[CODE4LIB] making day with library data

[Birkin Diana]

This Saturday, 22 November event just came across my virtual desk...



Excerpt...

"Stacks Unbound is a making day with library data, from catalogues to metadata.

Libraries are important resources for learning and culture. By metaphorically 
unbinding the stacks and coming together, we can explore what is possible. From 
linking WWI publications to compiling data on species to generating a [timeline 
of pirate and cat publications][link], we hope to emulate and build on the 
success of previous events at RLUK and the British Library."

[link]: 
http://www.rluk.ac.uk/news/building-picture-linked-open-data-rluk-hackathon/

---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu

Re: [CODE4LIB] jobs digest for 2014-05-16

[Birkin Diana]

> full ads

-0.33

new format

+1

---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On May 21, 2014, at 9:54 AM, Doran, Michael D  wrote:

>> full ads and (listserv topics and/or email filter) gives each code4lib
>> subscriber the most control.
> 
> +1
> 
> -- Michael
> 
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
>> Tom Keays
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 8:13 AM
>> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
>> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] jobs digest for 2014-05-16
>> 
>> I would prefer to get the full ads as well.
>> 
>> full ads and (listserv topics and/or email filter) gives each code4lib
>> subscriber the most control.
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 8:53 AM, Dunn, Katie  wrote:
>> 
>>> On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 10:06 PM, Joe Hourcle wrote:
 It looks to me like it's a change in the messages that '
>>> jobs.code4lib.org'
 generates and sends to the list ...
>>> 
>>> I much preferred receiving the full ads in separate messages, because
>> they
>>> were easy to archive and search in my email without having to
>> copy/paste
>>> from the website, but I can just subscribe to the Atom feed instead.
>>> 
>>> Katie
>>> 

Re: [CODE4LIB] how to unsubscribe this list?

[Birkin Diana]

>From (for me) the 7th link off Ralph's gsearch...

> Here at ND we will instigate a code4lib mailing list. Initially Rob and I will
> be moderators. We'll give it a try for eighteen (18) months, and after that
> time if there does not seem to be enough interest to keep the whole thing
> alive, then we will shut it down...

:)

Wow -- _thanks_ so much, Rob & Eric!

-b


---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Feb 20, 2014, at 1:17 PM, LeVan,Ralph  wrote:

> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=unsubscribe+code4lib
> 
> Ralph

Re: [CODE4LIB] Python (or similar) package to read counter stat reports?

[Birkin Diana]

Was just talking with someone about such stats. He mentioned counter, whereas 
I'd remembered sushi -- found this:

-b
---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Feb 11, 2014, at 3:36 PM, Michael Beccaria  wrote:

> This might be a bit obscure, but is there a python package or other 
> programming language package that is designed to read library Counter 
> statistics reports? I'm looking to start building a data warehouse for some 
> of our ebook and journal vendors and want to pull data from these reports. I 
> can script it but wanted to know if anything might exist to help along the 
> way. Anybody else working on or completed something similar?
> 
> Mike Beccaria
> Systems Librarian
> Head of Digital Initiative
> Paul Smith's College
> 518.327.6376
> mbecca...@paulsmiths.edu
> Become a friend of Paul Smith's Library on Facebook today!

Re: [CODE4LIB] Anyone working with iPython?

[Birkin Diana]

Hey Roy,

I haven't been _working_ with it, but coincidentally just viewed a webinar on 
it with some other programmers here, and I agree it's pretty cool.

The webinar (I think it's freely viewable):
'Data Science Experiments with Twitter and IPython Notebook'


> ...But perhaps the killer bit is the idea of "Notebooks" that can capture all 
> of your work in a way that is also editable and completely web-ready...

It was pretty amazing to install it, fire it up, see a browser auto-open, type 
some python in & hit return -- and then open a second browser, access the same 
url, see the input code and its output -- and then, from the second browser be 
able to add & run code... that the first browser could then see, too. (I agree, 
hard to explain.)

