Re: [CODE4LIB] usability testing software
Although I have not used it, Zurb's Verify looks promising: http://verifyapp.com/ I have been very pleased with Foundation so far. matt Nate Hill nathanielh...@gmail.com 1/31/2013 10:35 AM Hi all, Years ago I had the opportunity to use Morae to do some usability testing. http://www.techsmith.com/morae.html I may have an opportunity to put together a little bit of a usability testing lab at my library, and I wonder if anyone can suggest a similar product but... I'd like it to run on Macs. Suggestions? thanks -- Nate Hill nathanielh...@gmail.com http://4thfloor.chattlibrary.org/ http://www.natehill.net
Re: [CODE4LIB] Why we need multiple discovery services engine?
Wayne, many of them would have their own based discovery services... and... they will have vendor based discovery services... why... I agree with Jonathan, and would add that, as with so many things, why things are has a lot to do with history. Forgive me if you already know this... For a long while vendors bundled a catalog, then a web-catalog, with their integrated library system. Many vendors made it very difficult for developers to change the bundled web catalog in any standard way, and charged significant fees for the ability to do so. When NCState Endeca took faceted browsing on the road, the closed-data model floodgates broke, and many institutions essentially began exporting the necessary data from their ILS, indexing it in solr and displaying it via easily tweaked homegrown or VuFind et al systems, which had the added advantage of easily allowing other collections to be indexed displayed. And the world was better. Vendors (most) responded to this by improving their systems, making them easier to configure in standard ways, via providing APIs, and via allowing other data-sources to be exposed, which is why you sometimes now see both systems in place. -b --- Birkin James Diana Programmer, Digital Technologies Brown University Library birkin_di...@brown.edu On Jan 31, 2013, at 11:21 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote: So, there are two categories of solutions here -- 1) local indexes, where you create the index yourself, like blacklight or vufind (both based on a local Solr). 2) vendor-hosted indexes, where the vendor includes all sorts of things in their index that you the customer don't have local metadata for, mostly including lots and lots of scholarly article citations. If you want to include scholarly article citations, you probably can't do that with a local index solution. Although some consortiums have done some interesting stuff in that area, let's just say it takes a lot of resources to do. For most people, if you want to include article search in your index, it's not feasilbe to do so with a local index. So only VuFind/Blacklight with a local Solr is out, if you want article search. You _can_ load local content in a vendor-hosted index like EDS/Primo/Summon. So plenty of people do choose a vendor-hosted index product as their only discovery tool, including both local metadata and vendor-provided metadata. As you suggest. But some people want the increased control that a locally controlled Solr index gives you, for the local metadata where it's feasible. So use a local index product. But still want the article search you can get with a vendor-hosted index product. So they use both. There is also at least some reasons to believe that our users don't mind and may even prefer having local results and hosted metadata results presented seperately (although probably preferably in a consistent UI), rather than merged. A bunch more discussion of these issues is included in my blog post at: http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/article-search-improvement-strategy/ From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Wayne Lam [wing...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 9:31 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Why we need multiple discovery services engine? Hi all, I saw in numerous of library website, many of them would have their own based discovery services (e.g. blacklight / vufind) and at the same time they will have vendor based discovery services (e.g. EDS / Primo / Summon). Instead of having to maintain 2 separate system, why not put everything into just one? Any special reason or concern? Best Wayne
Re: [CODE4LIB] usability testing software
My library used Silverback recently, and it was just right for what we needed to do. We did not experience the issues that Jason mentioned. Matt Zimmerman -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jason Michel Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 11:10 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] usability testing software I've been using Silverback but lately have had problems: crashing during export, exported file corrupted, and also crashing during the preview playback within the app itself. Any one else have these issues? Sent from my iPhone On Jan 31, 2013, at 11:01 AM, Eric Lease Morgan emor...@nd.edu wrote: On Jan 31, 2013, at 10:56 AM, Julia Bauder julia.bau...@gmail.com wrote: I've used this in the past: http://silverbackapp.com/. It's Mac-only (which was actually a drawback for the project I was working on!), it's cheap, and did what we needed. It doesn't do nearly as much as Morae, though, so it might not have specific features you need? I liked Silverback as well. BTW, you might also ask this question of Usability4Lib -- http://bit.ly/VxGls9 -- Eric Morgan
