Re: [CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities metadata?

[Fitchett, Deborah]

We have a shared folder with documentation, at various levels of updatedness... 
 I've managed to get to a point where there's three of us sharing our 'library 
IT' responsibilities. We've each developed our specialties but work together so 
we all know the basics of everything. That means when one person goes on leave 
and another is sick there's still someone who can keep things running.

For other teams, even where we're one deep we work hard to have each person 
also be backup for some other function(s) so we don't have to shut down 
interloans (for example) every time the interloans person goes on leave.

Our URL/password management system isn't pretty so I won't talk about it 
here(!) but it's functional at least. We have one system for managing the 
'library IT' stuff (ie catalogue, website, repositories, EZproxy) and a 
separate-but-similar system for the people managing the 'collections' stuff (ie 
database administration accounts).

Deborah
––
Deborah Fitchett (she/her) MLIS, RLIANZA
Associate University Librarian, Digital Scholarship

––
Learning, Teaching and Library – Te Whare Pūrākau
PO Box 85064, Lincoln University
Lincoln 7647, Christchurch, New Zealand
+64 3 423 0358
deborah.fitch...@lincoln.ac.nz
ltl.lincoln.ac.nz

––
Lincoln University
Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki
––



-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries  On Behalf Of Hammer, Erich F
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2023 5:14 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG
Subject: [CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities metadata?

Caution: This email originated from outside our organisation. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content 
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Between administrative interfaces for internal and third-party Library service 
applications, IT/networking services, support services, etc., I have around 3 
dozen bookmarks just to (barely) manage my responsibilities.  That doesn't 
include the various forms for requesting other people do other things with 
their tools/utilities.  The other departments like Access Services, Reference, 
Archives, Purchasing, HR etc. have their own utilities and services for their 
needs, and I've been wondering if anyone is actually keeping track of all of 
these internal needs in case someone else suddenly needs to take over any 
particular job.  Because of reduced staffing, there is almost no redundancy, 
thus, I know unquestionably that should I get hit by the Lotto bus, there are 
lesser-used-but-still-vital systems/services that nobody else knows how to 
access.  They might know of them and are probably smart enough to figure out at 
least some basics if plopped in front of them, but how to get to them has 
limited/no documentation.

I've been thinking that our fundamental function is keeping track of 
information, so shouldn't the Library also *collectively* keep track of all the 
tools/utilities necessary to keep the library functioning?  I imagine that just 
a giant list would be too overwhelming when an individual employee might only 
need a small percentage of them, so some means of indexing/searching is 
probably required.  Does anyone here do have a shared/collective solution, or 
does each department (or worse, individual) just keep that information 
separately and internally?  Do you use a third-party product (what?), or have 
you constructed your own solution?  Do you keep track of shared credentials or 
the individual staff members who hold credentials?

Thanks,
Erich


--
Erich HammerHead of Library Systems
er...@albany.edu University Libraries
518-442-3891  University @ Albany

The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.



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Re: [CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities metadata?

[Eric Phetteplace]

I've been at the same organization for a long time and also have a
sprawling list of applications, scripts, workflows, etc. necessary for my
work and supporting others at the library. I've also inherited the typical,
terrible situations where there's no documentation nor inventory of systems
in use. What I try to do is:

- put all non-trival code (anything more than a few shell commands) under
distributed version control
- always have a readme
- always have setup, usage, and license sections in the readme
- high-level, less technical workflow documentation resides in a wiki and
links to relevant code and admin interfaces, etc.
- we only recently got a password manager where we can share credentials
(hurrah!)

We also have various spreadsheets of applications tied to different
functional concerns, like maintenance, authentication/security, data
protection. Many of these are collaborations outside the library.