-b
---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Dec 19, 2013, at 12:48 PM, Roy Tennant  wrote:

> Our Wikipedian in Residence, Max Klein brought iPython [1] to my attention
> recently and even in just the little exploration I've done with it so far
> I'm quite impressed. Although you could call it "interactive Python" that
> doesn't begin to put across the full range of capabilities, as when I first
> heard that I thought "Great, a Python shell where you enter a command, hit
> the return, and it executes. Great. Just what I need. NOT." But I was SO
> WRONG.
> 
> It certainly can and does do that, but also so much more. You can enter
> blocks of code that then execute. Those blocks don't even have to be
> Python. They can be Ruby or Perl or bash. There are built-in functions of
> various kinds that it (oddly) calls "magic". But perhaps the killer bit is
> the idea of "Notebooks" that can capture all of your work in a way that is
> also editable and completely web-ready. This last part is probably
> difficult to understand until you experience it.
> 
> Anyway, i was curious if others have been working with it and if so, what
> they are using it for. I can think of all kinds of things I might want to
> do with it, but hearing from others can inspire me further, I'm sure.
> Thanks,
> Roy
> 
> [1] http://ipython.org/

Re: [CODE4LIB] Interested in enhancing call-number browse in Millennium catalog

[Birkin Diana]

> ...Next: a smart phone app that reads books on a shelf and reports what the 
> call numbers mean...

_love_ this idea; thx for kicking off the c4l-hackfest topics!  :)
---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Dec 4, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Karen Coyle  wrote:

> cynthia, I can't help you but I can encourage you -- honestly, the call 
> numbers alone (especially in LCC where the notation is not a strict 
> hierarchy) are close to useless without the meanings. One might even make the 
> meanings more visible than the call numbers themselves (bolder, placed 
> first)... Go for it!
> 
> Next: a smart phone app that reads books on a shelf and reports what the call 
> numbers mean. I'd call it "Where the F am I, anyway?"
> 
> kc

Re: [CODE4LIB] [CODE4LIB] HEADS UP - Government shutdown will mean *.loc.gov is going offline October 1

[Birkin Diana]

> ...you'd want to create a caching service...


One solution for a relevant particular problem (not full-blown linked-data 
caching):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Catalog

excerpt: "However, if they are absolute URLs, they only work when your network 
can reach them. Relying on remote resources makes XML processing susceptible to 
both planned and unplanned network downtime."

We'd heard about this a while ago, but, Jodi, you and David Riordan and 
Congress have caused a temporary retreat from normal sprint-work here at Brown 
today to investigate implementing this!  :/

The particular problem that would affect us: if your processing tool checks, 
say, an loc.gov mods namespace url, that processing will fail if the loc.gov 
url isn't available, unless you've implemented xml catalog, which is a formal 
way to locally resolve such external references.

-b
---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Sep 30, 2013, at 7:15 AM, Uldis Bojars  wrote:

> What are best practices for preventing problems in cases like this when an
> important Linked Data service may go offline?
> 
> --- originally this was a reply to Jodi which she suggested to post on the
> list too ---
> 
> A safe [pessimistic?] approach would be to say "we don't trust [reliability
> of] linked data on the Web as services can and will go down" and to cache
> everything.
> 
> In that case you'd want to create a caching service that would keep updated
> copies of all important Linked Data sources and a fall-back strategy for
> switching to this caching service when needed. Like archive.org for Linked
> Data.
> 
> Some semantic web search engines might already have subsets of Linked Data
> web cached, but not sure how much they cover (e.g., if they have all of LoC
> data, up-to-date).
> 
> If one were to create such a service how to best update it, considering
> you'd be requesting *all* Linked Data URIs from each source? An efficient
> approach would be to regularly load RDF dumps for every major source if
> available (e.g., LoC says - here's a full dump of all our RDF data ... and
> a .torrent too).
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Uldis
> 
> 
> On 29 September 2013 12:33, Jodi Schneider  wrote:
> 
>> Any best practices for caching authorities/vocabs to suggest for this
>> thread on the Code4Lib list?
>> 
>> Linked Data authorities & vocabularies at Library of Congress (id.loc.gov)
>> are going to be affected by the website shutdown -- because of lack of
>> government funds.
>> 
>> -Jodi

Re: [CODE4LIB] Why we need multiple discovery services engine?

[Birkin Diana]

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  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] some radical edit of policy

[Birkin Diana]

kcoyle++

i like the way it merges clarity of commitment with positive tone.

