Re: [CODE4LIB] onboarding developers coming from industry

[Jason Casden]

I think that the importance of sharing your passion for library service
should not be overlooked. While universities can be rather bureaucratic,
this may also be true of many of the commercial and governmental
organizations from which these developers are being hired. The advantages
that we do have over many of these organizations include the opportunity to
work directly with the users of your products, the ability to be more
involved in broader systems analysis work, and the pursuit of a mission
anchored in education and research.

Echoing Leah's comments, I think there is great potential to foster a more
rewarding professional experience for developers new to libraries, and
facilitating connections with library users may be a good place to start.

Jason

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 9:58 AM, Leah Root  wrote:

> On Mar 2, 2016, at 9:30 AM, Tom Hutchinson 
> wrote:
>
> > ...To be honest I feel like I still don’t even really know what libraries
> / librarians are yet.
>
>
> > ..  Tom, when you find out, please tell the rest of us.  ;-)  —Eric Lease
> Morgan
>
>
>  this ++
>
> We actually speak the same language - the dialect is a little different.
> Slightly less verbose, but we get it :)
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 9:33 AM, Eric Lease Morgan  wrote:
>
> > On Mar 2, 2016, at 9:30 AM, Tom Hutchinson 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > ...To be honest I feel like I still don’t even really know what
> > libraries / librarians are yet.
> >
> >
> >   Tom, when you find out, please tell the rest of us.  ;-)  —Eric Lease
> > Morgan
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Leah M Root
> Library Publishing/Web Services Developer
> Milne Library, SUNY Geneseo 
> 1 College Circle, Geneseo, NY 14454
> 585-245-6061 | cell 585-802-4676
> ro...@geneseo.edu
> @RootLeah 
>

Re: [CODE4LIB] Charlotte, NC Code4Lib Meeting

[Jason Casden]

Hi Riley,

I'm in the Triangle and I would definitely be interested in attending.

Jason


On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 8:00 PM, Riley Childs ri...@tfsgeo.com wrote:

 I can secure a meeting space at one of the public library branches, so
 really there isn't much organizing, I would want it to be more in the
 style of a 2600 meeting (no real point person) so if you could (maybe)
 bring some friends, I can bring some and there, we have our selves a
 meeting!

 *Riley Childs*
 *Library Technology Manager at Charlotte United Christian Academy
 http://cucawarriors.com/*
 *Head Programmer/Manager at Open Library Management Projec
 http://openlibman.sf.net/t http://openlibman.sourceforge.net/*
 *Cisco Certified Entry Level Technician *
 _

 *Phone: +1 (704) 497-2086*
 *email: ri...@tfsgeo.com ri...@tfsgeo.com*
 *email: ri...@rileychilds.net ri...@rileychilds.net*
 *Twitter: @RowdyChildren http://twitter.com/rowdychildren*




 On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 7:16 PM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote:

  I'm in Virginia and might attend said meeting, even if I can't help
  organize.
  On Nov 12, 2013 6:35 PM, Riley Childs ri...@tfsgeo.com wrote:
 
   Is anyone in Charlotte, NC (and surrounding areas) interested in
  starting a
   Code4Lib meeting?
   Just kind of asking :{D!
   *Riley Childs*
   *Library Technology Manager at Charlotte United Christian Academy
   http://cucawarriors.com/*
   *Head Programmer/Manager at Open Library Management Projec
   http://openlibman.sf.net/t http://openlibman.sourceforge.net/*
   *Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician *
   _
  
   *Phone: +1 (704) 497-2086*
   *email: ri...@tfsgeo.com ri...@tfsgeo.com*
   *Twitter: @RowdyChildren http://twitter.com/rowdychildren*
  
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2014 keynote voting is open!

[Jason Casden]

This is just a reminder that keynote voting closes Friday (tomorrow) at
midnight PDT.

Jason


On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 11:04 AM, Jason Casden jmcas...@ncsu.edu wrote:

 With special thanks to Ross Singer for his management of the
 diebold-o-tron and to Adam Constabaris for his patches, the Code4Lib 2014
 Keynote Speakers Committee is happy to open this year's invited speaker
 election.

 All nominees have been contacted and the ten nominees included in this
 election are all potentially available to speak. The top two available vote
 recipients will be keynote speakers this year. Voting will end on Friday,
 October 4th, 2013 at 11:59:59 PM PDT.

