Re: [CODE4LIB] Hours on Library Websites?
Matt, For the last year or so I've been using a tool developed by a handful of Code4Libbers: https://github.com/kenirwin/LibraryHoursManager There are two front-end pieces: 1) a "today's hours" report to put on the front page, http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/ and calendar of dates and hours: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/about/hours/calendar.php The calendar-style front end was developed by Andrew Darby and Ron Gilmour at Ithaca College, based on work that Andrew did earlier and wrote about in the C4L journal: http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/46 That tool's back-end is a simple day-by-day XML file; I wrote a set of back-end scripts to generate the XML based on a variety of date settings, e.g.: * From January 7-May 15, here are the normal library hours... * but spring break hours are different, so use the override "break hours" setting... * and then there are one or two days we have special hours that don't conform to a routine like "break hours", so use these special hours... Feel free to give it a try, and let me know if you need any help with it. Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Matt Sherman Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2016 10:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: [CODE4LIB] Hours on Library Websites? Hi all, We are working on a website migration/redesign into WordPress and I am trying to figure out an automated solution for posting and keeping up to date the hours on the home page. I am wondering, how do other institutions manage this? Are there any good tools I should be looking into? Any insights or suggestions are appreciated. Matt Sherman
Re: [CODE4LIB] including data from static JSON file in Javascript
Thanks Kyle -- that's exactly what I needed for the current circumstance. It might not be the best, but it looks like the simplest by a long shot. Thanks to Conal too. I'm so glad to have a community of folks who can help spare us from hours of anguish and frustration! Ken From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Kyle Banerjee [kyle.baner...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2016 9:45 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] including data from static JSON file in Javascript If all you want to do is load external json as a string, you can do it using syntax almost identical to what you suggest. Just change your data.json file so the content is var data = ' [include your json here, be sure to escape things properly]'; Then just load this file before your external script e.g.: Within external_script.js, you can reference the data variable just as you would have had it been defined in external_script.js. Depending on what you're doing with your json, it may or may not be a good approach, but it will work. kyle
[CODE4LIB] including data from static JSON file in Javascript
Hi folks,
I'm working on a javascript project that currently has a bunch of JSON data
defined inside the script; I'd like to move the data to a file outside the JS
file so it can be updated without touching the script, but I'm running up
against a few challenges externalizing the data.
The static JSON file lives in the same directory with the script.
If I had my druthers, I'd to it PHP style, but I don't think JS works this way:
=
External file:
[all this JSON]
Script:
var data = include ('data.json');
All the options I find for loading external files are all AJAX-y, whereas what
I really want is something synchronous - the script doesn't go on until the
data loads.
I've also had some lexical scope issues where I can get the data inside the
getJSON() function, but then have trouble transporting the data out of that
function into the rest of the script.
Does anyone know of a good way to accomplish this? I imagine there's some
incantation that I can perform, but I'm struggling to find it.
Thanks,
Ken
[CODE4LIB] Hours of Operation on Website - management tool
Hi folks, I'm hoping to find some sort of web-based app that can manage the library's hours of operations, including: * Displaying today's hours * Displaying an upcoming schedule of hours * Updatable though a GUI interface by non-techy library staff * Able to update our Google Places account hours (which, I note, currently lists our school-year hours as our open hours today), perhaps on a daily basis * Preferably a stand-alone thing that can provide data on an ad hoc basis (as opposed to a CMS-specific thing like a WP plugin or a Drupal module) * PHP preferred but not necessary * OSS / free preferred but not necessary I feel certain that someone else has already wanted this enough to create it. Anyone have a solution they're happy with? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] Hours of Operation on Website - management tool
Thanks Ron, Ithaca was actually already on my radar -- we're looking at moving to SubjectPlus to manage some of our library website, and some of our librarians have particularly looking at Ithaca's site for ideas. So far, none of the suggestions folks have had quite match what I'm looking for, but your solution may have the advantage of being simpler than many of the others -- and written in a language I use. Do you have some code you'd be willing to share for the hours tool? Thanks Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ron Gilmour Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2015 9:13 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Hours of Operation on Website - management tool Hi Ken, The solution that we're using at Ithaca College Library meets some, but not all, of your criteria. You can see the end result here https://ithacalibrary.com/services/hours.php. The ugly part is the back end, which is a hand-authored XML file that I create a couple times a year based on what our circulation manager tells me. I guess with a little instruction he could do it himself, but I haven't gone there. I'm attaching a sample XML file in case you're interested. (PHP fills in default values, so hours are only listed for days on which the hours deviate from normal.) We used to use a solution backed by Google Calendar, but that got all weird when we started staying open overnight. Let me know if you'd like more info. Ron Gilmour Web Services Librarian Ithaca College Library On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Ken Irwin kir...@wittenberg.edu wrote: Hi folks, I'm hoping to find some sort of web-based app that can manage the library's hours of operations, including: * Displaying today's hours * Displaying an upcoming schedule of hours * Updatable though a GUI interface by non-techy library staff * Able to update our Google Places account hours (which, I note, currently lists our school-year hours as our open hours today), perhaps on a daily basis * Preferably a stand-alone thing that can provide data on an ad hoc basis (as opposed to a CMS-specific thing like a WP plugin or a Drupal module) * PHP preferred but not necessary * OSS / free preferred but not necessary I feel certain that someone else has already wanted this enough to create it. Anyone have a solution they're happy with? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] getting started with Drupal for library website
Hi folks, Thanks to all who responded a few weeks ago to my inquiry about updating the code on my library's website. Many folks suggested moving to a CMS, and I'm starting to look into that possibility, and particularly Drupal. In doing so, I'm hoping not to re-invent the wheel, and I'm hoping that maybe someone has already designed a basic infrastructure to replace the backbone of our current website, namely. Under our current arrangement we have an interlocking set of databases that performs some basic library functions: There's a database table that lists all of the databases we subscribe to. That database feeds a user interface that: * lists databases * counts click-thrus * routes traffic to our proxy server when appropriate * can list databases by subject area (defined in a table of subject associations) There's also a back-end UI to create subject/database associations, display click-thru stats, generate EZproxy config files based on the table of library databases. Does anyone know of a freely-available set of modules/pages/etc that's already designed to do this sort of thing? In my imagination, lots of libraries would want to basically this same thing, customized to their own particularly needs and maybe we wouldn't each have to start from scratch. Any advice? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] replacing deprecated PHP code throughout website
Thanks to all who responded to this - you've given me a lot to think about. In the near term, I'm going to learn to do PDO calls and convert a few small projects over to that system. In the long-term, taking this as an opportunity to switch to a CMS for the main website might make sense, so I'll start exploring those ideas again too. And/or, I may take TK up on the idea of giving it all up an opening a coffee shop instead... Many thanks -- I 'm glad to have such a robust community of experienced co-conspirators. Ken On Wednesday, April 29, 2015, Ken Irwin kir...@wittenberg.edu wrote: Hello all, I've just learned that the PHP mysql_* functions are all deprecated as of PHP 5.5, and I'm trying to figure out what this means for my life. My library's website is heavily database-driven, hand-coded, and all written using the mysql_* functions. It's currently running PHP 5.4, so presumably code all needs to be updated before the next server upgrade. So I'm looking for a little advice: 1. Is there a general consensus on what the best long-term alternative to the mysql_* functions is? I see a bunch of references to the PDO extension, which is available on our server. Is that The Answer, or should I be looking other places as well. 2. Does anyone have advice about how to proceed with an enormous overhaul like this? I'm sure I'll be working on a development copy of the server until everything is all worked out. But beyond that, advice would be welcome. Have you employed students to do work like this? 3. I wonder what other broad-sweeping old-fashionednesses may also be about to rear up and bite me. If you imagine that I learned procedural (almost never object-oriented) PHP 4 in about 2000 and am slow to change my ways, can you predict what sort of deprecated foolishness I might still be perpetrating? Any advice, input, or experience would be appreciated! Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] replacing deprecated PHP code throughout website
Hello all, I've just learned that the PHP mysql_* functions are all deprecated as of PHP 5.5, and I'm trying to figure out what this means for my life. My library's website is heavily database-driven, hand-coded, and all written using the mysql_* functions. It's currently running PHP 5.4, so presumably code all needs to be updated before the next server upgrade. So I'm looking for a little advice: 1. Is there a general consensus on what the best long-term alternative to the mysql_* functions is? I see a bunch of references to the PDO extension, which is available on our server. Is that The Answer, or should I be looking other places as well. 2. Does anyone have advice about how to proceed with an enormous overhaul like this? I'm sure I'll be working on a development copy of the server until everything is all worked out. But beyond that, advice would be welcome. Have you employed students to do work like this? 3. I wonder what other broad-sweeping old-fashionednesses may also be about to rear up and bite me. If you imagine that I learned procedural (almost never object-oriented) PHP 4 in about 2000 and am slow to change my ways, can you predict what sort of deprecated foolishness I might still be perpetrating? Any advice, input, or experience would be appreciated! Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] IP Authentication for Online Access to the New York Times
Brett, This isn't quite an answer, but perhaps a perspective/option. Our library hasn't been able to get NYT to do straight-up IP authentication and for years they have been a challenge for us. Recently, they rolled out an educational institutional access option. Through that option, our users must sign up for their own account, which is associated with our account based on their having signed up for the account from a computer bearing a campus IP address. The actual access is based on the password they set up for their account, and they can use that password from anywhere. But to get the password, they have to be on campus. It might be worth asking whether some kind of hybrid solution might be available, using IP access for inside the library and using password/account based access from off-campus. Good luck! Ken
[CODE4LIB] looking for a good PHP table-manipulating class
Hi folks, I'm hoping to find a PHP class that designed to display data in tables, preferably able to do two things: 1. Swap the x- and y-axis, so you could arbitrarily show the table with y=Puppies, x=Kittens or y=Kittens,x=Puppies 2. Display the table either using plain text columns or formatted html I feel confident that in a world of 7 billion people, someone must have wanted this before. Any ideas? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] Tablet Uses for Library Staff
Three things I do with a tablet in the library: 1. guerrilla reference -- if I'm carrying a tablet I don't need to be near a computer to help folks out when wandering around the library. (this is an ad hoc activity for me, but I imagine some people do it more deliberately.) 2. weeding -- my Weeding Helper tool is designed to export holdings data from III catalogs and let librarians make notes about weeding while standing in the stacks: https://github.com/kenirwin/Weeding-Helper 3. Our library has recently started using Suma (developed by C4L folks from NCSU) for doing head counts and logging reference transactions. It is tablet-based and also works on desktops. The tabletiness works very well for doing headcounts, since you can walk around and count noses and enter data all at the same time. https://github.com/cazzerson/Suma I'm curious to know what other folks are doing with tablets too. Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matthew Sherman Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 11:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Tablet Uses for Library Staff Hi all, Today a few of us received our a few Surface Pros to use around the library. Being the digital content librarian for our University I really want to figure out some interesting things we can do with them. I have some thoughts on possibly working with inventory and my information literacy librarian colleague is thinking how to use them in the classroom. Yet, I wanted to poll the group and see what sorts of interesting things people are doing with tablets for their library staff, or ideas people might have for utilizing a Surface Pro in the library. Matt Sherman
[CODE4LIB] library of congress call number subject coding
Hi folks, Does anyone have a handy scheme for coding LC call numbers into just a few broad subject areas (e.g. Arts, Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences) or perhaps something only a little more granular than that? I'm hoping for a list that will turn 1-3 letter LC classes into subject groups, and I'd rather not reinvent the wheel if someone's already got something. Any leads? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] library of congress call number subject coding
