Re: [CODE4LIB] Info request - Library Hackathon for students
Some DPLA Community Reps put together a hackathon planning guide last fall ( http://dp.la/info/2014/10/07/dpla-community-reps-produce-hackathon-planning-guide-now-available/). It was based in part on some notes I made after planning a hackathon for the Texas Digital Library las spring, which was however directed mostly at librarians wanting to dip their toes into tech. Speaking of DPLA, the applications for the third round of community reps close tomorrow Feb. 13. It's a great way to learn more about DPLA and to share that knowledge with your community! http://dp.la/info/2015/01/15/apply-to-dpla-reps-third-class/ Danielle -- Danielle Cunniff Plumer dcplumer associates 512-508-3099 danie...@dcplumer.com On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 9:51 AM, Heather Claxton claxt...@gmail.com wrote: My husband's company uses student hack-a-thons as recruitment tools. It gives them a chance to see what the students can do, talk to them in a casual manner, offer mentoring ect. Generally, they sponsor a prize as a thank you for letting them observe the hack-a-thon. On the flipside, it's a great marketing ploy on the organizers end, since a lot of senior students are starting to look for potential job opportunities, and will participate purely for that reason. You could probably contact your university career center to help you find an interested/local sponsor. Good luck! I hope it turns out well. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Craig Boman craig.bo...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Code4Lib, Has your library ever hosted a hackathon for university students? If so, would you do it again? Anything you wish you had known before hosting the hackathon? From the list archives, it looks like most of the hackathons at libraries have been for librarians, rather than university students. Please feel free to share any ideas. Thanks, Craig Boman Applications Support Specialist University of Dayton Libraries 300 College Park Dayton, OH, 4569
Re: [CODE4LIB] Checksums for objects and not embedded metadata
Kyle, It's a bit of a hack, but you could write a script to delete all the metadata from images with ExifTool and then run checksums on the resulting image (see http://u88.n24.queensu.ca/exiftool/forum/index.php?topic=4902.0). exiv2 might also work. I don't think you'd want to do that every time you audited the files, though; generating new checksums is a faster approach. I haven't tried this, but I know that there's a program called ssdeep developed for the digital forensics community that can do piecewise hashing -- it hashes chunks of content and then compares the hashes for the different chunks to find matches, in theory. It might be able to match files with embedded metadata vs. files without; the use cases described on the forensics wiki is finding altered (truncated) files, or reuse of source code. http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ssdeep Danielle Cunniff Plumer On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 9:44 AM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 11:07 AM, Rosalyn Metz rosalynm...@gmail.com wrote: - How is your content packaged? - Are you talking about the SIPs or the AIPs or both? - Is your content in an instance of Fedora, a unix file structure, or something else? - Are you generating checksums on the whole package, parts of it, both? The quick answer to this is that this is a low tech operation. We're currently on regular filesystems where we are limited to feeding md5 checksums into a list. I'm looking for a low tech way that makes it easier to keep track of resources across a variety of platforms in a decentralized environment and which will easily adopt to future technology transitions. For example, we have a bunch of stuff in Bepress and Omeka. Neither of those is good for preservation, so authoritative files live elsewhere as do a huge number of resources that aren't in these platforms. Filenames are terrible identifiers and things get moved around even if people don't mess with the files. We also are trying to come up with something that deals with different kinds of datasets (we're focusing on bioimaging at the moment) and fits in the workflow of campus units, each of which needs to manage tens of thousands of files with very little metadata on regular filesystems. Some of the resources are enormous in terms of size or number of members. Simply embedding an identifier in the file is a really easy way to tell which files have metadata and which metadata is there. In the case at hand, I could just do that and generate new checksums. But I think the generic problem of making better use of embedded metadata is an interesting one as it can make objects more usable and understandable once they're removed. For example, just this past Friday I received a request to use an image someone downloaded for a book. Unfortunately, he just emailed me a copy of the image, described what he wanted to do, and asked for permission but he couldn't replicate how he found it. An identifier would have been handy as would have been embedded rights info as this is not the same for all of our images. The reason we're using DOI's is that they work well for anything and can easily be recognized by syntax wherever they may appear. On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 7:06 PM, Joe Hourcle onei...@grace.nascom.nasa.gov wrote: The problems with 'metadata' in a lot of file formats is that they're just arbitrary segments -- you'd have to have a program that knew which segments were considered 'headers' vs. not. It might be easier to have it be able to compute a separate checksum for each segment, so that should the modifications change their order, they'd still be considered valid. This is what I seemed to be bumping up against so I was hoping there was an easy workaround. But this is helpful information. Thanks, kyle
Re: [CODE4LIB] Why learn Unix?
Siobhan, I teach a course on digital curation tools and applications for the University of North Texas, and one of the motivational pieces I use is the Digital Curation Centre's chapter on Open Source and Digital Curation by Andrew McHugh in the Digital Curation Manual (2005): http://www.dcc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/resource/curation-manual/chapters/open-source.pdf . Most of my students won't go on to be coders -- in fact, I suspect that most of them will interact with systems primarily through GUIs -- but I try to give them enough of an introduction to *nix and specifically bash that they aren't afraid to use it (well, everyone should be a *little* afraid). Danielle Cunniff Plumer Danielle On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Siobhain Rivera siori...@indiana.edu wrote: Hi everyone, I'm part of the ASIST Student Chapter and Indiana University, and we're putting together a series of workshops on Unix. We've noticed that a lot of people don't seem to have a good idea of why they should learn Unix, particularly the reference/non technology types. We're going to do some more research to make a fact sheet about the uses of Unix, but I thought I'd pose the question to the list - what do you think are reasons librarians need to know Unix, even if they aren't in particularly tech heavy jobs? I'd appreciate any input. Have a great week! Siobhain Rivera Indiana University Bloomington Library Science, Digital Libraries Specialization ASIST-SC, Webmaster
Re: [CODE4LIB] Why learn Unix?
