Re: [CODE4LIB] Hours on Library Websites?

[Ken Irwin]

Matt,

For the last year or so I've been using a tool developed by a handful of 
Code4Libbers:
https://github.com/kenirwin/LibraryHoursManager 

There are two front-end pieces: 1) a "today's hours" report to put on the front 
page, 
http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/ 
and calendar of dates and hours: 
http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/about/hours/calendar.php 

The calendar-style front end was developed by Andrew Darby and Ron Gilmour at 
Ithaca College, based on work that Andrew did earlier and wrote about in the 
C4L journal: 
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/46 
That tool's back-end is a simple day-by-day XML file; I wrote a set of back-end 
scripts to generate the XML based on a variety of date settings, e.g.:
 * From January 7-May 15, here are the normal library hours...
 * but spring break hours are different, so use the override "break hours" 
setting...
 * and then there are one or two days we have special hours that don't conform 
to a routine like "break hours", so use these special hours...

Feel free to give it a try, and let me know if you need any help with it. 

Ken


-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Matt 
Sherman
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2016 10:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Hours on Library Websites?

Hi all,

We are working on a website migration/redesign into WordPress and I am trying 
to figure out an automated solution for posting and keeping up to date the 
hours on the home page.  I am wondering, how do other institutions manage this? 
 Are there any good tools I should be looking into?  Any insights or 
suggestions are appreciated.

Matt Sherman

Re: [CODE4LIB] including data from static JSON file in Javascript

[Ken Irwin]

Thanks Kyle -- that's exactly what I needed for the current circumstance. It 
might not be the best, but it looks like the simplest by a long shot. 

Thanks to Conal too.

I'm so glad to have a community of folks who can help spare us from hours of 
anguish and frustration!

Ken


From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Kyle Banerjee 
[kyle.baner...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2016 9:45 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] including data from static JSON file in Javascript

If all you want to do is load external json as a string, you can do it
using syntax almost identical to what you suggest. Just change your
data.json file so the content is

var data = ' [include your json here, be sure to escape things properly]';

Then just load this file before your external script e.g.:




Within external_script.js, you can reference the data variable just as you
would have had it been defined in external_script.js.

Depending on what you're doing with your json, it may or may not be a good
approach, but it will work.

kyle

[CODE4LIB] including data from static JSON file in Javascript

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I'm working on a javascript project that currently has a bunch of JSON data 
defined inside the script; I'd like to move the data to a file outside the JS 
file so it can be updated without touching the script, but I'm running up 
against a few challenges externalizing the data.

The static JSON file lives in the same directory with the script.

If I had my druthers, I'd to it PHP style, but I don't think JS works this way:
=
External file:
[all this JSON]

Script:
var data = include ('data.json');

All the options I find for loading external files are all AJAX-y, whereas what 
I really want is something synchronous - the script doesn't go on until the 
data loads.
I've also had some lexical scope issues where I can get the data inside the 
getJSON() function, but then have trouble transporting the data out of that 
function into the rest of the script.

Does anyone know of a good way to accomplish this? I imagine there's some 
incantation that I can perform, but I'm struggling to find it.

Thanks,
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] Hours of Operation on Website - management tool

[Ken Irwin]

Thanks Ron,

Ithaca was actually already on my radar -- we're looking at moving to 
SubjectPlus to manage some of our library website, and some of our librarians 
have particularly looking at Ithaca's site for ideas. 

So far, none of the suggestions folks have had quite match what I'm looking 
for, but your solution may have the advantage of being simpler than many of the 
others -- and written in a language I use. 

Do you have some code you'd be willing to share for the hours tool? 

Thanks
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ron 
Gilmour
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2015 9:13 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Hours of Operation on Website - management tool

Hi Ken,

The solution that we're using at Ithaca College Library meets some, but not 
all, of your criteria. You can see the end result here 
<https://ithacalibrary.com/services/hours.php>.

The ugly part is the back end, which is a hand-authored XML file that I create 
a couple times a year based on what our circulation manager tells me. I guess 
with a little instruction he could do it himself, but I haven't gone there. I'm 
attaching a sample XML file in case you're interested. (PHP fills in default 
values, so hours are only listed for days on which the hours deviate from 
normal.)

We used to use a solution backed by Google Calendar, but that got all weird 
when we started staying open overnight.

Let me know if you'd like more info.

Ron Gilmour
Web Services Librarian
Ithaca College Library


On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Ken Irwin  wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I'm hoping to find some sort of web-based app that can manage the 
> library's hours of operations, including:
>
> * Displaying today's hours
>
> * Displaying an upcoming schedule of hours
>
> * Updatable though a GUI interface by non-techy library staff
>
> * Able to update our Google Places account hours (which, I note,
> currently lists our school-year hours as our open hours today), 
> perhaps on a daily basis
>
> * Preferably a stand-alone thing that can provide data on an ad
> hoc basis (as opposed to a CMS-specific thing like a WP plugin or a 
> Drupal
> module)
>
> * PHP preferred but not necessary
>
> * OSS / free preferred but not necessary
>
> I feel certain that someone else has already wanted this enough to 
> create it. Anyone have a solution they're happy with?
>
> Thanks
> Ken
>

[CODE4LIB] Hours of Operation on Website - management tool

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I'm hoping to find some sort of web-based app that can manage the library's 
hours of operations, including:

* Displaying today's hours

* Displaying an upcoming schedule of hours

* Updatable though a GUI interface by non-techy library staff

* Able to update our Google Places account hours (which, I note, 
currently lists our school-year hours as our open hours today), perhaps on a 
daily basis

* Preferably a stand-alone thing that can provide data on an ad hoc 
basis (as opposed to a CMS-specific thing like a WP plugin or a Drupal module)

* PHP preferred but not necessary

* OSS / free preferred but not necessary

I feel certain that someone else has already wanted this enough to create it. 
Anyone have a solution they're happy with?

Thanks
Ken

[CODE4LIB] getting started with Drupal for library website

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Thanks to all who responded a few weeks ago to my inquiry about updating the 
code on my library's website. Many folks suggested moving to a CMS, and I'm 
starting to look into that possibility, and particularly Drupal.

In doing so, I'm hoping not to re-invent the wheel, and I'm hoping that maybe 
someone has already designed a basic infrastructure to replace the backbone of 
our current website, namely.