Thanks all, This has given me a few things to work with and I think I can move forward. Joys Ken -Original Message- From: Will Martin [mailto:w...@will-martin.net] Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2014 5:26 PM To: Code for Libraries Cc: Ken Irwin Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] library of congress call number subject coding Until recently, we had a New Books feature on our site that sorted out new books by LC classification (in addition to some other views). I have attached a ZIP file containing: 1) An HTML file documenting the structure of the database table that it pulled our new book data from; 2) The PHP to load a subject area, using the first letter of the LC call number as a broad category. It's not especially sophisticated, and it basically reiterates the broadest LC classifications, which may not make a whole lot of sense to some end users. But perhaps you'll find it useful as a starting point. This one takes the letter from a parameter in the GET request, but you could easily get the call number from a database query and slice the first character off. I'd love to show you a live copy, but unfortunately the New Books feature got decommissioned a couple weeks ago on the grounds that it took too much staff time to separate out new acquisitions. They are now sent directly to the stacks with no markers in the catalog to differentiate them from any other book, so the corresponding web stuff was removed. Will Martin Web Services Librarian Chester Fritz Library University of North Dakota
Re: [CODE4LIB] Python in Your Library
This is the only python we've got going on in our library: http://www.wittprojects.net/library_blog/?p=573 http://ezra.wittenberg.edu/record=b1252845~S0 Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Julia Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 9:13 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Python in Your Library Hi All, This is my first time posting to Code4Lib. Now seems like a good time. I am wondering how you have applied Python in your library. What projects have been successful? What have you heard of other libraries doing? What advantages or disadvantages does it have compared to other scripting languages used in the library field? If you have any thoughts on any of those questions, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks, Julia caffr...@simmons.edu Simmons College Library
[CODE4LIB] tool for finding close matches in vocabular list
Hi folks, I'm looking for a tool that can look at a list of all of subject terms in a poorly-controlled index as possible candidates for term consolidation. Our student newspaper index has about 16,000 subject terms and they include a lot of meaningless typographical and nomenclatural difference, e.g.: Irwin, Ken Irwin, Kenneth Irwin, Mr. Kenneth Irwin, Kenneth R. Basketball - Women Basketball - Women's Basketball-Women Basketball-Women's I would love to have some sort of pattern-matching tool that's smart about this sort of thing that could go through the list of terms (as a text list, database, xml file, or whatever structure it wants to ingest) and spit out some clusters of possible matches. Does anyone know of a tool that's good for that sort of thing? The index is just a bunch of MySQL tables - there is no real controlled-vocab system, though I've recently built some systems to suggest known SH's to reduce this sort of redundancy. Any ideas? Thanks! Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question
Matt, Our library's website is visually and navigationally part of the larger university website, but housed on its own server. We are under the Academics tab in the Centers of learning block along with the writing center, community service office, etc. Being part of the larger university framework makes it easy to navigate folks to our website. Being visually part of the university website has its advantages and disadvantages. It ties us in visually and makes us clearly part of the university website, but it also dictates a lot of our design features. We have a push-pull relationship with the sales-oriented approach of the university website -- a while back we were told that the library website was too oriented toward doing work and not enough toward advertising the awesomeness of the university. We have tried to include a bit more selling-the-awesomeness without sacrificing the utility (heavens forfend!) of the website. Having our own server is usually a great advantage to us. It does mean that we have to do some extra legwork to keep ourselves integrated with the rest of the website, but it also gives us a lot of latitude to develop new services and create a pretty broad infrastructure. It is in part a legacy of the late 90s when the library had one of the first web developers on campus. We've sometimes had to fight to keep our independence, the complexity of a library website really requires some dedicated attention in a way that could not be expected of an external department with different mission priorities. We do have a minimal presence in the student portal -- basically a link to the ask a question form and a login link for the OPAC/Circulation Record/what do I have checked out now page. If I had another person to work on it, I would love to develop more integration with the portal -- but not at the expense of the larger website. Good luck! Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matthew Sherman Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:41 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question 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
[CODE4LIB] RDA gibberish in user interface
Hi all, In our library, we've noticed lately a lot of raw-looking RDA info from MARC records that shows up in the user interface. Our head of tech services translated the gibberish for the librarians, and we are now considering what to do with it. (The example and her excellent translations follow at the end of the message.) When I first saw the RDA info in the OPAC, I assumed it was a mistake - that a field accidentally got unhidden. It seems to me that we should either suppress the RDA info or we should have library systems (e.g. OPACs) that turn the gibberish into human-intelligible text. Has anyone attempted to do the latter? Because there are so many possibilities, it would be a substantial undertaking to build and maintain a translator. I'm imagining that we as a community might undertake to build an open-source dataset that provides generic translations, and that the platform-dependent groups of us (III users, Ex Libris users, etc) might build little JQuery scripts or whatever to integrate the tranlations into the user interfaces. Does this make sense? Is it just silly and we should suppress the data? What think you all? Ken Descript xvi, 219 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm text txt rdacontent unmediated n rdamedia volume nc rdacarrier What this means: The form of communication through which a work is expressed. 336 text txt rdacontent The rda content is text (abbreviated by txt) translation: content is expressed by text Media type reflects the general type of intermediation device required to view, play, run, etc., the content of a resource. 337 unmediated n rdamedia The rda media is unmediated (abbreviated as [blank] translation: you do not need anything other than your eyes to access the text Carrier type reflects the format of the storage medium and housing of a carrier in combination with the media type (which indicates the intermediation device required to view, play, run, etc., the content of a resource). Field 338 information enables indication of more specific carrier types and carrier types from various lists. 338 volume nc rdacarrier The rda carrier (abbreviated as c) is volume translation: the text is stored in a volume (ie, monograph) SO, a DVD record would look like this: Descript 1 videodisc (approximately 152 minutes) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in two-dimensional moving image tdi rdacontent video v rdamedia videodisc vd rdacarrier 336 two-dimensional moving image tdm rdacontent = projected medium, ie movie 337 video v rdamedia = you need a some sort of video player to access the content of this movie 338 videodisc vd rdacarrier = the movie is stored on a dvd
[CODE4LIB] image gallery management software recommendations
Hi all, I'm working on a project for which we're looking for some image gallery management software (ie, upload, organize, tag, etc.) that's a standalone piece of software: ie, not part of a larger CMS like WordPress, Drupal, ContentDM, etc. We'd of course like something that is simple, awesome, and free. (We might settle for two of the three...) The only absolute requirement is that it needs to run on a Linux/Apache server. PHP/MySQL would be preferred, and something with a responsive front-end would also be nice. The world appears to be teeming with such things of various quality; I thought I'd ask you all for recommendations rather than just try to wade through the masses of junk. Any ideas? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] capturing only relevant CSS for a selection
Hi all, I'm looking for a tool that I hope exists, and that I hope someone here might be able to point me too. I want to select a portion of a web page (or of the html behind it), and be able to copy it ALONG WITH whatever CSS rules apply to that section of code. I don't want the whole 1000+ lines of css that pertain to the page, just the 5-10-100 rules that affect the styling of that section of the page. The situation: my library web page is, by university fiat, wrapped up in our university's overall web design (see: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/ ). It's so complex that it's hard to extract portions of a page for reuse. I want to take the top part of the page and re-write it in a simplified (ie, not 1000s of lines on non-relevant CSS) so I can re-purpose the same look-and-feel at the top of our customizable external services (discovery layer, etc.) I could laboriously reconstruct it, but I'm hoping that something exists to help. The inspect element feature built into most browsers is a start. I'm hoping that some tool can leverage the same technology to look at all 50 divs at the same time and spit out a combined pile of CSS rules that will make it all look ok. Does such a tool exist? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] netflix search mashups w/ library tools?
Hi folks, Is anyone out there using library-like tools for searching Netflix? I'm imagining a world in which Netflix data gets mashed up with OCLC data or something like it to populate a more robustly searchable Netflix title list. Does anything like this exist? What I really want at the moment is a list of Netflix titles dealing with Islamic topics (Muhammed, the Qu'ran, the history of Islamic civilizations, the Hajj, Ramadan, etc.) for doing beyond-the-library readers' advisory in connection with our ALA/NEH Muslim Journey's Bookshelf. Netflix's own search tool is singularly awful, and I thought that the library world might have an interest in doing better. Any ideas? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] netflix search mashups w/ library tools?
Thanks Karen, This goes in a bit of a direction from what I'm hoping for and your project does suggest that some matching to build such searches might be possible. What I really want is to apply LCSH and related data to the Netflix search process, essentially dropping Netflix holdings into a library catalog interface. I suspect you'd have to build a local cache of the OCLC data for known Netflix items to do so, and maybe a local cache of the Netflix title list. I wonder if either or both of those actions would violate the TOS for the respective services. Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coombs Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 11:26 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] netflix search mashups w/ library tools? Ken, I did a mashup that took Netflix's top 100 movies and looked to see if a specific library had that item. http://www.oclc.org/developer/applications/netflix-my-library You might think about doing the following. Search WorldCat for titles on a particular topic and then check to see if the title is available via Netflix. Netflix API for searching their catalog is pretty limited though so it might not give you what you want. It looks like it only allows you to search their streamable content. Also I had a lot of trouble with trying to match Netflix titles and library holdings. Because there isn't a good match point. DVDs don't have ISBNs and if you use title you can get into trouble because movies get remade. So title + date seems to work best if you can get the information. Karen On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Ken Irwin kir...@wittenberg.edu wrote: Hi folks, Is anyone out there using library-like tools for searching Netflix? I'm imagining a world in which Netflix data gets mashed up with OCLC data or something like it to populate a more robustly searchable Netflix title list. Does anything like this exist? What I really want at the moment is a list of Netflix titles dealing with Islamic topics (Muhammed, the Qu'ran, the history of Islamic civilizations, the Hajj, Ramadan, etc.) for doing beyond-the-library readers' advisory in connection with our ALA/NEH Muslim Journey's Bookshelf. Netflix's own search tool is singularly awful, and I thought that the library world might have an interest in doing better. Any ideas? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] same css, different servers, one breaks in IE
Hi folks, I've been working on integrating some Bootstrap into our library website, and I've stumbled on weird thing that I can't explain: I'm using the basic bootstrap templates, straight out of the box with no customization, and the CSS feature that compresses the header on narrow screens doesn't work on IE(v9) on my library web server. But exactly the same code on my personal server works just fine. Both sets of code work fine in Chrome and Firefox. Both servers are some mix of Linux+Apache. Why would the same css work on one server but not another? I ran Fiddler to be sure that the css was actually being called, and it is. I wonder if others will get the same results. Working in IE: Out of the box hero template: http://alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html Just the responsive header (no JS, just relies on 2 css files): http://www.alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html Not working on IE: http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html Any ideas? I'm mystified... Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] same css, different servers, one breaks in IE
Never mind? This appears to be a campus network issue, not inherent to IE On Jun 28, 2013, at 10:11 AM, Ken Irwin kir...@exchange.wittenberg.edumailto:kir...@exchange.wittenberg.edu wrote: Hi folks, I’ve been working on integrating some Bootstrap into our library website, and I’ve stumbled on weird thing that I can’t explain: I’m using the basic bootstrap templates, straight out of the box with no customization, and the CSS feature that compresses the header on narrow screens doesn’t work on IE(v9) on my library web server. But exactly the same code on my personal server works just fine. Both sets of code work fine in Chrome and Firefox. Both servers are some mix of Linux+Apache. Why would the same css work on one server but not another? I ran Fiddler to be sure that the css was actually being called, and it is. I wonder if others will get the same results. Working in IE: Out of the box “hero” template: http://alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html Just the responsive header (no JS, just relies on 2 css files): http://www.alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html Not working on IE: http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html Any ideas? I’m mystified… Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] phone app for barcode-to-textfile?
