, whereas modsCollection is actually the root element. Any suggestions? Josh Welker
[CODE4LIB] Metadata generator (was: Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing?)
I really like Ben's idea of programmatically reading the XML schema and generating the XML structure based on that rather than hard-coding each metadata schema. I've hit a snag. I'm using the MODS 3.5 schema as a starting point. http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-5.xsd By convention, it seems that a properly formed MODS file starts with a modsCollection element that wraps the whole file and then an individual mods element for each record. However, when you look at the schema file, there doesn't seem to be anything that specifies that structure. Every element, including the individual metadata fields and subfields, are globally defined top-level elements. As a result, I have no idea how I could tell my program which element to use as my document root without hard-coding that information for each schema. I couldn't even do something as simple as saying that the first defined element should be the document root because, in the case of MODS, the mods tag is defined before modsCollection, whereas modsCollection is actually the root element. Any suggestions? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ben Companjen Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 10:52 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? Cool! My first thought on this topic was: give the program an XML schema, and generate possible documents with the correct datatypes etc. (Something like that must exist somewhere, right?) Does it happen to work anything like that, or is it hardcoded to generate these specific elements? Ben On 09-12-13 17:27, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Challenge accepted. http://library.ucmo.edu/dev/metadata-generator.php Obviously in the prototype phase, but it works. Only MODS is available for now, and you can only select top-level elements (all child elements of the top-level selections will be auto-generated). I will try to expand it to more than just MODS. Admittedly, I know very little about METS, so I will need some assistance if I am going to make one of those. I'll eventually host this somewhere else once it's done, so don't bookmark it. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin S. Clarke Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 12:26 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? When I first read this, I was imagining not having to give it your metadata but native support for most of our commonly used metadata records... so the interface is: Give me 100 MODS records and it spits that out... You could get fancy and say, Give me X number of METS records that wrap TIFFs and JPGs and that uses MODS, etc. That's not as trivial as hooking into an lorem ipsum machine, but it'd be pretty cool, imho. Kevin On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Pottinger, Hardy J. pottinge...@missouri.edu wrote: Hi, I asked this on Google Plus earlier today, but I figured I'd better take this question here: my brain is trying to tell me that there's a service or app that makes fake metadata, kind of like Lorem Ipsum but you feed it your fields and it gives you nonsense metadata back. But, it looks right enough for testing. Yesterday, I had to make up about 50 rows of fake metadata to test some code that handles paging in a UI, and I had to make it all up by hand. This hurts my soul. Someone please tell me such a service exists, and link me to it, so I never have to do this again. Or else, I may just make such a service, to save us all. But I don't want to go coding some new service if it already exists, because that sort of thing is for chumps. -- HARDY POTTINGER pottinge...@umsystem.edu University of Missouri Library Systems http://lso.umsystem.edu/~pottingerhj/ https://MOspace.umsystem.edu/ Making things that are beautiful is real fun. --Lou Reed
Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing?
Challenge accepted. http://library.ucmo.edu/dev/metadata-generator.php Obviously in the prototype phase, but it works. Only MODS is available for now, and you can only select top-level elements (all child elements of the top-level selections will be auto-generated). I will try to expand it to more than just MODS. Admittedly, I know very little about METS, so I will need some assistance if I am going to make one of those. I'll eventually host this somewhere else once it's done, so don't bookmark it. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin S. Clarke Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 12:26 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? When I first read this, I was imagining not having to give it your metadata but native support for most of our commonly used metadata records... so the interface is: Give me 100 MODS records and it spits that out... You could get fancy and say, Give me X number of METS records that wrap TIFFs and JPGs and that uses MODS, etc. That's not as trivial as hooking into an lorem ipsum machine, but it'd be pretty cool, imho. Kevin On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Pottinger, Hardy J. pottinge...@missouri.edu wrote: Hi, I asked this on Google Plus earlier today, but I figured I'd better take this question here: my brain is trying to tell me that there's a service or app that makes fake metadata, kind of like Lorem Ipsum but you feed it your fields and it gives you nonsense metadata back. But, it looks right enough for testing. Yesterday, I had to make up about 50 rows of fake metadata to test some code that handles paging in a UI, and I had to make it all up by hand. This hurts my soul. Someone please tell me such a service exists, and link me to it, so I never have to do this again. Or else, I may just make such a service, to save us all. But I don't want to go coding some new service if it already exists, because that sort of thing is for chumps. -- HARDY POTTINGER pottinge...@umsystem.edu University of Missouri Library Systems http://lso.umsystem.edu/~pottingerhj/ https://MOspace.umsystem.edu/ Making things that are beautiful is real fun. --Lou Reed
Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing?
Sure. It's not a fancy reusable class or anything though--just a simple PHP script. I will try to put it up sometime today or tomorrow and will share a link. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin S. Clarke Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 10:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? Nice! Are you going to put the code on GitHub (or some such place)? I'd be interested in tracking... Kevin On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Challenge accepted. http://library.ucmo.edu/dev/metadata-generator.php Obviously in the prototype phase, but it works. Only MODS is available for now, and you can only select top-level elements (all child elements of the top-level selections will be auto-generated). I will try to expand it to more than just MODS. Admittedly, I know very little about METS, so I will need some assistance if I am going to make one of those. I'll eventually host this somewhere else once it's done, so don't bookmark it. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin S. Clarke Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 12:26 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? When I first read this, I was imagining not having to give it your metadata but native support for most of our commonly used metadata records... so the interface is: Give me 100 MODS records and it spits that out... You could get fancy and say, Give me X number of METS records that wrap TIFFs and JPGs and that uses MODS, etc. That's not as trivial as hooking into an lorem ipsum machine, but it'd be pretty cool, imho. Kevin On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Pottinger, Hardy J. pottinge...@missouri.edu wrote: Hi, I asked this on Google Plus earlier today, but I figured I'd better take this question here: my brain is trying to tell me that there's a service or app that makes fake metadata, kind of like Lorem Ipsum but you feed it your fields and it gives you nonsense metadata back. But, it looks right enough for testing. Yesterday, I had to make up about 50 rows of fake metadata to test some code that handles paging in a UI, and I had to make it all up by hand. This hurts my soul. Someone please tell me such a service exists, and link me to it, so I never have to do this again. Or else, I may just make such a service, to save us all. But I don't want to go coding some new service if it already exists, because that sort of thing is for chumps. -- HARDY POTTINGER pottinge...@umsystem.edu University of Missouri Library Systems http://lso.umsystem.edu/~pottingerhj/ https://MOspace.umsystem.edu/ Making things that are beautiful is real fun. --Lou Reed
Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing?
It's hard-coded to generate the specific elements. But your way sounds a lot cleaner, so I might try to do that instead :) It will be more difficult initially but much easier once I start implementing other metadata formats. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ben Companjen Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 10:52 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? Cool! My first thought on this topic was: give the program an XML schema, and generate possible documents with the correct datatypes etc. (Something like that must exist somewhere, right?) Does it happen to work anything like that, or is it hardcoded to generate these specific elements? Ben On 09-12-13 17:27, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Challenge accepted. http://library.ucmo.edu/dev/metadata-generator.php Obviously in the prototype phase, but it works. Only MODS is available for now, and you can only select top-level elements (all child elements of the top-level selections will be auto-generated). I will try to expand it to more than just MODS. Admittedly, I know very little about METS, so I will need some assistance if I am going to make one of those. I'll eventually host this somewhere else once it's done, so don't bookmark it. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin S. Clarke Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 12:26 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? When I first read this, I was imagining not having to give it your metadata but native support for most of our commonly used metadata records... so the interface is: Give me 100 MODS records and it spits that out... You could get fancy and say, Give me X number of METS records that wrap TIFFs and JPGs and that uses MODS, etc. That's not as trivial as hooking into an lorem ipsum machine, but it'd be pretty cool, imho. Kevin On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Pottinger, Hardy J. pottinge...@missouri.edu wrote: Hi, I asked this on Google Plus earlier today, but I figured I'd better take this question here: my brain is trying to tell me that there's a service or app that makes fake metadata, kind of like Lorem Ipsum but you feed it your fields and it gives you nonsense metadata back. But, it looks right enough for testing. Yesterday, I had to make up about 50 rows of fake metadata to test some code that handles paging in a UI, and I had to make it all up by hand. This hurts my soul. Someone please tell me such a service exists, and link me to it, so I never have to do this again. Or else, I may just make such a service, to save us all. But I don't want to go coding some new service if it already exists, because that sort of thing is for chumps. -- HARDY POTTINGER pottinge...@umsystem.edu University of Missouri Library Systems http://lso.umsystem.edu/~pottingerhj/ https://MOspace.umsystem.edu/ Making things that are beautiful is real fun. --Lou Reed
Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing?