Re: [CODE4LIB] Answer to your question Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia)
Deborah, I'm not sure what you mean about something for the offender, so some examples would be good. My big concern is that we not create a new group of outsiders -- folks who've been told they've offended someone and therefore are made to feel uncomfortable. I fully understand the pushback from people who feel that all of this will have a chilling effect and that some folks will be made to feel guilty. How do we avoid that? I'd recommend big group hugs at the closing of the conference to show we all still love each other, but, damn, the 70's are long gone! :-) kc On 1/31/13 7:26 PM, Fitchett, Deborah wrote: Thank you Becky, Karen and Gary for your answers (and excuse the delay replying; have been attempting to clear my head despite the heat and an achy ankle combining against me). The backup buttons are a good idea, and I definitely support both Becky and Karen's suggestions for additions to the policy. I think it's helpful breaking it down into separate parts. It's especially helpful to have expectations for the community, since the more the community can be trusted, the more safe people will feel to mention when something's an issue. Would it be useful to have something (whether as part of the CoC or just some discussion) for the 'offender' as well? Not so much for the person who intends to offend, because they're going to do that wherever they think they can; but for the person who didn't intend to offend (and/or doesn't think they did) or the person who wants to avoid offending (while still actually enjoying the party)? I recall some stuff on that angle from a recent discussion of sf conventions, and should be able to dig up links if it's of interest to anyone here. Deborah -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Becky Yoose Sent: Wednesday, 30 January 2013 1:59 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Answer to your question Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia) On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 9:55 PM, Fitchett, Deborah deborah.fitch...@lincoln.ac.nz wrote: So, given that we're all nice people who wouldn't intentionally harass or make spurious claims of harassment against each other, nevertheless sometimes someone will unintentionally say or do something that (especially given the concept of microagressions that Karen and I have alluded to and Kathryn named) really hurts someone else. This is, whatever else you want to call it, a problem because it decreases the feeling of community. So, how as a community should we respond when this happens? That's my question. Different people will have different answers, but here's mine to answer your question: I'm breaking this into two parts: the Incident and the Community Response 1. Incident happens. Inform the offender that he/she has affected you negatively. Oftentimes, as you pointed out, stuff like this is unintentional, and the accidental offender and offended will resolve the incident by having that initial discussion. I would predict that most incidents will be resolved here. 2. If offender insists that he/she did not offend, or if offender is actively harassing you, then you will need a third party to step in. These people have either been indicated by the CoC or by the listserv as those who you should go to for help. If you are at a conference, find the conference organizer or staff person. For #c4l13, that would be Francis. If you can't find Francis, there will be other conference staff that would be available to help if the situation calls for immediate action. If you are in the #code4lib IRC, the zoia command to list people designated as channel helpers is @helpers. I'd assume that there is at least one helper in the channel at most times. For the listserv, you have a free-for-all for public messages; however, this listserv does have a maintainer, Eric Lease Morgan. 3. Wider community response to Incident: If the incident doesn't past the first step (discussion reveals offense was unintentional, apologies said, public note or community is informed of resolution), then there's not much the community can do at this point since the incident was resolved without outside intervention. If incident results in corrective action, the community should support the decision made by the Help in Step 2 if they choose corrective action, like ending a talk early or banning from the listserv, as well as support those harmed by the incident, either publicly or privately (whatever individuals are comfortable with). If the Help in Step 2 run into issues implementing the CoC, then the Help should come to the community with these issues and the community should revise the CoC as they see fit. So that's my answer. In Real Life people will have opinions about how the CoC is enforced. People will argue that a particular decision was unfair, and others will say that it didn't go far enough. We really can't stop people
[CODE4LIB] Reminder: ACM/IEEE JCDL2013 Paper Submissions Due 02.04.13
