[CODE4LIB] Stats and public wireless devices
I know this is more of a hardware question than a code question but I suspect that a few of the folks that have other systems roles might be able to steer me in the right direction. We're looking to replace the public wifi in the library, by itself nothing remarkable. The key requirement after reliable connectivity, is the ability to produce some level of statistics relative to usage. (I know: lies, damned lies and usage statistics). We don't run a proxy or any other system that the public need a login to use. I expect a fair number of connections that would just be staff walking in with a smart phone or other device. After the laughter subsides, any thoughts as to a suitable device? Walter
[CODE4LIB] Timelines (was: visualize website)
On 2012-08-30, at 1:03 PM, miles stauffer wrote: Is this what you are looking for? http://selection.datavisualization.ch/ The site points to TimelineJS at http://timeline.verite.co/ for timeline visualization. There is also the widget from the SIMILE project at MIT at http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/ Are there other suggestions for tools for time line visualizations? Walter
[CODE4LIB] Expectations for count queries
In the various bundles of good ideas that represent result set standards in the library and greater world, apart from the atom/opensearch totalResults element, is there an expectation of how one should package a number when that is *all* that is being requested? Use Case: dear dataset: if I asked you for steamboat records, how many would you send me? signed: curious dear curious: 12 signed: dataset I'm inclined to return just the number as Content-Type: text/plain. Clearly the semantics of the query string require a mutual understanding, but that's not my specific concern here. Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] NON-MARC ILS?
On 2012-03-14, at 2:11 PM, Bess Sadler wrote: Q1. Is there an ILS that is not based on MaRC records? A1. No, not to my knowledge. Yes, marc cataloging can seem tedious and arcane, but we have lots of tools for working with it at this point. All commercial ILS vendors that I am aware of use it, and the open source ILS products I know of also use MaRC. Further note to this. a) All the commercial and non-commercial ILS systems used by more than one institution of which I am aware either added MARC processing or died. b) All of the systems for which I have seen the underpinnings have mapped the important values from the Marc record into various other SQL data structures. They may store the Marc on the side or assemble it on the fly at the point of demand. Marc enters and exits the system but may or may not drive the internals. Walter Lewis who would happily forget everything he learned about Marc; but honestly folks there are lots of things that make less sense in the world
Re: [CODE4LIB] Metadata war stories...
On 2012-01-25, at 10:06 AM, Becky Yoose wrote: - Dirty data issues when switching discovery layers or using legacy/vendor metadata (ex. HathiTrust) I have a sharp recollection of a slide in a presentation Roy Tennant offered up at Access (at Halifax, maybe), where he offered up a range of dates extracted from an array of OAI harvested records. The good, the bad, the incomprehensible, the useless-without-context (01/02/03 anyone?) and on and on. In my years of migrating data, I've seen most of those variants. (except ones *intended* to be BCE). Then there are the fielded data sets without authority control. My favourite example comes from staff who nominally worked for me, so I'm not telling tales out of school. The classic Dynix product had a Newspaper index module that we used before migrating it (PICK migrations; such a joy). One title had twenty variations on Georgetown Independent (I wish I was kidding) and the dates ranged from the early ninth century until nearly the 3rd millenium. (apparently there hasn't been much change in local council over the centuries). I've come to the point where I hand-walk the spatial metadata to links with to geonames.org for the linked open data. Never had to do it for a set with more than 40,000 entries though. The good news is that it isn't hard to establish a valid additional entry when one is required. Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] My crazed idea about dealing with registration limitations
On 2011-12-22, at 1:55 PM, Peter Noerr wrote: Crazy variation number 3. Have two tracks which are identical, but time shifted by half a day (or some other convenient unit). The presenters talk twice on the same day - in the morning for track A and the afternoon for track B. That way there is no speaker gulag, no time over-run (though, following Declan's point, how much time is left out of the week after travelling, so why not the whole week), and you get a chance to hear a really interesting presentation twice - or miss it twice! One of the things I've always enjoyed about single track conferences like Code4Lib and Access is that when you are speaking you don't miss all the other great (and more often than not, greater) presentations happening in other rooms while you're talking about stuff you already know. It might be different for some folks, but for some of us giving a presentation is *mostly* an excuse to get our employers to release us from other duties and fund travel and the opportunity to learn. Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] Patents and open source projects