A few other readings I use on *nix: - Powers, E. (2012). Why I learned to love the command line. Hack Library School: By, For, and About Library School Students. http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/why-i-learned-to-love-the-command-line/ - Stephenson, Neal. (1999). In the beginning was the command line. http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html - Raymond, E. S. (1999). The cathedral and the bazaar. Sebastapol, CA: : O’Reilly Associates. http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ - Cocciolo, A. (2013). Unix commands and batch processing for the reluctant librarian or archivist. Code4Lib Journal 23. http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/9158 - Phillips, M. 2011. Metadata Analysis at the Command-line. Code4Lib Journal 19. http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/7818 - Coyle, K. (2007). Learning to love Linux. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 34(1), 72-73. The Cocciolo article is good, but I wish the title were different. Danielle Cunniff Plumer On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 10:17 AM, danielle plumer dcplu...@gmail.com wrote: Siobhan, I teach a course on digital curation tools and applications for the University of North Texas, and one of the motivational pieces I use is the Digital Curation Centre's chapter on Open Source and Digital Curation by Andrew McHugh in the Digital Curation Manual (2005): http://www.dcc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/resource/curation-manual/chapters/open-source.pdf . Most of my students won't go on to be coders -- in fact, I suspect that most of them will interact with systems primarily through GUIs -- but I try to give them enough of an introduction to *nix and specifically bash that they aren't afraid to use it (well, everyone should be a *little* afraid). Danielle Cunniff Plumer Danielle On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Siobhain Rivera siori...@indiana.edu wrote: Hi everyone, I'm part of the ASIST Student Chapter and Indiana University, and we're putting together a series of workshops on Unix. We've noticed that a lot of people don't seem to have a good idea of why they should learn Unix, particularly the reference/non technology types. We're going to do some more research to make a fact sheet about the uses of Unix, but I thought I'd pose the question to the list - what do you think are reasons librarians need to know Unix, even if they aren't in particularly tech heavy jobs? I'd appreciate any input. Have a great week! Siobhain Rivera Indiana University Bloomington Library Science, Digital Libraries Specialization ASIST-SC, Webmaster
Re: [CODE4LIB] getting URIs, was: [CODE4LIB] barriers to open metadata?
Jonathan,
Different communities have different benefits.
1. Library catalogers, at least, seem sold on the idea of using URIs if
they can then populate the display value of fields with strings. I've been
giving them this scenario for about 4 years now, and they're sold. This
would simplify the tasks of cleaning up old metadata records and updating
subject headings, etc. The question is how to accomplish this given the
constraints of existing systems and content standards. Maintain two
systems, one for input and one for display, pushing data from one to the
other with a export -- normalize -- import routine? Not viable for most
institutions. So, near-term in theory, pie-in-the-sky in reality.
2. The benefits to metadata aggregators seem obvious; if the aggregators
can access the linked data form of the records, it greatly simplifies data
pre-processing. Near-term in theory, but only if enough individual
institutions participate. I have no idea where the tipping point on that
would be. But see #1 for the problem of getting the linked data.
3. The benefits to researchers are longer-term and less defined in my
mind. Improved ability to explore data aggregations is the primary one I
can think of.
4. The benefits to other users are the ones that seem most nebulous. I
don't even have data on whether people use Semantic Web-enabled tools like
Google's Knowledge Graph or how much value they perceive in rich snippets.
Google apparently thinks there's value, because apparently they spend a lot
of time adding schema.org markup to their index to enable snippets (
http://searchengineland.com/schema-markup-shows-36-google-search-results-almost-websites-use-study-189707
).
Danielle
--
Danielle Cunniff Plumer
dcplumer associates
danie...@dcplumer.com
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote:
If you want libraries to spend money on adding URI's to their data, there
is going to need to be some clear benefit they get from doing it -- and it
needs to be a pretty near-term benefit, not Well, some day all these
awesome things might happen, because linked data.
On 4/30/14 1:34 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
Thanks, Richard. I ask because it's one of the most common questions
that I get -- often about WorldCat, but in general about any source of
URIs -- How do I connect my data (text forms) to their URIs? And these
questions usually come from library or archive projects with little or
no programming staff. So it seems like we need to be able to answer that
question so that people can get linked up. In fact, it seems to me that
the most pressing need right now is an easy way (or one that someone
else can do for you at a reasonable cost) to connect the text string
identifiers that we have to URIs. I envision something like what we
went through when we moved from AACR name forms to AACR2 name forms, and
libraries were able to send their MARC records to a service that
returned the records with the new name form. In this case, though, such
a service would return the data with the appropriate URIs added. (In the
case of MARC, in the $0 subfield.)
It's great that the big guys like LC and OCLC are providing URIs for
resources. But at the moment I feel like it's grapes dangling just
beyond the reach of the folks we want to connect to. Any ideas on how to
make this easy are welcome. And I do think that there's great potential
for an enterprising start-up to provide an affordable service for
libraries and archives. Of course, an open source pass in your data in
x or y format and we'll return it with URIs embedded would be great,
but I think it would be reasonable to charge for such a service.
kc
On 4/30/14, 9:59 AM, Richard Wallis wrote:
To unpack the several questions lurking in Karen’s question.
As to being able to use the WorldCat Works data/identifiers there is no
difference between a or b - it is ODC-BY licensed data.
Getting a Work URI may be easier for a) as they should be able to
identify
the OCLC Number and hence use the linked data from it’s URI
http://worldcat.org/oclc/{ocn} to pick up the link to it’s work.
Tools such as xISBN http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/doc/api.htm
can
step you towards identifier lookups and are openly available for low
volume
usage.
Citation lookup is more a bib lookup feature, that you could get an OCLC
Number from. One of colleagues may be helpful on the particulars of this.
Apologies for being WorldCat specific, but Karen did ask.
~Richard.
On 30 April 2014 17:15, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:
My question has to do with discoverability. Let's say that I have a
bibliographic database and I want to add the OCLC work identifiers to
it.
Obviously I don't want to do it by hand. I might have ISBNs, but in some
cases I will have a regular author/title-type citation.
and let's say that I am asking this for two different
[CODE4LIB] Hacking DPLA at TCDL - reminder!