I checked out the Eclipse option and was not able to get much use out of it. Maybe someone else will have better luck? It doesn't seem to align very well with a library use case. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ben Companjen Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 11:14 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? Hi Josh, Before you start coding: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17106/how-to-generate-sample-xml-documen ts-from-their-dtd-or-xsd suggests that Eclipse can generate XML from an DTD or XSD file. First try with the EAC XSD shows I need to try other options, but it's promising. (It's still an interesting problem to try to tackle yourself, of course.) Ben On 09-12-13 17:59, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: It's hard-coded to generate the specific elements. But your way sounds a lot cleaner, so I might try to do that instead :) It will be more difficult initially but much easier once I start implementing other metadata formats. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ben Companjen Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 10:52 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? Cool! My first thought on this topic was: give the program an XML schema, and generate possible documents with the correct datatypes etc. (Something like that must exist somewhere, right?) Does it happen to work anything like that, or is it hardcoded to generate these specific elements? Ben On 09-12-13 17:27, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Challenge accepted. http://library.ucmo.edu/dev/metadata-generator.php Obviously in the prototype phase, but it works. Only MODS is available for now, and you can only select top-level elements (all child elements of the top-level selections will be auto-generated). I will try to expand it to more than just MODS. Admittedly, I know very little about METS, so I will need some assistance if I am going to make one of those. I'll eventually host this somewhere else once it's done, so don't bookmark it. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin S. Clarke Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 12:26 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Lorem Ipsum metadata? Is there such a thing? When I first read this, I was imagining not having to give it your metadata but native support for most of our commonly used metadata records... so the interface is: Give me 100 MODS records and it spits that out... You could get fancy and say, Give me X number of METS records that wrap TIFFs and JPGs and that uses MODS, etc. That's not as trivial as hooking into an lorem ipsum machine, but it'd be pretty cool, imho. Kevin On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Pottinger, Hardy J. pottinge...@missouri.edu wrote: Hi, I asked this on Google Plus earlier today, but I figured I'd better take this question here: my brain is trying to tell me that there's a service or app that makes fake metadata, kind of like Lorem Ipsum but you feed it your fields and it gives you nonsense metadata back. But, it looks right enough for testing. Yesterday, I had to make up about 50 rows of fake metadata to test some code that handles paging in a UI, and I had to make it all up by hand. This hurts my soul. Someone please tell me such a service exists, and link me to it, so I never have to do this again. Or else, I may just make such a service, to save us all. But I don't want to go coding some new service if it already exists, because that sort of thing is for chumps. -- HARDY POTTINGER pottinge...@umsystem.edu University of Missouri Library Systems http://lso.umsystem.edu/~pottingerhj/ https://MOspace.umsystem.edu/ Making things that are beautiful is real fun. --Lou Reed
Re: [CODE4LIB] problem in old etd xml files
Evil ampersands! They have caused me hours of headaches in past XML projects... Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jason Bengtson Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 4:35 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] problem in old etd xml files What's killing you is the ampersands. When these were encoded they contained characters that hadn't been properly encoded as XML (mainly special linguistic characters and non-breaking spaces). Definitely replace your :stylesheet with -stylesheet, but then do a find and replace on all of your ampersands. It's the number one giant killer with modern XML parsers. I downloaded your file, switched in the hyphen and ditched all the ampersands and the solution tested good for me in Chrome and Firefox. Best regards, Jason Bengtson, MLIS, MA Head of Library Computing and Information Systems Assistant Professor, Graduate College Department of Health Sciences Library and Information Management University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center 405-271-2285, opt. 5 405-271-3297 (fax) jason-bengt...@ouhsc.edu http://library.ouhsc.edu www.jasonbengtson.com NOTICE: This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify us by replying to the original message at the listed email address. Thank You. On Dec 9, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Robertson, Wendy C wendy-robert...@uiowa.edu wrote: Thanks. I'll see if this helps. I'm sure IE was used to view the files 4.5 years ago. I don't think I looked at them, but we had super employees (recent grads from library school) that worked with the files and I trust that they would have noticed problems. Fortunately we only have 7 of these to try to fix. Wendy -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jon Gorman Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 3:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] problem in old etd xml files A lot of modern systems won't load entities (or will limit it somehow) because of the denial of service attack that is possible. Look for XML Entity Reference Denial of Service. I can't remember if Public declarations are treated any differently than System ones. (I would have suspected it to trust SYSTEM ones more, but they'd still be exploitable by the same bug). (There's also a fair number of other errors, I'm somewhat skeptical that the example worked on many browsers even then. It's possible IE was flexible enough it would have worked). One thing you might want to do is is take out the entities. I can't remember why I had to do this, but xmllint seemed to do the trick. ( I found a snippet at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/614067/how-to-resolve-all-entity-re ferences-in-xml-and-create-a-new-xml-in-c, but it' smissing the necessary --loaddtd) xmllint --loaddtd --noent --dropdtd FRONT.xml FRONT_nodtdent.xml I mean, you don't need the dtd for validation, particularly since I suspect given the errors it may not validate anyhow. It might make the files a little harder to read when reading the raw source, but I suspect that's not typically a problem. Jon Gorman University of Illinois On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Robertson, Wendy C wendy-robert...@uiowa.edu wrote: Back in 1999-2002 a handful of our theses were submitted as a collection of xml files. We posted the files in our repository several years ago (we posted a zipped folder with all the files). At that time, if you opened front.xml you would be able to access the thesis. We have not touched the files in the close to 5 years since we posted them, but the files no longer open correctly. One of the problem theses is http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/189/. Front.xml begins ?xml version=1.0 encoding=UTF-8? ?xml:stylesheet type=text/css href=UIowa2K1.css ? !DOCTYPE thesis SYSTEM UIowa2K.dtd I have tried the following changes but they do not help 1) Adding standalone=no? to the xml declaration -- ?xml version=1.0 encoding=UTF-8 standalone=no? 2) Changing the case of UIowa2K1.css and UIowa2K.dtd to match the files (which are in all caps) 3) Changing xml:stylesheet to xml-stylesheet Chrome shows errors that entities are not defined, but they are defined in the dtd. I would appreciate any assistance in making these documents available again. Thanks! Wendy Robertson Digital Scholarship Librarian * The University of Iowa Libraries 1015 Main Library * Iowa City, Iowa 52242
Re: [CODE4LIB] book cover api
Google Books API returns a JSON object that contains links to three or four different image sizes. Also, regarding CSS, browsers seem to scale the height down proportionally when you use CSS to modify the width. As a side note about Google Books, the cover images seem to only be available via HTTP, while organizational policy at many institutions requires HTTPS. This causes issues in newer browsers that don't allow HTTP content on an HTTPS site. Does anyone know of a workaround other than saving all the images server-side? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Amy Drayer Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 12:02 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] book cover api Dear Kelly et al: I agree to a certain degree with Jonathan that you can use CSS to resize the images if alternate sizes are not available. However, I would not recommend changing the ratio or increasing the size of the original image. With Retina displays (Apple), in order to keep any kind of non-pixelated cover art, you need an original graphic nearly twice the size you plan to display (depending on image quality), and then you could use CSS to scale it down correctly (that's one method and probably the easiest with the images coming from another source). Syndetics and Content Cafe both offer three sizes of covers, but I am unfamiliar with APIs that offer size options. GoodReads seems like it might, but I haven't tried it. In peace, Amy M. Drayer Senior IT Specialist In peace, Amy M. Drayer, MLIS Senior IT Specialist, Web Developer amost...@gmail.com http://www.puzumaki.com On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Galen Charlton g...@esilibrary.com wrote: Hi, On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 9:39 AM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote: I don't know of any free book cover api that resizes images for you to your specifications, they all only offer images at certain sizes. I don't know about the commercial services like syndectics etc. As a data point, the last time I checked, Syndetics offers a choice of small, medium, or large but doesn't offer on-the-fly scaling to user-supplied dimensions. 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] Interested in enhancing call-number browse in Millennium catalog
You could do all this with Javascript and not have to worry about mucking
around with wwwoptions or any of that messy stuff. Just create a static
JSON or XML file in the webpac directory containing a list of all the
classification names and their associated call number ranges (as detailed
or as general as you want it to be). Write some Javascript code that looks
at each call number on a page, matches it to a LC classification name
based on your definitions file, and then append that name next to the call
number (or wherever you might want it). If you have impure call numbers,
such as prepending REF to reference titles, you can use regular
expressions or just basic string matching to remove those from the
beginning of the call numbers.
But as Kyle mentioned, this data might not be especially helpful to users.
A more robust option would be to connect to WorldCat API or a similar
service to fetch LC Subject Headings for each title and display that
rather than the classification heading.
Maybe one day webpacs will have a nice templating system where you can
just use tags like {callnumber} or {marc650}.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Kyle Banerjee
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 1:10 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Interested in enhancing call-number browse in
Millennium catalog
This is going to be tricky. AFAIK, you can't modify the call number result
table on the fly without proxying since Mil doesn't let you get at the
routine that renders the call numbers.
If proxying is not what you had in mind and rendering the call number
meanings above the table is acceptable, I suppose you could load a
javascript routine in the footer that reads what's been loaded and then
puts a call number explanation somewhere near the top. One trick you could
use if you wanted it lower is to redefine an image in WWWOPTIONS that
contains embedded HTML that renders your value dynamically. As far as I
remember, you can break out of image definitions simply by adding a double
quote, closing the tag, and inserting whatever script you want, e.g.:
BUT_WHATEVER=/screens/image.gif alt=whatever border=0
//ascript [load or embed whatever you like].../scriptimg
src=invisible_spacer.gif
(note lack of closing quote -- don't forget you broke out of an image tag)
As far as a method for getting the data goes, your best option would be to
download the linked data from id.loc.gov and extract the ranges which
could be processed as strings matched by regex rather than linked data.
All processing could be offloaded on the client.
But this is horribly hacky and a lot of work for relatively little gain.
When you get right down to it, the only purpose of a call number is to
physically collocate materials on the shelf and it's not really that
useful for search which is why practically no one aside from a few
cataloging nerds do call number searches. Plus, anyone geeky enough to do
a call number search actually must know what call number range is relevant
to their needs. Keep in mind that in many cases, no decent call number
exists for a concept and the best one available really is quite crummy so
prominently displaying that won't necessarily be a good thing.
kyle
On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Harper, Cynthia char...@vts.edu wrote:
I'm thinking of trying to enhance the call-number browse pages on a
Millennium catalog with meanings of the classification ranges taken
from the LoC Classification database.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/classification.html
a typical call-number browse page might look like this:
http://librarycatalog.vts.edu/search~S1?/cBX100.7.B632+1999/cbx++100.7
+b632+1999/-3,-1,,E/browse
http://librarycatalog.vts.edu/search%7ES1?/cBX100.7.B632+1999/cbx++100
.7+b632+1999/-3,-1,,E/browse
I'd like to intersperse the call-number listing with call-number range
meanings like
BX100 - Christian denominations - Eastern churches
Has anyone tried this? Can you point me to the API documentation for
the LC Classification?
Cindy Harper
Re: [CODE4LIB] display book covers
I built something similar using Google Books. You'll definitely want to create a mechanism for caching the cover image URLs or else you are going to run into the API's daily limit (which is 1000 by default I think). An easy way to do it would be to store the URL and an identifier such as a bib record number or ISBN as a pair in a Solr index or SQL database. When the page loads, you can have either the client side or the server side fetch the image URL based on the current identifier number and display it on the page. I built a new books display using Google Books that shows an automatically changing feed of recently added books. I ended up creating a script that runs each day, and rather than indexing the image URLs it generates a static HTML page for the display, which contains all the complex formatting so that it doesn't have to happen with each page load. You can see it here: https://library.sbuniv.edu/new-books/ Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Adam Wead Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2013 9:14 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] display book covers Hi all, Anyone have some good resources about tools for gathering book cover images? I'm building that into our next catalog update, which uses Blacklight, but I'm not necessarily looking for Rails-only approaches. My questions are more general: What sources are out there? (ex. Google Books, amazon) Making it work? I'm trying out Google Books at the moment, just making a call to their API. This can be asynchronously and loaded after the rest of the page, or cached, perhaps even store the url in solr or a database table? Tools? I am trying out a Google Books gem[1], which is just a wrapper for the api. Other thoughts? Thanks in advance, .adam __ Adam Wead Systems and Digital Collections Librarian Library + Archives Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum 216.515.1960 aw...@rockhall.org [1] https://github.com/zeantsoi/GoogleBooks This communication is a confidential and proprietary business communication. It is intended solely for the use of the designated recipient(s). If this communication is received in error, please contact the sender and delete this communication.