Hi all, Does anyone have a phone app (pref. iOS) that will just scan barcodes to a textfile? All the apps I'm finding are shopping oriented or other special uses. I just want to replace our antique barcode scanner that spits out a list of barcodes as a text file. Anyone have such a thing? Or advice on where to assemble the building blocks to create one? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] phone app for barcode-to-textfile?
This (CLZ Barry) looks like it could be perfect! $8/phone beats many other options! Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Aaron Addison Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 2:07 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] phone app for barcode-to-textfile? You might want to look at http://www.clz.com/barry/ -- Aaron Addison Unix Administrator W. E. B. Du Bois Library UMass Amherst 413 577 2104 On Thu, 2013-06-06 at 17:40 +, Ken Irwin wrote: Hi all, Does anyone have a phone app (pref. iOS) that will just scan barcodes to a textfile? All the apps I'm finding are shopping oriented or other special uses. I just want to replace our antique barcode scanner that spits out a list of barcodes as a text file. Anyone have such a thing? Or advice on where to assemble the building blocks to create one? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android?
Hi folks, I'm looking for simple, JS-based mobile framework (like jQT, formerly jQuery Touch) that looks good on both iOS and Win 8 (and, you know, everything else). For this particular purpose I'm NOT looking for a responsive framework (e.g. Bootstrap, Skeleton). I just checked out jQT on a Win 8 phone, and it just plain doesn't work. The sizing is funny and the links DON'T WORK. So: does anyone either (a) know how to get jQT to work on a Win8 phone, or (b) know of another good mobile framework that will work well on Win8, iOS, and Android? I'm looking for something with simple implementation like jQT -- add a few classes and div attributes to turn a boring long page into something that behaves like a suite of pages. Any ideas? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android?
PS - I should have mentioned that what I'm looking for is a mobile WEB framework. I'm not doing app development -- just trying to deliver reasonably simple HTML pages. thanks Ken From: Ken Irwin Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 10:40 AM To: Code for Libraries Subject: mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android? Hi folks, I'm looking for simple, JS-based mobile framework (like jQT, formerly jQuery Touch) that looks good on both iOS and Win 8 (and, you know, everything else). For this particular purpose I'm NOT looking for a responsive framework (e.g. Bootstrap, Skeleton). I just checked out jQT on a Win 8 phone, and it just plain doesn't work. The sizing is funny and the links DON'T WORK. So: does anyone either (a) know how to get jQT to work on a Win8 phone, or (b) know of another good mobile framework that will work well on Win8, iOS, and Android? I'm looking for something with simple implementation like jQT -- add a few classes and div attributes to turn a boring long page into something that behaves like a suite of pages. Any ideas? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] what do you do: API accounts used by library software, that assume an individual is registered
I've set up email address-based accounts for PayPal and Facebook APIs using organizational gmail accounts. Our university is picky about not having email accounts accessible by more than one person (refdesk@mylibrary is a mailing list/distribution list that can receive email but cannot send it.), so instead of wrestling with IT's rules, we've set up gmail accounts for things like 'mylibrary@gmail', 'ourfoodcoop@gmail' to handle those APIs. It has worked out pretty well. Mostly I'm still the only person dealing with the APIs, but the day that changes it seems like the situation ought to work out. Ken From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Jonathan Rochkind [rochk...@jhu.edu] Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 11:11 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] what do you do: API accounts used by library software, that assume an individual is registered Whether it's Amazon AWS, or Yahoo BOSS, or JournalTOCs, or almost anything else -- there are a variety of API's that library software wants to use, which require registering an account to use. They may or may not be free, sometimes they require a credit card attached too. Most of them assume that an individual person is creating an account, the account will be in that individual's name, with an email address, etc. This isn't quite right for a business or organization, like the library, right? What if that person leaves the organization? But all this existing software is using API keys attached to 'their' account? Or what if the person doesn't leave, but responsibilities for monitoring emails from the vendor (sent to that account) change? And even worse if there's an institutional credit card attached to that account. I am interested in hearing solutions or approaches that people have ACTUALLY tried to deal with this problem, and how well they have worked. I am NOT particularly interested in Well, you could try X or Y; I can think of a bunch of things I _could_ try myself, each with their potential strengths and weaknesses. I am interested in hearing about what people actually HAVE tried or done, and how well it has worked. Has anyone found a way to deal with this issue, other than having each API registered to an account belonging to whatever individual staff happened to be dealing with it that day? Thanks for any advice.
Re: [CODE4LIB] back to minorities question, seeking guidance
What both Kelly and David say is true here: David: programming needs math, not arithmetic. Kelly: computers are good at arithmetic on their own. To which I'll add: the related skill that I see as necessary here is quantitative reasoning - not the crunching of numbers but the correct assembly of the formulae, articulating the systematization of the problem. What I'm less certain of is what sort of training tend to lead to that sort of conceptual skill. Ken On Feb 27, 2013, at 8:44 AM, David Faler dfa...@tlcdelivers.com wrote: I think math is essential, but what they teach in schools these days isn't math. It's arithmetic. Some intro philosophy courses teach math. I'll stop before I start ranting. On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Kelly Lucas klu...@isovera.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org wrote: Wilhelmina Randtke writes Pretty much the whole entire entry level programming class for the average class covers using code to do things that you can do much more easily without code. Probably it was the wrong course. I think coding should start with building web pages. A calculator can't do that. Cheers, Thomas Krichelhttp://openlib.org/home/krichel http://authorprofile.org/pkr1 skype: thomaskrichel -- Kelly R. Lucas Senior Developer Isovera, Inc. klu...@isovera.com http://www.isovera.com http://drupal.org/user/271780 twitter: @bp1101
[CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live
Sarah asks about how to direct users to mobile versions of databases where
appropriate.
The way I'm doing it is:
1. All database links are served up from a database table, so the link on our
website is http://$OUR_LIBRARY/redirect?$db_id
2. The db-of-dbs knows if there is a mobile specific url (because we put it
there...)
3. Detect mobile-or-not as a binary value
4. Serve up the right one as an HTTP header redirect
One big exception: EBSCO (which provides a really large number of our
databases) handles their mobile access by using the same URL with a different
profile name in the url. The redirect script has a special case that says if
($mobile = true and $ebsco = true) { do string replace on the url to change
from the desktop url to the mobile url } -- so I don't have to list both
versions of the URL in the database.
It seems to work out pretty well.
Ken
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sarah
Dooley
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:25 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live
Very cool--congratulations!
In addition to Dave's questions, I'd be curious to know (can't see it since I
don't have a login) how you handled directing people to databases that have
mobile versions. This is something I've been wondering about for our site down
the road and library sites in general--from a responsive site, how to
effectively link people out to vendor-provided resources that are either mobile
or non-mobile.
-Sarah Dooley
Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live
I use the PHP code from: http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/ (free for personal and non-profit use) Ken -Original Message- From: Jonathan Rochkind [mailto:rochk...@jhu.edu] Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:36 PM To: Code for Libraries Cc: Ken Irwin Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live What method do you use to detect mobile-or-not?
Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live
The code I'm using (on the server side) is based on the
$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] variable -- the providers of the code have gone to
a bunch of trouble to parse user agents and discern whether or not they count
as mobile devices. It is decidedly imperfect, but it does a good job at least
for the mobile devices we're seeing so far.
In other contexts I also use JavaScript-based detection, but for these
functions I'm doing it with the PHP approach.
ken
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:53 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB]
Responsive Web Site Live
Ah, but this still doesn't answer my question on your part, Mark!
How do you detect browser width, especially on the server-side?
If it's with Javascript... the method Ken describes, it's not clear to me how
javascript logic could get in there exactly.
Thus my question.
On 1/2/2013 3:51 PM, Mark Pernotto wrote:
I'd be curious to hear the response to Jonathan's question. For the
longest time, I used to determine mobile displays by browser, but it
just got too cluttered. Now I detect browser width to determine
mobile versions. This little trick doesn't play nice with all
frameworks, however, so it's not bullet-proof, but so far, it has
worked well. And on a high level, easy to troubleshoot.
It wasn't immediately apparent to me if this was a part of a CMS or
not - it's awfully clean, and the usual Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress
identities weren't visible in the source. Really nice work!
Thanks,
Mark
On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote:
What method do you use to detect mobile-or-not?
On 1/2/2013 3:33 PM, Ken Irwin wrote:
Sarah asks about how to direct users to mobile versions of databases
where appropriate.
The way I'm doing it is:
1. All database links are served up from a database table, so the
link on our website is http://$OUR_LIBRARY/redirect?$db_id
2. The db-of-dbs knows if there is a mobile specific url (because we
put it there...) 3. Detect mobile-or-not as a binary value 4. Serve
up the right one as an HTTP header redirect
One big exception: EBSCO (which provides a really large number of
our
databases) handles their mobile access by using the same URL with a
different profile name in the url. The redirect script has a special
case that says if ($mobile = true and $ebsco = true) { do string
replace on the url to change from the desktop url to the mobile url
} -- so I don't have to list both versions of the URL in the database.
It seems to work out pretty well.
Ken
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Sarah Dooley
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:25 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live
Very cool--congratulations!
In addition to Dave's questions, I'd be curious to know (can't see
it since I don't have a login) how you handled directing people to
databases that have mobile versions. This is something I've been
wondering about for our site down the road and library sites in
general--from a responsive site, how to effectively link people out
to vendor-provided resources that are either mobile or non-mobile.