This is just a reminder that full paper submissions for the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries @JCDL2013 are due on Monday Feb 4, 2013 by 11:59 UTC. For more on submissions - http://www.jcdl2013.org/call-for-papers @JCDL2013 is a major international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical and social issues. This year's conference will be held in Indianapolis, IN from July 22-26. We welcome submissions on the wide range of topics of interest in Digital Libraries worldwide. On behalf of the JCDL 2013 Planning Committee, Best, Robert ** Robert H. McDonald Associate Dean for Library Technologies Deputy Director-Data to Insight Center, Pervasive Technology Institute Indiana University 1320 East 10th Street Herman B Wells Library 234 Bloomington, IN 47405 Phone: 812-856-4834 Email: rhmcd...@indiana.edu Skype: rhmcdonald AIM: rhmcdonald1
Re: [CODE4LIB] usability testing software
Hi Nate (et al), on the server side, you might also take a look at the open source ClickHeat [1], which creates a visual heatmap of clicks on an HTML page. ~Nicholas __ Nicholas Taylor Data Specialist Library of Congress Web Archiving http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/ n...@loc.gov [1] http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html
[CODE4LIB] Shameless Plug: The Web for Libraries Weekly
Hey C4Libbers, I'm just shamelessly plugging my first crack at a weekly newsletter curating what's new in the web community for practical application in libraries. Called what?! Well, it's called The Web for Libraries Weekly. Here's the browser version of the first campaign* that mailed this morning. http://www.eepurl.com/utWcH Have a good one : ), Michael Schofield(@nova.edu) | Web Services Librarian | (954) 262-4536 Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center Hi! Hit me up any time, but I'd really appreciate it if you report broken links, bugs, your meeting minutes, or request an awesome web app over on the Library Web Serviceshttp://staff.library.nova.edu/pm site. * Can you tell I'm using Mail Chimp? :)
[CODE4LIB] digital collections sitemaps
Hi, I've seen registries for digital collections that make their metadata available through OAI-PMH, but I have yet to see a listing of digital collections that just make their resources available on the Web the way the Web works [1]. Sitemaps are the main mechanism for listing Web resources for automated crawlers [2]. Knowing about all of these various sitemaps could have many uses for research and improving the discoverability of digital collections on the open Web [3]. So I thought I'd put up a quick form to start collecting digital collections sitemaps. One required field for the sitemap itself. Please take a few seconds to add any digital collections sitemaps you know about--they don't necessarily have to be yours. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dE1JMDRIcXJMSzJ0YVlRaWdtVnhLcmc6MQ#gid=0 At this point I'll make the data available to anyone that asks for it. Thank you, Jason [1] At least I don't recall seeing such a sitemap registry site or service. If you know of an existing registry of digital collections sitemaps, please let me know about it! [2] http://www.sitemaps.org/ For more information on robots see http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Robots_Are_Our_Friends [3] For instance you can see how I've started to investigate whether digital collections are being crawled by the Common Crawl: http://jronallo.github.com/blog/common-crawl-url-index/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2013 in Layar
Sweet! I had deleted Layar last year because I didn't see any use of keeping it on the phone after toying with it a bit at Access a couple years ago. This sounds like a quite promising use. Thanks for setting it up, Bill. Peter On Jan 31, 2013, at 9:58 PM, William Denton w...@pobox.com wrote: I've set up a Code4Lib 2013 layer in the Android/iOS augmented reality application Layar [1] to do something that I think---I hope---will add an interesting and fun element to the conference. You can use it to scan around the city to see two kinds of things: 1) tweets using the #c4l13 or #code4lib hashtag (if the tweets are geolocated so they can be nailed to a point) and 2) points of interest from the shared Google Maps that have been set up [2]. During the day all of the tweets will be coming from everyone at the UIC Forum, so that's not too interesting ... but I hope that outside the conference times, when people are all over Chicago, they'll be tweeting, and that's when you might wonder, Where's everyone at? and you can hold up your phone, look around, and see that a bunch of folks are two blocks over there at a blues club and another bunch are up over there trying obscure beers and someone else posted a picture of an LP she just bought down the block, and that a comic book store someone recommended is a half mile that way. It's an Code4Lib-augmented view of Chicago: you look around and see what we're all doing and where we're hanging out, and all the places we're interested in or recommend. To try it out, intall Layar on your phone, then run it, click to go into Geo Layers mode, and search for code4lib 2013. Launch the layer and look around. You probably won't see anything around you, but next time you tweet something with #c4l13 (and the tweet is geolocated so you're sharing your latitude and longitude) it will show up. So, if you want to try it, add points to the Google Maps, and when you're in Chicago, tweet! I don't know how well it will work, but please test it and try it, because I think if it does turn out it will be a lot of fun. It can work for any conference or