5 days until the Hacking DPLA at TCDL event! Are you ready? We currently have about 20 people interested in coming to the event, and it's promising to be great! The organizers would like to get to know a bit more about you, so if you're planning to attend, we'd love it if you'd complete the quick survey at http://goo.gl/6MP7DM. *Event Logistics:* Join us for the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries' first-ever hackathon! We'll be developing tools that Texas libraries and others can freely use to power new and transformative explorations of our digitized cultural heritage, based on the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) API. Event information and registration is available at https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hacking-dpla-at-tcdl. *When:* Sunday, April 27, 2014, 1:00-5:00 p.m. *Where:* UT Austin, Perry-Castañeda Library, 1.124 *Parking:* Available at the Brazos Garage on MLK, next to the Blanton Museum of Art (http://www.utexas.edu/parking/parking/garages/brg.php) What to bring: Laptop set up with your preferred coding environment (power outlets and wireless internet provided). Snacks and drinks, including water and sodas, will be provided. If you have special dietary needs, please bring your own food or drink, or contact danie...@dcplumer.com for assistance. *Schedule:* See http://goo.gl/NyjhI7 We're planning to work in pairs or small groups, in order to get the most out of the limited time. We have activities planned for folks who aren't experienced coders, but please explore the DPLA API and other resources we've put together (http://goo.gl/Hhl9lb) so that you're ready to go! If you have an idea for a project, you can submit it to HackerLeague or bring it with you to the event to look for partners. If you have any questions, please send them to danie...@dcplumer.com. We look forward to seeing you on Sunday, April 27!
Re: [CODE4LIB] text mining software
I worked a lot with GATE in a previous position (not in a library, but in a research position at the Univ. of Texas at Austin). It's handy in that there is both a UI version (GATE Developer) and a set of APIs (GATE Embedded), which were the only versions I worked with. Also nice is the fact that there is reasonably good documentation from the Univ. of Sheffield (http://gate.ac.uk/), including some basic video tutorials and slides from recent training courses that you can step through ( http://gate.ac.uk/wiki/TrainingCourseJune2013/). Pretty much all the standard text-mining tools can be accessed through GATE, by creating a pipeline that incorporates the tools you need. There are also some default machine learning options if you don't want to roll your own. There's even a UIMA plug-in if you'd like to use it inside a GATE pipeline. Danielle -- Danielle Cunniff Plumer dcplumer associates www.dcplumer.com dcplu...@gmail.com On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 5:15 PM, stuart yeates stuart.yea...@vuw.ac.nzwrote: There have been some great software recommendations in this thread, that I really don't want to quibble with. What I'd like to quibble with is the software-first approach. We've all tried the software-first approach, how many of us were happy with it? There is a standard in this area and that standard appears to have at least two non-trivial implementations, including from one software distributor whose name we all recognise. SPEC: http://docs.oasis-open.org/**uima/v1.0/uima-v1.0.htmlhttp://docs.oasis-open.org/uima/v1.0/uima-v1.0.html APACHE UIMA: http://uima.apache.org/ GATE: http://gate.ac.uk/ Anyone have experience using the standard or these two implementations? cheers stuart -- Stuart Yeates Library Technology Services http://www.victoria.ac.nz/**library/http://www.victoria.ac.nz/library/
Re: [CODE4LIB] mobile app
On this topic, I'd suggest that Texas libraries interested in developing mobile apps consider applying for funding from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission: 2nd Round of Funding for TexShare Libraries to Go Mobile! Intent Forms due July 31, 2013. TSLAC has assisted over 50 libraries enhance their mobile presence this year. We’d like to continue to support libraries in their efforts to go mobile with Round 2 Funding. Funding available for FY2014 (September 2013 – September 2014) TSLAC will support TexShare libraries or library consortia interested in building or expanding their mobile presence through mobile-accessible library catalogs, mobile-accessible library web sites, mobile apps, and/or other services focused on the mobile library user. This can include design changes to existing sites/catalogs or complete alternatives specifically made for the mobile environment. TSLAC is offering subsidies ranging from $3,000 to $15,000 (depending upon library type and size). Intent forms are available at the program website ( https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/texshare/mobilesolutions/round2 ) Submit an intent form by July 31, 2013. First-time requests will receive top priority for funding. If funding permits, we will also accept projects from libraries that received Round 1 funding and want to develop additional mobile services. Round 2 Timeline: June 24, 2013: Library Intent forms available on TSLAC website July 31, 2013: Last day to submit an Intent form August 31, 2013: Last date to submit a Round 2 Project Summary Form October 1, 2013: If project includes a subscription, latest start date for full 12-month funding September 30, 2014: Projects completed; All items must be delivered; Subscription funding concludes Fall 2014: Project reports due Questions can be addressed to Beverley Shirley at texsh...@tsl.state.tx.usor by phone to 800-252-9386. I'm just the messenger, so don't ask me for more information. Danielle Cunniff Plumer dcplumer associates danie...@dcplumer.com 512-508-3099 On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 11:58 AM, William Helman whel...@ubalt.edu wrote: Hi Kalie, Two of my graduate assistants and I recently developed a user-centered mobile web app/interface http://langsdale.ubalt.edu/m/ for our library. We spent a lot of time doing focus groups and user testing over the course of two semesters worth of development time, and have been pretty happy with the results. One suggestion I would definitely have is to use a web framework like jQuery Mobile http://jquerymobile.com/ or Bootstraphttp://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/index.htmlto jump start your efforts. Then, later when you have everything the way you want it, you can use a service like PhoneGap http://phonegap.com/ to wrap it up into native apps you can offer on Google Play or Apple's App Store. If you're interested I've presented a few times on it during the lifetime of the project, and have the (slightly similar) slide decks posted to SlideShare: Society for Scholarly Publishing 2011 Fall Seminar http://www.slideshare.net/whelman/langsdale-mobile-a-user-centered-approach , Internet Librarian 2012http://www.slideshare.net/whelman/responsive-user-driven-mobile and recently at an Amigos Online conference http://www.slideshare.net/whelman/mobile-orimmobileamigoshtml5css3. That last one was on how we used responsive design techniques to re-purpose our mobile site to act as the interface on 3 iPad search kiosks I've installed here at Langsdale. I've also published our code at https://github.com/whelman/ I'd be happy to talk more about our experiences, just send me an email if you're interested. -Bill Helman Integrated Digital Services Librarian. The University of Baltimore, Langsdale Library whel...@ubalt.edu | 410-837-4209 skype:4108374209?call | http://whelman.com | @thinkpol http://twitter.com/thinkpol On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Kaile Zhu kz...@uco.edu wrote: Anybody has experience on how to build mobile app for your library? If your library paid for the development, please also share your experience. Thanks. - Kelly
Re: [CODE4LIB] mobile app