Under our current arrangement we have an interlocking set of databases that 
performs some basic library functions:

There's a database table that lists all of the databases we subscribe to. That 
database feeds a user interface that:

* lists databases

* counts click-thrus

* routes traffic to our proxy server when appropriate

* can list databases by subject area (defined in a table of subject 
associations)
There's also a back-end UI to create subject/database associations, display 
click-thru stats, generate EZproxy config files based on the table of library 
databases.

Does anyone know of a freely-available set of modules/pages/etc that's already 
designed to do this sort of thing? In my imagination, lots of libraries would 
want to basically this same thing, customized to their own particularly needs 
and maybe we wouldn't each have to start from scratch.

Any advice?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] replacing deprecated PHP code throughout website

[Ken Irwin]

Thanks to all who responded to this - you've given me a lot to think about. In 
the near term, I'm going to learn to do PDO calls and convert a few small 
projects over to that system. In the long-term, taking this as an opportunity 
to switch to a CMS for the main website might make sense, so I'll start 
exploring those ideas again too. And/or, I may take TK up on the idea of giving 
it all up an opening a coffee shop instead...

Many thanks -- I 'm glad to have such a robust community of experienced 
co-conspirators.

Ken

>>> On Wednesday, April 29, 2015, Ken Irwin  wrote:
>>>
>>>  Hello all,
>>>>
>>>> I've just learned that the PHP mysql_* functions are all deprecated 
>>>> as of PHP 5.5, and I'm trying to figure out what this means for my 
>>>> life. My library's website is heavily database-driven, hand-coded, 
>>>> and all written using the mysql_* functions. It's currently running 
>>>> PHP 5.4, so presumably code all needs to be updated before the next 
>>>> server upgrade.
>>>>
>>>> So I'm looking for a little advice:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 1.   Is there a general consensus on what the best long-term
>>>> alternative to the mysql_* functions is? I see a bunch of 
>>>> references to the PDO extension, which is available on our server. 
>>>> Is that The Answer, or should I be looking other places as well.
>>>>
>>>> 2.   Does anyone have advice about how to proceed with an enormous
>>>> overhaul like this? I'm sure I'll be working on a development copy 
>>>> of the server until everything is all worked out. But beyond that, 
>>>> advice would be welcome. Have you employed students to do work like 
>>>> this?
>>>>
>>>> 3.   I wonder what other broad-sweeping old-fashionednesses may also
>>>> be about to rear up and bite me. If you imagine that I learned 
>>>> procedural (almost never object-oriented) PHP 4 in about 2000 and 
>>>> am slow to change my ways, can you predict what sort of deprecated 
>>>> foolishness I might still be perpetrating?
>>>>
>>>> Any advice, input, or experience would be appreciated!
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Ken
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>

[CODE4LIB] replacing deprecated PHP code throughout website

[Ken Irwin]

Hello all,

I've just learned that the PHP mysql_* functions are all deprecated as of PHP 
5.5, and I'm trying to figure out what this means for my life. My library's 
website is heavily database-driven, hand-coded, and all written using the 
mysql_* functions. It's currently running PHP 5.4, so presumably code all needs 
to be updated before the next server upgrade.

So I'm looking for a little advice:


1.   Is there a general consensus on what the best long-term alternative to 
the mysql_* functions is? I see a bunch of references to the PDO extension, 
which is available on our server. Is that The Answer, or should I be looking 
other places as well.

2.   Does anyone have advice about how to proceed with an enormous overhaul 
like this? I'm sure I'll be working on a development copy of the server until 
everything is all worked out. But beyond that, advice would be welcome. Have 
you employed students to do work like this?

3.   I wonder what other broad-sweeping old-fashionednesses may also be 
about to rear up and bite me. If you imagine that I learned procedural (almost 
never object-oriented) PHP 4 in about 2000 and am slow to change my ways, can 
you predict what sort of deprecated foolishness I might still be perpetrating?

Any advice, input, or experience would be appreciated!

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] IP Authentication for Online Access to the New York Times

[Ken Irwin]

Brett,

This isn't quite an answer, but perhaps a perspective/option. Our library 
hasn't been able to get NYT to do straight-up IP authentication and for years 
they have been a challenge for us. 

Recently, they rolled out an educational institutional access option. Through 
that option, our users must sign up for their own account, which is associated 
with our account based on their having signed up for the account from a 
computer bearing a campus IP address. The actual access is based on the 
password they set up for their account, and they can use that password from 
anywhere. But to get the password, they have to be on campus.

It might be worth asking whether some kind of hybrid solution might be 
available, using IP access for inside the library and using password/account 
based access from off-campus. 

Good luck!
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] circulation statistics

[Ken Irwin]

Eric,

It's not Aleph, but... III's catalog has a "create list" function that lets you 
create a list of records (bib records, item records, patron records, etc) that 
meet certain criteria (patrons who live is x zip code, items in the main 
stacks with more than 5 checkouts, etc.) 

To do what your friend is trying to do, it would help to have some way of 
flagging the relevant records (popular lit) -- maybe they are the books in a 
particular location, or maybe he's added a local subject heading, etc -- 
something that lets him point to a particular subset of the collection. So his 
process might look something like:
* find all the books that match:
 - published since 1980
 - location = popular fiction collection
 - total circ > 2
* and then export selected fields:
 - author
 - title
 - publisher
 - year
 - total circs
 - total renews

Or something like that. 
This is exactly the kind of search and extraction that I designed my Weeding 
Helper tool to work with -- only there I'm looking at *un*-popular materials: 
https://github.com/kenirwin/Weeding-Helper 
Demo: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/iii/weed/demo/view.php?table=art_orders 
It takes that sort of search-and-export data from the catalog and makes it 
sortable and subject to note-taking so you can take a computer or tablet up to 
the stacks and weed a range of books and have their circ history in front of 
you. 

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric 
Lease Morgan
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 5:08 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] circulation statistics

Does anybody here know how to extract circulation statistics from an library 
catalog? Specifically, given a date range, are you able to create a list of the 
most frequently borrowed books ordered by the number of times they’ve been 
circulated?

I have a colleague who wants to digitize sets of modern literature and then do 
text analysis against the result. In an effort to do the analysis against 
popular literature, he wants to create a list of… popular titles. Getting a 
list of such a thing from library circulation statistics sounds like a logical 
option to me. 

Does somebody here know how to do this? If you know how to do it against Ex 
Libris’s Aleph, then that is a bonus. 