event. The program driving this is Laertes [3], and the code is here: https://github.com/wdenton/laertes It's pretty straightforward, and if you're comfortable running a modern Ruby web app then to make your own layer it's just a matter of some basic configuration at Layar's web site and customizing Laertes by editing a hash tag in a config file. Or maybe I could host it for you, for a while at least. See you soon, Bill [1] http://www.layar.com/ [2] https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=213549257652679418473.0004ce6c25e6cdeb0319dmsa=0 and https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=208580427660303662074.0004d00a3e083f4d160a4msa=0 [3] As in Odysseus's father, who was one of the Argonauts and did a fair bit of travelling, and because his name has layer in it. -- Peter Murray Assistant Director, Technology Services Development LYRASIS peter.mur...@lyrasis.org +1 678-235-2955 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 800.999.8558 Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org LYRASIS: Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers.
Re: [CODE4LIB] digital collections sitemaps
Jason, You may want to allow people just to give you the robots.txt file which references the sitemap. I also register the sitemaps individually with the big search engines for our site, but I found that very large sitemaps aren't processed very well. So, for our site I think I limited the number of items per sitemap to 40,000. Which results in ten sitemaps for the digital objects and an additional sitemap for all the collections. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/robots.txt Or else perhaps give more boxes, so we can include all the sitemaps utilized in our systems. Cheers! Mark Mark V Sullivan Digital Development and Web Coordinator Technology and Support Services University of Florida Libraries 352-273-2907 (office) 352-682-9692 (mobile) mars...@uflib.ufl.edu From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Jason Ronallo [jrona...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2013 11:14 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] digital collections sitemaps Hi, I've seen registries for digital collections that make their metadata available through OAI-PMH, but I have yet to see a listing of digital collections that just make their resources available on the Web the way the Web works [1]. Sitemaps are the main mechanism for listing Web resources for automated crawlers [2]. Knowing about all of these various sitemaps could have many uses for research and improving the discoverability of digital collections on the open Web [3]. So I thought I'd put up a quick form to start collecting digital collections sitemaps. One required field for the sitemap itself. Please take a few seconds to add any digital collections sitemaps you know about--they don't necessarily have to be yours. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dE1JMDRIcXJMSzJ0YVlRaWdtVnhLcmc6MQ#gid=0 At this point I'll make the data available to anyone that asks for it. Thank you, Jason [1] At least I don't recall seeing such a sitemap registry site or service. If you know of an existing registry of digital collections sitemaps, please let me know about it! [2] http://www.sitemaps.org/ For more information on robots see http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Robots_Are_Our_Friends [3] For instance you can see how I've started to investigate whether digital collections are being crawled by the Common Crawl: http://jronallo.github.com/blog/common-crawl-url-index/
[CODE4LIB] Job: Web and Mobile Application Developer at Hennepin County Library
Position re-opened. Applications accepted through Friday, Feb. 15. The Hennepin County Library system (MN) is seeking a full-time Web and Mobile Application Developer. This person will provide software planning, web and mobile application analysis and programming, and support for the maintenance and development of the library's growing online services and resources. Hennepin County Library is recognized as one of the top public libraries in the United States and serves more than one million residents of the city of Minneapolis and suburban Hennepin County. The 41 library system offers more than 5 million books, CDs and DVDs, materials in more than 40 languages, 1600 public computers and extensive online services. The primary duties and responsibilities of this position include: Build and integrate interactive and static websites, mobile applications, and services for internal and external audiences; configure, code, deploy and implement websites and mobile applications Develop and adhere to all applicable standards (web, development, and security) Evaluate new software; test on various platforms, browsers and applications Work with teams of programmers, content managers, and content providers on large and complex projects Troubleshoot and debug applications Work with vendors that provide key products and services to develop and maintain web interfaces For more information and to apply for this position, please visit [www.hennepin.jobs](http://www.hennepin.jobs), click on View Current Positions and look for **Web Developer - Hennepin County Library**. Applications will be accepted for this position until Friday, February 15. Brought to you by code4lib jobs: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/5985/
[CODE4LIB] Volunteer during C4L13!