I believe that this announcement is for libraries in Texas, yes. Danielle Cunniff Plumer On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Kaile Zhu kz...@uco.edu wrote: I guess the funding will only award to libraries in Texas, right? -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of danielle plumer Sent: 2013年7月3日 12:10 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] mobile app On this topic, I'd suggest that Texas libraries interested in developing mobile apps consider applying for funding from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission: 2nd Round of Funding for TexShare Libraries to Go Mobile! Intent Forms due July 31, 2013. TSLAC has assisted over 50 libraries enhance their mobile presence this year. We’d like to continue to support libraries in their efforts to go mobile with Round 2 Funding. Funding available for FY2014 (September 2013 ? September 2014) TSLAC will support TexShare libraries or library consortia interested in building or expanding their mobile presence through mobile-accessible library catalogs, mobile-accessible library web sites, mobile apps, and/or other services focused on the mobile library user. This can include design changes to existing sites/catalogs or complete alternatives specifically made for the mobile environment. TSLAC is offering subsidies ranging from $3,000 to $15,000 (depending upon library type and size). Intent forms are available at the program website ( https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/texshare/mobilesolutions/round2 ) Submit an intent form by July 31, 2013. First-time requests will receive top priority for funding. If funding permits, we will also accept projects from libraries that received Round 1 funding and want to develop additional mobile services. Round 2 Timeline: June 24, 2013: Library Intent forms available on TSLAC website July 31, 2013: Last day to submit an Intent form August 31, 2013: Last date to submit a Round 2 Project Summary Form October 1, 2013: If project includes a subscription, latest start date for full 12-month funding September 30, 2014: Projects completed; All items must be delivered; Subscription funding concludes Fall 2014: Project reports due Questions can be addressed to Beverley Shirley at texsh...@tsl.state.tx.usor by phone to 800-252-9386. I'm just the messenger, so don't ask me for more information. Danielle Cunniff Plumer dcplumer associates danie...@dcplumer.com 512-508-3099 On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 11:58 AM, William Helman whel...@ubalt.edu wrote: Hi Kalie, Two of my graduate assistants and I recently developed a user-centered mobile web app/interface http://langsdale.ubalt.edu/m/ for our library. We spent a lot of time doing focus groups and user testing over the course of two semesters worth of development time, and have been pretty happy with the results. One suggestion I would definitely have is to use a web framework like jQuery Mobile http://jquerymobile.com/ or Bootstraphttp://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/index.htmlto jump start your efforts. Then, later when you have everything the way you want it, you can use a service like PhoneGap http://phonegap.com/ to wrap it up into native apps you can offer on Google Play or Apple's App Store. If you're interested I've presented a few times on it during the lifetime of the project, and have the (slightly similar) slide decks posted to SlideShare: Society for Scholarly Publishing 2011 Fall Seminar http://www.slideshare.net/whelman/langsdale-mobile-a-user-centered-app roach , Internet Librarian 2012http://www.slideshare.net/whelman/responsive-user-driven-mobile and recently at an Amigos Online conference http://www.slideshare.net/whelman/mobile-orimmobileamigoshtml5css3. That last one was on how we used responsive design techniques to re-purpose our mobile site to act as the interface on 3 iPad search kiosks I've installed here at Langsdale. I've also published our code at https://github.com/whelman/ I'd be happy to talk more about our experiences, just send me an email if you're interested. -Bill Helman Integrated Digital Services Librarian. The University of Baltimore, Langsdale Library whel...@ubalt.edu | 410-837-4209 skype:4108374209?call | http://whelman.com | @thinkpol http://twitter.com/thinkpol On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Kaile Zhu kz...@uco.edu wrote: Anybody has experience on how to build mobile app for your library? If your library paid for the development, please also share your experience. Thanks. - Kelly
Re: [CODE4LIB] Choosing fora. was: Proliferation of Code4Lib Channels
I want to thank Karen and Wilhelmina especially for continuing this discussion. I've never attended a Code4Lib (though I did once offer to help organize one in Austin). This conversation is making me more willing to spend my own money to attend one. Danielle Cunniff Plumer On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Esmé Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu wrote: I think this raises some interesting questions about community and appropriate use of the code4lib name. I just took a look at the code4lib reddit and there were comments from a handful of people. If a handful of people want to create some new channel and call it code4lib, is that OK? Who decides that? Does it matter if it's part of something like reddit, that is seriously at odds with our budding anti-harassment policy? I don't personally use reddit, but I can see the advantages of a threaded discussion system, especially for a wide-ranging and branching discussion such as this one. Slashdot is the other full-featured discussion system I know, but (as previously mentioned) has similar problems, and would also create a new hosting and maintenance burden. Is there a better alternative? -Esme -- Esme Cowles escow...@ucsd.edu We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. -- Robert Wilensky On 12/2/2012, at 3:19 PM, Wilhelmina Randtke rand...@gmail.com wrote: At the end of this email, is the current default homepage of Reddit at this very moment. I only had to read down to the current 6th most popular post - 6th most popular of the ENTIRE REDDIT SITE - which is a man's reference to seeing a highschool classmate on Girls Gone Wild, then masturbating such that one arm becomes much bigger than the other (person posted a picture of Quagmire from Family Guy with one big arm). I'm sure the front page will have changed by the time you read this, but just read down and find the example of the moment. There will be one. Women as sex objects isn't a fringe thing on Reddit. It's a core part of the service. Reddit's got lots of porn forums, with 5 digits of users. Sexual images of women is not a fringe activity on Reddit. It's a core service. Racism is also prevalent. For example, http://www.reddit.com/r/niggers/ . At least there are only 4 digits of users, so dedicated racist forums is a fringe activity. But, why is there a dedicated forum at all? It's inappropriate to try and move drafting of an antidiscrimination policy to Reddit, alongside forums which are so hateful to the groups which are underrepresented in Code4Lib. -Wilhelmina Randtke Begin Clip of Current default Front page of Reddit --- Item number 6 refers to masturbating over a female high school classmate - 1 2572 Taiwan engineers defeat limits of flash memoryhttp://phys.org/news/2012-12-taiwan-defeat-limits-memory.html (phys.org http://www.reddit.com/domain/phys.org/) submitted 4 hours ago by Maslo55 http://www.reddit.com/user/Maslo55 to technology http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/ - 565 comments http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/145h0c/taiwan_engineers_defeat_limits_of_flash_memory/ - share http://www.reddit.com/# 2 2503 I'm not sure how to title this http://i.imgur.com/kZBrW.png ( i.imgur.com http://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/) submitted 3 hours ago by wow050 http://www.reddit.com/user/wow050 to WTFhttp://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/ - 343 comments http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/145imx/im_not_sure_how_to_title_this/ - share http://www.reddit.com/# 3 1768 http://i.imgur.com/isC9k.jpg On a metro bus http://i.imgur.com/isC9k.jpg (i.imgur.comhttp://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/ ) submitted 3 hours ago by jjameson18 http://www.reddit.com/user/jjameson18to atheism http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/ - 251 comments http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/145ktv/on_a_metro_bus/ - share http://www.reddit.com/# 4 1828 http://imgur.com/E4KYV Back in my day we had to work for our games http://imgur.com/E4KYV ( imgur.com http://www.reddit.com/domain/imgur.com/) submitted 4 hours ago by MouthFullOfPubeshttp://www.reddit.com/user/MouthFullOfPubesto gaming http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/ - 166 comments http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/145h3h/back_in_my_day_we_had_to_work_for_our_games/ - share http://www.reddit.com/# 5 1950 http://qkme.me/3s09n5?id=228440273 When ever I have to get up and mow the lawn http://qkme.me/3s09n5?id=228440273 (qkme.me http://www.reddit.com/domain/qkme.me/) submitted 4 hours ago by flabeachbum http://www.reddit.com/user/flabeachbumto AdviceAnimals http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/ - 200 comments