-b

---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Dec 2, 2012, at 11:15 AM, Karen Coyle  wrote:

> I did a somewhat radical edit of the policy. To me it sounded heavy-handed, 
> and I didn't think that we needed such in our community. I also want to 
> distinguish between "bloopers" that need correction and active harassment. A 
> lot of discriminatory language is unconscious but still should be gently 
> corrected. [1]
> 
> I also don't think that these are "rules" -- a policy is a policy, and I 
> think rules is too strong a term.
> 
> Because of the amount that I changed (and because I really wasn't sure what 
> would happen when I hit "save") these changes are still in my "fork":
> 
> https://github.com/kcoyle/antiharassment-policy
> 
> Let me know if I should commit it (and I'm assuming that's just a matter of 
> hitting the "commit" button).
> 
> kc
> 
> [1] It's from the 90's, but http://kcoyle.net/howhard.html has many examples
> 
> -- 
> Karen Coyle
> kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet

Re: [CODE4LIB] CAS authentication with ILLiad

[Birkin Diana]

For others interested in this issue, we at Brown are taking a different tack 
for now.

It'll be a while before the computing/info-services department gets around to 
shibbolizing ILLiad (because of the windows server). Our interest has been in 
_automating_ ILLiad requests, which we've been doing for a few years now, but 
with a catch: to date we've had to capture users' passwords in order to 
programmatically log them in (then we pass ILLiad an OpenUrl).

Though that has worked fine, we've wanted to move away from handling the 
passwords, and thought we might have wait for the cis department to investigate 
& implement a 'delegation' approach that has been used with Shibboleth -- but a 
programmer on our team discovered the remote authentication feature, and got 
the following working: Now we can have users log into a (non-Illiad) 
shib-protected page for the relevant OpenUrl-based service, and then we pass 
their user-id (eppn in shib-speak) and illiad-remote-authentication key to 
ILLiad, grab the session id, which then allows the OpenUrl-based request to be 
submitted to ILLiad.

-b

---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Jan 12, 2012, at 1:04 PM, Cindy Harper wrote:

> How opportune! Colgate wants to do this, but I'm offered a one-week
> timeframe. We have CAS all set up. Does it look like it's doable in that
> time?
> 
> Cindy Harper, Systems Librarian
> Colgate University Libraries
> char...@colgate.edu
> 315-228-7363
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 12:51 PM, Friscia, Michael > wrote:
> 
>> Anyone still interested in the topic of remote authentication for ILLiad
>> using CAS? (for sites that host their own ILLiad instance)
>> 
>> I just completed integration this morning without using the various UofA
>> or UC Davis ISAPI filters out there. If there's interest I'd be happy to
>> share how it was done.
>> 
>> ___
>> Michael Friscia
>> Manager, Digital Library & Programming Services
>> 
>> Yale University Library
>> (203) 432-1856

Re: [CODE4LIB] Linux Laptop

[Birkin Diana]

Possible bridges to whatever you decide to get:

- Use Ubuntu on VirtualBox on your Mac (yes, I did see the using 'linux in a 
non-server computer' concern -- thus the bridge qualification).

- Depending on the issues and languages you're using, use in-language 
package-managers. For example, we have a library of python repository code with 
three python-package dependences: fcrepo, lxml, and solrpy. Using 'pip' (a 
python package-manager), we've created a simple requirements file, so that, 
when I run, on my mac, a pip-install command for our repo_utils, it 
automatically web-downloads and installs those packages if necessary (even 
specific versions if desired). And this'll work the same on your Mac, VBox, and 
a possible eventual linux laptop.

-Birkin

---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Digital Technologies
Brown University Library
birkin_di...@brown.edu


On Dec 14, 2011, at 12:54 PM, Chris Fitzpatrick wrote:

> Thanks everyone for all the recommendations. I know this would be this list 
> to ask. 
> 
> Sounds like Ubuntu is the overwhelming favorite. In the past when I've used a 
> linux in a non-server computer, there are always some annoying problems... 
> things like the laptop not waking from sleep mode, power consumption 
> problems, or the microphone not working.  
> 
> So, I wondering about specific laptop brands/models and linux 
> distributions/versions that people have found to work really well. A Dell or 
> ThinkPad with Ubuntu seems to be the popular choice? 
> 
> But, yeah, I know i started it, but I'm going to avoid going deeper into my 
> opinions on Apple vs. Windows vs. Linux and the implications vis-à-vis 
> productivity, copyright, social justice, and the plight of the polar bear. If 
> only out of concern that introducing this discussion might cause the poor 
> mail server at ND to meltdown…..
> 
> b,chris.