—
Eric Morgan

[CODE4LIB] looking for a good PHP table-manipulating class

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I'm hoping to find a PHP class that designed to display data in tables, 
preferably able to do two things:
1. Swap the x- and y-axis, so you could arbitrarily show the table with 
y=Puppies, x=Kittens or y=Kittens,x=Puppies
2. Display the table either using plain text columns or formatted html

I feel confident that in a world of 7 billion people, someone must have wanted 
this before.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] Tablet Uses for Library Staff

[Ken Irwin]

Three things I do with a tablet in the library:

1. guerrilla reference -- if I'm carrying a tablet I don't need to be near a 
computer to help folks out when wandering around the library. (this is an ad 
hoc activity for me, but I imagine some people do it more deliberately.) 

2. weeding -- my Weeding Helper tool is designed to export holdings data from 
III catalogs and let librarians make notes about weeding while standing in the 
stacks: 
https://github.com/kenirwin/Weeding-Helper 

3. Our library has recently started using Suma (developed by C4L folks from 
NCSU) for doing head counts and logging reference transactions. It is 
tablet-based and also works on desktops. The tabletiness works very well for 
doing headcounts, since you can walk around and count noses and enter data all 
at the same time.
https://github.com/cazzerson/Suma 

I'm curious to know what other folks are doing with tablets too.

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matthew 
Sherman
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 11:30 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Tablet Uses for Library Staff

Hi all,

Today a few of us received our a few Surface Pros to use around the library.  
Being the digital content librarian for our University I really want to figure 
out some interesting things we can do with them.  I have some thoughts on 
possibly working with inventory and my information literacy librarian colleague 
is thinking how to use them in the classroom.
Yet, I wanted to poll the group and see what sorts of interesting things people 
are doing with tablets for their library staff, or ideas people might have for 
utilizing a Surface Pro in the library.

Matt Sherman

Re: [CODE4LIB] library of congress call number subject coding

[Ken Irwin]

Thanks all,

This has given me a few things to work with and I think I can move forward. 

Joys
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Will Martin [mailto:w...@will-martin.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2014 5:26 PM
To: Code for Libraries
Cc: Ken Irwin
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] library of congress call number subject coding

Until recently, we had a "New Books" feature on our site that sorted out new 
books by LC classification (in addition to some other views).  I have attached 
a ZIP file containing:

1) An HTML file documenting the structure of the database table that it pulled 
our new book data from;

2) The PHP to load a subject area, using the first letter of the LC call number 
as a broad category.

It's not especially sophisticated, and it basically reiterates the broadest LC 
classifications, which may not make a whole lot of sense to some end users.  
But perhaps you'll find it useful as a starting point.  
This one takes the letter from a parameter in the GET request, but you could 
easily get the call number from a database query and slice the first character 
off.

I'd love to show you a live copy, but unfortunately the New Books feature got 
decommissioned a couple weeks ago on the grounds that it took too much staff 
time to separate out new acquisitions.  They are now sent directly to the 
stacks with no markers in the catalog to differentiate them from any other 
book, so the corresponding web stuff was removed.

Will Martin

Web Services Librarian
Chester Fritz Library
University of North Dakota

[CODE4LIB] library of congress call number subject coding

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Does anyone have a handy scheme for coding LC call numbers into just a few 
broad subject areas (e.g. Arts, Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences) or 
perhaps something only a little more granular than that?

I'm hoping for a list that will turn 1-3 letter LC classes into subject groups, 
and I'd rather not reinvent the wheel if someone's already got something.

Any leads?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] Python in Your Library

[Ken Irwin]

This is the only python we've got going on in our library:
http://www.wittprojects.net/library_blog/?p=573 
http://ezra.wittenberg.edu/record=b1252845~S0 

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Julia
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 9:13 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Python in Your Library

Hi All,

This is my first time posting to Code4Lib.  Now seems like a good time.

I am wondering how you have applied Python in your library.  What projects have 
been successful?  What have you heard of other libraries doing?  What 
advantages or disadvantages does it have compared to other scripting languages 
used in the library field?  

If you have any thoughts on any of those questions, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks,
Julia
caffr...@simmons.edu
Simmons College Library

[CODE4LIB] tool for finding close matches in vocabular list

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I'm looking for a tool that can look at a list of all of subject terms in a 
poorly-controlled index as possible candidates for term consolidation. Our 
student newspaper index has about 16,000 subject terms and they include a lot 
of meaningless typographical and nomenclatural difference, e.g.:

Irwin, Ken
Irwin, Kenneth
Irwin, Mr. Kenneth
Irwin, Kenneth R.

Basketball - Women
Basketball - Women's
Basketball-Women
Basketball-Women's

I would love to have some sort of pattern-matching tool that's smart about this 
sort of thing that could go through the list of terms (as a text list, 
database, xml file, or whatever structure it wants to ingest) and spit out some 
clusters of possible matches.

Does anyone know of a tool that's good for that sort of thing?

The index is just a bunch of MySQL tables - there is no real controlled-vocab 
system, though I've recently built some systems to suggest known SH's to reduce 
this sort of redundancy.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question

[Ken Irwin]

Matt,

Our library's website is visually and navigationally part of the larger 
university website, but housed on its own server. We are under the "Academics" 
tab in the "Centers of learning" block along with the writing center, community 
service office, etc. Being part of the larger university framework makes it 
easy to navigate folks to our website. Being visually part of the university 
website has its advantages and disadvantages. It ties us in visually and makes 
us clearly part of the university website, but it also dictates a lot of our 
design features. We have a push-pull relationship with the "sales-oriented" 
approach of the university website -- a while back we were told that the 
library website was too oriented toward doing work and not enough toward 
advertising the awesomeness of the university. We have tried to include a bit 
more selling-the-awesomeness without sacrificing the utility (heavens forfend!) 
of the website.

Having our own server is usually a great advantage to us. It does mean that we 
have to do some extra legwork to keep ourselves integrated with the rest of the 
website, but it also gives us a lot of latitude to develop new services and 
create a pretty broad infrastructure. It is in part a legacy of the late 90s 
when the library had one of the first web developers on campus. We've sometimes 
had to fight to keep our independence, the complexity of a library website 
really requires some dedicated attention in a way that could not be expected of 
an external department with different mission priorities. 

We do have a minimal presence in the student portal -- basically a link to the 
"ask a question" form and a login link for the OPAC/Circulation Record/"what do 
I have checked out now" page. If I had another person to work on it, I would 
love to develop more integration with the portal -- but not at the expense of 
the larger website.