 When rating nominees, please consider whether they are likely to be an
 excellent contributor in each the following areas:

 1) Appropriateness. Is this speaker likely to convey information that is
 useful to many members of our community?
 2) Uniqueness. Is this speaker likely to cover themes that may not
 commonly appear in the rest of the program?
 3) Contribution to diversity. Will this person bring something rare,
 notable, or unique to our community, through unusual experience or
 background?

 http://vote.code4lib.org/election/27

 If you have any issues with your account, please contact Ryan Wick at
 ryanw...@gmail.com.

 Thanks,
 Code4Lib 2014 Keynote Speakers Committee

[CODE4LIB] Code4Lib 2014 keynote voting is open!

[Jason Casden]

With special thanks to Ross Singer for his management of the diebold-o-tron
and to Adam Constabaris for his patches, the Code4Lib 2014 Keynote Speakers
Committee is happy to open this year's invited speaker election.

All nominees have been contacted and the ten nominees included in this
election are all potentially available to speak. The top two available vote
recipients will be keynote speakers this year. Voting will end on Friday,
October 4th, 2013 at 11:59:59 PM PDT.

When rating nominees, please consider whether they are likely to be an
excellent contributor in each the following areas:

1) Appropriateness. Is this speaker likely to convey information that is
useful to many members of our community?
2) Uniqueness. Is this speaker likely to cover themes that may not commonly
appear in the rest of the program?
3) Contribution to diversity. Will this person bring something rare,
notable, or unique to our community, through unusual experience or
background?

http://vote.code4lib.org/election/27

If you have any issues with your account, please contact Ryan Wick at
ryanw...@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Code4Lib 2014 Keynote Speakers Committee

[CODE4LIB] Call for Code4Lib 2014 invited speaker nominations ends Friday!

[Jason Casden]

If there is anyone that you think would be a good choice for one of our two
keynote presentations at Code4Lib 2014, please add them to our list of
invited speaker nominations:

http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2014_Invited_Speakers_Nominations

You can view the previous two years of nominations at:

http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2013_Invited_Speakers_Nominations
http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2012_nominations_list

If you have trouble editing the wiki, just send the nomination info to me.

Please submit your nominations by this Friday. We will then contact
potential speakers to confirm their interest before conducting a community
vote.

Thanks,
Jason

Re: [CODE4LIB] Way to record usage of tables/rooms/chairs in Library

[Jason Casden]

Hi Tom,

It's nice to see Suma discussed on this thread, and I do think that it is a
pretty nice tool for collecting, managing, and analyzing a variety of
transactional and observational use data. We're using it at NCSU to collect
a fairly wide range of data, including head counts, service desk
transactions, roaming service, technology lending issues, and detailed
space usage for new or experimental spaces. I wanted to respond
specifically to two of the requirements you listed with a brief explanation
of our design decisions.

1) Chair-level data

A central goal of Suma from a very early point in the project has been to
support frequent, long-running, and (optionally) mobile data collection
initiatives with stable, simple, and reusable tools for collection,
management, and analysis of this data. In our conversations about highly
granular data like chair usage, several conflicts with Suma's priorities of
simplicity and flexibility were identified. First, this kind of data can be
very brittle. Even minor changes to furniture layouts can introduce a
serious disruption to long-term data. For example, if you decide to change
out the chairs at a table with a new style, are those the same chairs that
were counted earlier, or are these new chairs? Or if you add a chair to a
table, or push two tables together, which chairs are new and which are old?
How do you encode that information? How often do you need to update the
collection interface? Second, we felt it would be much more difficult to
design simple but sophisticated reusable data visualization and analysis
tools with geographic data (say, the specific location coordinate of a
chair) and, in order to provide more than a floor plan heat map, we would
need to map these coordinates to regions, and those regions to larger
regions, etc., which would quickly obscure the chair-level data. Finally,
when we collected examples of questions that people would like to ask of
the data, the tools to answer them rarely required chair-level usage
information. We decided to represent locations as a hierarchy where a data
collector just drills down to the most relevant location label.

This isn't to say that Suma couldn't support very specific regions. In a
couple of cases where we have particularly specific questions about space
use, we do break down spaces into detailed regions such as lockers or
soft seating. It would be pretty difficult to collect chair-level data in
Suma, though. I do also recognize that there are cases where chair-level
data is critical. There are proprietary tools used by interior design and
architecture firms to support these activities, and our Building Services
department uses PlanGrid for tracking issues on a floor plan using an iOS
device, but we have focused more on regional data in Suma so far. There are
probably some other options out there that I've missed.