Hi All, Another friendly reminder to sign up to volunteer. You're going to be there anyway! Who wants to sit in the _same_ spot the _entire_ day? So move around a little bit by joining the volunteers! Just think, minimal effort, and you can add it to your resume too! Plus lots of gratitude from various people. In particular, we're looking for: * Tuesday registration helpers * microphone runners * session timers Sign up on the wiki: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2013_During_the_Conference_Volunteers Thanks, Cynthia TheRealArty / Arty-chan
[CODE4LIB] Opt out of video capture at Code4lib 2013 pre-conference
For those attending the Code4lib Pre-Conference and likely by extension Conference. If you are uncomfortable being recorded do let me know by sending a note with the subject [code4lib video opt-out] to francis.kayiwa@gmail We will have Daniel Jones from the Berkman Center for Internet Society recording some of the pre-conferences for a short video he is putting up for the Boston DPLA launch. We also will be recording the presentations (this is trickier to avoid capturing you) for live streaming. Cheers, ./fxk -- Whom are you? said he, for he had been to night school. -- George Ade
Re: [CODE4LIB] digital collections sitemaps
Hi Mark, Actually, the sitemap.org protocol allows for a sitemap to include references to multiple child sitemaps http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#index. Which is what we did at my former employer: http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/sitemap/sitemap.xml And thus the robots.txt only includes a single sitemap: http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/robots.txt When we add extra collections, it just goes into the sitemap.xml, so we are not continuously updating the robots.txt. Chad On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Sullivan, Mark V mars...@uflib.ufl.eduwrote: Jason, You may want to allow people just to give you the robots.txt file which references the sitemap. I also register the sitemaps individually with the big search engines for our site, but I found that very large sitemaps aren't processed very well. So, for our site I think I limited the number of items per sitemap to 40,000. Which results in ten sitemaps for the digital objects and an additional sitemap for all the collections. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/robots.txt Or else perhaps give more boxes, so we can include all the sitemaps utilized in our systems. Cheers! Mark Mark V Sullivan Digital Development and Web Coordinator Technology and Support Services University of Florida Libraries 352-273-2907 (office) 352-682-9692 (mobile) mars...@uflib.ufl.edu From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Jason Ronallo [jrona...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2013 11:14 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] digital collections sitemaps Hi, I've seen registries for digital collections that make their metadata available through OAI-PMH, but I have yet to see a listing of digital collections that just make their resources available on the Web the way the Web works [1]. Sitemaps are the main mechanism for listing Web resources for automated crawlers [2]. Knowing about all of these various sitemaps could have many uses for research and improving the discoverability of digital collections on the open Web [3]. So I thought I'd put up a quick form to start collecting digital collections sitemaps. One required field for the sitemap itself. Please take a few seconds to add any digital collections sitemaps you know about--they don't necessarily have to be yours. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dE1JMDRIcXJMSzJ0YVlRaWdtVnhLcmc6MQ#gid=0 At this point I'll make the data available to anyone that asks for it. Thank you, Jason [1] At least I don't recall seeing such a sitemap registry site or service. If you know of an existing registry of digital collections sitemaps, please let me know about it! [2] http://www.sitemaps.org/ For more information on robots see http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Robots_Are_Our_Friends [3] For instance you can see how I've started to investigate whether digital collections are being crawled by the Common Crawl: http://jronallo.github.com/blog/common-crawl-url-index/
Re: [CODE4LIB] Adding authority control to IR's that don't have it built in