Good luck! 
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matthew 
Sherman
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:41 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question

Hi Code4Libbers,

Slightly odd question for you academic library folks.  Why does your library 
have its website where it is on the university site?  For context, the library 
I currently work at has our library site hidden within the campus 
intranet/portal, so that students have to log into a web portal to even see the 
search page.  This was a decision by the previous director who was here before 
my time and an assortment of us librarians think this is a terrible setup.  So 
I wanted to kick out to the greater community to give us good reasons for free 
to the website to more general access, or help us to understand why you would 
bury it behind a login like they did.  All thoughts, insights, and opinions are 
welcome, they all help us develop our thinking on this and our arguments for 
any changes we want to make.  Thanks everyone and have a good week.

Matt Sherman

[CODE4LIB] RDA gibberish in user interface

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

In our library, we've noticed lately a lot of raw-looking RDA info from MARC 
records that shows up in the user interface. Our head of tech services 
translated the gibberish for the librarians, and we are now considering what to 
do with it. (The example and her excellent translations follow at the end of 
the message.) When I first saw the RDA info in the OPAC, I assumed it was a 
mistake - that a field accidentally got unhidden.
It seems to me that we should either suppress the RDA info or we should have 
library systems (e.g. OPACs) that turn the gibberish into human-intelligible 
text. Has anyone attempted to do the latter?

Because there are so many possibilities, it would be a substantial undertaking 
to build and maintain a "translator". I'm imagining that we as a community 
might undertake to build an open-source dataset that provides generic 
translations, and that the platform-dependent groups of us (III users, Ex 
Libris users, etc) might build little JQuery scripts or whatever to integrate 
the tranlations into the user interfaces.

Does this make sense? Is it just silly and we should suppress the data?

What think you all?
Ken



Descript

xvi, 219 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm


text txt rdacontent


unmediated n rdamedia


volume nc rdacarrier





What this means:

The form of communication through which a work is expressed.

336 text txt rdacontent
The rda content is text (abbreviated by txt)
translation:  content is expressed by text

Media type reflects the general type of intermediation device required to view, 
play, run, etc., the content of a resource.
337 unmediated n rdamedia   The rda 
media is unmediated (abbreviated as [blank]
translation: you do not need anything other than your eyes to access the text


Carrier type reflects the format of the storage medium and housing of a carrier 
in combination with the media type (which indicates the intermediation device 
required to view, play, run, etc., the content of a resource). Field 338 
information enables indication of more specific carrier types and carrier types 
from various lists.


338 volume nc rdacarrier 
The rda carrier (abbreviated as c) is volume
translation: the text is stored in a volume (ie, monograph)



SO, a DVD record would look like this:

Descript

1 videodisc (approximately 152 minutes) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in


two-dimensional moving image tdi rdacontent


video v rdamedia


videodisc vd rdacarrier



336  two-dimensional moving image tdm  rdacontent  = projected medium, ie 
movie
337  video v rdamedia   
= you need a some sort of video player to access the content of this movie
338  videodisc  vd rdacarrier = 
the movie is stored on a dvd

[CODE4LIB] image gallery management software recommendations

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm working on a project for which we're looking for some image gallery 
management software (ie, upload, organize, tag, etc.) that's a standalone piece 
of software: ie, not part of a larger CMS like WordPress, Drupal, ContentDM, 
etc.

We'd of course like something that is simple, awesome, and free. (We might 
settle for two of the three...) The only absolute requirement is that it needs 
to run on a Linux/Apache server. PHP/MySQL would be preferred, and something 
with a responsive front-end would also be nice.

The world appears to be teeming with such things of various quality; I thought 
I'd ask you all for recommendations rather than just try to wade through the 
masses of junk.

Any ideas?
Thanks
Ken

[CODE4LIB] capturing only relevant CSS for a selection

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a tool that I hope exists, and that I hope someone here might 
be able to point me too. I want to select a portion of a web page (or of the 
html behind it), and be able to copy it ALONG WITH whatever CSS rules apply to 
that section of code. I don't want the whole 1000+ lines of css that pertain to 
the page, just the 5-10-100 rules that affect the styling of that section of 
the page.

The situation: my library web page is, by university fiat, wrapped up in our 
university's overall web design (see: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/ ). It's 
so complex that it's hard to extract portions of a page for reuse. I want to 
take the top part of the page and re-write it in a simplified (ie, not 1000s of 
lines on non-relevant CSS) so I can re-purpose the same look-and-feel at the 
top of our customizable external services (discovery layer, etc.) I could 
laboriously reconstruct it, but I'm hoping that something exists to help.

The "inspect element" feature built into most browsers is a start. I'm hoping 
that some tool can leverage the same technology to look at all 50 divs at the 
same time and spit out a combined pile of CSS rules that will make it all look 
ok. Does such a tool exist?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] netflix search mashups w/ library tools?

[Ken Irwin]

Thanks Karen,

This goes in a bit of a direction from what I'm hoping for and your project 
does suggest that some matching to build such searches might be possible. 

What I really want is to apply LCSH and related data to the Netflix search 
process, essentially dropping Netflix holdings into a library catalog 
interface. I suspect you'd have to build a local cache of the OCLC data for 
known Netflix items to do so, and maybe a local cache of the Netflix title 
list. I wonder if either or both of those actions would violate the TOS for the 
respective services. 

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen 
Coombs
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 11:26 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] netflix search mashups w/ library tools?

Ken,

I did a mashup that took Netflix's top 100 movies and looked to see if a 
specific library had that item.
http://www.oclc.org/developer/applications/netflix-my-library

You might think about doing the following. Search WorldCat for titles on a 
particular topic and then check to see if the title is available via Netflix. 
Netflix API for searching their catalog is pretty limited though so it might 
not give you what you want. It looks like it only allows you to search their 
streamable content.

Also I had a lot of trouble with trying to match Netflix titles and library 
holdings. Because there isn't a good match point. DVDs don't have ISBNs and if 
you use title you can get into trouble because movies get remade. So title + 
date seems to work best if you can get the information.