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question for Institutional Repository Folks
I've had success in the past using the Foxit suite to bypass Adobe's proprietary PDF restrictions. Or in many cases you can just open the PDF file in a non-Adobe reader (such as Foxit) and use a print-to-pdf tool like PDFCreator to regenerate a new PDF file from the same content, and IIRC it is devoid of a password. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilhelmina Randtke Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 1:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question for Institutional Repository Folks When I check Adobe's site, I see that All Adobe products enforce the restrictions set by the permissions password. However, if third-party products do not support these settings, document recipients are able to bypass some or all of the restrictions you set. http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/X/pro/using/WSD012A4E1-51D1-4bcd-BA9F- EF03C6F20BB6.html I would be interested to know whether anyone has a good alternative PDF editor to Acrobat Professional. My hunch is that an app for editing PDFs is most likely to have a high level of functionality, because someone handling PDFs on a desktop will just get Acrobat Professional. -Wilhelmina Randtke On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Matthew Sherman matt.r.sher...@gmail.comwrote: Hello Code4libbers, I had a question for for others who work with institutional repositories. I have a file given by the a professor that I have permission to post if I add a note to the PDF, but the file is password locked. Has anyone else run into this problem before? Can anyone give me some advice in how I can edit this to add the required note to the top of the PDF? Any advice is welcome. Matt Sherman
Re: [CODE4LIB] local APIs atop III's Sierra DB
Thought I'd share this work put together by the folks in charge of our consortium: https://github.com/mcoia/sierra_marc_tools It's a Perl implementation. I haven't used it myself, but I know it can generate MARC records. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Rob Casson Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 1:05 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] local APIs atop III's Sierra DB i've done some very ugly, preliminary hacking at getting MARC records out: https://gist.github.com/roblivian/7012077 generally works, but still need to account for more invalid MARC tags, on-the-fly records (non-MARC records, i.e. reserve items, ordered bibs, etc) On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Thomale, Jason jason.thom...@unt.eduwrote: Everyone: You guys are fantastic. Thanks to those who have responded thus far for being so willing to share. I will be contacting y'all off-list, if you don't mind. :-) Just wanted to tag onto Dave's response here... I've written a decent amount of code against Sierra, but I don't know if any of it amounts to an API. ... * I've also started creating little web services with mod_perl for use in a web-application I'm working on. Examples: a script that spits back item information in JSON when given an item barcode, a script that spits back a JSON list of all attached items when given a bib record number. Again these are mostly special purpose, but I have a notion to find ways to generalize them. Yes this is basically where I am right now and where this is coming from. I've thrown together sort of a prototype app for helping us with some inventory stuff we're doing, which consists of a really quick-and-dirty web service that serves up JSON and a bootstrap/jQuery front-end. For what it is--which at this point isn't much more than a proof-of-concept--it works. But. In the coming year there are a lot of similar things we plan to do, and building out a RESTful API to serve up catalog data in particular ways seems like a logical step right now. Julia alluded to some things you don't want to do when you're querying the database, which is something I'm interested in talking about as well. If my experiences are anything like yours, Julia, I'm finding things just aren't indexed in ways that make it optimal for our use cases. Namely, querying on most variable field data is out of the question if you don't want multi-minute response times. It seems the only way to get this to work well will be to dump portions of the database out to an external document store / indexer. I'm primarily looking at serving up JSON at this point, so probably something like Solr or Elasticsearch. Learning from your experiences building a Sierra driver for VuFind would be quite helpful and interesting. Francis, I'll be interested to see whether you're thinking along similar lines or if you're going a totally different direction... Sadly, I'm a team of one here and I'm a bit shy about the state my code is currently in, so I haven't published it anywhere. ( Also the way I use git locally is probably wrong, not to mention there are probably passwords in old commits. ) No worries! I completely understand, and I share your shyness. Believe me, I'm the last person that should judge. Nonetheless, I'd definitely be interested in collaborating on anything that might benefit all Sierra users. Cool. I really appreciate it. I guess--at this point I'm still looking at solving local needs first, but making it easy enough to extend to new use cases. Or...at the very least doing something that will provide for a good learning experience. :-) I don't know, it's still ideas. Thanks, Jason
[CODE4LIB] Ruby on Windows
I am attempting to write my first small Ruby app, but I am running into major problems just getting off the ground developing in Windows. I downloaded the most recent Ruby 2.0 package from RubyInstaller. Then I installed DevKit so I could use gems. After some fiddling, I was finally able to install some gems. Some. For any given gem I try to install, there’s about a 25% chance that I get this byzantine error: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. […a whole bunch of gibberish about C headers and so forth…] In particular, I am trying to install the Blather XMPP client. I am tempted to just give up and develop on Linux, but I am wanting to deploy this script to Windows machines and figure I might run into problems if I don’t develop in Windows. I have Googled the heck out of this issue and can’t find anything that is similar to my case (the solutions on the RubyInstaller Github wiki did not work). Do any of you Ruby people know why I might be having this error so frequently in my Windows environment? Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Ruby on Windows
I'm using Windows 7 x64 SP1. I am using the most recent RubyInstaller (2.0.0-p247 x64) and DevKit (DevKit-mingw64-64-4.7.2-2013022-1432-sfx). That's disappointing to hear that most folks use Ruby exclusively in *nix environments. That really limits its utility for me. I am trying Ruby because dealing with HTTP in Java is a huge pain, and I was having difficulties setting up a Python environment in Windows, too (go figure). Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of David Mayo Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2013 3:44 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Ruby on Windows DevKit is a MingW/MSYS wrapper for Windows Ruby development. It might not be finding it, but he does have a C dev environment. I know you cut them out earlier, but would you mind sending some of the C Header Blather our way? It's probably got some clues as to what's going on. Also - which versions of Windows, RubyInstaller, and DevKit are you using? On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 4:38 PM, Ross Singer rossfsin...@gmail.com wrote: It's probably also possible to get these working within Cygwin. Assuming the libraries you need to compile against are available in Cygwin, of course. -Ross. On Oct 1, 2013, at 4:28 PM, Michael J. Giarlo leftw...@alumni.rutgers.edu wrote: Our Windows-based devs all do their Ruby work on Ubuntu and Fedora VMs, FWIW. -Mike On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Justin Coyne jus...@curationexperts.com wrote: If you see something about C-extensions, it's because the library is not written in pure Ruby, it is a wrapper around a library written in C. Your system may not have the C compiler or some of the libraries needed to compile or link the extension. Justin Coyne On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I am attempting to write my first small Ruby app, but I am running into major problems just getting off the ground developing in Windows. I downloaded the most recent Ruby 2.0 package from RubyInstaller. Then I installed DevKit so I could use gems. After some fiddling, I was finally able to install some gems. Some. For any given gem I try to install, there's about a 25% chance that I get this byzantine error: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. [.a whole bunch of gibberish about C headers and so forth.] In particular, I am trying to install the Blather XMPP client. I am tempted to just give up and develop on Linux, but I am wanting to deploy this script to Windows machines and figure I might run into problems if I don't develop in Windows. I have Googled the heck out of this issue and can't find anything that is similar to my case (the solutions on the RubyInstaller Github wiki did not work). Do any of you Ruby people know why I might be having this error so frequently in my Windows environment? Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Desk Statistics Software Question
I strongly recommend HighCharts. It's free and entirely in Javascript, and the charts is creates are rendered as SVG and can be manipulated in real-time in the browser. I tried the Google Chart API but couldn't make heads or tails of it. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kaile Zhu Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 2:33 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Desk Statistics Software Question I like your line graph. Mine is using simple css to draw the bar. I am working on using google chart api to draw combo graph (bar + line). Once I finish it, it should look much nicer. .NET has its own chart controls, but it's server side and clumsy. - Kelly Zhu -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Stephen Zweibel Sent: 2013年8月22日 14:14 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Desk Statistics Software Question I did the same, but with Python! Available here: https://github.com/szweibel/Augur Allows for customization of what you're tracking. Also open-source. Photos attached. Stephen Zweibel Visiting Reference Librarian Health Professions Library Hunter College szwei...@hunter.cuny.edu On 8/22/13 3:00 PM, Kaile Zhu kz...@uco.edu wrote: Not sure if this is what you want. I developed it for my library, using .NET environment. Take a look at the attached pictures. Let me know if you, or anybody else wants it, or want me to show more screen shots. Kelly Zhu Web Services Librarian 405-974-5957 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brian McBride Sent: 2013年8月22日 11:10 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Desk Statistics Software Question Code4Lib, I am curious what other institutions are using for tracking desk stats? We are evaluating our current solution and wanted to see what what other solutions are available either commercial or open source. Thanks, Brian Brian McBride Head of Application Development J. Willard Marriott Library O: 801.585.7613 F: 801.585.5549 brian.mcbr...@utah.edumailto:brian.mcbr...@utah.edu **Bronze+Blue=Green** The University of Central Oklahoma is Bronze, Blue, and Green! Please print this e-mail only if absolutely necessary! **CONFIDENTIALITY** This e-mail (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information. Any unauthorized disclosure or use of this information is prohibited. **Bronze+Blue=Green** The University of Central Oklahoma is Bronze, Blue, and Green! Please print this e-mail only if absolutely necessary! **CONFIDENTIALITY** This e-mail (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information. Any unauthorized disclosure or use of this information is prohibited.