I have a wiki page on my scheduled tasks, too—workflows I perform every
month, semester, year, etc.—which I find is often overlooked in
documentation, or isn't centralized in one place. *A lot* (all?) of the
documentation I write is talking to myself because I'm a solo systems
librarian at a small institution. But, for one, I frequently find it useful
because library processes are full of eccentricities and it hopefully
reduces our bus factor. I know some larger library dev teams have great,
version-controlled documents for onboarding or processes (thinking of
Princeton  and Stanford
 specifically) which is what
I aspire to.

This response doesn't do a great job of addressing apps/tools used by other
teams. In some situations, you kind of have to trust them to be documenting
on their own, it seems like it would be challenging for one person/team to
be fully responsible for another's documentation.

Best,
Eric Phetteplace
Systems Librarian
California College of the Arts
libraries.cca.edu



On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 9:15 AM Margaret Alexander 
wrote:

> I completely agree.  One of our developers took another job 4 years ago,
> and we are still finding little apps and dependencies that we know nothing
> about but are still in use.  Not to mention the ones that are NOT still in
> use, but are still squirreled away on servers, and we have to figure out
> who might have been using them to decide if they need to be migrated when
> the server is upgraded, etc.
> Which is to say, I don't have a solution, but am determined to get our
> knowledge documented, and I'd love to hear what others are doing, too.
> Best,
> Margaret Alexander
> Core Systems Librarian
> University of Oregon Libraries
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Code for Libraries  On Behalf Of Hammer,
> Erich F
> Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2023 8:14 AM
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities
> metadata?
>
> Between administrative interfaces for internal and third-party Library
> service applications, IT/networking services, support services, etc., I
> have around 3 dozen bookmarks just to (barely) manage my responsibilities.
> That doesn't include the various forms for requesting other people do other
> things with their tools/utilities.  The other departments like Access
> Services, Reference, Archives, Purchasing, HR etc. have their own utilities
> and services for their needs, and I've been wondering if anyone is actually
> keeping track of all of these internal needs in case someone else suddenly
> needs to take over any particular job.  Because of reduced staffing, there
> is almost no redundancy, thus, I know unquestionably that should I get hit
> by the Lotto bus, there are lesser-used-but-still-vital systems/services
> that nobody else knows how to access.  They might know of them and are
> probably smart enough to figure out at least some basics if plopped in
> front of them, but how to get to them has limited/no documentation.
>
> I've been thinking that our fundamental function is keeping track of
> information, so shouldn't the Library also *collectively* keep track of all
> the tools/utilities necessary to keep the library functioning?  I imagine
> that just a giant list would be too overwhelming when an individual
> employee might only need a small percentage of them, so some means of
> indexing/searching is probably required.  Does anyone here do have a
> shared/collective solution, or does each department (or worse, individual)
> just keep that information separately and internally?  Do you use a
> third-party product (what?), or have you constructed your own solution?  Do
> you keep track of shared credentials or the individual staff members who
> hold credentials?
>
> Thanks,
> Erich
>
>
> --
> Erich HammerHead of Library Systems
> er...@albany.edu University Libraries
> 518-442-3891  University @ Albany
>
> The perversity of the Universe tends

Re: [CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities metadata?

[Margaret Alexander]

I completely agree.  One of our developers took another job 4 years ago, and we 
are still finding little apps and dependencies that we know nothing about but 
are still in use.  Not to mention the ones that are NOT still in use, but are 
still squirreled away on servers, and we have to figure out who might have been 
using them to decide if they need to be migrated when the server is upgraded, 
etc.  
Which is to say, I don't have a solution, but am determined to get our 
knowledge documented, and I'd love to hear what others are doing, too. 
Best, 
Margaret Alexander
Core Systems Librarian
University of Oregon Libraries

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries  On Behalf Of Hammer, Erich F
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2023 8:14 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG
Subject: [CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities metadata?