2) Floor plan interface

This was a big part of our early design discussions. Like many libraries,
our earlier usage data collection methods were quite varied, and included a
variety of paper forms (to later be entered into spreadsheets) and
sometimes paper floor plans with seat-level pencil marks. While we felt
that seat-level or coordinate data generally could not justify its cost for
the reasons described above, the ability to select a regional location
using a floor plan would definitely be convenient and may improve data
consistency in ambiguous connective spaces. In this case, our decision was
really driven by technical expediency and open-source community support.
Providing a floor plan interface would require the development of a system
for managing and coding floor plan images (we could probably use OpenLayers
for part of this), which would have slowed our initial development and
created hurdles for deployments to new locations. We have always
maintained, though, that this kind of interface could be developed for Suma
if it were compatible with our location hierarchies (and, of course, pull
requests are always welcome). In two years of heavy internal use, though,
we have found that the text-based location hierarchies require only a small
amount of training in order to ensure consistent use.

If you do think that you might want to try out Suma, just drop me a line
and I can show you around a live demo.

Also, I can't resist joining in on the seat usage spitballing. I saw a
presentation once that described an NFC-based seat reservation system at a
Korean library. Something like this might help answer questions about
furniture preferences based on academic affiliation:-)

Thanks,
Jason



On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Thomas Misilo misi...@fit.edu wrote:

 Thank you all for the suggestions. I guess I should be a little more
 specific. I am looking for something that can be loaded up on a tablet
 (ipad and/or nexus 7), and have the laylout of the floor + chairs and
 tables.

 We are wanting to track usage of specific carrels and tables in different
 locations on the floor. To 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Inventory App

[Jason Casden]

Hi Michael,

If you happen to be a Voyager user (or if you'd just like to see a nice
example), check out the ShelfLister project from Michael Doran and UT
Arlington:

http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/shelflister/

Jason


On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Michael Wright Johnson mwj1...@gmail.comwrote:

 I am just wondering if anyone knows of an iPad web based application that
 can do inventory or shelf checking?  Something similar to Suma.

 Many thanks,

 Michael

[CODE4LIB] Submit your Code4Lib 2014 invited speaker nominations!

[Jason Casden]

Hi folks,

It's that time again. Have you seen any speakers lately that you think
would give an excellent Code4Lib keynote? Is there someone you haven't seen
but would like to? Do you like making lists of names? Please add to our
list of invited speaker nominations:

http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2014_Invited_Speakers_Nominations

You can view the previous two years of nominations at:

http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2013_Invited_Speakers_Nominations
http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2012_nominations_list

If you have trouble editing the wiki, just send the nomination info to me.

Please submit your nominations by August 30th, 2013. We will then contact
potential speakers to confirm their interest and conduct a community vote.

Thanks,
Jason

[CODE4LIB] Announcing lentil

[Jason Casden]

This is just a quick note to announce the open-source release of the lentil
project[1], which is extracted from the My #HuntLibrary[2][3] photography
(i.e. Instagram) social media collection and preservation project.

My #HuntLibrary was created as a platform to foster student and community
engagement with the new James B. Hunt Jr. library via social media imagery
and to preserve these images as part of the record of the Hunt Library
launch. Images from this crowdsourced documentation effort will be selected
to become part of our permanent digital collections, allowing the NCSU
community to contribute to the historical record of the Hunt Library
through image submissions as well as the use of voting tools. Cory Lown and
I presented a lightning talk[4] at Code4Lib 2013 about this project and
heard from several folks who were curious about implementing a similar
service.

lentil is a Ruby on Rails gem that provides a straightforward way to create
a similar service on a Rails-capable web server. Special thanks to Jason
Ronallo for the Rails Engine extraction and packaging, and for showing that
a lentil-based project can be deployed to Heroku.

Please let us know if you have any questions or ideas, or if you give
lentil a try.

Jason

[1] https://github.com/NCSU-Libraries/lentil
[2] http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/myhuntlibrary
[3] http://acrl.ala.org/techconnect/?p=3174
[4] http://www.slideshare.net/casden/my-huntlibrary

Re: [CODE4LIB] project management system

[Jason Casden]

We have been using Trello[1] for several projects and so far it's been
getting rave reviews all around. We've used Basecamp quite a bit and it's
an excellent project communication tool, but it sometimes fell a little
short when it came to the ticket-y use cases--specifically, planning and
discussion around smaller chunks of work could be difficult. Trello
provides a clean interface that solves the many of our more pressing issues
for smaller projects, including:

1) Feature-specific discussion and prioritization.
2) Simple bug tracking.
3) Recording actionable output of meetings to improve continuity between
planning sessions as well as to easily document a common understanding of
project goals.
4) Killing code block by structuring the project as a pipeline of
clearly-defined tasks.
5) Providing a place where any project member's random ideas can be
recorded before they're forgotten.
6) Encouraging open debate outside of meetings.
7) Providing a nice one-handed mobile interface for our colleagues with
newborns.