[CODE4LIB] Separate library CMS systems vs Campus-wide CMS systems (was [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it)
Does anyone have any suggestions as to where the library should or should not compromise when it comes to using an institutional CMS rather than a custom library one? We are going through this process right now. Our web pages are currently all in static HTML and LibGuides. I am wanting to move to Drupal, and campus IT wants us to move to their Adobe Contribute platform. AFAIK, Contribute does not allow for any server-side scripting and does not have any sort of plugin system, and I am very concerned that Contribute would harm the library's ability to effectively integrate its online resources into a single web portal (server-side caching, indexes, scheduled tasks, etc). I know the answer to this question is it depends, but I am hoping others can share the fruits of their experience. Thoughts? Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jimmy Ghaphery Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 5:49 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it I have followed this thread with great interest. In 2011 Erin White and I researched many of the issues the group has been hitting on, demonstrating the popularity of LibGuides in ARL libraries, the locus of control outside of systems' departments, and the state of content policies.[1] Our most challenging statement in the article to the library tech community (which was watered down a bit in the peer review process) was The popularity of LibGuides, at its heart a specialized content management system, also calls into question the vitality and/or adaptability of local content management system implementations in libraries. One of the biggest challenges I see toward creating a non-commercial alternative is that the library code community is so dispersed in the various institutions that it makes it difficult to get away from the download tar.gz model. Are our institutions ready to collaborate across themselves such that there could be a shared SaaS model (of anything really) that libraries could subscribe/contribute to? The barriers here certainly aren't technological, but more along the lines of policy, governance, etc. As for Research Guides in general, I see a very clear divide in the public/tech communities not only on platform but more philosophical. From the tech side once it is all boiled down, heck why do you even need a third party system; catalog the databases with some type of local genres and push out an api/xml feeds to various disciplines. From the public side there is a long lineage of individually curated guides that goes to the core of value of professionally knowing one's community and serving it. [1] https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/1830 best, Jimmy On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Galen Charlton g...@esilibrary.com wrote: Hi, On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 6:53 AM, Wilhelmina Randtke rand...@gmail.com wrote: There's not a lock-in issue with LibGuides, because it's used to host pathfinders. Those are supposed to be periodically revisited. One of the big problems is that librarians will start a guide and never finish, or make one then never maintain it. Periodically deleting everything is a good thing for pathfinders and subject guides, and people should do it anyway. No one's talking about tools for digital archives, which have lock in issues and are way more expensive. Lock-in doesn't have to be absolute to be effective, it just has to has raise the bar sufficiently high to make users think twice about migrating away. This applies even if the data to be moved is transitory and constantly changing. For example, if a library has been diligently updating their pathfinders, but wants to switch platforms, if there were no way to export them to load into the successor system, the effort of redoing them or doing a lot of copy-and-pasting could be prohibitive. As a general statement -- and I know that this battle has been bitterly fought in the ILS space -- I believe that *all* library software services, whether based on F/LOSS software or proprietary software, should provide a way for the library to obtain a full dump of their data, in an accessible format, at no additional charge. I see that LibGuides advertises the ability to make local backups of individual pages and also provides (via a paid add-on module) an XML export function. I don't know if SpringShare will also provide free one-time exports on request, but I would hope they do. Of course, even if one has the data in hand, data migrations can still take a lot of time, effort, and expertise. 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
[CODE4LIB] Subject guide policies (was [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it)
One of the recurring themes in the LibGuides thread was that libraries need better policies regarding content and style management in guides. I wholeheartedly agree here, but my attempts to do so in the past were shot down in favor of giving all librarians maximum freedom. I have two questions: 1) What kind of policies do you all have in place for subject guide style and content management? 2) How do you get librarians to buy in to the policies, and how are they enforced? Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jimmy Ghaphery Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 5:49 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it I have followed this thread with great interest. In 2011 Erin White and I researched many of the issues the group has been hitting on, demonstrating the popularity of LibGuides in ARL libraries, the locus of control outside of systems' departments, and the state of content policies.[1] Our most challenging statement in the article to the library tech community (which was watered down a bit in the peer review process) was The popularity of LibGuides, at its heart a specialized content management system, also calls into question the vitality and/or adaptability of local content management system implementations in libraries. One of the biggest challenges I see toward creating a non-commercial alternative is that the library code community is so dispersed in the various institutions that it makes it difficult to get away from the download tar.gz model. Are our institutions ready to collaborate across themselves such that there could be a shared SaaS model (of anything really) that libraries could subscribe/contribute to? The barriers here certainly aren't technological, but more along the lines of policy, governance, etc. As for Research Guides in general, I see a very clear divide in the public/tech communities not only on platform but more philosophical. From the tech side once it is all boiled down, heck why do you even need a third party system; catalog the databases with some type of local genres and push out an api/xml feeds to various disciplines. From the public side there is a long lineage of individually curated guides that goes to the core of value of professionally knowing one's community and serving it. [1] https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/1830 best, Jimmy On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Galen Charlton g...@esilibrary.com wrote: Hi, On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 6:53 AM, Wilhelmina Randtke rand...@gmail.com wrote: There's not a lock-in issue with LibGuides, because it's used to host pathfinders. Those are supposed to be periodically revisited. One of the big problems is that librarians will start a guide and never finish, or make one then never maintain it. Periodically deleting everything is a good thing for pathfinders and subject guides, and people should do it anyway. No one's talking about tools for digital archives, which have lock in issues and are way more expensive. Lock-in doesn't have to be absolute to be effective, it just has to has raise the bar sufficiently high to make users think twice about migrating away. This applies even if the data to be moved is transitory and constantly changing. For example, if a library has been diligently updating their pathfinders, but wants to switch platforms, if there were no way to export them to load into the successor system, the effort of redoing them or doing a lot of copy-and-pasting could be prohibitive. As a general statement -- and I know that this battle has been bitterly fought in the ILS space -- I believe that *all* library software services, whether based on F/LOSS software or proprietary software, should provide a way for the library to obtain a full dump of their data, in an accessible format, at no additional charge. I see that LibGuides advertises the ability to make local backups of individual pages and also provides (via a paid add-on module) an XML export function. I don't know if SpringShare will also provide free one-time exports on request, but I would hope they do. Of course, even if one has the data in hand, data migrations can still take a lot of time, effort, and expertise. 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 -- Jimmy Ghaphery Head, Digital Technologies VCU Libraries 804-827-3551
Re: [CODE4LIB] Separate library CMS systems vs Campus-wide CMS systems (was [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it)
Okay, thanks for the background on Contribute. I am new here and haven't really used it before. I only know what I gathered from the documentation online. If Contribute is most powerful in conjunction with Dreamweaver, that is another strike against it in my book. I have not had very good experiences with Dreamweaver from a code maintainability standpoint. Maybe the people whose code I was maintaining just did not use Dreamweaver to its fullest potential, but it has left a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless. No spaghetti code for me, thanks. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilhelmina Randtke Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 10:32 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Separate library CMS systems vs Campus-wide CMS systems (was [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it) Avoid Contribute, if possible. A Dreamweaver and Contribute framework makes for a very flexible website. But... the Contribute editor accounts have to be very locked down or else there will be some problems with the two programs playing together. In Contribute, it is possible to enable editing as text, which gives you all the power of fingers on keyboard coding. However, a site done in Dreamweaver with templates and other structural awesomeness pretty much rules out edit as text in Contribute. If you go in and edit as text with Contribute, it is very easy to accidentally disassociate a page from the Dreamweaver template. Then when there is an update to the template, you have problems. Most likely, your page will kick back to what it looked like the last time it was in compliance with the template. There may also be some problems editing pages that use spry widgets, so some of the awesome looking things that are easy in Dreamweaver are off the table in Contribute. The alternative to edit as text is to allow you to insert code snippets in Contribute, but then going in and editing them later is annoying. Like every CMS ever, Contribute will insert some white space or garbage at times. And with no way to edit code, you can't fix these issues. When you say there are no plugins or scripting for Contribute, that's not true of the program. That's how your campus has configured things. It's a political issue, not 100% tech. But they have very good technology reasons to lock down the Contribute accounts, from Dreamweaver and Contribute not working well together. A politically favorable main campus which wants to serve does best by not giving you enough rope to hang yourself, and no matter how techy you are, it's easy to do that in innately buggy Contribute. -Wilhelmina Randtke On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 8:21 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Does anyone have any suggestions as to where the library should or should not compromise when it comes to using an institutional CMS rather than a custom library one? We are going through this process right now. Our web pages are currently all in static HTML and LibGuides. I am wanting to move to Drupal, and campus IT wants us to move to their Adobe Contribute platform. AFAIK, Contribute does not allow for any server-side scripting and does not have any sort of plugin system, and I am very concerned that Contribute would harm the library's ability to effectively integrate its online resources into a single web portal (server-side caching, indexes, scheduled tasks, etc). I know the answer to this question is it depends, but I am hoping others can share the fruits of their experience. Thoughts? Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jimmy Ghaphery Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 5:49 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it I have followed this thread with great interest. In 2011 Erin White and I researched many of the issues the group has been hitting on, demonstrating the popularity of LibGuides in ARL libraries, the locus of control outside of systems' departments, and the state of content policies.[1] Our most challenging statement in the article to the library tech community (which was watered down a bit in the peer review process) was The popularity of LibGuides, at its heart a specialized content management system, also calls into question the vitality and/or adaptability of local content management system implementations in libraries. One of the biggest challenges I see toward creating a non-commercial alternative is that the library code community is so dispersed in the various institutions that it makes it difficult to get away from the download tar.gz model. Are our institutions ready to collaborate across themselves such that there could be a shared SaaS model (of anything really
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it
What I don't understand is that many large and mid-sized libraries also make very extensive use of LibGuides. These are libraries that usually have a few dozen librarians and twice as many staff. You'd think that with 90+% of library resources being in electronic format now that these libraries would have a whole team of people with very good IT skills for managing technology and servers and online resources, but most libraries are lucky to have even *one* of those people. I do definitely see the appeal of using LibGuides in an environment where campus IT has very strict policies, but that seems like taking the lesser of two evils. At least being locked into a campus IT system provides a consistent look and feel (if little else). Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ross Singer Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2013 9:00 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it I don't think the remedy to a lack of technology skills is to make librarians into shade tree sysadmins. *That's* the expense that gets swept under the rug in the open source argument. Most advocates have systems administrators and infrastructure to support implementing things themselves and grossly underestimate the cost when that environment doesn't exist. -Ross. On Sunday, August 11, 2013, Cornel Darden Jr. wrote: Hi, Lack of technology skills seems to be a recurring theme here. 21st century Librarians shouldn't lack any technology skills. Those that do need to get them or look for another career.; or they are just hurting the patrons and institutions they serve. Thanks, Cornel Darden Jr. MSLIS Librarian Kennedy-King College City Colleges of Chicago Work 773-602-5449 Cell 708-705-2945 On Aug 11, 2013, at 8:10 PM, stuart yeates stuart.yea...@vuw.ac.nzjavascript:; wrote: On 12/08/13 12:20, Andrew Darby wrote: I don't get this argument at all. Why is it counter productive to try to look at open source alternatives if the vendor's option is relatively cheap? Why wouldn't you investigate all options? If you have no in-house technical capability, the cost of looking at an open source alternative can easily outweigh the multi-year licensing fee. cheers stuart -- Stuart Yeates Library Technology Services http://www.victoria.ac.nz/library/