Karen

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Ken Irwin  wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Is anyone out there using library-like tools for searching Netflix? I'm 
> imagining a world in which Netflix data gets mashed up with OCLC data or 
> something like it to populate a more robustly searchable Netflix title list.
>
> Does anything like this exist?
>
> What I really want at the moment is a list of Netflix titles dealing with 
> Islamic topics (Muhammed, the Qu'ran, the history of Islamic civilizations, 
> the Hajj, Ramadan, etc.) for doing beyond-the-library readers' advisory in 
> connection with our ALA/NEH Muslim Journey's Bookshelf. Netflix's own search 
> tool is singularly awful, and I thought that the library world might have an 
> interest in doing better.
>
> Any ideas?
> Thanks
> Ken

[CODE4LIB] netflix search mashups w/ library tools?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Is anyone out there using library-like tools for searching Netflix? I'm 
imagining a world in which Netflix data gets mashed up with OCLC data or 
something like it to populate a more robustly searchable Netflix title list.

Does anything like this exist?

What I really want at the moment is a list of Netflix titles dealing with 
Islamic topics (Muhammed, the Qu'ran, the history of Islamic civilizations, the 
Hajj, Ramadan, etc.) for doing beyond-the-library readers' advisory in 
connection with our ALA/NEH Muslim Journey's Bookshelf. Netflix's own search 
tool is singularly awful, and I thought that the library world might have an 
interest in doing better.

Any ideas?
Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] same css, different servers, one breaks in IE

[Ken Irwin]

Never mind? This appears to be a campus network issue, not inherent to IE



On Jun 28, 2013, at 10:11 AM, "Ken Irwin" 
mailto:kir...@exchange.wittenberg.edu>> wrote:

Hi folks,

I’ve been working on integrating some Bootstrap into our library website, and 
I’ve stumbled on weird thing that I can’t explain:

I’m using the basic bootstrap templates, straight out of the box with no 
customization, and the CSS feature that compresses the header on narrow screens 
doesn’t work on IE(v9) on my library web server. But exactly the same code on 
my personal server works just fine. Both sets of code work fine in Chrome and 
Firefox. Both servers are some mix of Linux+Apache.

Why would the same css work on one server but not another?

I ran Fiddler to be sure that the css was actually being called, and it is.

I wonder if others will get the same results.

Working in IE:
Out of the box “hero” template: 
http://alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html
Just the responsive header (no JS, just relies on 2 css files): 
http://www.alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html

Not working on IE:
http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html
http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html

Any ideas? I’m mystified…

Thanks
Ken

[CODE4LIB] same css, different servers, one breaks in IE

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I've been working on integrating some Bootstrap into our library website, and 
I've stumbled on weird thing that I can't explain:

I'm using the basic bootstrap templates, straight out of the box with no 
customization, and the CSS feature that compresses the header on narrow screens 
doesn't work on IE(v9) on my library web server. But exactly the same code on 
my personal server works just fine. Both sets of code work fine in Chrome and 
Firefox. Both servers are some mix of Linux+Apache.

Why would the same css work on one server but not another?

I ran Fiddler to be sure that the css was actually being called, and it is.

I wonder if others will get the same results.

Working in IE:
Out of the box "hero" template: 
http://alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html
Just the responsive header (no JS, just relies on 2 css files): 
http://www.alltrees.org/ken/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html

Not working on IE:
http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/hero.html
http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/test/bootstrap/docs/examples/top-nojs.html

Any ideas? I'm mystified...

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] phone app for barcode-to-textfile?

[Ken Irwin]

This (CLZ Barry) looks like it could be perfect! $8/phone beats many other 
options!

Ken


-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Aaron 
Addison
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 2:07 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] phone app for barcode-to-textfile?

You might want to look at

http://www.clz.com/barry/


-- 
Aaron Addison
Unix Administrator 
W. E. B. Du Bois Library UMass Amherst
413 577 2104



On Thu, 2013-06-06 at 17:40 +, Ken Irwin wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Does anyone have a phone app (pref. iOS) that will just scan barcodes to a 
> textfile? All the apps I'm finding are shopping oriented or other special 
> uses. I just want to replace our antique barcode scanner that spits out a 
> list of barcodes as a text file.
> 
> Anyone have such a thing? Or advice on where to assemble the building blocks 
> to create one?
> 
> Thanks
> Ken

[CODE4LIB] phone app for barcode-to-textfile?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

Does anyone have a phone app (pref. iOS) that will just scan barcodes to a 
textfile? All the apps I'm finding are shopping oriented or other special uses. 
I just want to replace our antique barcode scanner that spits out a list of 
barcodes as a text file.

Anyone have such a thing? Or advice on where to assemble the building blocks to 
create one?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android?

[Ken Irwin]

Well I feel pretty silly -- I think jQuery Mobile is what I'm looking for.

Ken


From: Ken Irwin
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 10:40 AM
To: Code for Libraries
Subject: mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android?

Hi folks,

I'm looking for simple, JS-based mobile framework (like jQT, formerly jQuery 
Touch) that looks good on both iOS and Win 8 (and, you know, everything else).

For this particular purpose I'm NOT looking for a responsive framework (e.g. 
Bootstrap, Skeleton).

I just checked out jQT on a Win 8 phone, and it just plain doesn't work. The 
sizing is funny and the links DON'T WORK.

So: does anyone either
(a) know how to get jQT to work on a Win8 phone, or
(b) know of another good mobile framework that will work well on Win8, iOS, and 
Android?

I'm looking for something with simple implementation like jQT -- add a few 
classes and div attributes to turn a boring long page into something that 
behaves like a suite of pages.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android?

[Ken Irwin]

PS - I should have mentioned that what I'm looking for is a mobile WEB 
framework. I'm not doing app development -- just trying to deliver reasonably 
simple HTML pages.

thanks
Ken

____
From: Ken Irwin
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 10:40 AM
To: Code for Libraries
Subject: mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android?

Hi folks,

I'm looking for simple, JS-based mobile framework (like jQT, formerly jQuery 
Touch) that looks good on both iOS and Win 8 (and, you know, everything else).

For this particular purpose I'm NOT looking for a responsive framework (e.g. 
Bootstrap, Skeleton).

I just checked out jQT on a Win 8 phone, and it just plain doesn't work. The 
sizing is funny and the links DON'T WORK.

So: does anyone either
(a) know how to get jQT to work on a Win8 phone, or
(b) know of another good mobile framework that will work well on Win8, iOS, and 
Android?

I'm looking for something with simple implementation like jQT -- add a few 
classes and div attributes to turn a boring long page into something that 
behaves like a suite of pages.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Ken

[CODE4LIB] mobile framework for Win 8 + iOS + Android?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I'm looking for simple, JS-based mobile framework (like jQT, formerly jQuery 
Touch) that looks good on both iOS and Win 8 (and, you know, everything else).