-Sarah Dooley
Re: [CODE4LIB] Survey + policy
Eric++ I was thinking the same thing. Along those lines: for the folks working on the draft policy - I'd like to suggest adding gender expression and gender identity to the mix of things we're not discriminating about. Language from the GLAAD Media Reference Guidehttp://www.glaad.org/document.doc?id=99: Gender Identity: One’s internal, personal sense of being a man or a woman (or a boy or a girl). For transgender people, their birth-assigned sex and their own internal sense of gender identity do not match. Gender Expression: External manifestation of one’s gender identity, usually expressed through “masculine,” “feminine” or gender-variant behavior, clothing, haircut, voice or body characteristics. -Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Phetteplace Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 2:01 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Survey Maybe too late now but...gender is not a binary. There should be an Other option if we really are striving to be an inclusive community. -Eric On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.netmailto:li...@kcoyle.net wrote: On 11/27/12 10:35 AM, Joe Hourcle wrote: I admit, I'm no expert on surveys (I tried doing one once for a class ... got shut down for an IRB violation as I said I'd share the results back with the organization we were surveying ... which is pretty sad, as the organization I was surveying was the library school itself) ... but you could do a much larger survey, trying to get all people who work in libraries, and ask questions about specific IT-related tasks that they might be doing, even if they don't self-identify as IT. Of course, then you might miss those of us who don't work in libraries, but who may identify with this group. ... and make sure that whoever does it isn't at an academic institution, to avoid that IRB crap. -Joe Joe, what I was hoping for was not a survey where individuals report on themselves, but a statistical sample of libraries where the library reports on its staff. That avoid the self-image issue, and the selection that individual reporting on self entails. kc -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.netmailto:kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
[CODE4LIB] any Libki / Userful Pre-Book users out there?
Hi folks, Anybody out there using the Libki computer kiosk/reservation manager system? Our library is looking for a (preferably free/OSS) solution to manage access to our public kiosks. Libki looks possible, but the documentation on their website really only goes as far as installation. I'd like to find out a bit more, including: * what features are there? What can I do with it? (e.g.: support authentication against our Innovative OPAC, LDAP, etc? support guest passwords for folks not in the system?) * is there more documentation, or is the minimal stuff on the website the entirety of it? * it looks like it's tested on Debian/Ubuntu; what's your experience like installing it on other Linux OSes? * is it worth it as is, or should I be looking for another solution? I also found Userful's Pre-Book software, which looks like it's free for the base package but not so free when you want to authenticate against a catalog or things like that. Any thoughts on that system would be welcome too. Anybody? Thanks! Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] Browser Wars
My id agrees with the calls to let IE die a horrible death, but I agree with your point: from a service perspective, we cannot just drop support for IE. Libraries will hopefully uphold a higher standard of accessibility than some other places on the web. In my heart of hearts, I assume that anyone using BlackBerry or IE is doing so because they want to have a sub-optimal experience on the web, but I can't quite bring myself to design that way. Instead, with nearly everything I design, I have to do some IE-workarounds to make it not suck on a browser that can't be bothered to join the 21st century. *sigh* Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 10:33 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Browser Wars Hi Code4Lib, Ever since Microsoft announced the new IE auto-update policy, the blogosphere is fussing. This is definitely important (and good) news, but sites-Smashing Magazine has three articles on it in the last few days-are really pushing the drop IE support, and its literally slowing the internet down. I'm down, but that attitude-especially for libraries-isn't really the right one to have. It is, IMHO, an old view. A smart design strategy with progressive enhancement can deliver content to . everyone - which should be the priority for non-prof / [local-]government web presences over flare. Right? Anyway, all of this is coming from some really good web developers who don't really face the same issues that have to be considered for library sites. I was just curious what the library community actually thought about this. Thanks, Michael Here's some reading: Old Browsers ar eHOlding Back the Web (July 9th): http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/09/old-browsers-are-holding-back-the -web/ Dear Web User: Please Upgrade Your Browser (July 10th) : http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/10/dear-web-user-please-upgrade-your -browser/ It's Time to Stop Blaming Internet Explorer (July 12th): http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/12/its-time-to-stop-blaming-internet -explorer/ A recent library blog today: Have you Given Much thought to browsers? : http://www.meanlaura.com/archives/1528
[CODE4LIB] web video: best practices / workflow
Hi folks, Our library is planning to post some video guides in the next little while, and I'd like to make it as simple-for-me and accessible-for-everyone-else as possible. Does anyone have a good handy guide/idea/workflow/etc on current best practices for presenting html5-happy video that has reasonably good cross-platform usability? (I'm thinking it needs to work in at least: IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, iOS, Android.) Here are some of the things I'm thinking about: *Which formats do you typically include? *How do you generate videos in those formats? *How do you know what codecs are in those files? *What (free if possible?) software are you using to accomplish this? *What kind of workflow for file creation makes this process manageable. I've been looking at Mark Pilgrim's book HTML5 Up and Running (O'Reilley, 2010), and it makes the whole process seem pretty arduous. I'm hoping that that the last two years have brought some simplifying developments. Pilgrim recommends the following formats (in failover order): H.264 mp4 WebM Ogg Theora His system for generating all of these files includes scads of software and tedious processes. Anybody have an easier and/or more up-to-date approach? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] web video: best practices / workflow
Quoth Jason: I've just written a script which takes source video, adds a common credits snippet to each video, and then wraps system calls to convert to MP4 and WebM. The script also takes the first frame of the video to create a poster image. Is this a share-able script? That sounds like exactly the kind of workflow-management that I was hoping to find. (I checked out the AnyVideoConverter that Ed mentioned too. It does a nice job converting files, but it almost seems deliberately designed to be time-consuming. (It will let you generate 3 kinds of HTML5 video formats and outputs HTML code for each of them -- but it makes you do them sequentially, and then you've got to cut and paste the HTML code together, instead of letting you pick 1-3 output formats and generating one tidy code block.) So close... Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib MidWest
Thanks Ranti! I am definitely interested, and would favor a the latter end of the proposed timeframe. Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matt Schultz Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2012 3:08 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib MidWest Hi Ranti, I work virtually with Educopia Institute and the MetaArchive Cooperative, and am based near Grand Rapids, MI. I would definitely look forward to attending being so close and all, and could do so either early in the week or the weekend. But would prefer the weekend. Best, Matt Schultz Program Manager Educopia Institute, MetaArchive Cooperative http://www.metaarchive.org matt.schu...@metaarchive.org 616-566-3204 On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Ranti Junus ranti.ju...@gmail.com wrote: Hello All, Michigan State University (Lansing, MI) is hosting the next Code4Lib Midwest. We aim to hold the event in either week of July 16th or 23rd (but most likely not July 27th) either as 1.5 or 2 days event. So, my question for those who might be interested to come: would it be better to have it early in the week or weekend? Let me know and then I'll set up a doodle poll for the date options. thanks, ranti. -- Bulk mail. Postage paid. -- Matt Schultz Program Manager Educopia Institute, MetaArchive Cooperative http://www.metaarchive.org matt.schu...@metaarchive.org 616-566-3204
[CODE4LIB] free source for issn-periodical-type data?
Hi folks, Does anyone know of a free data source that correlates ISSNs with data that includes what kind of publication is this? e.g. *Academic journal (+/- peer review?) *Popular magazine *Newspaper *Trade journal *Etc Obviously, there's some wiggle room in these designations, and I don't need a super-solid answer. I've been asked to supply information about our academic journal collection, and I don't have a particularly good way of differentiating between our e-journals and e-magazines, for instance. Individual suppliers might make these distinctions, but I'm really hoping that a query-able (or, better: downloadable) file exists. Any ideas? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] system for web-based annotated bibliography?
Hi folks, I'm starting in on a pretty big bibliography project, for what I expect will be a web-based annotated bibliography. Kind of part-book-review-blog/part-bibliography. I'm wondering if there are any systems out there that would support this kind of thing. I think what I want is essentially a mashup of Zotero and Wordpress. Zotero to capture, wrangle, and output bib data, and Wordpress to handle the blog-like/text aspects, tagging, etc. I'm imaging a system that could be used like a regular blog, but that would also allow formatted bib output, e.g. spit out an MLA-style bibliography for all the books tagged as travelogue, with or without annotations. Anybody have experience with something like this? Does it exist already? I'd rather not have to invent this one! Thanks! Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] system for web-based annotated bibliography?
Julia -- that look quite plausible; it just means that I'll finally have to learn Drupal! I am not opposed to this fate, just foot-draggy... :) -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Julia Bauder Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 10:10 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] system for web-based annotated bibliography? Would Drupal and its Biblio module (http://drupal.org/project/biblio) do what you need? Julia
Re: [CODE4LIB] server side vs client side
My general approach is server-side first. Unless it's wildly easier to accomplish something client-side, then I think it makes sense to go for the consistency of server-side processing. So taking a text file, doing some processing, and spitting out what should behave for the user as if it's a static HTML document, server-side PHP/Perl/DrugOfChoice sounds like the way to go. Save client-side processing for the things it does much better than the server-side alternative; mostly, I think that means use JavaScript for browser-interactivity stuff that's easier to do in the browser. Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Nate Hill Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 12:49 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] server side vs client side As I was struggling with the syntax trying to figure out how to use javascript to load a .txt file, process it and then spit out some html on a web page, I suddenly found myself asking why I was trying to do it with javascript rather than PHP. Is there a right/wrong or better/worse approach for doing something like that? Why would I want to choose one approach rather then the other? As always, apologies if I'm asking a terribly basic question. -- Nate Hill nathanielh...@gmail.com http://www.natehill.net
Re: [CODE4LIB] Professional development advice?
HTML, CSS, and PHP make for a great start. For interface development, I'd suggest adding jQuery to the mix (especially JQueryUI and JQuery Mobile). I find jQuery to be useful for two particular things: 1) modifying interfaces over which you have limited direct control (like OPACs) -- it lets you modify the DOM (ie, re-write the HTML). 2) jQueryUI makes it astonishingly easy to create all sorts of interface widgets like tabbed browsing, date pickers, etc. JQuery Mobile does similar work in mobilizing well-formed HTML content. For some moderately heavy lifting in the background, MySQL (or something similar like PostgreSQL) is also enormously useful. I use MySQL databases for darn near everything -- our list of journal holdings, the list of databases, collection development functions, etc. Large chunks of our library website are generated from the database content, which helps with update once, changes appear everywhere kinds of functions. I'm kind of close to the ground coder in that I mostly work on smaller projects that don't require or take advantage of big intermediary tools like Drupal. Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with the big tools, just that someone else is better positioned to recommend them. (If I were to pick up a few new toolsets right now, Drupal and SOLR/Blacklight would probably be the ones I'd go for.) Good luck, Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Anne Gresham Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 11:08 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Professional development advice? Hi code4lib folks, I'm in my final semester of library school and my first year as a baby librarian. At school, I focused on systems and technology, and I'm currently running a desktop and mobile site at work. I'm fine with HTML and CSS, and I can fumble around in PHP, but I feel very under-prepared for the library web developer career I want to have. I was wondering what skills/programming languages/experience you think I should be seeking if I want to be able to develop (good) interactive online resources/digital collections for library patrons and/or staff. Thanks for your help! Anne Gresham Reference Librarian Springdale Public Library 479-750-8180 | agres...@springdalelibrary.org
[CODE4LIB] best practices for video accessibility?