[CODE4LIB]
Normally a lurker, but I thought I'd point out that this is how SxSW Interactive works. Voting is one part of the decision-making process, but organizers have a lot of latitude to adjust the results to get the best diversity of presentations. They also leave some slots free for late-breaking developments and fill those solely at the discretion of the organizers and director. Danielle Cunniff Plumer dcplumer associates On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Joseph Montibello joseph.montibe...@dartmouth.edu wrote: Cynthia++ If something like this were implemented, maybe waiting until after the voting was done would be helpful. Diversify the program by looking at what was selected in voting and then filling gaps as perceived by the program committee. And/or having the committee/group/whatever it is that's working on a policy now participate in that process. Anyway, just my two cents. Joe Montibello, MLIS Library Systems Manager Dartmouth College Library 603.646.9394 joseph.montibe...@dartmouth.edu On 11/27/12 11:14 AM, Cynthia Ng cynthia.s...@gmail.com wrote: Here's something that came up during the program committee meeting. While I understand why code4lib has traditionally decided on the program purely by voting, would the community support leaving maybe a couple of slots for the program committee to decide sessions? perhaps with the explicit goal to help diversify the program: whether it be by gender, ethnicity, technology/tool, point of view (e.g someone outside library/archives), etc. People tend to vote for their interest and what is familiar to them, that's only natural, but at past Access conferences for example, I have found some that I never would've voted (just based off of a description) as some of the most interesting talks I've seen. Sometimes it's the topic, sometimes it's the presenter, regardless, if we want to diversify, it's a small step to take, but one I think we should at least consider for code4libcon 2014.
Re: [CODE4LIB] PDF Compression
As you probably know, you can compress PDFs by compressing or flattening the layers (most useful for born-digital materials, such as artwork) or by applying a compression algorithm to the underlying images for PDFs assembled from digitized images, which seems to be what you're doing. Reducing the image size (pixels) and bit depth prior to assembling images in a PDF (i.e., don't start with your 800ppi TIFF master) can have a dramatic difference on the total size of the PDF. Beyond that, lossless and lossy compression algorithms can reduce the size of the underlying image files, with different techniques working well on different types of images. IrfanView and Ghostscript can help with this. LZW is one of the more common lossless compression algorithms for TIFF images. JPEG2000 also offers good lossless compression. In addition to LuraTech, there's at least one other proprietary PDF compression system, developed by SAFER Inc. (http://www.saferinc.com/). Based on a conversation with someone from the company about 18 months ago, they use algorithms that do automatic edge detection and background detection, applying compression non-uniformly to regions that appear to contain little information. At the time of this conversation, they weren't able to give me any white papers or peer-reviewed articles describing the algorithms used, which made me hesitant about recommending the system for anything remotely archival, though they claimed it was lossless. For use copies, though, the software does work very well, and file size reduction is dramatic. I don't know anything about pricing. LuraTech may use something similar in their Mixed Raster Content (MRC) or layered compression. As far as I know, IrfanView and ghostscript don't include algorithms to do anything similar. Danielle Cunniff Plumer dcplumer associates www.dcplumer.com -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Nathan Tallman Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 10:29 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] PDF Compression Can anyone recommend some good PDF compression software? Preferable open-source or low-cost. We're scanning archival collections and the PDFs can be quite large for a single folder. The folder may be thick or thin, and contain a mix of text and images. We've fiddled with various Acrobat settings for getting the file size down, but we haven't found a good balance between quality and file size. (Plus, these need to be OCR'ed; so far we've been doing that in Acrobat.) We were looking at LuraTech PDF Compressor, but the cost for an enterprise license is pretty high. It did do an excellent job though. Thanks, Nathan
[CODE4LIB] Online workshop: Digital Library Systems and Applications
Do you need to learn the fundamental skills necessary to create and sustain interoperable digital projects? The Texas State Library and Archives Commission http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ and Amigos Library Serviceshttp://www.amigos.orghave developed an online training series to help you get started. Our workshop series is based on the Digital Library Environmenthttp://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/courses/index.html workshop series from the Library of Congress; further development of this series was made possible by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. The next workshop in the series is Digital Library Systems and Applicationshttp://www.amigos.org/learning/catalog/shopping/product_details.php?id=353. This workshop provides information about evaluating, adapting, and developing systems and applications for born-digital and digitized material. The workshop explores the following topics: - User-Centered Design: Functional Requirements, Use Cases, and Usability - Components of Digital Collections: Collections Objects, Object Metadata, and System Models - Workflows: Creating, Acquiring, Administering, Accessing, and Disposing of Data - Interoperability: Protocols, standards, and transformations *Learning Objectives* At the conclusion of this workshop, students will be able to: - Identify digital library design and development processes - Understand the relationships between data/metadata and system functionality - Design staff workflows for using digital library systems - Describe methods to reuse components of digital collections in alternative systems to meet user needs The instructors for the course are Bill Walker, Imaging Services Field Officer at Amigos, and Danielle Cunniff Plumer, coordinator of the Texas Heritage Online program at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. The cost for each 8-hour online workshop is $250. For more information or to register, click on the links below or visit www.Amigos.org. Digital Project Planning and Management Basicshttp://www.amigos.org/learning/catalog/shopping/product_details.php?id=349 4/18-21 10:30 am - 12:30 pm Digital Library Systems and Applicationshttp://www.amigos.org/learning/catalog/shopping/product_details.php?id=353 5/3-6 1:00 - 3:00 pm Metadata Standards and Crosswalkshttp://www.amigos.org/learning/catalog/shopping/product_details.php?id=354 5/31-6/3 10:30 am - 12:30 pm Controlled Vocabulary and Thesaurus Designhttp://www.amigos.org/learning/catalog/shopping/product_details.php?id=355 6/14-17 1:00 - 3:00 pm http://www.amigos.org/learning/catalog/shopping/product_details.php?id=355 Danielle Cunniff Plumer Coordinator, Texas Heritage Online Texas State Library Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) Website: http://www.texasheritageonline.org Blog: http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/tho/blog/
[CODE4LIB] Tools for OAI-PMH support?