For this particular purpose I'm NOT looking for a responsive framework (e.g. 
Bootstrap, Skeleton).

I just checked out jQT on a Win 8 phone, and it just plain doesn't work. The 
sizing is funny and the links DON'T WORK.

So: does anyone either
(a) know how to get jQT to work on a Win8 phone, or
(b) know of another good mobile framework that will work well on Win8, iOS, and 
Android?

I'm looking for something with simple implementation like jQT -- add a few 
classes and div attributes to turn a boring long page into something that 
behaves like a suite of pages.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] what do you do: API accounts used by library software, that assume an individual is registered

[Ken Irwin]

I've set up email address-based accounts for PayPal and Facebook APIs using 
organizational gmail accounts. Our university is picky about not having email 
accounts accessible by more than one person ("refdesk@mylibrary" is a mailing 
list/distribution list that can receive email but cannot send it.), so instead 
of wrestling with IT's rules, we've set up gmail accounts for things like 
'mylibrary@gmail', 'ourfoodcoop@gmail' to handle those APIs. It has worked out 
pretty well.

Mostly I'm still the only person dealing with the APIs, but the day that 
changes it seems like the situation ought to work out. 

Ken

From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] on behalf of Jonathan 
Rochkind [rochk...@jhu.edu]
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 11:11 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] what do you do: API accounts used by library software, that 
assume an individual is registered

Whether it's Amazon AWS, or Yahoo BOSS, or JournalTOCs, or almost
anything else -- there are a variety of API's that library software
wants to use, which require registering an account to use.

They may or may not be free, sometimes they require a credit card
attached too.

Most of them assume that an individual person is creating an account,
the account will be in that individual's name, with an email address, etc.

This isn't quite right for a business or organization, like the library,
right?  What if that person leaves the organization? But all this
existing software is using API keys attached to 'their' account? Or what
if the person doesn't leave, but responsibilities for monitoring emails
from the vendor (sent to that account) change?  And even worse if
there's an institutional credit card attached to that account.

I am interested in hearing solutions or approaches that people have
ACTUALLY tried to deal with this problem, and how well they have worked.

I am NOT particularly interested in "Well, you could try X or Y"; I can
think of a bunch of things I _could_ try myself, each with their
potential strengths and weaknesses. I am interested in hearing about
what people actually HAVE tried or done, and how well it has worked.

Has anyone found a way to deal with this issue, other than having each
API registered to an account belonging to whatever individual staff
happened to be dealing with it that day?

Thanks for any advice.

Re: [CODE4LIB] back to minorities question, seeking guidance

[Ken Irwin]

What both Kelly and David say is true here:
David: programming needs math, not arithmetic. 
Kelly: computers are good at arithmetic on their own. 

To which I'll add: the related skill that I see as necessary here is 
quantitative reasoning - not the crunching of numbers but the correct assembly 
of the formulae, articulating the systematization of the problem.

What I'm less certain of is what sort of training tend to lead to that sort of 
conceptual skill. 

Ken



On Feb 27, 2013, at 8:44 AM, "David Faler"  wrote:

> I think math is essential, but what they teach in schools these days isn't
> math.  It's arithmetic.  Some intro philosophy courses teach math.  I'll
> stop before I start ranting.
> 
> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Kelly Lucas  wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Thomas Krichel 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>>  Wilhelmina Randtke writes
>>> 
 Pretty much the whole entire entry level programming class for the
>>> average
 class covers using code to do things that you can do much more easily
 without code.
>>> 
>>>  Probably it was the wrong course. I think coding should start with
>>>  building web pages. A calculator can't do that.
>>> 
>>>  Cheers,
>>> 
>>>  Thomas Krichelhttp://openlib.org/home/krichel
>>>  http://authorprofile.org/pkr1
>>>   skype: thomaskrichel
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Kelly R. Lucas
>> Senior Developer
>> Isovera, Inc.
>> klu...@isovera.com
>> http://www.isovera.com
>> http://drupal.org/user/271780
>> twitter: @bp1101
>> 

Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live

[Ken Irwin]

The code I'm using (on the server side) is based on the 
$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] variable -- the providers of the code have gone to 
a bunch of trouble to parse user agents and discern whether or not they count 
as mobile devices. It is decidedly imperfect, but it does a good job at least 
for the mobile devices we're seeing so far. 

In other contexts I also use JavaScript-based detection, but for these 
functions I'm doing it with the PHP approach. 

ken 

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of 
Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:53 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] 
Responsive Web Site Live

Ah, but this still doesn't answer my question on your part, Mark!

How do you detect browser width, especially on the server-side?

If it's with Javascript... the method Ken describes, it's not clear to me how 
javascript logic could get in there exactly.

Thus my question.

On 1/2/2013 3:51 PM, Mark Pernotto wrote:
> I'd be curious to hear the response to Jonathan's question.  For the 
> longest time, I used to determine mobile  displays by browser, but it 
> just got too cluttered.  Now I detect browser width to determine 
> mobile versions.  This little trick doesn't play nice with all 
> frameworks, however, so it's not bullet-proof, but so far, it has 
> worked well.  And on a high level, easy to troubleshoot.
>
> It wasn't immediately apparent to me if this was a part of a CMS or 
> not - it's awfully clean, and the usual Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress 
> identities weren't visible in the source.  Really nice work!
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Jonathan Rochkind  wrote:
>> What method do you use to detect mobile-or-not?
>>
>>
>> On 1/2/2013 3:33 PM, Ken Irwin wrote:
>>>
>>> Sarah asks about how to direct users to mobile versions of databases 
>>> where appropriate.
>>>
>>> The way I'm doing it is:
>>> 1. All database links are served up from a database table, so the 
>>> link on our website is http://$OUR_LIBRARY/redirect?$db_id
>>> 2. The db-of-dbs knows if there is a mobile specific url (because we 
>>> put it there...) 3. Detect mobile-or-not as a binary value 4. Serve 
>>> up the right one as an HTTP header redirect
>>>
>>> One big exception: EBSCO (which provides a really large number of 
>>> our
>>> databases) handles their mobile access by using the same URL with a 
>>> different profile name in the url. The redirect script has a special 
>>> case that says if ($mobile = true and $ebsco = true) { do string 
>>> replace on the url to change from the desktop url to the mobile url 
>>> } -- so I don't have to list both versions of the URL in the database.
>>>
>>> It seems to work out pretty well.
>>>
>>> Ken
>>>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf 
>>> Of Sarah Dooley
>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:25 PM
>>> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
>>> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live
>>>
>>> Very cool--congratulations!
>>>
>>> In addition to Dave's questions, I'd be curious to know (can't see 
>>> it since I don't have a login) how you handled directing people to 
>>> databases that have mobile versions. This is something I've been 
>>> wondering about for our site down the road and library sites in 
>>> general--from a responsive site, how to effectively link people out 
>>> to vendor-provided resources that are either mobile or non-mobile.
>>>
>>> -Sarah Dooley
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live

[Ken Irwin]

I use the PHP code from: http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/ 
(free for personal and non-profit use)

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Jonathan Rochkind [mailto:rochk...@jhu.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:36 PM
To: Code for Libraries
Cc: Ken Irwin
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] 
Responsive Web Site Live

What method do you use to detect mobile-or-not?