On 6 December 2011, at 9:46 AM, Roy Tennant wrote: I once got a cease and desist letter from a legal firm defending someone's trademark for metadata. I mean, seriously. Perhaps obviously, I ignored it. It's still in my files somewhere. We had a variation in Ontario back in the 90s when a businessmen working with libraries heard the phrase virtual library pass my lips in conversation. Next thing I knew, he thought he had trademarked it. I try never to use the phrase these days, and he left the library market. I can't begin to recall which of you I heard it from first. Walter Lewis Halton Hills
Re: [CODE4LIB] Programmer Orientation to Library/Lib Sci
On 22 July 2011, at 1:07 PM, Bigwood, David wrote: The extended ASCII character set, Latin-1, used in the old MARC systems was always something that was neglected to get mentioned and not at all obvious. Now that more systems are using UNICODE it should be less of a problem, all depends on your system and if you still have legacy data. Isn't Marc-8 different than Latin-1 in how it handles accents? At least that's how I read http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/charsets/marc.html ... and I'd never argue with Michael about this. :) Walter Lewis who never met a character set he didn't wish he hadn't *had* to meet
Re: [CODE4LIB] Seth Godin on The future of the library
On 17 May 2011, at 11:18 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: On 5/16/2011 7:52 PM, Luciano Ramalho wrote: And then we need to consider the rise of the Kindle. An ebook costs about $1.60 in 1962 dollars. A thousand ebooks can fit on one device, 1) Why quote the ebook price in 1962 dollars? The reality in 2011 is that Kindle books in general are too expensive, particularly when Yeah, how much did a paperback book cost in 1962? 50 cents? $1? I wasn't alive then, but I bet $1.60 is expensive in 1962 dollars! I usually use one of two inflation factors (the economists use a larger basket): a) what did that house have cost me then? b) what would I have earned on minimum wage then if I wasn't in a job that supplied room and board? In US, minimum wage in 1962 was $1.15/hour; in 2009 it was $7.25 (x6.3). I wish paperbacks had only inflated at that rate Local to where I am, the houses that in 1962 were offered for $12,000 go now in the $360,000 range (x30) That's actually not far off what I'm seeing for some of the thicker paperbacks this year. Walter Lewis
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2011 Proposals
On 3 Mar 10, at 9:52 AM, Julia Bauder wrote: Also, the farther north we go, the more likely that snow+airplane incompatibilities will foil speakers' (and attendees'!) travel plans at the last minute, which isn't fun for anyone. somewhere_out_of_nor'easter_and_lake_effect_range_in_february++ Actually there is a clear line (at least on the eastern half of the continent) where the further north you go, the *less* snow you got this. Buffalo is trailing a number of places on the east coast in total snow accumulation and Toronto has been dusted a few times this winter, with nothing of real substance. Detroit and Chicago were well below seasonal averages last time I checked. ALL of that said, where are the San Diego gang or the folks from Miami? Walter who can only dream of pubs with open patios in February
Re: [CODE4LIB] Kingston? And now the date (was Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?)
On 29 Jan 10, at 5:34 PM, Wendy Huot wrote: +1 Thursday-Friday 6-7 May The dates of 6th and 7th work for me and I think they work for Kingston. Bill: librarian-hunting season begins in the late Fall, so we're in the clear. +1 for me too. I should note that while the standard librarian-hunting seasons overlap for public and academic librarians, there is a special sitting duck hunt that co-incides with the municipal budgeting process. In some communities, like ours, it is actually televised (think the worst bass-fishing show you've ever flipped past). Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?
On 25 Jan 10, at 11:23 AM, MJ Suhonos wrote: Might only be an issue crossing at the Detroit-Windsor border, though. Not sure how broadly his opinion may have spread beyond the state. I think the key to the troubles at Windsor can be linked either to a) Art Rhyno confessing at the border crossing he was going to be paid for going to a library conference (some XML thing), or b) an American (name slips my mind) who ran into issues coming to Access when it was held in Windsor. In short, it isn't a general US/Canadian border problem. The evidence would suggest it is directly related the the University of Windsor's Leddy Library being too close to the bridge over the Detroit River. Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?