Ed, Thank you for the detailed response. That was very helpful. Yes, it seems like good Web architecture is the API. Sounds like it would be easy enough to start somewhere and add features over time. I could see how exposing this data in a crawlable way could provide some nice indexed landing pages to help improve discoverability of related collections. I wonder though if this begs the question of who other than my own institution would use such local authorities? Would there really be other consumers? What's the likelihood that other institutions will need to reuse my local name authorities? Is the idea that if enough of us publish our local data in this way that there could be aggregators or other means to make it easier to reuse from a single source? I can see the use case for a local authorities app. While I think it would be cool to expose our local data to the world in this way, I'm still trying to grasp at the larger value proposition. Jason On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 5:59 AM, Ed Summers e...@pobox.com wrote: Hi Jason, Heh, sorry for the long response below. You always ask interesting questions :-D I would highly recommend that vocabulary management apps like this assign an identifier to each entity, that can be expressed as a URL. If there is any kind of database backing the app you will get the identifier for free (primary key, etc). So for example let's say you have a record for John Chapman, who is on the faculty at OSU, which has a primary key of 123 in the database, you would have a corresponding URL for that record: http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123 When someone points their browser at that URL they get back a nice HTML page describing John Chapman. I would strongly recommend that schema.org microdata and/or opengraph protocol RDFa be layered into the page for SEO purposes, as well as anyone who happens to be doing scraping. I would also highly recommend adding a sitemap to enable discovery, and synchronization. Having that URL is handy because you could add different machine readable formats that hang off of it, which you can express as links in your HTML, for example lets say you want to have JSON, RDF and XML representations: http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123.json http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123.xml http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123.rdf If you want to get fancy you can content negotiate between the generic url and the format specific URLs, e.g. curl -i --header Accept: application/json http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123 HTTP/1.1 303 See Other date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:47:44 GMT server: Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) location: http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123 vary: Accept-Encoding But that's gravy. What exactly you put in these representations is a somewhat open question I think. I'm a bit biased towards SKOS for the RDF because it's lightweight, this is exactly its use case, it is flexible (you can layer other assertions in easily), and (full disclosure) I helped with the standardization of it. If you did do this you could use JSON-LD for the JSON, or just come up with something that works. Likewise for the XML. You might want to consider supporting JSON-P for the JSON representation, so that it can be used from JavaScript in other people's applications. It might be interesting to come up with some norms here for interoperability on a Wiki somewhere, or maybe a prototype of some kind. But the focus should be on what you need to actual use it in some app that needs vocabulary management. Focusing on reusing work that has already been done helps a lot too. I think that helps ground things significantly. I would be happy to discuss this further if you want. Whatever the format, I highly recommend you try to have the data link out to other places on the Web that are useful. So for example the record for John Chapman could link to his department page, blog, VIAF, Wikipedia, Google Scholar Profile, etc. This work tends to require human eyes, even if helped by a tool (Autosuggest, etc), so what you do may have to be limited, or at least an ongoing effort. Managing them (link scrubbing) is an ongoing effort too. But fitting your stuff into the larger context of the Web will mean that other people will want to use your identifiers. It's the dream of Linked Data I guess. Lastly I recommend you have an OpenSearch API, which is pretty easy, almost trivial, to put together. This would allow people to write software to search for John Chapman and get back results (there might be more than one) in Atom, RSS or JSON. OpenSearch also has a handy AutoSuggest format, which some JavaScript libraries work with. The nice thing about OpenSearch is that Browsers search boxes support it too. I guess this might sound like an information architecture more than an API. Hopefully it makes sense. Having a page that documents all this, with API written across the top, that hopefully includes terms of
Re: [CODE4LIB] Adding authority control to IR's that don't have it built in