[CODE4LIB] directing users to mobile DBs, was RE: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live

[Ken Irwin]

Sarah asks about how to direct users to mobile versions of databases where 
appropriate. 

The way I'm doing it is: 
1. All database links are served up from a database table, so the link on our 
website is http://$OUR_LIBRARY/redirect?$db_id
2. The db-of-dbs knows if there is a mobile specific url (because we put it 
there...) 
3. Detect mobile-or-not as a binary value
4. Serve up the right one as an HTTP header redirect

One big exception: EBSCO (which provides a really large number of our 
databases) handles their mobile access by using the same URL with a different 
profile name in the url. The redirect script has a special case that says if 
($mobile = true and $ebsco = true) { do string replace on the url to change 
from the desktop url to the mobile url } -- so I don't have to list both 
versions of the URL in the database.

It seems to work out pretty well.

Ken 

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sarah 
Dooley
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 3:25 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Responsive Web Site Live

Very cool--congratulations!

In addition to Dave's questions, I'd be curious to know (can't see it since I 
don't have a login) how you handled directing people to databases that have 
mobile versions. This is something I've been wondering about for our site down 
the road and library sites in general--from a responsive site, how to 
effectively link people out to vendor-provided resources that are either mobile 
or non-mobile.

-Sarah Dooley

Re: [CODE4LIB] Survey + policy

[Ken Irwin]

Eric++

I was thinking the same thing.



Along those lines: for the folks working on the draft policy - I'd like to 
suggest adding "gender expression" and "gender identity" to the mix of things 
we're not discriminating about.



Language from the GLAAD Media Reference 
Guide:



Gender Identity: One’s internal, personal sense of being a man or a woman 
(or a boy or a girl). For transgender people, their birth-assigned sex and 
their own internal sense of gender identity do not match.



Gender Expression: External manifestation of one’s gender identity, usually 
expressed through “masculine,” “feminine” or gender-variant behavior, clothing, 
haircut, voice or body characteristics.



-Ken





-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric 
Phetteplace
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 2:01 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Survey



Maybe too late now but...gender is not a binary. There should be an Other 
option if we really are striving to be an inclusive community.





-Eric



On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Karen Coyle 
mailto:li...@kcoyle.net>> wrote:



> On 11/27/12 10:35 AM, Joe Hourcle wrote:

>

>> I admit, I'm no expert on surveys (I tried doing one once for a class ...

>> got shut down for an IRB violation as I said I'd share the results

>> back with the organization we were surveying ... which is pretty sad,

>> as the organization I was surveying was the library school itself)

>> ... but you could do a much larger survey, trying to get all people

>> who work in libraries, and ask questions about specific IT-related

>> tasks that they might be doing, even if they don't self-identify as

>> IT. Of course, then you might miss those of us who don't work in

>> libraries, but who may identify with this group. ... and make sure

>> that whoever does it isn't at an academic institution, to avoid that

>> IRB crap. -Joe

>>

>

> Joe, what I was hoping for was not a survey where individuals report

> on themselves, but a statistical sample of libraries where the library

> reports on its staff. That avoid the "self-image" issue, and the

> selection that individual reporting on self entails.

>

> kc

>

>

> --

> Karen Coyle

> kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net

> ph: 1-510-540-7596

> m: 1-510-435-8234

> skype: kcoylenet

>

[CODE4LIB] any Libki / Userful Pre-Book users out there?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Anybody out there using the Libki computer kiosk/reservation manager system? 
Our library is looking for a (preferably free/OSS) solution to manage access to 
our public kiosks. Libki looks possible, but the documentation on their website 
really only goes as far as installation.

I'd like to find out a bit more, including:
* what features are there? What can I do with it? (e.g.: support authentication 
against our Innovative OPAC, LDAP, etc? support guest passwords for folks not 
in the system?)
* is there more documentation, or is the minimal stuff on the website the 
entirety of it?
* it looks like it's tested on Debian/Ubuntu; what's your experience like 
installing it on other Linux OSes?
* is it "worth it" as is, or should I be looking for another solution?

I also found Userful's "Pre-Book" software, which looks like it's "free" for 
the base package but not so free when you want to authenticate against a 
catalog or things like that. Any thoughts on that system would be welcome too.

Anybody?

Thanks!
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] Browser Wars

[Ken Irwin]

My id agrees with the calls to let IE die a horrible death, but I agree with 
your point: from a service perspective, we cannot just drop support for IE. 
Libraries will hopefully uphold a higher standard of accessibility than some 
other places on the web. 

In my heart of hearts, I assume that anyone using BlackBerry or IE is doing so 
because they want to have a sub-optimal experience on the web, but I can't 
quite bring myself to design that way. Instead, with nearly everything I 
design, I have to do some IE-workarounds to make it not suck on a browser that 
can't be bothered to join the 21st century.

*sigh*

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael 
Schofield
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 10:33 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Browser Wars

Hi Code4Lib,

 

Ever since Microsoft announced the new IE auto-update policy, the blogosphere 
is fussing. This is definitely important (and good) news, but sites-Smashing 
Magazine has three articles on it in the last few days-are really pushing the 
"drop IE support," and "its literally slowing the internet down." I'm down, but 
that attitude-especially for libraries-isn't really the right one to have. It 
is, IMHO, an old view. A smart design strategy with progressive enhancement can 
deliver content to . everyone - which should be the priority for non-prof / 
[local-]government web presences over flare. Right?

 

Anyway, all of this is coming from some really good web developers who don't 
really face the same issues that have to be considered for library sites. I was 
just curious what the library community actually thought about this.