I coordinate our statewide cultural heritage collections discovery service, TexasHeritageOnline.org. In the past, we've used a variety of approaches to interoperability, including Z39.50, SRU, and custom APIs, but I'm moving more to simple OAI-PMH, because that's what many of the asset management systems support natively. Right now I have at least five large collections that are built as MySQL databases to which I'd like to add OAI-PMH data provider support. The problem is that many of the tools we've identified, like the OAIBiblio tool and the Oldenburg tool, use PHP4, and the folks I'm working with are running PHP5. There's also a need for multi-table support. Does anybody know of newer tools for OAI data provider support? Good documentation would be a plus g. I do have a small budget this year for development, so if needed I could contract this out, but I thought I'd see what's available first. Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Online Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) dplu...@tsl.state.tx.us
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2011 Proposals
I'm sorry to confirm that we're not working on a proposal for next year's Code4Lib. Due to a couple of big projects planned for next year, my coworkers and I won't have time to coordinate anything extra, and none of the other institutions in the state have expressed interest in serving as the lead on this. If you know developers in Texas, you could certainly try to change their minds... However, you are all always welcome to come to Austin for SXSW Interactive! Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Online Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) dplu...@tsl.state.tx.us From: Code for Libraries on behalf of Michael J. Giarlo Sent: Wed 3/3/2010 8:56 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2011 Proposals A quick thread recap: There is no proposal from the Austin folks and they have thus far not expressed interest in hosting. So far we've received three intend to propose messages, and those are for Vancouver, New Haven, and Ithaca. The deadline for actual hosting proposals is Friday. Voting on hosting proposals will presumably take place in the usual way, via Ross Singer's el diebold-o-tron-o-matic-o, not in an e-mail thread. -Mike
Re: [CODE4LIB] Accessible reCaptcha Was: Bookmarking web links - authoritativeness or focused searching
Casey, I've had many conversations on the subject of CAPTCHAs with consultants in our Talking Book division. Like it or not, many webmasters who insist on using visual CAPTCHAs (often in combination with JavaScript) are turning away customers. One consultant, who is blind herself and who is NOT technologically illiterate by any means, has had to have a sighted co-worker sign up for her for anything Yahoo! related. When I looked at Yahoo!'s code a while back, they present the CAPTCHA, with a link (encoded as JavaScript popup) for folks who can't read the CAPTCHA. JAWS, the screen-reader program we have installed here, just would not recognize that link. (Note: I just looked again, and they've improved things considerably -- see below for code). Jim Thatcher, who is a major voice in the accessibility world, has an article about some of the difficulties posed by CAPTCHA and its ilk: http://jimthatcher.com/captchas.htm There are lots of other ways to minimize bot problems that don't (ahem!) violate the law, for those of us who work for institutions subject to section 508 and similar rules. There's a very nice (though slightly dated) article at http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/ on the subject. Logic puzzles, presented as simple text, are the approach we use most commonly, although Google's apparent ability to solve some of these does have us a little concerned. I'm not sure it's ever good a good idea to insult your users, or your colleagues. I know that I've seen CAPTCHA's with the message that boils down to to help us make sure you're really a human, please fill this out. I'm not disabled, but I am insulted by these messages! -- Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) dplu...@tsl.state.tx.us dcplu...@gmail.com Yahoo's code: p class=vi-note Attention Blind or Visually Impaired Users: To complete this form you must enter a word that is part of an image. If you can't read the image, Yahoo is happy to help you create your account. A representative from customer care will need to contact you. To request assistance with registration, please read the Yahoo! Terms of Service located at a href=http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ view-source:http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms//a. Once you have reviewed our policies, please provide your phone number and email address and send your request by visiting this URL - a href=http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/edit/cgi_access view-source:http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/edit/cgi_accesshttp://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/edit/cgi_access/a /p div id=captchaDiv class=ymemformfield input type=text name=cword id=cword value= size=10 maxlength=10 class= tabindex=20 autocomplete=off a id=captchaSwitchButton input type=button tabindex=21 id=caswitchurl value=Need audio assistance ?/a span class=smalla href= id=lnk_captcha_moreinfo title=More info about verifying your account target=ppMore infohttp://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/nt/ic/ut/alt1/hlp12_1.gif/a/span pThis helps Yahoo! prevent automated registrations./p div id=captchaCanvas noscript img src=https://ab.login.yahoo.com/img/BxyGIOJZFella6xwSlXbkqFfauXMpUvn05N.dhNnnHEoyBQnkGBIpanJ3vmeY0cv3vwOyGLipg6zZQZhvCIFqwZNvoeeAc2B21gVBw--.jpg; width=290 height=80 alt= border=2 id=cimg class=cimg /noscript a id=captchaRefreshAnchorinput type=button tabindex=22 id=captchaShuffleLink value=Try a new code /a /div /div On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 2:53 PM, Casey Durfee ca...@librarything.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 8:39 AM, MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop wrote: Eric Hellman wrote: Are you arguing that reCaptcha cannot be accessible or that it is incorrectly implemented on this site? Primarily that it is incorrectly implemented. However, I've yet to see an implementation of recaptcha that is accessible and does not needlessly insult users with impaired vision. Even the one on recaptcha.net includes the fully-abled=human insults. The space shuttle is not wheelchair-accessible. Is that a reason not to go to the moon? Are non-astronauts less than human? People in foreign countries who don't speak English are not discriminating against you by not speaking English. Fancy restaurants don't have picture menus. People who don't have the internet can't query google via snail mail. Do you consider yourself more human than people who don't have internet access or don't know how to read? Captcha isn't meant as a judgment about whether you happen to have a soul or something, so there's no need to take it personally. It's meant to keep the bots out, period. It's easy to not understand the importance of that if you've never had to deal with your site getting spammed. No business owner in their right mind wants to exclude potential customers if they don't have to. If the site itself is not accessible, maybe it's better they use
Re: [CODE4LIB] indexing pdf files