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it
I've found the LibraryH3lp folks to be quite fantastic compared to Springshare in terms of support and responsiveness, and there is starting to be a good bit of overlap between their services. I think Springshare now offers a chat module (which is inferior IMO), and LibraryH3lp also offers a free FAQ module that does the same thing as LibAnswers. Interesting that LibraryH3lp is now developing an alternative to LibGuides proper. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Terrell, Trey Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 11:04 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it Regarding Library a La Carte, active development has been taken over by the folks over at LibraryH3lp. You can read their blog post at http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2013/06/library-la-carte-resurrected-open. html. I'm not sure how much longer it'll be before it's a viable plug-in replacement again. Trey -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of davesgonechina Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 7:07 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides: I don't get it You guys are awesome, this is great stuff, really helpful. My impression of libguides has been fairly negative for many of the reasons mentioned, but Sean has a good point about content strategy and training, and Wilhemina has a good point about the costs of open source not always being appreciated. Has anyone tried the two platforms Andrew Darby mentioned, SubjectsPlus and Library a la Carte? That's the sort of thing I've been looking for but never found until now. Dave On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 9:57 PM, Sean Hannan shan...@jhu.edu wrote: Again, this not a technical issue. It's a content strategy issue. Believe me, I was where you were. I was using all kinds of javascript and CSS hacks to try to prevent people from getting creative with color. I was getting to the point of setting up Capybara tests to run against the guides to alert me to abusive uses of bold and italics. The folks creating guides are content people, not web people. Take the web out of it. Focus on the content. Pick a couple heuristics to educate them on (we picked 7 +/- 2, above the fold/below the fold, and F-shaped reading patterns). Above all, show them statistics. And not the built-in LibGuides stats, either. New vs. returning. Average time on page. Pageviews over the course of a year. Very, very, very quickly our librarians realized what content is important, what content is superfluous, and that the time the spend carefully manicuring and maintaining their guides would (and could) be better spent elsewhere. -Sean On 8/12/13 9:35 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I just have to say I have been thinking the exact same thing about LibGuides for the two years I've been using it. I feel vindicated knowing others feel the same way. At UCMO, we will be migrating to Drupal in the next several months, and I am hoping very much that I can convince people to use less LibGuides. LibGuides is great in its ease of use, but fails on just about every design principle I can think of. There have been several studies on tab blindness in LibGuides, and don't get me started on the sub-tab links that are hiding and require the user to mouse over a tab to even see what is there. I've tried telling people so many times to have just a few tabs and always to use a table of contents for the main page, but they rarely do. And it becomes just about impossible to have a consistent look and feel across your website when LibGuides allows guide creators to modify every element on the page as they see fit. People will do crazy things like putting page content in a sidebar element, something you'd never ever ever see on any website on the Internet. I tried to enforce uniform colors and column sizes across all the guides, but I was told to let it go because my coworkers wanted to be able to decide those things on a guide-by-guide basis. I've worked at two institutions that use LibGuides, and what inevitably happens is that librarians create one Uber Guide for entire subject areas (biology, religion, etc) and then create sub-pages for all the dozens of specific disciplines within those subject areas. And then, assuming the user somehow manages to find these pages, they are typically not much more than a list of links that could have easily been included on the main library website. Okay, sorry for the rant. It has been building up for several years and never had a chance to voice out. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri
[CODE4LIB] marc4j read example
Does anyone have a simple example of reading a MARC file using the Java
marc4j library? The documentation is rather lackluster (
http://marc4j.tigris.org/doc/) and I am unable to find anything helpful
Googling or searching discussion lists. I am wanting to do something like
this:
public class MARCParser(){
public ArrayListString getData(File file){
MarcReader reader = new MarcReader(file);
ArrayListString data = new ArrayList;
while(reader.next()){
data.add(reader.getField(“856”));
}
return data;
}
}
I figured this would be a simple enough task and have done something very
similar with a PHP MARC library, but I am stumped here.
Josh Welker
Information Technology Librarian
James C. Kirkpatrick Library
University of Central Missouri
Warrensburg, MO 64093
JCKL 2260
660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
Ah you got me. Shame on me for not checking the link first. I haven't had to dodge Rickrolls since 2010 so I am out of practice. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 3:21 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby It's extremely eerie how this thread has played out almost exactly like a similar one in 2010: http://bit.ly/4kb77v Creatures of habit, we are. On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 12:55 PM, Levy, Michael ml...@ushmm.org wrote: Has anyone tried coding using one of these? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3keLeMwfHY
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
I am already a big user of PHP for web apps, but PHP does not make a fantastic scripting language in my experience. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby No mention of PHP? Sent from my iPhone On Jul 30, 2013, at 9:14 AM, Kurt Nordstrom doseofvitam...@gmail.com wrote: Whoohoo, late to the party! I like Python because I learned it first, and I haven't had a need to explore Ruby yet. I did briefly foray into learning Ruby in order to try to learn Rails, and I actually found that my background in Python sort of gave me brain-jam for learning Ruby, because the languages were so close together, but just different in some ways. So my mind would be 'oh, so it's just insert Python idiom here but then, it's not. If I tackle Ruby again, I will definitely try to 'empty my cup' first. -K On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Marc Chantreux m...@unistra.fr wrote: hello, Sorry comming late with it but: On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:43:33AM -0500, Joshua Welker wrote: Not intending to start a language flame war/holy war here, but in the library coding community, is there a particular reason to use Ruby over Python or vice-versa? Is it the only choices you have? Because I'd personnally advice none of them I tested both of them before stucking to Perl just because * it is very pleasant when it come to explore and modify datastructures and strings (which library things are). * the ecosystem is briliant: perl comes with lot of libraries and tools with a quality i haven't found in other languages. Of course, perl is not perfect and i really would like to use a modern emerging compiled language like go, rust, haskell or even something on the jvm (like clojure or the emerging perl6) but all of them miss libraries. HTH regards -- Marc Chantreux Université de Strasbourg, Direction Informatique 14 Rue René Descartes, 67084 STRASBOURG CEDEX ☎: 03.68.85.57.40 http://unistra.fr Don't believe everything you read on the Internet -- Abraham Lincoln -- http://www.blar.net/kurt/blog/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
umad bro? ;) Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Rich Wenger Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 9:22 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby The proliferation of boutique languages is a cancer on our community. Each one is a YAP (Yet Another Priesthood), and little else. The world does not need five slightly varying syntaxes for a substring function. If I had switched languages every time the web community recommended it, I would have rewritten a mountain of apps at least twice in the past five years. What's next, a separate language to put periods at the end of sentences? Just my $.02. That is all. Rich Wenger E-Resource Systems Manager, MIT Libraries rwen...@mit.edu 617-253-0035 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 9:56 AM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby I am already a big user of PHP for web apps, but PHP does not make a fantastic scripting language in my experience. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby No mention of PHP? Sent from my iPhone On Jul 30, 2013, at 9:14 AM, Kurt Nordstrom doseofvitam...@gmail.com wrote: Whoohoo, late to the party! I like Python because I learned it first, and I haven't had a need to explore Ruby yet. I did briefly foray into learning Ruby in order to try to learn Rails, and I actually found that my background in Python sort of gave me brain-jam for learning Ruby, because the languages were so close together, but just different in some ways. So my mind would be 'oh, so it's just insert Python idiom here but then, it's not. If I tackle Ruby again, I will definitely try to 'empty my cup' first. -K On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Marc Chantreux m...@unistra.fr wrote: hello, Sorry comming late with it but: On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:43:33AM -0500, Joshua Welker wrote: Not intending to start a language flame war/holy war here, but in the library coding community, is there a particular reason to use Ruby over Python or vice-versa? Is it the only choices you have? Because I'd personnally advice none of them I tested both of them before stucking to Perl just because * it is very pleasant when it come to explore and modify datastructures and strings (which library things are). * the ecosystem is briliant: perl comes with lot of libraries and tools with a quality i haven't found in other languages. Of course, perl is not perfect and i really would like to use a modern emerging compiled language like go, rust, haskell or even something on the jvm (like clojure or the emerging perl6) but all of them miss libraries. HTH regards -- Marc Chantreux Université de Strasbourg, Direction Informatique 14 Rue René Descartes, 67084 STRASBOURG CEDEX ☎: 03.68.85.57.40 http://unistra.fr Don't believe everything you read on the Internet -- Abraham Lincoln -- http://www.blar.net/kurt/blog/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
I think I have the information I need at this point, so this would be a good time to let this thread die before it turns into what I tried to avoid in the first place. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matthew Sherman Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 10:25 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby Ok folks, we have veered into nonconstructive territory. How about we come back to the original question and help this person figure out what they need to about Ruby and Python so they can do well with what they want to work on. On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote: All languages other than assembly are boutique and must be eliminated like the cancer that they are. On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Ross Singer rossfsin...@gmail.com wrote: What would you consider a boutique language? What isn't? -Ross. On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Rich Wenger rwen...@mit.edu wrote: The proliferation of boutique languages is a cancer on our community. Each one is a YAP (Yet Another Priesthood), and little else. The world does not need five slightly varying syntaxes for a substring function. If I had switched languages every time the web community recommended it, I would have rewritten a mountain of apps at least twice in the past five years. What's next, a separate language to put periods at the end of sentences? Just my $.02. That is all. Rich Wenger E-Resource Systems Manager, MIT Libraries rwen...@mit.edu 617-253-0035 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Joshua Welker Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 9:56 AM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby I am already a big user of PHP for web apps, but PHP does not make a fantastic scripting language in my experience. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Riley Childs Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:18 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby No mention of PHP? Sent from my iPhone On Jul 30, 2013, at 9:14 AM, Kurt Nordstrom doseofvitam...@gmail.com wrote: Whoohoo, late to the party! I like Python because I learned it first, and I haven't had a need to explore Ruby yet. I did briefly foray into learning Ruby in order to try to learn Rails, and I actually found that my background in Python sort of gave me brain-jam for learning Ruby, because the languages were so close together, but just different in some ways. So my mind would be 'oh, so it's just insert Python idiom here but then, it's not. If I tackle Ruby again, I will definitely try to 'empty my cup' first. -K On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Marc Chantreux m...@unistra.fr wrote: hello, Sorry comming late with it but: On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:43:33AM -0500, Joshua Welker wrote: Not intending to start a language flame war/holy war here, but in the library coding community, is there a particular reason to use Ruby over Python or vice-versa? Is it the only choices you have? Because I'd personnally advice none of them I tested both of them before stucking to Perl just because * it is very pleasant when it come to explore and modify datastructures and strings (which library things are). * the ecosystem is briliant: perl comes with lot of libraries and tools with a quality i haven't found in other languages. Of course, perl is not perfect and i really would like to use a modern emerging compiled language like go, rust, haskell or even something on the jvm (like clojure or the emerging perl6) but all of them miss libraries. HTH regards -- Marc Chantreux Université de Strasbourg, Direction Informatique 14 Rue René Descartes, 67084 STRASBOURG CEDEX ☎: 03.68.85.57.40 http://unistra.fr Don't believe everything you read on the Internet -- Abraham Lincoln -- http://www.blar.net/kurt/blog/
[CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
Not intending to start a language flame war/holy war here, but in the library coding community, is there a particular reason to use Ruby over Python or vice-versa? I am personally comfortable with Python, but I have noticed that there is a big Ruby following in Code4Lib and similar communities. Am I going to be able to contribute and work better with the community if I use Ruby rather than Python? I am 100% aware that there is no objective way to answer which of the two languages is the best. I am interested in the much more narrow question of which will work better for library-related scripting projects in terms of the following factors: -existing modules that I can re-use that are related to libraries (MARC tools, XML/RDF tools, modules released by major vendors, etc) -availability of help from others in the community -interest/ability of others to re-use my code Thanks. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
Thanks, this is more along the lines I was looking for. I started using Python because PHP (my usual web language of choice) has quite poor libraries for SOAP requests, and Python was easy to use as a glue script to fill the SOAP holes in my program. One of the things I wanted to ask that went largely unanswered is what kinds of typical library coding activities are not very well supported in either language? For instance: -MARC i/o (both have this covered, I know, but it is a prime example) -XML tools -SPARQL tools -Working with Solr -MySQL/Postgres tools -Screen scraping tools -SOAP/REST tools ...etc. And I am limiting my inquiry to Python and Ruby because I am looking for quick glue script languages and not something to write a whole web app. For instance, something I can schedule as a cron task to get some remote data and index it locally. I would use PHP or Java for a full-blown application. I guess I should include Perl in the discussion, too, but Perl's syntax is a little heady for me. I am not trying to be incendiary here, so I hope you all do not respond to me as such. I think these are pretty reasonable and concrete questions. It's not like I'm asking What's the best language? in a general and open-ended way. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Scott Turnbull Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 12:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby I think it mostly comes down to what you're looking for out of the language choice. Both are great language. I love the explicitness and community around Python, the meta-programming features of Ruby are a lot of fun as well. Both have great communities that support a lot of diversity. I feel python comes out a bit better on this but only just a bit. Some great fits for Python in libraries. - Syntax is easy to learn so if you have to get a team working on the same skillset this is a big advantage. - If you need to work with scholars who need to learn programming, the easy of learning python is a big advantage here. - If you work in natural language processing or with geo-spacial data then python is particularly well suited. - You need a stable language with good backwards compatibility. Some great fits for Ruby in libraries: - If you do a lot of web development Rails is an obvious advantage, though rails dominance is almost a disservice to the Ruby community by how much it obscures the language. - If you work with unstructured data I think Ruby comes out a little on top (just a little) and there are some neat meta-programming techniques to read and work with XML in ruby. - You work in a DevOps environment and need to do a lot of server provisioning, the Puppet library offers a lot to a group and leverages Ruby. - In libraries custom Fedora repository work is often done using the Hydra gems I don't think there's one better choice, it just comes down to knowing what you need to develop as far as a local community goes and picking the one that is best suited for those use cases. That said, I tend to enjoy working in Python more than Ruby. Most of my gripes with Ruby are actually probably with Rails so as a language I really do think they are both fine and I only have a slight preference for one. On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Not intending to start a language flame war/holy war here, but in the library coding community, is there a particular reason to use Ruby over Python or vice-versa? I am personally comfortable with Python, but I have noticed that there is a big Ruby following in Code4Lib and similar communities. Am I going to be able to contribute and work better with the community if I use Ruby rather than Python? I am 100% aware that there is no objective way to answer which of the two languages is the best. I am interested in the much more narrow question of which will work better for library-related scripting projects in terms of the following factors: -existing modules that I can re-use that are related to libraries (MARC tools, XML/RDF tools, modules released by major vendors, etc) -availability of help from others in the community -interest/ability of others to re-use my code Thanks. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -- *Scott Turnbull* APTrust Technical Lead scott.turnb...@aptrust.org www.aptrust.org 678-379-9488
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. And props for RubyMARC! I have heard lots of good things. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ross Singer Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 2:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby I can only answer for the Ruby support, I can't compare Ruby libs to Python libs on these, but: MARC: there's Ruby-MARC. I helped write it, so I'm biased. XML tools: depends on what you need. In general, Ruby doesn't have great support for sophisticated XML problems. Nokogiri has a great API for DOM parsing. Code4libbers have reported plenty of frustrations with bugs, though. SAX support exists, but is wanting. See also, xslt. You can use the fairly close to the metal libxml ruby bindings, as well, but the API is very non-Ruby. SPARQL tools: rdf.rb provides some fantastic libraries. There's a SPARQL gem, although it doesn't provide SPARQL update or property paths ( https://github.com/ruby-rdf/sparql). That only matters to you, if, you know, it matters to you. Solr: There's rsolr and sunspot. If you ever decide you'd like to try ElasticSearch, there's Tire, which is great (I use it all the time). MySQL/PostgreSQL: there are lots of ORMs, if that's what you're looking for. ActiveRecord is the most common, although DataMapper has a better API (IMO). I use Sequel a lot for performance or for PostgreSQL-specific functionality (array/hstore fields, etc.) Screen scraping tools: these exist, but I'm not all the familiar with them. I mostly just use HTTParty and Nokogiri. SOAP: Again, YMMV with this. I think Savon has a fantastic API, but I have no idea how well it deals with the vagaries of different SOAP server responses. REST: There's the aforementioned HTTParty, although rest-client is probably the most commonly used. I think it's probably unrealistic to expect one language to handle all of these well (well, there's Java, but then you've got other factors to weigh). I've found Ruby to be a pretty good all-purpose language. Most of my maintenance tools are written in Ruby as rake tasks (despite the fact that the primary project I work on is written in PHP). It helps that Ruby's performance is beginning to catch up to Python's (although Python is still faster for most things, I think). -Ross. On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: Thanks, this is more along the lines I was looking for. I started using Python because PHP (my usual web language of choice) has quite poor libraries for SOAP requests, and Python was easy to use as a glue script to fill the SOAP holes in my program. One of the things I wanted to ask that went largely unanswered is what kinds of typical library coding activities are not very well supported in either language? For instance: -MARC i/o (both have this covered, I know, but it is a prime example) -XML tools -SPARQL tools -Working with Solr -MySQL/Postgres tools -Screen scraping tools -SOAP/REST tools ...etc. And I am limiting my inquiry to Python and Ruby because I am looking for quick glue script languages and not something to write a whole web app. For instance, something I can schedule as a cron task to get some remote data and index it locally. I would use PHP or Java for a full-blown application. I guess I should include Perl in the discussion, too, but Perl's syntax is a little heady for me. I am not trying to be incendiary here, so I hope you all do not respond to me as such. I think these are pretty reasonable and concrete questions. It's not like I'm asking What's the best language? in a general and open-ended way. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Scott Turnbull Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 12:17 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby I think it mostly comes down to what you're looking for out of the language choice. Both are great language. I love the explicitness and community around Python, the meta-programming features of Ruby are a lot of fun as well. Both have great communities that support a lot of diversity. I feel python comes out a bit better on this but only just a bit. Some great fits for Python in libraries. - Syntax is easy to learn so if you have to get a team working on the same skillset this is a big advantage. - If you need to work with scholars who need to learn programming, the easy of learning python is a big advantage here. - If you work in natural language processing or with geo-spacial data then python is particularly
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
I know they are very similar and that I could learn both, and ideally I would. It's not so much that I am intimidated by learning another language as it is that I don't want to start a project in Python and then realize 75% through the project that Module X doesn't work with Filetype Y and that the community no longer exists and that I have to rewrite the whole thing in Ruby. (This is exactly what happened when I tried to build a SUSHI client in PHP and realized PHP's SOAP libraries were not compatible with the style of SOAP responses specified in the SUSHI standard, and it was a big headache I'd like to avoid in the future.) Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jon P. Stroop Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 3:04 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby s/ruby/any_language/ Why not learn both? As with spoken languages, knowing more than one makes it easier for you to think at a higher level of abstraction and therefore a better developer, and, as others have alluded to, will allow you to choose the 'right tool [framework, library, etc] for the right job'. Plus, as Giarlo said, they're not really that different. From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Chris Fitzpatrick [chrisfitz...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 1:39 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby One thing to factor in is that if you learn ruby you run the risk of becoming one of those people who constantly talks,tweets,blogs, posts to this mailing list about how great ruby is. This can have a very negative impact on your work productivity. On Monday, July 29, 2013, Dana Pearson wrote: Josh, I work exclusively with XSLT but specialize in metadata only no need for content display choices maybe a candidate for library programming language...XSLT 2.0 has useful analyze-string element to cover Roy's point by the way, Josh, live just down the road in Leeton regards, dana On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Roy Tennant roytenn...@gmail.comjavascript:; wrote: On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Peter Schlumpf pschlu...@earthlink.netjavascript:; wrote: Imagine if the library community had its own programming/scripting language, at least one that is domain relevant. What would it look like? Whatever else it had, it would have to have a sophisticated way to inspect text for patterns -- that is, regular expressions. Roy -- Dana Pearson dbpearsonmlis.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
Thanks for the insight. If I wanted to do a full scale semantic web application (nightmare scenario), I'd go Java anyway, not Python. I'm feeling more inclined to focus on Ruby rather than Python the more I read here. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris Fitzpatrick Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 3:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby Hi, My first email was an attempt at humour. Sorry, I didn't mean to jack your thread. Ruby is my language of choice, but I have done some work in Python. For all the things you listed, there are libraries in both languages that are probably as good as each other. Python has lxml, which is as good as Ruby's Nokogiri for XML stuff. Python has Sunburnt for Solr stuff, although I do really like Sunspot (and Tire for ElasticSearch is even better). Both Python and Ruby have mechanize for screen scraping, which was actually based off a Perl's WWW::Mechanize library... I will say that while Ruby has more web application building tools, I think Python is still more popular with science-y type people. Python seems to be what all Programming 101 for Non-CS Students classes use now, so I think Python has more data processing/science libraries, especially for things like Natural Language Processing and statistics. I went to a Semantic Web workshop and everyone was using Python or Java, although there are some Ruby libraries out there... That said, JRuby has really come a long way in the past year, so now it's easier to use the bad-ass Java libraries ( like Marc4j, CoreNLP, and Java's XML libraries) without actually having to put up with all the crap Java makes you submit to. In terms of speed/performance both Ruby and Python are equally terrible. I guess I'd just recommend instead of learning both languages, I would push myself to learn one really really well. That was something I learned the hard way when I was younger...always learning a language just well enough to get comfortable then getting bored and trying something else. good luck! On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:03 PM, Jon P. Stroop jstr...@princeton.eduwrote: s/ruby/any_language/ Why not learn both? As with spoken languages, knowing more than one makes it easier for you to think at a higher level of abstraction and therefore a better developer, and, as others have alluded to, will allow you to choose the 'right tool [framework, library, etc] for the right job'. Plus, as Giarlo said, they're not really that different. From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Chris Fitzpatrick [chrisfitz...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 1:39 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby One thing to factor in is that if you learn ruby you run the risk of becoming one of those people who constantly talks,tweets,blogs, posts to this mailing list about how great ruby is. This can have a very negative impact on your work productivity. On Monday, July 29, 2013, Dana Pearson wrote: Josh, I work exclusively with XSLT but specialize in metadata only no need for content display choices maybe a candidate for library programming language...XSLT 2.0 has useful analyze-string element to cover Roy's point by the way, Josh, live just down the road in Leeton regards, dana On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Roy Tennant roytenn...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Peter Schlumpf pschlu...@earthlink.netjavascript:; wrote: Imagine if the library community had its own programming/scripting language, at least one that is domain relevant. What would it look like? Whatever else it had, it would have to have a sophisticated way to inspect text for patterns -- that is, regular expressions. Roy -- Dana Pearson dbpearsonmlis.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