Hi, I've been following this thread carefully, and am very interested. At UCLA, we have the Frontera collection (http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/) and we have a local set of authorities because the performers and publishers are more ephemeral than what's usually in LCNAF. So, we're thinking of providing these values to others via API or something to help share what we know and get input from others. So, that's our use case for publishing out. Curious about everyone's thoughts. Best, Lisa On Feb 1, 2013, at 9:44 AM, Jason Ronallo jrona...@gmail.commailto:jrona...@gmail.com wrote: Ed, Thank you for the detailed response. That was very helpful. Yes, it seems like good Web architecture is the API. Sounds like it would be easy enough to start somewhere and add features over time. I could see how exposing this data in a crawlable way could provide some nice indexed landing pages to help improve discoverability of related collections. I wonder though if this begs the question of who other than my own institution would use such local authorities? Would there really be other consumers? What's the likelihood that other institutions will need to reuse my local name authorities? Is the idea that if enough of us publish our local data in this way that there could be aggregators or other means to make it easier to reuse from a single source? I can see the use case for a local authorities app. While I think it would be cool to expose our local data to the world in this way, I'm still trying to grasp at the larger value proposition. Jason On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 5:59 AM, Ed Summers e...@pobox.commailto:e...@pobox.com wrote: Hi Jason, Heh, sorry for the long response below. You always ask interesting questions :-D I would highly recommend that vocabulary management apps like this assign an identifier to each entity, that can be expressed as a URL. If there is any kind of database backing the app you will get the identifier for free (primary key, etc). So for example let's say you have a record for John Chapman, who is on the faculty at OSU, which has a primary key of 123 in the database, you would have a corresponding URL for that record: http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123 When someone points their browser at that URL they get back a nice HTML page describing John Chapman. I would strongly recommend that schema.orghttp://schema.org microdata and/or opengraph protocol RDFa be layered into the page for SEO purposes, as well as anyone who happens to be doing scraping. I would also highly recommend adding a sitemap to enable discovery, and synchronization. Having that URL is handy because you could add different machine readable formats that hang off of it, which you can express as links in your HTML, for example lets say you want to have JSON, RDF and XML representations: http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123.json http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123.xml http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123.rdf If you want to get fancy you can content negotiate between the generic url and the format specific URLs, e.g. curl -i --header Accept: application/json http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123 HTTP/1.1 303 See Other date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:47:44 GMT server: Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) location: http://id.library.osu.edu/person/123 vary: Accept-Encoding But that's gravy. What exactly you put in these representations is a somewhat open question I think. I'm a bit biased towards SKOS for the RDF because it's lightweight, this is exactly its use case, it is flexible (you can layer other assertions in easily), and (full disclosure) I helped with the standardization of it. If you did do this you could use JSON-LD for the JSON, or just come up with something that works. Likewise for the XML. You might want to consider supporting JSON-P for the JSON representation, so that it can be used from JavaScript in other people's applications. It might be interesting to come up with some norms here for interoperability on a Wiki somewhere, or maybe a prototype of some kind. But the focus should be on what you need to actual use it in some app that needs vocabulary management. Focusing on reusing work that has already been done helps a lot too. I think that helps ground things significantly. I would be happy to discuss this further if you want. Whatever the format, I highly recommend you try to have the data link out to other places on the Web that are useful. So for example the record for John Chapman could link to his department page, blog, VIAF, Wikipedia, Google Scholar Profile, etc. This work tends to require human eyes, even if helped by a tool (Autosuggest, etc), so what you do may have to be limited, or at least an ongoing effort. Managing them (link scrubbing) is an ongoing effort too. But fitting your stuff into the larger context of the Web will mean that other people will want to use your identifiers. It's the dream of Linked Data I guess. Lastly I recommend you have an OpenSearch API, which is pretty
[CODE4LIB] Job: Production Systems Architect and Administrator at California Digital Library