On 20 Jan 10, at 10:16 AM, MJ Suhonos wrote: I think mode of transportation is something to consider; for those of us in South/Eastern Ontario, most of the cities are relatively reachable within a few hours by ground (excepting Sudbury, unfortunately). However, for those out-of-province coming via air transport, Kingston is at least 2h from the closest major airport (Ottawa). [NB: don't get me wrong; as a Queen's graduate, I love Kingston very much]. As another Queen's grad (a little before MJ, I fear), I am also guilty of forgetting that Air Canada has about eight flights a day that drop into the airport at Kingston. As a student it was mostly VIA, the bus or the thumb. That said, I would be driving right by Toronto's Pearson Airport on my way down and could time passage to do a pickup (or two). Walter who loves Kingston in May and June
Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?
On 20 Jan 10, at 2:30 PM, David Fiander wrote: Of course, as a corollary to the fact that all the locations being discussed are Canadian (well, except for Montreal), any Americans resident in the USA on the list do need to make sure that their passports will be valid through to the end of May, at least, in order to ensure you will be able to attend. Is Canadian customs now requiring US Passports? Used to be Hotel California: you could come over, but without your passport you couldn't go home. Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?
On 20 Jan 10, at 2:39 PM, Wendy Huot wrote: Regarding travel to Kingston: * For an interesting drive from upstate NY, you can get from Cape Vincent, NY to Kingston by way of Wolfe Island + ferry. Driving across the Thousand Islands Bridge is faster, but the interesting quotient goes way up via Wolfe Island (two ferries: one cheap, one free) Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] Location of the first Code4Lib North meeting?
On 20 Jan 10, at 2:53 PM, David Fiander wrote: Walter plans on going to Kingston by way of Buffalo and Cape Vincent, just so he can take the ferries. I've done just that, ... taking in a few lighthouses and harbours along the way! (and special collections at Cornell and Syracuse). Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] preconference proposals - solr
On 13 Nov 09, at 11:25 AM, Bess Sadler wrote: 1. Morning session - solr white belt [delightful descriptions snipped] 2. Morning session - solr black belt 3. Afternoon session - Blacklight Is there any chance that the black belt session needs to be/should be a two parter and run through the afternoon as well? ... or repeat for those who have just acquired their white belts but are headed in different directions? Walter who is happy to get all the direction on solr he can find
Re: [CODE4LIB] Long way to be a good coder in library
Ed Summers schrieb: The first step is admitting that you are unable to understand *all* the crazy library technology lingo, and that library-technology environment as a whole has become unmanageable. :-) If all else fails, as a noise filter, you could also do worse than to track the technologies that Ed Summers is interested in, or has contributed to ... Walter Lewis part time edsu groupie
Re: [CODE4LIB] Open, public standards v. pay per view standards and usage
William Wueppelmann wrote: [snip] I'm not entirely sure that TCP/IP and the other IETF RFCs became established because of restrictions placed on OSI. I was under the impression that OSI was also insanely complicated and that the IETF standards were much cheaper to implement from a technical standpoint. And, from a product standpoint, in the mid-90s, there were still a lot of bets being placed on closed online services like AOL, MSN, and Compuserve. Not to mention the book I once saw on MS Blackbird ... (MSN .0001?) which, thankfully, was abandonned before leaving the nest. Any examples closer to the library world? What I had been hoping for were data standards more in the library space. I've read ANSI's Z.39.19 which deals with Monolingual thesauri. (a copy lives here: http://www.slis.kent.edu/~mzeng/Z3919/8Z3919toc.htm) Near as I can tell the parallel multi-lingual standard is ISO 5964 and is available at http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?ics1=01ics2=140ics3=20csnumber=12159 for a fee of 168 Swiss francs (CHF) or ~$155USD I pay attention to the one, and never expect to read the other. This past week I was on the edge of another discussion of standards with associated controlled vocabularies (in the K-12 domain) where a criticism was raised that it wasn't Creative Commons with an Attribution requirement, else how could you teach it? That got me thinking about whether we shouldn't have already learned that lesson because the 'net largely runs on public RFCs, but wondered if I wasn't missing other examples inside our domain. Walter
[CODE4LIB] Open, public standards v. pay per view standards and usage
Are there any blindingly obvious examples of instances where a) a standards group produced a standard published by a body which charged for access to it and b) a alternative standards groups produced a competing standard that was openly accessible and the work of group a) was rendered totally irrelevant because most non-commercial work ignored it in favour of b). My instinct is to quote the battle between OSI (ISO) and TCP/IP (IETF RFCs). Does that strike others as appropriate? Any examples closer to the library world? Walter Lewis
Re: [CODE4LIB] HTML mark-up in MARC records
Doran, Michael D wrote: Is anybody else embedding HTML mark-up code in MARC records [1]? We're currently including an img tag in some MARC Holdings records in the 856z [2]. I'm inclined to think that HTML mark-up does not belong anywhere in MARC records, but am looking for other opinions (preferably with the reasoning behind the opinions), both pro and con. One of the things I found in some specific instances where I was generating Marc-like records on the fly from records that could have embedded HTML (i.e. MARBI marc community output) was that a variety of the targets that could read the data didn't know what to do with the tags and escaped them before passing them to the web client. In short, consider the downstream partners who may try and render the HTML and what interfaces they are using. Not everyone views the record via a browser ... :) Walter Lewis
Re: [CODE4LIB] best OCR package?