We've found that the system is intuitive both for very-technical and
less-technical colleagues and has helped to reduce the cognitive load
associated with keeping project history in memory. We have also been using
Google Docs for document management and GitHub for code management, but
haven't yet tried integrating Trello with GitHub[2][3]. I love the limits
the Trello developers have embraced, but it will sometimes come up short
when compared to some more complex project management systems (e.g. time
tracking, elevated project manager privileges, scheduling and chart
generation, document management). The current version is free forever[4],
although I think there are plans to offer a paid package with additional
features.

Jason

[1] https://trello.com/
[2] https://github.com/zanker/github-trello
[3] https://zapier.com/zapbook/github/trello/
[4] https://trello.com/privacy


On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Cary Gordon listu...@chillco.com wrote:

 Jira, which we use for major projects, is not open source. Atlassian
 does provide Jira and Confluence — their wiki tool — free of charge to
 open source projects.

 Jira is a big hammer, and to get the most out of it, you need someone
 to devote a significant amount of time to configuring and maintaining
 it. While it is usable out of the box, it is not any better in that
 form than Redmine or myriad other, lighter weight and easier to manage
 alternatives.

 Cary

 On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Kaile Zhu kz...@uco.edu wrote:
  We can keep adding to the list.  Since there are so many choices,  I see
 the strong reason to use open source software.  Here is my recommendation:
 Jira (project management/bug reporting system used by professional software
 development companies, like apache.org), spiceworks, etc.  - Kelly
 
  -Original Message-
  From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
 Mau, Trish
  Sent: 2013年1月14日 13:53
  To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
  Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] project management system
 
  I also like Basecamp but for really simple projects Minigroup might do
 the job: https://minigroup.com/. It's a hosted solution with plans
 starting at $3/year. There's no ticketing system or whiteboards, but you
 can communicate with your team, create and assign tasks, and post
 events/deadlines.
 
  Trish
 
  Trish Mau, librarian/web coordinator
  Burnaby Public Library, 6100 Willingdon Avenue, Burnaby BC, V5H 4N5 tel. 604
 436 5425  fax 604 436 9087
 
  The contents of this message may not necessarily reflect the position of
 Burnaby Public Library. If you have any concerns about this message, please
 e-mail b...@bpl.bc.ca.
  -Original Message-
  From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
 Cary Gordon
  Sent: Monday, January 14, 2013 11:11 AM
  To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
  Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] project management system
 
  I agree with Rosalyn that the key is what you mean by project
 management. I get the impression that you aren't looking for a ticketing
 system.
 
  For lists and communication, we use (and like) Basecamp, but there are
 lots of good alternatives. PBWorks is another good hosted system. If you
 can host yourself, MediaWiki, which powers the code4lib wiki, has a huge
 community, is widely used in the library world, and ramps up relatively
 quickly.
 
  We use Unfuddle for most of our ticketing, and they have a new planning
 product called Alchemy, which is in beta.
 
  Thanks,
 
  Cary
 
 
  On Jan 14, 2013, at 10:52 AM, Rosalyn Metz rosalynm...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
  Hi Kun,
 
  I guess the first question I would ask is what do you mean by project
  management -- its kind of a big space.  Are you looking for something
  more like a ticketing system?  Is your primary concern keeping up
  communication on projects?  Or are you looking to create a project
  list that you can keep track of?  Are you trying to just outline what
 it is that your projects are?

Re: [CODE4LIB] Library tablet app

[Jason Casden]

Hi Paul,

At NCSU Libraries we've built a couple of more special-purpose apps
that target tablet devices, WolfWalk and Suma:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/wolfwalk/
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/spaceassesstool/

The tablet design for WolfWalk is in a native iOS app, while Suma is
entirely web-based. These serve quite different use cases, and the
designs differ accordingly. As a staff-facing data collection tool,
Suma's design is meant to help a small set of trained users complete
data collection tasks efficiently without any data loss. Cory Lown,
who led the WolfWalk iPad design, has posted some excellent slides on
that process:

http://www.slideshare.net/corylown/lessons-from-wolfwalk-interface-design-for-tablets

Hope this helps.

Jason

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Paul Orkiszewski
orkiszews...@appstate.edu wrote:
 Hi all I was wondering if anyone's working on a tablet app for your library
 site that takes advantage of the tablet environment.  I'm not sure what that
 is and whether it's that different from a smart phone or full-sized
 computer, but I feel like it is.  I see some library apps in the Amazon
 store, but most of them are iterations of Boopsie software.  They're OK, but
 it seems like they could do more.  I just have no idea what that more is.
  What would an app specifically geared toward tablet architecture look like?
  Would it have a level?  Could you land airplanes or launch angry birds at
 the reference desk?