I am thinking after this discussion to start using Ruby instead of Python. Blacklight looks extremely useful, and Hydra is something I am going to look more at. Plus, data structures in Python just seem drastically overcomplicated coming from a C-family background (lists vs tuples vs dicts, and don't even think about trying to sort a dict by key). And as you mentioned the process of installing modules is just awful. I have also run into quite a few frustrations with the big split between Python 2.x and 3.x where some modules that are critical to me (such as Suds, the SOAP module) are 2.x only. It looks like Ruby has all the bases covered for me needs in MARC, screen scraping, etc, and it seems to have more momentum as far as projects active in the library world. Plus, SASS/Compass is amazing. And I hate Python whitespace. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Little, James Clarence IV Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 3:30 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby Personally, I prefer Python. If you are wanting to do more information science-y things, Ruby doesn't have equivalent libraries for things like the Natural Language Toolkithttp://nltk.org/ or SciPyhttp://www.scipy.org/. In Ruby's defense, Python doesn't have Blacklighthttp://projectblacklight.org/, and the Python packaging system is terrible. For XML, nothing beats Java. If you want to use XSLT 2.0 in software then the JVM is your only option. The JVM is undergoing a kind of renaissance with all the cool languages that can run on it now: Clojure, jRuby, Jython, Scala. With these languages you can enjoy the scriptyness, while also being able to bring in the heavy-duty Java XML libraries if they are needed. James Little Digital Programmer Otto G. Richter Library | University of Miami On Jul 29, 2013, at 3:51 PM, Wilhelmina Randtke rand...@gmail.commailto:rand...@gmail.com wrote: Library community programming is heavy on the string processing, right? So, just use a language that's good for that. Anyway, once you learn one, it's faster to learn another. -Wilhelmina Randtke On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Peter Schlumpf pschlu...@earthlink.netmailto:pschlu...@earthlink.netwrote: Python and Ruby (and any other programming languages) are just tools. Some do some things better than others. Imagine if the library community had its own programming/scripting language, at least one that is domain relevant. What would it look like? Peter Schlumpf -Original Message- From: Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edumailto:wel...@ucmo.edu Sent: Jul 29, 2013 10:43 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDUmailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby Not intending to start a language flame war/holy war here, but in the library coding community, is there a particular reason to use Ruby over Python or vice-versa? I am personally comfortable with Python, but I have noticed that there is a big Ruby following in Code4Lib and similar communities. Am I going to be able to contribute and work better with the community if I use Ruby rather than Python? I am 100% aware that there is no objective way to answer which of the two languages is the best. I am interested in the much more narrow question of which will work better for library-related scripting projects in terms of the following factors: -existing modules that I can re-use that are related to libraries (MARC tools, XML/RDF tools, modules released by major vendors, etc) -availability of help from others in the community -interest/ability of others to re-use my code Thanks. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby
Ha. Actually I was hoping to feel good about just sticking with Python. But alas. Now I will get to find out all the annoying things about Ruby instead. Josh Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jay Luker Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 4:11 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Python and Ruby On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 4:38 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: And I hate Python whitespace. Ah-ha! A more paranoid pythonista than I might suspect this whole thread was simply an exercise in Ruby shilling. --jay
Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualizing (public) library statistics
I second HighCharts. I build an app in PHP using the Yii framework and the HighCharts plugin. I can send screenshots if you request them, but the app itself is password-protected. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Heather Rayl Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 7:24 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualizing (public) library statistics Hey there. We have a dashboard at http://library.indstate.edu/dashboard/. I used HighCharts jquery charting library. Super easy to use, and can be used with static or dynamic data. ~heather On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 4:37 PM, scott bacon sdanielba...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Cab, I have had a statistics dashboard project on the back burner for a while. A few dashboards that come to mind, all of which appear to use different back-end technologies: IU School of Library and Information Science http://dashboard.slis.indiana.edu Indianapolis Museum of Art http://dashboard.imamuseum.org University of Richmond http://library.richmond.edu/about/assessment/library-statistics.html#l ibrary-instruction Hope this helps. On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Cab Vinton bibli...@gmail.com wrote: Come budget time, I invariably find myself working with the most recent compilation of public library statistics put out by our State Library -- comparing our library to peer institutions along a variety of measures (support per capita, circulation per capita, staffing levels, etc.) so I can make the best possible case for increasing/ maintaining our funding. The raw data is in a Excel spreadsheet -- http://www.nh.gov/nhsl/lds/public_library_stats.html -- so this seems ripe for mashing up, data visualization, online charting, etc. Does anyone know of any examples where these types of library stats have been made available online in a way that meets my goals of being user-friendly, visually informative/ clear, and just plain cool? If not, examples from the non-library world and/ or pointers to dashboards of note would be equally welcome, particularly if there's an indication of how things work on the back end. Cheers, Cab Vinton, Director Sanbornton Public Library Sanbornton, NH
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
I think I prefer the FAST auto-suggest results to the LOC one. Thanks! Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of LeVan,Ralph Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 10:00 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API There's also an autosuggester for FAST. http://oclc.org/developer/services/assignfast Ralph -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 4:23 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: LOC Subject Headings API If you don't have to use LCSH... the Agrovoc thesaurus has a term suggester API: try http://foris.fao.org/agrovoc/ It's actually easier to use than LCSH because the terms are not pre-coordinated. kc On 6/5/13 9:58 AM, Joshua Welker wrote: Hmm, that is pretty smart. I am actually hoping to roll this whole thing into a plugin for Wordpress/Drupal, so if possible I want to avoid using anything that is going to require server configuration (ie setting up Solr). But I bet I could just roll all the LCSH data into an SQLite file and then search it with PHP on the server. This might work. Thanks! Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 11:51 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API I once put all of the LCSH headings into a local Solr index and used TermsComponent to power autosuggest. It was really fast. Ethan On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I realized since I made that comment that the API is designed to give the top 10 subject heading suggestions rather than all of them. So that part is fine. But I am once again unsure if the API will work for me. I am creating a mashup of several data sources for my auto-suggest feature, and I am having a hard time dynamically adding the results from the LOC Suggest API to the existing collection of data that is used to populate my jQuery UI Autocomplete field. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have all the LC Subject Heading data cached on my server so that I can build my autocomplete data source one time rather than having to deal with dynamically adding, sorting, etc. But then the problem I run into is that the LCSH master file is so big that it basically crashes the server. That's why I'm thinking I might have to give up on this project. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 9:59 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API Josh, Can you say more about how the API isn't behaving as you expected it to? -Mike On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I went with this method and made some good progress, but the results the API was returning were not what I expected. I might have to give up on this project. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 8:22 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API You'd write some javascript to query the service with every keystroke, e.g. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Hi replies with subjects beginning with hi* It looks like covo.js supports LCSH, so you could look into that. Ethan On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: This would work, except I would need a way to get all the subjects rather than just biology. Any idea how to do that? I tried removing the querystring from the URL and changing Biology in the URL to with no success. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 7:05 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API How about id.loc.gov's OpenSearch-powered autosuggest feature? mjg@moby:~$ curl http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Biology [Biology,[Biology,Biology Colloquium,Biology Curators' Group,Biology Databook Editorial Board (U.S.),Biology and Earth Sciences Teaching Institute,Biology and Management of True Fir in the Pacific Northwest Symposium (1981 : Seattle, Wash.),Biology and Resource Management Program (Alaska Cooperative Park Studies Unit),Biology and behavior series,Biology and environment (Macmillan Press),Biology and management of old-growth forests],[1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result],[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85014203,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
I finished the project. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions! I ended up using the OCLC Fast API (fast.oclc.org/searchfast/fastsuggest) rather than saving everything locally. Tracking down the entire LCSH authority listing and parsing it into a simple data format was just unwieldy. The search box I built suggests the LCSH terms from OCLC as well as LibGuides and LibraryH3lp FAQ links. jQuery UI Autocomplete is used for the suggestion functionality. The search box send actual searches to EBSCO Discovery Service. You can see it below on our homepage: https://library.sbuniv.edu Josh Welker
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
This would work, except I would need a way to get all the subjects rather than just biology. Any idea how to do that? I tried removing the querystring from the URL and changing Biology in the URL to with no success. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 7:05 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API How about id.loc.gov's OpenSearch-powered autosuggest feature? mjg@moby:~$ curl http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Biology [Biology,[Biology,Biology Colloquium,Biology Curators' Group,Biology Databook Editorial Board (U.S.),Biology and Earth Sciences Teaching Institute,Biology and Management of True Fir in the Pacific Northwest Symposium (1981 : Seattle, Wash.),Biology and Resource Management Program (Alaska Cooperative Park Studies Unit),Biology and behavior series,Biology and environment (Macmillan Press),Biology and management of old-growth forests],[1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result],[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85014203,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79006962,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90639795,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85100466,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr97041787,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85276541,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82057525,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90605518,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr2001011448,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no94028058;]] -Mike On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I did see that, and it will work in a pinch. But the authority file is pretty massive--almost 1GB-- and would be difficult to handle in an automated way and without completely killing my web app due to memory constraints while searching the file. Thanks, though. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Bryan Baldus [mailto:bryan.bal...@quality-books.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:39 PM To: Code for Libraries; Joshua Welker Subject: RE: LOC Subject Headings API On Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:31 PM, Joshua Welker [jwel...@sbuniv.edu] wrote: I am building an auto-suggest feature into our library's search box, and I am wanting to include LOC subject headings in my suggestions list. Does anyone know of any web service that allows for automated harvesting of LOC Subject Headings? I am also looking for name authorities, for that matter. Any format will be acceptable to me: RDF, XML, JSON, HTML, CSV... I have spent a while Googling with no luck, but this seems like the sort of general-purpose thing that a lot of people would be interested in. I feel like I must be missing something. Any help is appreciated. Have you seen http://id.loc.gov/ with bulk downloads in various formats at http://id.loc.gov/download/ I hope this helps, Bryan Baldus Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses 1-800-323-4241x402 bryan.bal...@quality-books.com eij...@cpan.org http://home.comcast.net/~eijabb/