Development and Production Architect and Administrator with operational and architectural responsibilities for the growing suite of digital curation and preservation services offered by the University of California Curation Center (UC3, http://www.cdlib.org/uc3) at the California Digital Library (CDL), an administrative unit of the University of California Office of the President (UCOP). UC3, one of the world's premier digital curation programs, is a creative partnership between the CDL, the ten UC campuses, and the international curation community, providing innovative services and solutions to ensure the long-term usability of the University's digital content. UC3 currently supports six major online curation services (DataUp, DMPTool, EZID, Merritt Repository, UDFR, Web Archiving Service), each with three parallel instances (dev, stage, production), running on over 30 servers in two data centers, with 150 TB of dedicated SAN storage. Reporting to a UC3 associate director, the incumbent will be responsible for the high- availability architectural design, operational support, and application-level administration of this infrastructure and will liaise with the UC3 Service Managers and Technical Leads for application monitoring and machine deployment, and the central CDL Infrastructure and Application Services (IAS) group for package administration and backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning, and will represent UC3 during weekly IAS/ITS planning and review meetings. More details are available at http://jobs.ucop.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=56008 Brought to you by code4lib jobs: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/6000/
[CODE4LIB] Job: Associate Director for Creation and Curation Services at Case Western Reserve University
The Kelvin Smith Library (KSL) seeks imaginative, collaborative and dynamic candidates to provide visionary and strategic leadership to advance our cutting-edge initiatives in digital and scholarly resources. The ADCC leads two teams: The Digital Learning and Scholarship Team designs and manages all of KSL's technology-related services, and the Scholarly Resources and Special Collections Team (SRSC) manages the library's rare book, manuscript, and archival collections, and analog and digital preservation. Strategic opportunities include reimagining the library's services for e-research and digital scholarship, and developing an exciting new vision for special collections in the 21st century. As a member of the senior leadership team, and working with the two team leaders, the ADCC develops strategies and policies, ensures and assesses service quality, allocates and manages human and financial resources, participates in fund and collection development, and serves as the primary administrative liaison to University Information Technology Services (ITS). The ADCC must be able to work effectively with external partners and cultivate potential donors. The ADCC is encouraged to engage in professional endeavors nationally and internationally. The ADCC reports to the Associate Provost and University Librarian and manages a staff of 13 fte and a budget of $1.4 million. QUALIFICATIONS. Required: ability to inspire and mobilize teams that promotes high performance, staff engagement, diversity and accountability; a master's degree in a relevant discipline; a record of success in one or more of the areas of responsibility; an articulate and clear thinker, good problem solver and solid strategist; successful record of project and operations management; able to work creatively and collaboratively in a complex and trans-functional environment; CV must warrant placement as a Librarian 3 or Librarian 4. Preferred: experience managing budgets, human resources, and technology infrastructures; an imaginative strategic planner; knowledge of current best practices; commitment to user- centered services; experience cultivating external funds and collections; success in faculty, student and donor relationship management; superior analytical, problem-solving, interpersonal and communication skills; success mentoring and coaching library staff; a respected national or international reputation in the profession. Brought to you by code4lib jobs: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/5938/
[CODE4LIB] I'm on a Code4lib Bus/Shuttle
We are thrilled to announce that there will be a Shuttle from the Conference Hotel to UIC Forum. The Shuttle will run for 2 hours in the AM and 2 hours at the end of the conference. All things being equal we still encourage you to use the reliable -especially at Rush Hour- CTA #8 Bus which will run more frequently than the UIC Shuttle/Bus does. (It has to make a `left` onto a very busy street. I wouldn't want to be that driver :-)) More details will be added to this link[0] and the attendees survivor guide which is still baking. best regards, ./fxk [0] http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2013_travel -- Whom are you? said he, for he had been to night school. -- George Ade
[CODE4LIB] Thank you for embracing Lanyrd
I just want to say a quick thank you to everybody that has contributed to the Lanyrd setup (http://lanyrd.com/2013/c4l13/) even if it's just saying that you're coming. I know I just went and did it without really asking, but it was mostly driven by my own selfish needs to have that information in a system I use. So, again, thanks! Pat