Hi all, I'm working with someone who's working to make their videos available online and is particularly looking for mobile accessibility. That seems to be a moving target these days, and I'm wondering if anyone with more experience in this area might have some best-practices up their sleeve. We're trying to figure out: 1) What size format to render the original vids in so they will be most accessible, and 2) Which sizes and formats to make the lower-res videos available too. Flash, OGG, and MP4(H.264) are all on our radar. I think that Adobe Premier or something similar is probably the tool they'll be using. They're looking at about 800 videos, so getting it right the first time is highly desirable! Any thoughts? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] mysql: terminated by AUTO -- myAdmin v commandline
Hi folks, Using the ever-handy phpMyAdmin tool for MySQL db management, there's a CSV import option to parse lines like this (all GUI-like): LOAD DATA INFILE 'file.csv' INTO TABLE tbl_name FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' FIELDS ENCLOSED BY '\', FIELDS ESCAPED BY '\' LINES TERMINATED BY 'auto' However, when I try that same sort of thing on the command-line, I can't get terminated by auto to work, with or without quotes. Looking at the MySQL documentation, this doesn't actually seem to be a legitimate instruction - maybe it's something slick that phpMyAdmin is doing in the background? I want to be that slick too - does anyone know of a way to introduce that kind of flexibility at the code level? Have you already written a script that handles these variations? Any ideas? Thanks ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?
That's a great point, Same. Thanks. The spam-bots have been falling for the confirm_email and filling it in with the correct value, but I think I'll try switching it to something obtuse that the auto-fillin isn't likely to have a value for. what_would_you_do_for_a_klondike_bar comes to mind... Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sam McDonald Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 11:26 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha? Hi all, Long time reader, 2nd time poster?! (since 2000?). Regarding honey-pot field labels...in some recent Chrome versions (and probably in current versions) Chrome helpfully auto-populates fields based upon the field label.(under default config, can be changed via Options, Personal stuff, autofill). If a field label has been used before (presumably on any previously filled out form using that browser, but perhaps only to forms served from that domain), it will auto-populate it. So, if your trap presumes that a field should be null, since you hid it from the spam bots, AND Chrome helpfully ( invisibly) auto-populates it (without the user knowing about it at all), the form will be trapped, and fail, and the user will have nearly no way to figure this out..the clever users will try a different browser and then meet success. I don't believe that the mass-attack spam bots look for labels that are needed to be filled in. That being said, perhaps a label needs to look tempting, but unlikely to be used by a developer, maybe something like First__Name_ the caps, double underscore and trailing underscore are unlikely to be used on purpose elsewhere, but not quite as obvious as spam_trap or asdhgashdvasbmvf Ah, here's some other people noting the problem http://www.electrictoolbox.com/html-form-honeypots-autofill/ http://www.alexanderinteractive.com/blog/2011/02/chrome%E2%80%99s-autofill-and-honeypot-fields/ http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?727720-Trouble-with-Chrome-filling-in-honeypot ...more can be found via Google using chrome autofill honeypot PS I originally discovered the Chrome form thing the hard way. -Sam
Re: [CODE4LIB] screen scraping
I don't know that there are two many rules about this, but here's what comes to mind for me: 1. respect robots.txt 2. cache content so you don't hit their site more often than is reasonable. (i'd say that once a day is pretty reasonable) 3. also cache or mockup or something when you're writing your code, so you're not pounding them with live hits while you're working out the bugs. as far as legality, i'm gonna leave that to someone else. citation is, of course, a really good start. Ken On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 22:23, Nate Hill nathanielh...@gmail.com wrote: A question: what are the 'rules' around screen scraping? If one site doesn't offer an RSS feed and you want to grab (for example) their weekly top ten list with a script and then redisplay it on another site, is that bad form? Or even illegal? Thanks- Nate -- Nate Hill nathanielh...@gmail.com http://www.natehill.net
[CODE4LIB] mysql subquery response time
Hi all, I've not done much with MySQL subqueries, and I'm trying right now with what I find to be surprising results. I wonder if someone can help me understand. I have a pile of data that with columns for institution and date. Institution gets repeated a lot, with many different dates. I want to select all the institutions that *only* have dates after July 1 and don't appear in the table before that. My solution was to do a first query for all the institutions that DO have dates before July 1 SELECT distinct institution FROM `renewals` WHERE snap_date '2011-07-01' And then to do a SELECT query on all the institutions: SELECT distinct institution from renewals And then try to do a NOT IN subquery subtracting the smaller query from the larger one: SELECT distinct institution from renewals WHERE institution not in (SELECT distinct institution FROM `renewals` WHERE snap_date '2011-07-01') ...only it doesn't seem to work. Or rather, the query has been running for several minutes and never comes back with an answer. Each of these two queries takes just a few milliseconds to run on its own. Can someone tell me (a) am I just formatting the query wrong, (b) do subqueries like this just take forever, and/or (c) is there a better way to do this? (I don't really understand about JOIN queries, but from what I can tell they are only for mixing the results of two different tables so I think they might not apply here.) Any advice would be most welcome. Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] memory management for grownups
I have a feeling it may be time for me to learn some grown-up programming skills, and I hope someone here might be able to help. I have a PHP script chewing over a large MySQL query. It's creating a handful of big associative arrays in the process, and punks out after the arrays get to 32MB. Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 242 bytes) in analysis.php on line 41 I'm basically building a big associative array encoding the name of the borrowing institution, the patron type (student,faculty,staff,etc), the item barcode, and the various bits of data we want for each of these items. // the first time we see a barcode $stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][first] = $date; $stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][min] = $renewals; $stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][call] = $call_no; //subsequent instances of the barcode $stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][max] = $renewals; Once I've chewed over all 4million records (40MB) , I spit it out into a new MySQL table that has the collated data that I want. Unfortunately this system breaks down when I get to so many millions of records. Is there a more efficient way of doing this kind of data transformation? I *could* not keep so much in the big stats array and instead make millions of UPDATE calls to the MySQL table, but that doesn't sound like a winning proposition to me. I imagine that I could also increase the memory allotment, but it will eventually get to big too. Or I suppose that I could do it all in chunks - right now I'm parsing the whole raw-data SQL table at once; I could do one institution's data at a time and buy myself some wiggle-room. But fundamentally, it seems to me that asking PHP to hold lots of data in an array might not be the most programmerly system; it's just what I've always done. Any advice? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] does your OPAC pass HTML validation?
Hi all, I'm curious: does ANYONE have an OPAC that passes an HTML validator test? I've know mine doesn't, and none of the ones I spot-checked do either. (TPD: OhioLINK gets a prize for coming way closer than anyone, by at least an order of magnitude and sometimes several!) Do catalogs even validate out-of-the-box? (I've never set up an OPAC before, I have no idea what out-of-the-box might actually look like.) I'm presently writing an article about working up a mobile OPAC and am a little embarrassed to be talking about validation despite the fact that my own catalog doesn't validate. I'm glad to see (?) I'm not alone in this, but... What do we think about this? Ken
[CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper
Hi all, I'm about to embark upon a summer weeding project, and would like to do so with the help of a little web tool - perhaps one that you've already invented or for which a generic AJAX-based CRUD interface already exists. (Mostly I think I'm just looking for a low-power AJAX-based CRUD thing.) I'm going to describe what I want it to do, and perhaps you can tell me if you think someone has already done the heavy lifting on creating something like this. Back end: a database containing the current shelf-list along with some useful bibdata like title, pubinfo, last-checkout-date, total-checkouts, date added to collection, plus some fields for the information we'll be inputing on the front end. Front end: an iPad/laptop-friendly touch-or-click interface that will allow us to mark individual fields. Some of those would be multiple choice fields like condition of the book. A free text note field. A few Booleans (e.g. Someone says this books is a classic and we may never discard it., Listed in Best Books for Acad Lib, I propose we weed this book) The idea for this interface would be to allow the (de)selector to make notes on each title as s/he goes down the shelf. The selector would be able to easily see bib data and would be able to change the data as the process goes on. I'd prefer to do this on an AJAX model so the database is updated in real time rather than relying on more overt form submission. I described this as a CRUD (Create, Replace, Update, Delete) thing, but I guess it's really just U - updating. Do you have a nice easy tool for doing AJAX-y db updating from a UI that would allow for the various types of input (pulldowns, Boolean, text fields). Preferably, I'd like to be able to do some visual renderings of some of the data to match our in-house sticker system - yellow dots for we might weed this, green for we gotta keep this. Any ideas? I would love to not re-invent this wheel. Thanks! Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper
It turns out that this is one of those I should have just searched first questions. Once it became clearer to me that I didn't need a library-specific app but that all I really needed was AJAX+CRUD, the problem simplified. Solution: http://www.ajaxcrud.com/ It looks like it can do all of the basic functions I need, and I can probably hack on some extra functionality (like catalog links and color changes) using jQuery or minor hacks on the built-in functions. Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper
AJAX for slickness and ease of use. We could do form html, but I'd prefer something that's updated in real time. As for the scanner -- my plan was to pre-populate the database from our OPAC, so we won't need to scan each book individually.) Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Dave Caroline Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 11:39 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper Why ajax! just a plain html form and add a barcode scanner, to pick that books data from the db Scan shelf, scan contents, you now have updated list of contents and books gone awol jump to updating page scan book, update, rinse repeat Dave Caroline
Re: [CODE4LIB] What do you wish you had time to learn?