My (much more primitive) version of the same thing involves reading and annotating articles using my Tablet PC. Although I do get a variety of print publications, I find I don't tend to annotate them as much anymore. I used to use EndNote to do the metadata, then I switched to Zotero. I hadn't thought to try to create a full-text search of the articles -- hmm. -- Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) dplu...@tsl.state.tx.us dcplu...@gmail.com On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 8:31 AM, Eric Lease Morgan emor...@nd.edu wrote: I have been having fun recently indexing PDF files. For the pasts six months or so I have been keeping the articles I've read in a pile, and I was rather amazed at the size of the pile. It was about a foot tall. When I read these articles I actively read them -- meaning, I write, scribble, highlight, and annotate the text with my own special notation denoting names, keywords, definitions, citations, quotations, list items, examples, etc. This active reading process: 1) makes for better comprehension on my part, and 2) makes the articles easier to review and pick out the ideas I thought were salient. Being the librarian I am, I thought it might be cool (kewl) to make the articles into a collection. Thus, the beginnings of Highlights Annotations: A Value-Added Reading List. The techno-weenie process for creating and maintaining the content is something this community might find interesting: 1. Print article and read it actively. 2. Convert the printed article into a PDF file -- complete with embedded OCR -- with my handy-dandy ScanSnap scanner. [1] 3. Use MyLibrary to create metadata (author, title, date published, date read, note, keywords, facet/term combinations, local and remote URLs, etc.) describing the article. [2] 4. Save the PDF to my file system. 5. Use pdttotext to extract the OCRed text from the PDF and index it along with the MyLibrary metadata using Solr. [3, 4] 6. Provide a searchable/browsable user interface to the collection through a mod_perl module. [5, 6] Software is never done, and if it were then it would be called hardware. Accordingly, I know there are some things I need to do before I can truely deem the system version 1.0. At the same time my excitment is overflowing and I thought I'd share some geekdom with my fellow hackers. Fun with PDF files and open source software. [1] ScanSnap - http://tinyurl.com/oafgwe [2] MyLibrary screen dump - http://infomotions.com/tmp/mylibrary.png [3] pdftotext - http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/ [4] Solr - http://lucene.apache.org/solr/ [5] module source code - http://infomotions.com/highlights/Highlights.pl [6] user interface - http://infomotions.com/highlights/highlights.cgi -- Eric Lease Morgan University of Notre Dame -- Eric Lease Morgan Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame (574) 631-8604
Re: [CODE4LIB] HTML mark-up in MARC records
Michael, For institutions that catalog digital objects in MARC or link to digital surrogates as UT Arlington does, my recommendation is to use the 856 as follows: 856 41 $u http://www.uta.edu/library/ccon/images/thumbs/00384Thumb.jpg $3 thumbnail image 856 41 $u http://www.uta.edu/library/ccon/mrsid_images/ccon/00384.sid $3 access image 856 42 $u http://libraries.uta.edu/ccon/scripts/ShowMap.asp?accession=00384 $3 Cartographic Connections web site If there were a finding aid, it would go in as 856 42 $u http://library.uta.edu/findingAids/maps.jsp $3 finding aid There have been conservations on the AUTOCAT list about the subfield 3; there's no controlled vocabulary or even best practices for how to use it, which makes it very difficult to use as a guide to what exactly you're linking to. We're working on a formal set of best practices for digitization projects in Texas that will include a recommendation similar to this. From a set of 856s like this, I can create a stylesheet to display the thumbnail image and link out to the website appropriately in our statewide image search tool Texas Heritage Online. I access UT Arlington's collections over Z39.50, btw -- see http://www.texasheritageonline.org/search.tkl?focus=target-utar-ccon.tklcclquery=mapoffset=1. Having HTML tags in the MARC is unnecessary, and might break things in normal catalog displays. What I need most is consistency so that I don't have to figure out every possible variation for every possible system, which gets a bit old. Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) dplu...@tsl.state.tx.us -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu]on Behalf Of Doran, Michael D Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2009 5:09 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] HTML mark-up in MARC records Hi Stuart, A couple of quick questions: I'd be glad to answer, but I suspect these really only have relevance *after* the main issue (Is embedding HTML mark-up in MARC records a good/bad idea?) is decided. ;-) (1) When you say HTML which version of HTML are you using? For the HTML markup in the record, there's obviously no version explicitly specified. Some img tags have an end tag (i.e. img src=URL /), so could be said to conform to XHTML 1.0, others have no end tag, so are generic HTML. The ILS in question declared pages to be HTML 4.0 Transitional in older versions of the online catalog but HTML standards compliance was wishful thinking. The current version declares pages to be HTML 4.01 Transitional and comes a lot closer to conforming. This does bring up the issue, though, of the potential for a mis-match in conformation to a declared DOCTYPE between the HTML mark-up in the record, and the online opac's HTML mark-up. (2) What tool are you using to validate the HTML inside the MARC? None that I am aware of. (Note I'm not in the cataloging department, so am not familiar with all their workflow.) (3) Since HTML can use character encodings that MARC doesn't understand, how are you escaping the non-ASCII characters in the HTML? I'm not sure what you are asking here. I'm not aware of any HTML elements and/or attributes that contain non-ASCII characters. Perhaps you are referring to data (or perhaps attribute values) rather than to the HTML mark-up code. Our MARC records are encoded in Unicode UTF-8, so potentially any character can be represented. For display of the data on the web, the online catalog is declaring that character set in a meta tag: META http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=UTF-8. -- Michael # Michael Doran, Systems Librarian # University of Texas at Arlington # 817-272-5326 office # 817-688-1926 mobile # do...@uta.edu # http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/ From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of stuart yeates [stuart.yea...@vuw.ac.nz] Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2009 4:05 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: 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. A couple of quick questions: (1) When you say HTML which version of HTML are you using? (2) What tool are you using to validate the HTML inside the MARC? (3) Since HTML can use character encodings that MARC doesn't understand, how are you escaping the non-ASCII characters in the HTML? cheers stuart -- Stuart Yeates http://www.nzetc.org/ New Zealand Electronic Text Centre http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/ Institutional Repository
Re: [CODE4LIB] Zotero under attack
Edward M. Corrado wrote: This will be interesting to see how it works out. From what I read, it looks like the case that Thomson has is based on, or at least strongly enhanced by, the EULA. Thus, the legal questions may end up being 1) is freeing data from a proprietary file format aviolation of copyright/patent/ etc.? and if not, 2) can you sign that away by agreeing to an EULA? Michael B. Klein wrote: Second, this isn't a EULA in the sense of By opening this package, you agree... or By clicking this, you agree... Those kinds of contracts are questionable. It's an actual contract granting GMU a site license for the Endnote software, negotiated by Thomson and GMU and agreed to in writing on both sides. I guess I wonder whether the Zotero developers at the Center for History and New Media were aware of the existence, much less the terms, of the Endnote software contract. If they were aware of the terms and decided to do the reverse-engineering anyway, the legal consequences will be much worse. My experience with large institutions, however, suggests that this was probably a decision made in ignorance of the contract. Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Records for Open Library