 
 *Paul Orkiszewski*
 Coordinator of Technology Services / Associate Professor
 University Library
 Appalachian State University
 218 College Street
 P.O. Box 32026
 Boone, NC 28608-2026

 E-mail: orkiszews...@appstate.edu
 Phone: 828 262 6588
 Fax: 828 262 2797
 __

Re: [CODE4LIB] iPad Kiosk Statistics

[Jason Casden]

I've used the semi-deprecated Web SQL Database on iPads to store 
relational data locally with some periodic polling to see if it's safe 
to flush the data to a server. The data survives browser and device 
restarts. This works well as long as the network access is reliably 
intermittent (as Nate pointed out). I used the persistence.js ORM, which 
made the data a little easier to work with.


https://github.com/zefhemel/persistencejs

If you're just storing a set of log lines, localStorage might be the 
shorter path (and it would work in Firefox, if that matters).


Jason

On 11/11/11 3:41 PM, Nate Vack wrote:

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Cary Gordonlistu...@chillco.com  wrote:

It depends on what you mean by local.

If you mean that the html files are on the iPad and you have no
network connection, there isn't much you can do.


You could use HTML5 storage:

http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html

You'd need network access *sometime,* but not constantly.

-n

Re: [CODE4LIB] Open-Source Reference Tracking Software

[Jason Casden]

Sorry for the plug, but we're working on a project (Suma) at NCSU 
Libraries that is basically a set of tools for collecting, storing, and 
analyzing data about the usage of physical spaces. The current client is 
web-based and designed for tablet use. We're using it for library 
headcounts now, and we're about to launch a trial as a possible 
replacement for paper-based reference transaction logs.


http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/spaceassesstool/

We are still pretty early in the development timeline, but we're going 
to release some code in the next month or so and will be attempting some 
active external testing later in the fall. It is an open-source project, 
but a reasonably full set of features may not be ready until early 2012. 
Right now, we're collecting and storing data quite reliably, but not 
retrieving or analyzing it.


Jason

On 8/2/11 12:48 PM, Nathan Tallman wrote:

Other than ATReference, does anyone know of any open-source software
designed for tracking reference statistics? I know there are a few
commercial options, but I'd rather stick with open-source. My apologies is
this has already been discussed on here.

Many thanks!
Nathan

P.S. Off-topic, but what do you prefer open source or open-source. I'm
not sure which is most correct.


Nathan Tallman
Associate Archivist
American Jewish Archives

Re: [CODE4LIB] C4L10 Mobile Web App Design slides

[Jason Casden]

Playing around with the Android emulator, it looks great in regards to
performance testing (it runs even slower than my Droid). Thanks for pointing
this out. Have you had any luck sending multi-touch interactions to the
Android emulator? Rapid pinch-to-zoom redraws have been the source of a lot
of problems for us, and I know that Android 2.1 is supposed to support this
in the browser.

Jason

Re: [CODE4LIB] C4L10 Mobile Web App Design slides

[Jason Casden]

I have mostly worked in the iPhone Simulator, but in this case you will miss
out on testing some of the device's resource limitations. I have had issues
both with a native application and a mobile web app where I had smooth
sailing in the simulator but then had crashes due to memory limitations on
the actual device. Also, I have run into some things (maps) which run great
in the simulator, but are crap on the device. While the simulator is still
hugely useful and does allow you to fake an out of memory call, it's
definitely not complete (in this case).

Actually, I bet this is a Simulator vs. Emulator issue. I see that the Palm
webOS Emulator runs in a virtual machine, and I am able to get some slow map
performance out of it. If it supported multi-touch and rotation, it would
probably be a great testing environment. For now, I'll just keep an iPod
Touch on my desk.

Jason

Re: [CODE4LIB] C4L10 Mobile Web App Design slides

[Jason Casden]

I was actually referring to the webOS emulator:

http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=1744Itemid=58

Currently, the emulator does not support the following:

* Accelerometer
* Audio
* Bluetooth (UI and any interface-specific APIs do not work in the emulator)
* Camera
* Gesture area
* Multi-touch
* Rotation
* Sound
* Video
* Wi-Fi (UI and any interface-specific APIs do not work in the emulator,
but network connectivity works by using the desktop connection)

If the emulator supported multi-touch and rotation, I think this would work
well for testing any mobile web content where the developer is concerned
about memory and processor limitations. I think a lot of physical devices
can work well as a canary in the coal mine, though. If I weren't messing
with maps so much, it probably wouldn't be a big problem.

Jason