Drupal Solr/Blacklight Rr Hula-hoop tricks -Ken On Apr 26, 2011, at 8:30 AM, Edward Iglesias wrote: Hello All, I am doing a presentation at RILA (Rhode Island Library Association) on changing skill sets for Systems Librarians. I did a formal survey a while back (if you participated, thank you) but this stuff changes so quickly I thought I would ask this another way. What do you wish you had time to learn? My list includes CouchDB(NoSQL in general) neo4j nodejs prototype API Mashups R Don't be afraid to include Latin or Greek History. I'm just going for a snapshot of System angst at not knowing everything. -- Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.orgtel:+1-678-235-2955 Ass't Director, Technology Services Development http://dltj.org/about/ Lyrasis --Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers. The Disruptive Library Technology Jesterhttp://dltj.org/ Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
[CODE4LIB] more general travel considerations: airport transportation
Hi all, Is there any effort currently underway to help folks get from the airport to/from the conference? If not, shall we start one? I'll be driving thru Indianapolis to/from the event and would be glad to pick up a person or two on the way. I'm sure we don't need to work that all out on the mailing list, but if there's not such an effort already underway, perhaps a wiki page to coordinate? Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] more general travel considerations: airport transportation
It turns out that there was already a rideshare page on the wiki: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/C4L2011_rideshare It just didn't have a category tag to associate it with the conference; it does now. Better living through metadata, Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard, Joel M Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 9:33 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] more general travel considerations: airport transportation I would be amenable to a wiki page. My schedule means I'm going to either sprint to make a 10:40 shuttle or wait roughly two hours waiting for the 12:40 shuttle, but I know that's monday and some (most) people will be arriving sunday. (I couldn't swing the extra hotel night) --Joel Joel Richard IT Specialist, Web Services Department Smithsonian Institution Libraries | http://www.sil.si.edu/ (202) 633-1706 | (202) 786-2861 (f) | richar...@si.edu On Jan 24, 2011, at 8:58 AM, Ken Irwin wrote: Hi all, Is there any effort currently underway to help folks get from the airport to/from the conference? If not, shall we start one? I'll be driving thru Indianapolis to/from the event and would be glad to pick up a person or two on the way. I'm sure we don't need to work that all out on the mailing list, but if there's not such an effort already underway, perhaps a wiki page to coordinate? Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download
This is good to know -- the data is likely to be used chiefly in Windows contexts, so the \r\n option might make most sense. Appreciate everyone's help on this! joys Ken -Original Message- From: Jonathan Rochkind [mailto:rochk...@jhu.edu] Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 11:34 AM To: Code for Libraries Cc: Ken Irwin Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download Windows NotePad probably needs an \r\n combo at the end of every line, windows style. Whether you should worry about that depends on where the file is destined for and if it matters. (Becuase an \r\n at the end of every line might (or might not) mess up some unix or mac applications. Ah, line endings.) On 1/11/2011 7:57 PM, Ken Irwin wrote: Jonathan's questions were right on target. I was opening the files in the standard MS Notepad editor, and it was not observing line breaks. When I went to go open the files in MiniTab they were just fine. (Changing the files to .txt and text/plain did *not* fix the problem in Notepad, and I do wonder what it would take to make that program happy, but in this case it doesn't much matter.) Thanks for the help Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 3:41 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download line breaks don't appear when you view it with what software? Can you have your browser save it to disk after it prompts you to do so, and open with a reliable text editor you know how to use and confirm if \n is really still in the file or not? If you are viewing it in your web brower, then your web browser is probably deciding to display it as HTML. The line breaks are probably still there, the web browser is just displaying as HTML. Web browsers aren't great places to view text. If you are viewing it after saving it to disk, then your web browser probably won't know to display as text unless the filename ends in .txt. If you are viewing it without saving to disk (but then why are you using Content-Disposition:attachment?), then make sure you're still setting the content-type appropriately; and you may need to make the filename end in .txt anyway. The line breaks are probably still there, your web browser is just rendering the file as html rather than txt, is my guess. On 1/11/2011 3:29 PM, Ken Irwin wrote: Hi all, I've got a dataset that I'm trying to make exportable for MiniTab, etc. It's tab-delimited and lines end with \n. When I serve it up as text/plain and view it in my web browser, it works just fine and all the line breaks are in the right places. When I send the header to make it a downloadable attachment: Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=categories.tab Then there are no line breaks at all - it's all one line, and the line-breaks don't appear. I tried \r instead, and that didn't work either. Any idea what I might be doing wrong here? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download
Hi all, I've got a dataset that I'm trying to make exportable for MiniTab, etc. It's tab-delimited and lines end with \n. When I serve it up as text/plain and view it in my web browser, it works just fine and all the line breaks are in the right places. When I send the header to make it a downloadable attachment: Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=categories.tab Then there are no line breaks at all - it's all one line, and the line-breaks don't appear. I tried \r instead, and that didn't work either. Any idea what I might be doing wrong here? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download
Jonathan's questions were right on target. I was opening the files in the standard MS Notepad editor, and it was not observing line breaks. When I went to go open the files in MiniTab they were just fine. (Changing the files to .txt and text/plain did *not* fix the problem in Notepad, and I do wonder what it would take to make that program happy, but in this case it doesn't much matter.) Thanks for the help Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 3:41 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download line breaks don't appear when you view it with what software? Can you have your browser save it to disk after it prompts you to do so, and open with a reliable text editor you know how to use and confirm if \n is really still in the file or not? If you are viewing it in your web brower, then your web browser is probably deciding to display it as HTML. The line breaks are probably still there, the web browser is just displaying as HTML. Web browsers aren't great places to view text. If you are viewing it after saving it to disk, then your web browser probably won't know to display as text unless the filename ends in .txt. If you are viewing it without saving to disk (but then why are you using Content-Disposition:attachment?), then make sure you're still setting the content-type appropriately; and you may need to make the filename end in .txt anyway. The line breaks are probably still there, your web browser is just rendering the file as html rather than txt, is my guess. On 1/11/2011 3:29 PM, Ken Irwin wrote: Hi all, I've got a dataset that I'm trying to make exportable for MiniTab, etc. It's tab-delimited and lines end with \n. When I serve it up as text/plain and view it in my web browser, it works just fine and all the line breaks are in the right places. When I send the header to make it a downloadable attachment: Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=categories.tab Then there are no line breaks at all - it's all one line, and the line-breaks don't appear. I tried \r instead, and that didn't work either. Any idea what I might be doing wrong here? Thanks Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] HTML Load Time
Nathan, Would it make sense to break this up into several documents and add a search function? You could still have a giant, one-page (and thus easily-printable) option, but maybe that wouldn't be the default. The search feature I'm envisioning would just be a search of key words in the title of a box. A tag-cloud sort of thing might be a useful way of making some of the keywords visible too. Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Nathan Tallman Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 2:49 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] HTML Load Time Hi Cod4Libers, I've got a LARGE finding aid that was generated from EAD. It's over 5 MB and has caused even Notepad++ and Dreamweaver to crash. My main concern is client-side load time. The collection is our most heavily used and the finding aid will see a lot of traffic. I'm fairly adept with HTML, but I can't think of anything. Does anyone have any tricks or tips to decrease the load time? The finding aid can be viewed at http://www.americanjewisharchives.com/aja/FindingAids/ms0361.html. Thanks, Nathan Tallman Associate Archivist American Jewish Archives
Re: [CODE4LIB] easy/classy save-marked-records functionality?
I was just struck with a bit on inspiration on this, so perhaps I'll have a thing to share later Ken From: Ken Irwin Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 3:38 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: easy/classy save-marked-records functionality? Hi all, Thanks for your thoughts yesterday re: dealing with vendors impermanent URLs - I think the advice of the group re: getting vendors to change their ways makes more sense than the techno solution I had in mind. For today's question, I am the db supplier, so I get to make my own choices about the interface! I've got a bunch of indexes to local content, like the student newspaper, and I want to add a mark-these-records/print/email-marked-records kind of functionality. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with something, but I'm wondering what already exists. It seems likely to me that someone has already worked up a classy jQuery and/or HTML5 driven tool for doing something like this. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought I'd see what's already out there. I'd like to be able to take a page like this: http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields[]=subjectdatabase=torchsetup=torch.configterms=footballhttp://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields%5b%5d=subjectdatabase=torchsetup=torch.configterms=football and have users mark individual records that they want to save/print/retrieve/etc. Any ideas for how this has already been worked out? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] easy/classy save-marked-records functionality?
Hi all, Thanks for your thoughts yesterday re: dealing with vendors impermanent URLs - I think the advice of the group re: getting vendors to change their ways makes more sense than the techno solution I had in mind. For today's question, I am the db supplier, so I get to make my own choices about the interface! I've got a bunch of indexes to local content, like the student newspaper, and I want to add a mark-these-records/print/email-marked-records kind of functionality. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with something, but I'm wondering what already exists. It seems likely to me that someone has already worked up a classy jQuery and/or HTML5 driven tool for doing something like this. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought I'd see what's already out there. I'd like to be able to take a page like this: http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields[]=subjectdatabase=torchsetup=torch.configterms=footballhttp://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields%5b%5d=subjectdatabase=torchsetup=torch.configterms=football and have users mark individual records that they want to save/print/retrieve/etc. Any ideas for how this has already been worked out? Thanks Ken
[CODE4LIB] detecting user copying URL?
Hi all, I have just, for the severalth time, just talked to a student who had lost a bunch of work in a common way: he had copied-and-pasted a bunch of database-content URLs on the fairly-reasonable (but, of course, incorrect) assumption that those URLs would get him back to the content later. He happened to be in LexisNexis, but it happens in lots of databases. Here's what I'm wondering: is there any tasteful/sane way of using JavaScript to detect when a user clicks into the URL bar and copies/cuts the URL from a page that will do the user no good later? It would, to my mind, be completely civilized for the database provider to generate a little popup window alerting the user to the error of their ways. User education would be great, of course, but some sort of built-in alert would be very friendly. What think you all? Would JS or some similar tool be able to achieve this? Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] how 'great' are the great books
I hypothesize that until you get your 100,000 results, that authors like Chaucer and Shakespeare will rise to the top because they are the ones we've all read; they're going to get more total votes because more people will have read them. Are you capturing the losses as well as the wins here? Can you tell the difference between no one has read this book and this book is not as great? How do you control for this? Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 11:29 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] how 'great' are the great books On Nov 4, 2010, at 11:22 AM, McAulay, Elizabeth wrote: http://bit.ly/bPQHIg i had a lot of fun playing with this survey. is it an infinite survey, though -- no end to the questions? Correct, it is an endless survey. 8-) BTW, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare's Macbeth are now #1 and #2. -- Eric M.
Re: [CODE4LIB] III Mobile Catalog
I've been pretty happy with the results we were able to get with a home-grown mobile catalog. It's not a product that one could install (though I'd be happy to share our code, much of which would likely work out well.) Basically, my approach was to write mobile stylesheets that kill a lot of the extraneous content (excess nav buttons, bulky content, etc.) We also use a bit of jQuery to apply CSS more selectively than a plain CSS declaration will allow. You can see our results at: http://ezra.wittenberg.edu The biggest downside to this approach is that it's a rendering of our main catalog -- we dictate that mobile browsers get the mobile stylesheet, and there's no opportunity for a user to say no, gimme the real thing. One of the biggest upsides (besides that it's free) is that it retains the capacity for marking/saving books, which AirPac does not. Most of the development took just a few days, though tweaking went on for longer. I'm not aware of the MobileCat, though, and I'll be interested in checking it out. If you (or anyone else) is interested in our code or hearing more about our approach, I'll be happy to share it. Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Amy Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 2:03 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] III Mobile Catalog We are researching possibilities for a mobile version of our III catalog and are wondering what success people have had. Right now our list of possible solutions include: - AirPac from III - does anyone have any feedback on this product? - MobileCat from the Tri-College Libraries (http://code.google.com/p/mobilecat/) - Other options? MobileCat is more attractive than AirPac because it's free, but I can't find much information of others out there who have implemented it successfully. Does anyone have feedback on either of these solutions or does anyone know of another mobile catalog option for III? Any thoughts would be most appreciated. Thanks Amy -- Amy Deschenes Library Assistant, Library Technology Simmons College Library Boston, MA desch...@simmons.edu
[CODE4LIB] mobile web design: resources?