Randy Stern wrote: Abbyy Finereader and Nuance Omnipage are the two leading commercial OCR products. Both can achieve 98% + character accuracy on most book-like material scanned at 300 dpi. At 07:37 AM 2/3/2009 -0500, Nicole Engard wrote: I'm with Christian - I loved Abbyy FineReader when I used it at both my previous libraries. It's very accurate and it's affordable if you're not using it for mass digitization :) but we never got the server contract because like Christian said - it is quite expensive. Abbyy's engine is actually quite affordable for mass digitization efforts as well. Indeed, if you look closely at the outputs from the Internet Archive you'll see they use it extensively. The desktop model requires bodies to handle the inputs and outputs; the server version can be built into a workflow. Once you get past the time to set it up, the cost per page is *very* low ( from memory ~1 to 2 cents per page). Walter Lewis
Re: [CODE4LIB] best OCR package?
Gabriel Farrell wrote: On Tue, Feb 03, 2009 at 10:09:54AM -0500, Walter Lewis wrote: If we had to correct it all: a) it would never get done and b) it would be better than some of the originals which are rife with typographic errors. Hence the genius of Distributed Proofreaders [1] and reCAPTCHA [2]. [1] http://www.pgdp.net/c/ [2] http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html I have tremendous respect for the genius behind these projects, but the Victorian four page village newspapers have enough text for a your average government report. Put four together and you get a three-decker novel. The folks in the Distributed Proofreaders rarely sign up for the labours of Hercules (and, according to my sources, he only hung in there for twelve tasks). Then you have to deal with the fact that OCRing some of the microfilm I've seen is probably not statistically different from invoking a random token generator ... Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] best OCR package?
Karen Coyle wrote: I know that 98% is impressive, but I always like to remember that with an average of 2000 characters per page that means 40 potential errors per book page. Just to give us some perspective on the level of cleanup that will be needed for books being digitized today. The good news from the perspective of searching is that a reasonable percentage of those errors will affect terms that are either rarely used in searching or are repeated correctly in the vicinity. The bad news: phrase search is compromised. Screen readers for the visually impaired are compromised. Relevance that depends on term clustered is compromised. If we had to correct it all: a) it would never get done and b) it would be better than some of the originals which are rife with typographic errors. Walter so still regrets the Swedish Chef OCR of most microfilm newspaper projects
Re: [CODE4LIB] Zotero under attack
Peter Murray wrote: The version of EndNote I have (circa 2005) came with a couple dozen styles, and as of now Thomson Scientific has 3,500 up on their EndNote Styles website. I had read the original claim as we export citations accepted at 3500 journals (most of which they might have been able to accomplish with the couple dozen styles in question given the popularity of MLA, APA etc.). How much of the 3500 claim is copy/paste as distinct from fresh intellectual effort? Were they not claiming: a) we invented an internal data model that allows us to produce all these (different?) outputs b) you reverse-engineered our data model c) people can now export their citations from our data model in our proprietary software to your free software d) this is hurting our sales (or the tea leaves suggest it will) e) Stop. Send money ... lots. Walter Lewis
Re: [CODE4LIB] marc records sample set
Bess Sadler wrote: 3. Are there features missing from the above list that would make this more useful? One of the things that Bill Moen showed at Access a couple of years ago (Edmonton?) was what he and others were calling a radioactive Marc record. One that had no normal payload but, IIRC had a 245$a whose value was 245$a etc. As I recall, it was used to test processes where you wanted to be sure that a specific field was mapped to a specific index, or was showing in a particular Z39.50 profiles. Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] KR