Kevin Kelly had an interesting post on The Technium last week about these sorts of issues (http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php), and his conclusion is exactly along the lines of Karen's post. His assumptions are: When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. So he concludes: When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. The things which cannot be copied are services -- he lists eight generatives that have value. These are immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage, and findability. Trust is also mentioned as a intangible asset with significant value. I find that this is a compelling argument, and it seems to be in line with things I hear coming out of OCLC Research, at least, and from the folks at Open Library, too. It will take time for an organization with as much inertia as OCLC has to change its modus operandi, but I think it will come. However, unlike others, I tend to be an optimist in the morning and a cynic by nightfall, so we'll see... Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of K.G. Schneider Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 7:04 AM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Records for Open Library Maybe Roy will answer that one -- but I doubt its that difficult to guess. OCLC's primary value is its bibliographic database and the information about its member's holdings. Nearly all of it's services are built around this. If they gave that information up to the Open Library, it would most certainly undermine their ILL, Cataloging and Grid Services initiatives. However, if a handful of members in relation to their membership participate in the program -- its no skin off their noses. --TR You know, I realize that's the going-in thinking, and OCLC has shared that with me. I fully understand the need for OCLC to protect its services. But I remember with a previous job that people (even some very important people) thought our product was our data, but it really wasn't: it was the services we wrapped around the data, including maintenance, delivery, affiliated products, etc. It's true that the data had to be good, but that goodness didn't come with a core dump of one-time static data. Keeping our data closed ultimately harmed us, perhaps perniciously, and I wish I had done a better job of championing a different path. I didn't have the skills or vocabulary and to this day I regret that. Karen G. Been there, done that, got the teeshirt Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib journal idea revival?
I'm coming late to this discussion because I was out all last week, but this is something I could approach the folks at the Texas Digital Library about. They've set up an Open Journals system and are currently hosting JoDI. See http://journals.tdl.org/ Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative Texas State Library and Archives Commission 512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Paul Miller Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 10:25 AM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib journal idea revival? Rather than create something new, is it worth looking at ways to align this need with existing infrastructure at Ariadne, D-Lib, etc? Maybe even get some of those evil vendors to underwrite some of the costs, in the name of nurturing market innovation, etc? Or is the need actually already filled/fillable by sites like code4lib.org, tdn.talis.com, etc, and all of our individual blogs? On 11/4/07 15:01, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: I think it was this past summer that there was some energy on starting a 'Code4Lib journal', that seems to have died out. I think such a journal could play a really important role, currently lacking, in the library community. Currently there are a bunch of people working on similar projects who don't communicate enough, re-inventing wheels. Plus more people who would LIKE to be working on similar products, but don't know how to get started. Plus I could see such a journal playing a role in techies communicating with the larger library community about challenges they are running into that effect larger library workflow. Anyway, I'd be interested in working on this to get this off the ground. Is anyone else? Especially someone(s) with a bit more Code4Lib cred/history than me? Thinking about it, I think it can probably be done in a pretty light-weight easy to get started manner. I assume people were thinking of an electronic only journal. So pretty much all we would need is: 1) An editorial committee or whatever. [Maybe some people imagined some more 'revolutionary' egalitarian type of community process, but I figure keep it simple, and an editorial committee seems simple, and also provides some people who have explicitly taken responsibility for getting things done.] 2) A place to host it. [maybe some kind of institutional repository software would be cool, but in a pinch seems to me a WordPress installation would do. Keep things simple and do-able and good enough is my motto. I'm sure one of our institutions would donate server space/cycles for a WordPress installation for such a journal. ] 3) Maybe a wiki would be nice for editorial commitee discussions. 4) Maybe a simple one page description of the mission of the journal and what the journal is looking for in articles. The editorial committee can work on that on the hypothetical wiki. 5) Some articles. The editorial committee can solicit some for the first 'issue'. Step 6: Profit! I mean, some e-published articles. No profit, sorry. That seems pretty do-able to me. I think it would serve a really good role. I'm not concerned so much with 'scholarly credibility' as I am with creating a valuable tool for people getting stuff done. I think thinking like that can keep it simple too. Oh, as long as we're at it, 6) Get an ISSN for the thing, since most link resolvers will never be able to track it otherwise. (Sigh). So anyone interested? Is this a good idea? Do-able? Should we do it? Want to help? I do. Jonathan -- Dr Paul Miller Senior Manager Technology Evangelist, Talis w: www.talis.com/ m: +44 (7769) 740083 im: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [AIM, MSN and iChat] skype: napm1971 -- The very latest from Talis read the latest news at www.talis.com/news listen to our podcasts www.talis.com/podcasts see us at these events www.talis.com/events join the discussion here www.talis.com/forums join our developer community www.talis.com/tdn and read our blogs www.talis.com/blogs Any views or personal opinions expressed within this email may not be those of Talis Information Ltd. The content of this email message and any files that may be attached are confidential, and for the usage of the intended recipient only. If you are not the intended recipient, then please return this message to the sender and delete it. Any use of this e-mail by an unauthorised recipient is prohibited. Talis Information Ltd is a member of the Talis Group of companies and is registered in England No 3638278 with its registered office at Knights Court, Solihull Parkway, Birmingham Business Park, B37 7YB.