Hi all, Forking off from the mobile-detection thread: Does anyone have any favorite books, articles, websites, etc. for the real how to business of building mobile-friendly websites. I have been astonished at the apparent dearth of such books, and was delighted earlier this year to discover Jonathan Stark's Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript from O'Reilly (2010); he has an Android-oriented version of the book coming out soon too. Although the book contains a lot about designing web pages, the app-building orientation of the book means that it gives short shrift to cross-platform compatibility. What I really want to find is a good guide to building simple websites that will work on any smartphone, yea, verily, even BlackBerry. (I don't know about anyone else, but I have found BB to not support a lot of things that work well on Droids and iThings.) For a shorter introduction, I belatedly discovered this article: Mobile Websites With Minimum Effort. Authors:Wisniewski, Jeff Source:Online; Jan/Feb2010, Vol. 34 Issue 1, p54-57, 4p The number-one thing that I learned from Stark's book is something that I had struggled for the longest time with: why does my iThing make all web pages look tiny? The answer: iThings assume that all web pages are 980px wide, and you've got to disabuse them of that notion by the simple expedient of defining a viewport in the page header: meta name=viewport content=width=device-width (there are several variations of this, and knowing the key word helps to find the rest.) Does anyone else have a favorite book or three for this kind of work? Ken
[CODE4LIB] Duct tape (was: PHP bashing (was: newbie))
I love how we changed the name of this thread to PHP bashing just in time for it to become a thread about duct tape. And y'all are forgetting the best automotive use for duct tape: as a temporary scaffolding for smearing Bondo onto. I just did this, in fact, and have the pink residue on my fingernails to prove it. And yes, since you ask: I use PHP all the time... ;) Though not for odd jobs -- that's what Perl is for. Ken From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of MJ Suhonos [...@suhonos.ca] Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 12:11 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] PHP bashing (was: newbie) Also...it's pretty good for plugging leaks in ducts. Actually, true story: I was in the hardware store, poking around the tape section, with a roll of your typical silver duct tape in my hand, obviously browsing. An employee came up to me asking what I was looking for, and for what purpose. I told him I was actually going to be taping metal ducts, to which he pointed at the duct tape in my hand and replied oh, then that's not what you want, this is what you want, and handed me some strange plastic stuff I'd never seen before. So, apparently duct tape isn't even good for taping ducts anymore. MJ At the risk of taking an off-topic conversation even further into Peanut Heaven, automotive hose repair is actually one of the things duct tape is least well-suited to. The adhesive doesn't bond when wet, it's not strong enough to hold much pressure or vacuum (especially moderate continuous pressure), and it fails very quickly at even moderately high temperatures. And it tends to leave goo all over everything, thus adding headaches to the proper repair you'll still need later. Duct tape is OK for keeping a wire bundle out of your fan or something, but if you try to fix a leak in your radiator hose with it, you'll still be stranded and also have gooey duct tape adhesive all over the place. Extending these points to the ongoing language debate is an exercise that will benefit no one ;-) Cheers (and just get that hose replaced ;-) -Nate
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Midwest?
I would come from Ohio to wherever we choose. Kalamazoo would suit me just fine; I've not been back there in entirely too long! Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Scott Garrison Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 8:37 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Midwest? +1 ELM, I'm happy to help coordinate in whatever way you need. Also, if we can find a drummer, we could do a blues trio (count me in on bass). I could bring our band's drummer (a HUGE ND fan) down for a day or two if needed--he's awesome. --SG WMU in Kalamazoo - Original Message - From: Eric Lease Morgan emor...@nd.edu To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Sent: Thursday, March 4, 2010 4:38:53 PM Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Midwest? On Mar 4, 2010, at 3:29 PM, Jonathan Brinley wrote: 2. share demonstrations I'd like to see this be something like a blend between lightning talks and the ask anything session at the last conference This certainly works for me, and the length of time of each talk would/could be directly proportional to the number of people who attend. 4. give a presentation to library staff What sort of presentation did you have in mind, Eric? This also raises the issue of weekday vs. weekend. I'm game for either. Anyone else have a preference? What I was thinking here was a possible presentation to library faculty/staff and/or computing faculty/staff from across campus. The presentation could be one or two cool hacks or solutions that solved wider, less geeky problems. Instead of tweaking Solr's term-weighting algorithms to index OAI-harvested content it would be making journal articles easier to find. This would be an opportunity to show off the good work done by institutions outside Notre Dame. A prophet in their own land is not as convincing as the expert from afar. I was thinking it would happen on a weekday. There would be more stuff going on here on campus, as well as give everybody a break from their normal work week. More specifically, I would suggest such an event take place on a Friday so the poeple who stayed over night would not have to take so many days off of work. 5. have a hack session It would be good to have 2 or 3 projects we can/should work on decided ahead of time (in case no one has any good ideas at the time), and perhaps a couple more inspired by the earlier presentations. True. -- ELM University of Notre Dame
[CODE4LIB] favorite jQuery plugins for libraries?
Hi all, I'm on a mission to finally learn some jQuery, and I'm kind of falling in love with it. In particular, I'm finding in it the perfect tool for modifying our OPAC in ways that the catalog vendor never intended, tweaking the DOM to my heart's content. Having worked my way through the basics of the language (I'm using the Learning jQuery book, which is a good introduction but has a nearly-useless index) I'm curious about the vast array of jQuery plugins. There are too many to know, and reading the descriptions it is not immediately apparent to me what they do. So I ask those of you who use jQuery: Do you have favorites, or ones that you find particularly relevant to the kind of work that we do? (The kind of work that we do varies quite a bit, but still...) The only one I've really explored so far is the dataTables plugin, which I will be keeping in mind for future applications. Nicole: your Library Mashups book is next on my list; I'm looking forward to it. joys, Ken
[CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc
Hi all, Does anyone have an-AJAX pop-up window style tool that works with image maps? I'm thinking of something in the the lightbox, thickbox, ibox family. I've found a bunch of references to people online *looking* for this functionality, but no one finding it. Any ideas? Thanks! Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc (clarified)
I think I should have been clearer about my quandary: I want to link to lightbox-style pseudo-popups by clicking links FROM an image-map (not to the map). *-box style linkers all seem to be keyed into the anchor-tag functionality, whereas image maps use the area-tag. So I either need: - an lightbox-style tool that can work with the area tag, or - an way of doing image maps that uses the anchor-tag instead of the area tag. Does anyone know of a solution here? (Re-write the lightbox code is of course a theoretical possibility, but I'd prefer not to get into that!) Thanks ken From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ken Irwin [kir...@wittenberg.edu] Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 2:20 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc Hi all, Does anyone have an-AJAX pop-up window style tool that works with image maps? I'm thinking of something in the the lightbox, thickbox, ibox family. I've found a bunch of references to people online *looking* for this functionality, but no one finding it. Any ideas? Thanks! Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc -- SOLVED
Sometimes the answer is quit working, go home, and ask your sweetie. My partner is a genius and had a very straightforward solution: get rid of the imagemap and replace it with some absolutely-positioned links that use regular anchor tags. Not only does this solve the problem in a lightbox-friendly way, it also improves accessibility -- the links are now text with a font-size of zero: usable for a screen-reader and invisible to others. Simple demo here: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/testbed/imagemap/ Tomorrow perhaps I'll write a little script to convert my image maps to absolutely positioned elements for the more complex real-life image maps. Ken
[CODE4LIB] character-sets for dummies?
Hi all, I'm looking for a good source to help me understand character sets and how to use them. I pretty much know nothing about this - the whole world of Unicode, ASCII, octal, UTF-8, etc. is baffling to me. My immediate issue is that I think I need to integrate data from a variety of character sets into one MySQL table - I expect I need some way to convert from one to another, but I don't really even know how to tell which data are in which format. Our homegrown journal list (akin to SerialsSolutions) includes data ingested from publishers, vendors, the library catalog (III), etc. When I look at the data in emacs, some of it renders like this: Revista de Oncolog\303\255a [slashes-and-digits instead of diacritics] And other data looks more like: Revista de Música Latinoamericana[weird characters instead of diacritics] My MySQL table is currently set up with the collation set to: utf8-bin , and the titles from the second category (weird characters display in emacs) render properly when the database data is output to the a web browser. The data from the former example (\###) renders as an I don't know what character this is placeholder in Firefox and IE. So, can someone please point me toward any or all of the following? · A good primer for understanding all of this stuff · A method for converting all of my data to the same character set so it plays nicely in the database · The names of which character-sets I might be working with here Many thanks! Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] character-sets for dummies?
Hi all -- thanks for these fabulous replies. I'm learning a lot. Armed with a bit of new knowledge, I've done some tinkering. I think I've solved my original quandaries, and have opened new cans of worms. I have a few more specific questions: 1) It appears that once I switch my MySQL table over from a latin character set to UTF-8, it is not longer case-insensitive (this makes sense based on what I learned from the Joel on Software post). All of the scripting I've done until now takes advantage of the case insensitivity; is there an easy way to keep this case insensitive while in UTF-8? 2) Is there a good/easy way to make the database agnostic about diacritics, so that a search for cafe will also find café The answers to both of these may be convert data to some normalized A-Z field that never displays, but I can only imagine that normalizing even most-Roman-characters-with-diacritics to plain ASCII-style characters can be daunting task. Any advice on these particulars? Thanks, Ken
[CODE4LIB] calling another webpage within CGI script
Hi all,
I'm moving to a new web server and struggling to get it configured properly.
The problem of the moment: having a Perl CGI script call another web page in
the background and make decisions based on its content. On the old server I
used an antique Perl script called hcat (from the Pelican
bookhttp://oreilly.com/openbook/webclient/ch04.html); I've also tried curl
and LWP::Simple.
In all three cases, I get the same behavior: it works just fine on the command
line, but when called by the web server through a CGI script, the LWP (or other
socket connection) gets no results. It sounds like a permissions thing, but I
don't know what kind of permissions setting to tinker with. In the test script
below, my command line outputs:
Content-type: text/plain
Getting URL: http://www.npr.org
885 lines
Whereas the web output just says Getting URL: http://www.npr.org; - and
doesn't even get to the Couldn't get error message.
Any clue how I can make use of a web page's contents from w/in a CGI script?
(The actual application has to do with exporting data from our catalog, but I
need to work out the basic mechanism first.)
Here's the script I'm using.
#!/bin/perl
use LWP::Simple;
print Content-type: text/plain\n\n;
my $url = http://www.npr.org;;
print Getting URL: $url\n;
my $content = get $url;
die Couldn't get $url unless defined $content;
@lines = split (/\n/, $content);
foreach (@lines) { $i++; }
print \n\n$i lines\n\n;
Any ideas?
Thanks
Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] find in page, diacritics, etc
This sounds like a great idea for a Firefox plugin... Ken -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Shearer Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 12:18 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] find in page, diacritics, etc Hi Folks, Looking for help/perspectives. Anyone got any clever solutions for allowing folks to find a word with diacritics in a rendered web page regardless of whether or not the user tries with or without diacritics. In indexes this is usually solved by indexing the word with and without, so the user gets what they want regardless of how they search. Thanks in advance for any ideas/enlightenment, Tim
[CODE4LIB] code to guide installation of software?
Hi folks, I've got a homegrown piece of software that I'll be presenting at a conference in a few weeks (to track title call-number request histories using III's InnReach module). I'm trying to package it up in such a way that other users will be able to use the software too, and I've never done this before. Is there any open-source or otherwise freely-available software to handle the installation of a LAMP-type product: - displaying readme type information until everything's set up - creating databases - creating data tables (in this case, with a dynamic list of fields depending on some user input) - loading up some pre-determined data into database tables - editing the config file variables I could make this up myself, but I wonder if someone has genericized this process. (I'm particularly concerned about how to effectively pre-load the data tables, not assuming the user has command-line mysql access.) Any ideas? Thanks Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
[CODE4LIB] what's friendlier less powerful than phpMyAdmin?