Between administrative interfaces for internal and third-party Library service 
applications, IT/networking services, support services, etc., I have around 3 
dozen bookmarks just to (barely) manage my responsibilities.  That doesn't 
include the various forms for requesting other people do other things with 
their tools/utilities.  The other departments like Access Services, Reference, 
Archives, Purchasing, HR etc. have their own utilities and services for their 
needs, and I've been wondering if anyone is actually keeping track of all of 
these internal needs in case someone else suddenly needs to take over any 
particular job.  Because of reduced staffing, there is almost no redundancy, 
thus, I know unquestionably that should I get hit by the Lotto bus, there are 
lesser-used-but-still-vital systems/services that nobody else knows how to 
access.  They might know of them and are probably smart enough to figure out at 
least some basics if plopped in front of them, but how to get to them has 
limited/no documentation.

I've been thinking that our fundamental function is keeping track of 
information, so shouldn't the Library also *collectively* keep track of all the 
tools/utilities necessary to keep the library functioning?  I imagine that just 
a giant list would be too overwhelming when an individual employee might only 
need a small percentage of them, so some means of indexing/searching is 
probably required.  Does anyone here do have a shared/collective solution, or 
does each department (or worse, individual) just keep that information 
separately and internally?  Do you use a third-party product (what?), or have 
you constructed your own solution?  Do you keep track of shared credentials or 
the individual staff members who hold credentials?

Thanks,
Erich


--
Erich HammerHead of Library Systems
er...@albany.edu University Libraries
518-442-3891  University @ Albany

The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.

Re: [CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities metadata?

[Marijane White]

This is from a slightly different angle, but I think about Derek Sivers' post 
about delegation at his company, CD Baby, and the creation of the company 
operating manual all the time: https://sive.rs/delegate I have shared it with 
my coworkers and talk about creating an operating manual pretty often. We do 
have some documentation but it's scattered all over the place, figuring out 
where/how to centralize it has been a challenge.


Marijane White, M.S.L.I.S. 
Data and Research Engagement Librarian, Assistant Professor 
Oregon Health & Science University Library 

Email: whi...@ohsu.edu  
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/-0001-5059-4132 
 



On 11/28/23, 8:14 AM, "Code for Libraries on behalf of Hammer, Erich F" 
mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG> on behalf of 
er...@albany.edu > wrote:


Between administrative interfaces for internal and third-party Library service 
applications, IT/networking services, support services, etc., I have around 3 
dozen bookmarks just to (barely) manage my responsibilities. That doesn't 
include the various forms for requesting other people do other things with 
their tools/utilities. The other departments like Access Services, Reference, 
Archives, Purchasing, HR etc. have their own utilities and services for their 
needs, and I've been wondering if anyone is actually keeping track of all of 
these internal needs in case someone else suddenly needs to take over any 
particular job. Because of reduced staffing, there is almost no redundancy, 
thus, I know unquestionably that should I get hit by the Lotto bus, there are 
lesser-used-but-still-vital systems/services that nobody else knows how to 
access. They might know of them and are probably smart enough to figure out at 
least some basics if plopped in front of them, but how to get to them has 
limited/no documentation.


I've been thinking that our fundamental function is keeping track of 
information, so shouldn't the Library also *collectively* keep track of all the 
tools/utilities necessary to keep the library functioning? I imagine that just 
a giant list would be too overwhelming when an individual employee might only 
need a small percentage of them, so some means of indexing/searching is 
probably required. Does anyone here do have a shared/collective solution, or 
does each department (or worse, individual) just keep that information 
separately and internally? Do you use a third-party product (what?), or have 
you constructed your own solution? Do you keep track of shared credentials or 
the individual staff members who hold credentials?


Thanks,
Erich




--
Erich Hammer Head of Library Systems
er...@albany.edu  University Libraries
518-442-3891 University @ Albany


The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.

[CODE4LIB] How does your library manage internal utilities metadata?