Sebastian Hammer wrote: A true hacker has no need for these crude tools. He waits for cosmic radiation to pummel the magnetic patterns on his drive into a pleasing and functional sequence of bits. Alas, having been doing this (along with my partners, the four Yorkshiremen) since the Stone Age ... We used to arrange pebbles in the middle of road into the relevant patterns (we *dreamed* of being able to afford the wire for an abacus). Passing carts would then help crunch the numbers. Walter for whom graph paper, templates, pencils, 80 column punchcards and IBM Assembler were formative experiences
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Web4lib] Library Staff Scheduler
Bigwood, David wrote: Yes, some do move between branches. ... and a variable to keep in mind depending on the size of the system (and the state of local traffic) ... time between branches. When we move staff between our two branches we have to make sure that coverage is there for the period between one desk and another. For example, for a 12:00 shift start in branch 2, I have to leave branch 1 no later than 11:30 (and did anyone consider my lunch?) Walter Lewis glad not to be doing branch lunch coverages any more
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Web4lib] Library Staff Scheduler
Deb Bergeron wrote: Lunch? You get to have lunch?! ;-) The absence of a lunch opportunity for the person covering lunches in the smaller branch was, in fact, the great irony of the exercise. :) Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] auto-anthologizing
Laura Smart wrote: At 05:17 AM 2/15/2007, you wrote: (Does your feedreader lose its flavor on your next post overnight?) If your readers say don't chew on it, but you edit it in spite? Or if the comments say you're wrong, but you edit so you're right? Thank you all for making me actually spill my morning coffee. Now only to film a barbershop quartet of librarians singing it via YouTube. ... just needs two more lines for the chorus, plus three verses :) Walter
[CODE4LIB] ISBD punctuation was [CODE4LIB] Getting data from Voyager into XML?
Erik Hatcher wrote: [snip] I am, however, skeptical of a purely MARC - XSLT - Solr solution. The MARC data I've seen requires some basic cleanup (removing dots at the end of subjects, normalizing dates, etc) in order to be useful as facets. While XSLT is powerful, this type of data manipulation is better (IMO) done with scripting languages that allow for easy tweaking in a succinct way. Perhaps what Erik's put his finger on here is as good an excuse as any to raise the Death To ISBD Punctuation banner one more time. Some 60s/70s field termination punctuation rules are at the heart of most of the crud you're trying to scrape off these records. If ever there was a set of encoding rules that were more misguided, I've been fortunate not to encounter them. Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] Server names at libraries
David J. Fiander wrote: Naming computers is always fun. My main computer at home is always Golem, and if I ever had had the power to name a series of computers, I was going to name them after famous Canadian maritime disasters (Erebus and Terror were going to be the first two). My development machines have always been named after ships that have been named after something else, just to supply both a theme and an inside joke. A sad pathetic life perhaps, but there it is. So I'm writing this on Bohemian, while testing some code on Corinthian, and pulling email from Assiniboia. That said, I've always *avoided* ship names associated with major collisions and fires. So I'll leave Noronic, Hammonic, and Bavarian for David. :) RFC 1178 (http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1178.html) has some good dos and don'ts for naming a computer, and is a pretty fun read too. That *has* to be the most interesting RFC it has ever been my pleasure to read Walter
Re: [CODE4LIB] Server names at libraries
Richmond,Ian wrote: What about naming the server so that users would know what it did from the name? We used to have a library web server named libweb, which I always liked, as it sort of made sense to people. That's what we do with DNS. Our internal names are almost never exposed to the public. However, the object is to separate roles (www.ourdomain, mail.ourdomain, news.ourdomain etc.) from the underlying machines and their names. I have machines that have up to 20 dns identities ... but then we host multiple sites in our community. Walter