Hi folks, I have some straightforward MySQL data tables that I would like to be editable by some of my less-techy colleagues. I tend to think of phpMyAdmin as a perfectly serviceable and reasonably interface for updating database tables, but I'm told that it's kind of intimidating to the uninitiated. Are there alternatives that are meant for non-admin-types? I'd want something with read/write permissions, but that could be targeted at just a few tables, wouldn't have any of the more potent tools (drop, empty, etc.). In the ideal world, I might like something that would prevent users from doing things like accidentally changing primary key data and things like that. I've thought about writing something, but I suspect that would be reinventing the wheel. Any ideas? Thanks, Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
Re: [CODE4LIB] what's friendlier less powerful than phpMyAdmin?
Thanks for all the database suggestions. The Scaffolding function Sean suggested is more perfect than I dreamed possible. One day I'd probably benefit from learning the whole CodeIgniter framework; for now, this function will do just what I need. Thanks so much! Ken Sean Hannan wrote: I was in a similar situation and I just used CodeIgniter's scaffolding (http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/scaffolding.html ) feature to allow my users to add/edit data. It's pretty safe, and it looks neat and clean, too. Sean Hannan Web Developer, Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University Ken Irwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/30/08 9:35 AM Hi folks, I have some straightforward MySQL data tables that I would like to be editable by some of my less- techy colleagues. I tend to think of phpMyAdmin as a perfectly serviceable and reasonably interface for updating database tables, but I'm told that it's kind of intimidating to the uninitiated. Are there alternatives that are meant for non- admin- types? I'd want something with read/write permissions, but that could be targeted at just a few tables, wouldn't have any of the more potent tools (drop, empty, etc.). In the ideal world, I might like something that would prevent users from doing things like accidentally changing primary key data and things like that. I've thought about writing something, but I suspect that would be reinventing the wheel. Any ideas? Thanks, Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
Re: [CODE4LIB] what's friendlier less powerful than phpMyAdmin?
Shawn Boyette ☠ wrote: I don't think he was asking about *programmers* creating or modifying *schema*. It's true -- I just want a simple little data entry tool (which I've got now! That was easy.) I've been doing all of my development by hand, without the luxury of frameworks, not out of any programmerly virtue, but just out of simplicity -- ie, I've not taken the time to learn about frameworks. It sure would be nice to take the time at some point, and I'll keep Tim's injunctions about abstraction in mind when I do. *thanks and joy* Ken On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Tim Spalding [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This gets religious quickly, but, in my experience, programmers who learn on a framework miss out on their understanding of database necessities. They may not matter much when you have a low-traffic, low-content situation, but as your traffic and data grow you're going to want an understanding of how MySQL optimizes queries, what's expensive and what's not, and so forth. Although anyone can learn anything, experience is the best teacher, and, in my experience, frameworks encourage you to avoid that experience. For example, the Ruby programmers I've worked with have been unaware that MySQL only uses one index per table per select, causing them to index far more than they need, how joins work across different MySQL data types, the advantages of ganging your inserts together, etc. This stuff adds up fast. Of course, the same arguments could be leveled against PHP in favor of C, against C in favor of assembly, etc.. Abstraction always has merits and demerits. Tim -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
[CODE4LIB] free movie cover images?
Hi folks, With some limitations, the Google Books API allows folks to access book covers for free. (How's that working out? Anyone having luck with it?) -- what about movie/DVD/VHS covers? Are there any free sources for those images? I'd like to work up a virtual-browsing interface for our library's pretty small collection of feature films, and I'd love to include covers. Any ideas on how I might get them? Anyone else doing this? Thanks Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
Re: [CODE4LIB] free movie cover images?
I'm puzzling through all of this too. Could it be the case that the acquisition of the images would be problematic (the files are owned or licensed by other companies) but that the use of the images is ok? That would be a particularly annoying snarl: if you've got it, you can use it, but you can't get it... Ken Peter Keane wrote: Actually, this is one of a number of links out there (esp. regarding the Arriba Soft case) suggesting that fair use, regarding thumbnail images, is quite often the applicable standard, the key (often) being that there is no Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. It's just depressing to me that the society, in the shadow of DCMA, RIAA action, etc. has essentially cowered in the face of these copyright issues, and I would go so far as to say the we librarians often abrogate our duty. I mean it is our job to *create* access to information not *prevent* it. Right? Geez, nothing like the free flow of information getting privatized. My aim is just to promote the idea of assuming that information wants to be free and proceed under that assumption unless there is clear and obvious proof otherwise. Looked at another way: a thumbnail is just a bit of visual metadata, and you cannot copyright metadata. --peter keane
Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect
Is their any hope for those of us who rely on our Expect-monkeys in III? My most important Expect scripts use the create-list function, and I hope that'll stay around for a while. But I'm sure they'll eventually go away too. Has III shown any interest in building in their own macros/automation features to do the sorts of tasks for which we rely on Expect? Ken Kyle Banerjee wrote: Last week, III announced that they are removing a number of circulation functions from the telnet menus in a software update that became generally available this month. From what I've been able to surmise, functions that will be removed include placing holds and checking things in or or out. Removing these menu options will break scripts that have been in use for years at institutions in our consortium, and lots more staff time will be required to perform certain tasks after some systems are upgraded. Apparently, III recently discovered that a bug involving holds was caused by the character-based system, but it is also related to a desire to port everything to Millennium. Based on the reasoning behind the announcement, future updates are likely result in other mission critical scripts breaking as other character-based functionality is deprecated. Just a reminder of the risks of relying on automation that depend on interfaces that are losing vendor support. kyle -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
[CODE4LIB] looking for code example: AJAX narrowing search results
Hi folks, I'm looking for what ought to be a straightfoward and easily-available code example to copy from: an html form that narrows its search results on the fly based on user input. I've had no trouble finding form-autocomplete functions that help the user find a search term, but I'm looking for something a little different. I want: 1. The textbox up here; user types content and the content of #2 narrows accordingly 2. A separate div with some fairly complicated entries based on the search results down here in a separate div Does anyone have some straightforward code for this? (I'm fairly certain that Ch. 4 of /Ajax for dummies/ had a Google-search example of this, but the sample code I downloaded for that a year ago has ceased functioning, and I don't have the book in my possession right now to re-download that book's examples. And likewise: any favorite Ajax sites that give lots of examples + code? I'm finding that to be less prevalent than I'd imagined... Thanks! Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
[CODE4LIB] PS-Re: looking for code example: AJAX + MySQL + PHP
It occurs to me that I didn't specify much about my environment. I'm using PHP + MySQL to do my searching, and hoping for AJAX to make it a bit more dynamic. I don't have and am not at all familiar with Ruby on Rails, so I'm mostly hoping for a lightweight JavaScript approach. I did download the Scriptaculous framework/library which I thought might do the trick, but I've not figured out a way to make that work. (It seems to be more into regular auto-completion rather than narrowing the results display. Ken Ken Irwin wrote: Hi folks, I'm looking for what ought to be a straightfoward and easily-available code example to copy from: an html form that narrows its search results on the fly based on user input. I've had no trouble finding form-autocomplete functions that help the user find a search term, but I'm looking for something a little different. I want: 1. The textbox up here; user types content and the content of #2 narrows accordingly 2. A separate div with some fairly complicated entries based on the search results down here in a separate div Does anyone have some straightforward code for this? (I'm fairly certain that Ch. 4 of /Ajax for dummies/ had a Google-search example of this, but the sample code I downloaded for that a year ago has ceased functioning, and I don't have the book in my possession right now to re-download that book's examples. And likewise: any favorite Ajax sites that give lots of examples + code? I'm finding that to be less prevalent than I'd imagined... Thanks! Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
Re: [CODE4LIB] MINUS in MySQL (was Re: Thanks!) -- also intesection with LIKE?
Jonathan Gorman wrote: I think what's Ken is asking for though is there some combination of the IN operator and LIKE operator. He's trying to exclude a set of patterns, ie converting (ip NOT LIKE 127.% OR ip NOT LIKE 143.123.%). yup - that's exactly what i'm trying to do. say much), but if by some stroke of luck you filter based on a certain part of the address you could do a substring function. SELECT * FROM iptables WHERE substring(iptables,1,7) NOT IN (127.475,...) sadly, my data isn't quite regular enough for that. it could simply be that MySQL isn't built to handle this kind of query. thanks Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
[CODE4LIB] Thanks! Re: [CODE4LIB] SQL query
Hi all, Thanks for these myriad responses! I've gotten at least three distinct approaches to try. I knew there had to be a better way. your sql-fu is appreciated! joys Ken
Re: [CODE4LIB] LC sort problems (php)
Thanks! Do you know if anyone has worked on porting this to a PHP scenario, or is that my job? joy Ken Doran, Michael D wrote: I've not tried it, but there is sortLC http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/sortlc/ Using your sample as input, sortLC outputs this result: LB1027 .P383 1999 LB1027.23 .B45 1997 LB1027.23 .S556 1996 LB1027.25 E45 2001 LB1027.3 .E44 2001 LB1027.3 .E45 1997 LB1027.3 .S33 1999 LB1027.44 .M67 1994 LB1027.9 .L43 2004 LB1027.9 .S26 2000 LB1028 .A7 1990 LB1028.24 .B75 1999 LB1028.24 .P65 1999 It is in beta. I think any LC sort routine will break done eventually, especially given the creativity and/or local practice occasionally used in the creation/assignment of LC call numbers. But sortLC should take you further along the path than your current sort routine. Note that the routine should kick out (to STDERR) any call numbers that it can't parse. Also be aware that it will dedupe identical call numbers. There was also a minor change made to the call number regexp to more accurately handle certain bad call numbers, so please let me know if there are any unintended (bad) consequences. The changed version is 1.2b. -- Michael # Michael Doran, Systems Librarian # University of Texas at Arlington # 817-272-5326 office # 817-688-1926 cell # [EMAIL PROTECTED] # http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/ -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bigwood, David Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 3:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LC sort problems (php) Ken, I've not tried it, but there is sortLC http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/sortlc/ It is in beta. David Bigwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lunar Planetary Institute http://www.lpi.usra.edu/library/whats_new.shtml -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ken Irwin Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 2:55 PM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: [CODE4LIB] LC sort problems (php) Hi folks, I've been using a Library-of-Congress sort routine for a few years, and until now I have never used it on sufficiently large set of data to notice that it doesn't really work. It does a great job of sorting by LC class letters, but after that it gets a bit sketchy. Can someone help me here? The sort uses the php usort command, with the sort routine defined in the SortCall function (at the bottom of the page) Here's the sort in action: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/sort.php And here's the code: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/sort.txt I'm finding that LC call numbers with decimals in the first number seem to be especially confusing, as in this supposedly sorted list: LB1027 .P383 1999 LB1027.9 .L43 2004 LB1028.24 .B75 1999 LB1027.3 .S33 1999 LB1027.9 .S26 2000 LB1028.24 .P65 1999 LB1027.3 .E44 2001 LB1028 .A7 1990 LB1027.25 E45 2001 LB1027.3 .E45 1997 LB1027.23 .B45 1997 LB1027.23 .S556 1996 LB1027.44 .M67 1994 Can anyone see why this isn't working? Alternately, does anyone have an LC sort routine that they are really happy with? This one doesn't even pretend to do a good job sorting on anything with more than one set of cutters, but now I find it's even lamer than I thought. Help! Thanks Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