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
Covo.js looks useful, but the sample proxy and example materials still leave me with the same problem I have right now: I'm not sure what URL to point my requests at to retrieve data. Covo.js is good inspiration for me, but I don't think I can use it because my autosuggest box is actually a mashup of several different sources (LibraryH3lp FAQs, LibGuides guide names and tags, custom autosuggest terms, website pages, and finally the LOC authority stuff I am asking about now). Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of diego ferreyra Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 7:03 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API May be covo.js can help you: http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/5994 https://github.com/haseharu/covojs 2013/6/4 Andreas Orphanides akorp...@ncsu.edu Something something Simon Spero something something OWL something LOC hierarchy? On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 8:04 PM, Michael J. Giarlo leftw...@alumni.rutgers.edu wrote: How about id.loc.gov's OpenSearch-powered autosuggest feature? mjg@moby:~$ curl http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Biology [Biology,[Biology,Biology Colloquium,Biology Curators' Group,Biology Databook Editorial Board (U.S.),Biology and Earth Sciences Teaching Institute,Biology and Management of True Fir in the Pacific Northwest Symposium (1981 : Seattle, Wash.),Biology and Resource Management Program (Alaska Cooperative Park Studies Unit),Biology and behavior series,Biology and environment (Macmillan Press),Biology and management of old-growth forests],[1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result],[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85014203,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79006962,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90639795,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85100466,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr97041787,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85276541,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82057525,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90605518,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr2001011448,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no94028058;]] -Mike On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I did see that, and it will work in a pinch. But the authority file is pretty massive--almost 1GB-- and would be difficult to handle in an automated way and without completely killing my web app due to memory constraints while searching the file. Thanks, though. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Bryan Baldus [mailto:bryan.bal...@quality-books.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:39 PM To: Code for Libraries; Joshua Welker Subject: RE: LOC Subject Headings API On Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:31 PM, Joshua Welker [jwel...@sbuniv.edu] wrote: I am building an auto-suggest feature into our library's search box, and I am wanting to include LOC subject headings in my suggestions list. Does anyone know of any web service that allows for automated harvesting of LOC Subject Headings? I am also looking for name authorities, for that matter. Any format will be acceptable to me: RDF, XML, JSON, HTML, CSV... I have spent a while Googling with no luck, but this seems like the sort of general-purpose thing that a lot of people would be interested in. I feel like I must be missing something. Any help is appreciated. Have you seen http://id.loc.gov/ with bulk downloads in various formats at http://id.loc.gov/download/ I hope this helps, Bryan Baldus Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses 1-800-323-4241x402 bryan.bal...@quality-books.com eij...@cpan.org http://home.comcast.net/~eijabb/ -- Diego Ferreyra
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
I've seen those, but I can't figure out where on the id.loc.gov site there is actually a URL that provides a list of authority terms. All the links on the site seem to link to other pages within the site. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Dana Pearson Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:42 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API Joshua, There are different formats at LOC: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html dana On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I am building an auto-suggest feature into our library's search box, and I am wanting to include LOC subject headings in my suggestions list. Does anyone know of any web service that allows for automated harvesting of LOC Subject Headings? I am also looking for name authorities, for that matter. Any format will be acceptable to me: RDF, XML, JSON, HTML, CSV... I have spent a while Googling with no luck, but this seems like the sort of general-purpose thing that a lot of people would be interested in. I feel like I must be missing something. Any help is appreciated. Josh Welker Electronic/Media Services Librarian College Liaison University Libraries Southwest Baptist University 417.328.1624 -- Dana Pearson dbpearsonmlis.com
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
I realized since I made that comment that the API is designed to give the top 10 subject heading suggestions rather than all of them. So that part is fine. But I am once again unsure if the API will work for me. I am creating a mashup of several data sources for my auto-suggest feature, and I am having a hard time dynamically adding the results from the LOC Suggest API to the existing collection of data that is used to populate my jQuery UI Autocomplete field. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have all the LC Subject Heading data cached on my server so that I can build my autocomplete data source one time rather than having to deal with dynamically adding, sorting, etc. But then the problem I run into is that the LCSH master file is so big that it basically crashes the server. That's why I'm thinking I might have to give up on this project. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 9:59 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API Josh, Can you say more about how the API isn't behaving as you expected it to? -Mike On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I went with this method and made some good progress, but the results the API was returning were not what I expected. I might have to give up on this project. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 8:22 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API You'd write some javascript to query the service with every keystroke, e.g. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Hi replies with subjects beginning with hi* It looks like covo.js supports LCSH, so you could look into that. Ethan On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: This would work, except I would need a way to get all the subjects rather than just biology. Any idea how to do that? I tried removing the querystring from the URL and changing Biology in the URL to with no success. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 7:05 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API How about id.loc.gov's OpenSearch-powered autosuggest feature? mjg@moby:~$ curl http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Biology [Biology,[Biology,Biology Colloquium,Biology Curators' Group,Biology Databook Editorial Board (U.S.),Biology and Earth Sciences Teaching Institute,Biology and Management of True Fir in the Pacific Northwest Symposium (1981 : Seattle, Wash.),Biology and Resource Management Program (Alaska Cooperative Park Studies Unit),Biology and behavior series,Biology and environment (Macmillan Press),Biology and management of old-growth forests],[1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result],[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85014203,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79006962,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90639795,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85100466,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr97041787,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85276541,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82057525,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90605518,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr2001011448,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no94028058;]] -Mike On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I did see that, and it will work in a pinch. But the authority file is pretty massive--almost 1GB-- and would be difficult to handle in an automated way and without completely killing my web app due to memory constraints while searching the file. Thanks, though. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Bryan Baldus [mailto:bryan.bal...@quality-books.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:39 PM To: Code for Libraries; Joshua Welker Subject: RE: LOC Subject Headings API On Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:31 PM, Joshua Welker [jwel...@sbuniv.edu] wrote: I am building an auto-suggest feature into our library's search box, and I am wanting to include LOC subject headings in my suggestions list. Does anyone know of any web service that allows for automated harvesting of LOC Subject Headings? I am also looking for name authorities, for that matter. Any format will be acceptable to me: RDF, XML, JSON, HTML, CSV... I have spent a while Googling with no luck, but this seems like the sort of general-purpose thing that a lot of people would be interested in. I feel like I must be missing something. Any
Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
Hmm, that is pretty smart. I am actually hoping to roll this whole thing into a plugin for Wordpress/Drupal, so if possible I want to avoid using anything that is going to require server configuration (ie setting up Solr). But I bet I could just roll all the LCSH data into an SQLite file and then search it with PHP on the server. This might work. Thanks! Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 11:51 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API I once put all of the LCSH headings into a local Solr index and used TermsComponent to power autosuggest. It was really fast. Ethan On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I realized since I made that comment that the API is designed to give the top 10 subject heading suggestions rather than all of them. So that part is fine. But I am once again unsure if the API will work for me. I am creating a mashup of several data sources for my auto-suggest feature, and I am having a hard time dynamically adding the results from the LOC Suggest API to the existing collection of data that is used to populate my jQuery UI Autocomplete field. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have all the LC Subject Heading data cached on my server so that I can build my autocomplete data source one time rather than having to deal with dynamically adding, sorting, etc. But then the problem I run into is that the LCSH master file is so big that it basically crashes the server. That's why I'm thinking I might have to give up on this project. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 9:59 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API Josh, Can you say more about how the API isn't behaving as you expected it to? -Mike On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I went with this method and made some good progress, but the results the API was returning were not what I expected. I might have to give up on this project. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 8:22 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API You'd write some javascript to query the service with every keystroke, e.g. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Hi replies with subjects beginning with hi* It looks like covo.js supports LCSH, so you could look into that. Ethan On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: This would work, except I would need a way to get all the subjects rather than just biology. Any idea how to do that? I tried removing the querystring from the URL and changing Biology in the URL to with no success. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 7:05 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API How about id.loc.gov's OpenSearch-powered autosuggest feature? mjg@moby:~$ curl http://id.loc.gov/authorities/suggest/?q=Biology [Biology,[Biology,Biology Colloquium,Biology Curators' Group,Biology Databook Editorial Board (U.S.),Biology and Earth Sciences Teaching Institute,Biology and Management of True Fir in the Pacific Northwest Symposium (1981 : Seattle, Wash.),Biology and Resource Management Program (Alaska Cooperative Park Studies Unit),Biology and behavior series,Biology and environment (Macmillan Press),Biology and management of old-growth forests],[1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result,1 result],[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85014203,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79006962,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90639795,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85100466,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr97041787,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85276541,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82057525,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n90605518,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr2001011448,; http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no94028058;]] -Mike On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Joshua Welker jwel...@sbuniv.edu wrote: I did see that, and it will work in a pinch. But the authority file is pretty massive--almost 1GB-- and would be difficult to handle in an automated way and without completely killing my web app due to memory constraints while searching the file
[CODE4LIB] LOC Subject Headings API
I am building an auto-suggest feature into our library's search box, and I am wanting to include LOC subject headings in my suggestions list. Does anyone know of any web service that allows for automated harvesting of LOC Subject Headings? I am also looking for name authorities, for that matter. Any format will be acceptable to me: RDF, XML, JSON, HTML, CSV... I have spent a while Googling with no luck, but this seems like the sort of general-purpose thing that a lot of people would be interested in. I feel like I must be missing something. Any help is appreciated. Josh Welker Electronic/Media Services Librarian College Liaison University Libraries Southwest Baptist University 417.328.1624