[Hammer, Erich F]

Between administrative interfaces for internal and third-party Library service 
applications, IT/networking services, support services, etc., I have around 3 
dozen bookmarks just to (barely) manage my responsibilities.  That doesn't 
include the various forms for requesting other people do other things with 
their tools/utilities.  The other departments like Access Services, Reference, 
Archives, Purchasing, HR etc. have their own utilities and services for their 
needs, and I've been wondering if anyone is actually keeping track of all of 
these internal needs in case someone else suddenly needs to take over any 
particular job.  Because of reduced staffing, there is almost no redundancy, 
thus, I know unquestionably that should I get hit by the Lotto bus, there are 
lesser-used-but-still-vital systems/services that nobody else knows how to 
access.  They might know of them and are probably smart enough to figure out at 
least some basics if plopped in front of them, but how to get to them has 
limited/no documentation.

I've been thinking that our fundamental function is keeping track of 
information, so shouldn't the Library also *collectively* keep track of all the 
tools/utilities necessary to keep the library functioning?  I imagine that just 
a giant list would be too overwhelming when an individual employee might only 
need a small percentage of them, so some means of indexing/searching is 
probably required.  Does anyone here do have a shared/collective solution, or 
does each department (or worse, individual) just keep that information 
separately and internally?  Do you use a third-party product (what?), or have 
you constructed your own solution?  Do you keep track of shared credentials or 
the individual staff members who hold credentials?

Thanks,
Erich


--
Erich HammerHead of Library Systems
er...@albany.edu University Libraries
518-442-3891  University @ Albany

The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.

Re: [CODE4LIB] Developing Linux Applications

[Bess Sadler]

Charles, what's your idea? A frequent way that open source projects happen
is to propose them to a community like this one and see if it solves a
problem that anyone else has. If it's a good idea that would solve a
problem, often you can get grant money to pursue a pilot project, or
sometimes even just to have a design process. Why not write up your idea
and see if anyone else wants to collaborate?

Bess

On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 8:57 AM Hammer, Erich F  wrote:

> The famous Edison quote is, "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99
> percent perspiration", but it should be a quote about invention, not
> genius.
>
> Coming up with an idea is easy, and the world is full of them.  Turning
> that idea into an actual product takes enormous and sustained effort, and
> that is true whether in "meatspace" or cyberspace.  Convincing someone else
> to do the work to bring your idea to fruition takes a really, really good
> idea, a lot of money and/or masterful manipulation and a hypnotic stage
> presence.  Doing it yourself or leading others is possible, but requires
> tremendous passion that won't be extinguished by this Debbie Downer
> response.
>
> Good luck!
>
>
> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 20:21, Charles Meyer eloquently inscribed:
>
> > Has anyone enjoyed success suggesting an application to the  Linux
> > Foundation or other Linux funding projects and then witnessing that
> > application developed into a freely-offered (ro low cost) Linux program?
> >
> > I'm curious how that process works.
> >
> > Ex. GIMP was developed in Linux before teh Windows version but how did it
> > get started and fully funded?
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Charles.
> >
> > Charlotte County Public Library
>
>
>

Re: [CODE4LIB] Developing Linux Applications

[Hammer, Erich F]

The famous Edison quote is, "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent 
perspiration", but it should be a quote about invention, not genius.  

Coming up with an idea is easy, and the world is full of them.  Turning that 
idea into an actual product takes enormous and sustained effort, and that is 
true whether in "meatspace" or cyberspace.  Convincing someone else to do the 
work to bring your idea to fruition takes a really, really good idea, a lot of 
money and/or masterful manipulation and a hypnotic stage presence.  Doing it 
yourself or leading others is possible, but requires tremendous passion that 
won't be extinguished by this Debbie Downer response.

Good luck!


On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 20:21, Charles Meyer eloquently inscribed:

> Has anyone enjoyed success suggesting an application to the  Linux
> Foundation or other Linux funding projects and then witnessing that
> application developed into a freely-offered (ro low cost) Linux program?
> 
> I'm curious how that process works.
> 
> Ex. GIMP was developed in Linux before teh Windows version but how did it
> get started and fully funded?
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Charles.
> 
> Charlotte County Public Library