 

Thanks,

 

Michael

 

 

Here's some reading:

 

"Old Browsers ar eHOlding Back the Web" (July 9th):
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/09/old-browsers-are-holding-back-the
-web/

 

"Dear Web User: Please Upgrade Your Browser" (July 10th) :
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/10/dear-web-user-please-upgrade-your
-browser/

 

"It's Time to Stop Blaming Internet Explorer" (July 12th):
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/12/its-time-to-stop-blaming-internet
-explorer/

 

A recent library blog today: "Have you Given Much thought to browsers"? :
http://www.meanlaura.com/archives/1528

 

 

Re: [CODE4LIB] web video: best practices / workflow

[Ken Irwin]

Quoth Jason: 
> I've just written a script which takes source video, adds a common credits 
> snippet to each video, 
> and then wraps system calls to convert to MP4 and WebM. The script also takes 
> the first frame of the video to create a poster image.

Is this a share-able script? That sounds like exactly the kind of 
workflow-management that I was hoping to find.

(I checked out the AnyVideoConverter that Ed mentioned too. It does a nice job 
converting files, but it almost seems deliberately designed to be 
time-consuming. (It will let you generate 3 kinds of HTML5 video formats and 
outputs HTML code for each of them -- but it makes you do them sequentially, 
and then you've got to cut and paste the HTML code together, instead of letting 
you pick 1-3 output formats and generating one tidy code block.) So close...

Ken

[CODE4LIB] web video: best practices / workflow

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Our library is planning to post some video guides in the next little while, and 
I'd like to make it as simple-for-me and accessible-for-everyone-else as 
possible.

Does anyone have a good handy guide/idea/workflow/etc on current best practices 
for presenting html5-happy video that has reasonably good cross-platform 
usability? (I'm thinking it needs to work in at least: IE, Firefox, Safari, 
Chrome, iOS, Android.)

Here are some of the things I'm thinking about:


*Which formats do you typically include?

*How do you generate videos in those formats?

*How do you know what codecs are in those files?

*What (free if possible?) software are you using to accomplish this?

*What kind of workflow for file creation makes this process manageable.

I've been looking at Mark Pilgrim's book HTML5 Up and Running (O'Reilley, 
2010), and it makes the whole process seem pretty arduous. I'm hoping that that 
the last two years have brought some simplifying developments.

Pilgrim recommends the following formats (in failover order):
H.264 mp4
WebM
Ogg Theora

His system for generating all of these files includes scads of software and 
tedious processes.

Anybody have an easier and/or more up-to-date approach?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib MidWest

[Ken Irwin]

Thanks Ranti!

I am definitely interested, and would favor a the latter end of the proposed 
timeframe.

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Matt 
Schultz
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2012 3:08 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib MidWest

Hi Ranti,

I work virtually with Educopia Institute and the MetaArchive Cooperative, and 
am based near Grand Rapids, MI. I would definitely look forward to attending 
being so close and all, and could do so either early in the week or the 
weekend. But would prefer the weekend.

Best,

Matt Schultz
Program Manager
Educopia Institute, MetaArchive Cooperative http://www.metaarchive.org 
matt.schu...@metaarchive.org
616-566-3204

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Ranti Junus  wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> Michigan State University (Lansing, MI) is hosting the next Code4Lib 
> Midwest. We aim to hold the event in either week of July 16th or 23rd 
> (but most likely not July 27th) either as 1.5 or 2 days event. So, my 
> question for those who might be interested to come: would it be better 
> to have it early in the week or weekend?
>
> Let me know and then I'll set up a doodle poll for the date options.
>
>
> thanks,
> ranti.
>
> --
> Bulk mail.  Postage paid.
>



--
Matt Schultz
Program Manager
Educopia Institute, MetaArchive Cooperative http://www.metaarchive.org 
matt.schu...@metaarchive.org
616-566-3204

[CODE4LIB] free source for issn->periodical-type data?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Does anyone know of a free data source that correlates ISSNs with data that 
includes "what kind of publication is this?" e.g.

*Academic journal (+/- peer review?)

*Popular magazine

*Newspaper

*Trade journal

*Etc

Obviously, there's some wiggle room in these designations, and I don't need a 
super-solid answer.

I've been asked to supply information about our academic journal collection, 
and I don't have a particularly good way of differentiating between our 
e-journals and e-magazines, for instance. Individual suppliers might make these 
distinctions, but I'm really hoping that a query-able (or, better: 
downloadable) file exists.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] system for web-based annotated bibliography?

[Ken Irwin]

Julia -- that look quite plausible; it just means that I'll finally have to 
learn Drupal! I am not opposed to this fate, just foot-draggy... :)

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Julia 
Bauder
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 10:10 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] system for web-based annotated bibliography?

Would Drupal and its Biblio module (http://drupal.org/project/biblio) do what 
you need?

Julia

[CODE4LIB] system for web-based annotated bibliography?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I'm starting in on a pretty big bibliography project, for what I expect will be 
a web-based annotated bibliography. Kind of 
part-book-review-blog/part-bibliography. I'm wondering if there are any systems 
out there that would support this kind of thing. I think what I want is 
essentially a mashup of Zotero and Wordpress. Zotero to capture, wrangle, and 
output bib data, and Wordpress to handle the blog-like/text aspects, tagging, 
etc. I'm imaging a system that could be used like a regular blog, but that 
would also allow formatted bib output, e.g. spit out an MLA-style bibliography 
for all the books tagged as "travelogue", with or without annotations.

Anybody have experience with something like this? Does it exist already? I'd 
rather not have to invent this one!

Thanks!
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] Get Lamp showing at cod4libcon

[Ken Irwin]

Well I feel real silly -- all this time I thought Get Lamp was a documentary 
about the power of open-source technologies (e.g. LAMP). I just watched the 
trailer and that turns out not to be the case...

I'm sad to be missing out on the Seattle experience. Y'all have fun and learn 
lots!

Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] server side vs client side

[Ken Irwin]

My general approach is "server-side first". Unless it's wildly easier to 
accomplish something client-side, then I think it makes sense to go for the 
consistency of server-side processing. 

So taking a text file, doing some processing, and spitting out what should 
behave for the user as if it's a static HTML document, server-side 
PHP/Perl/DrugOfChoice sounds like the way to go. 

Save client-side processing for the things it does much better than the 
server-side alternative; mostly, I think that means use JavaScript for 
browser-interactivity stuff that's easier to do in the browser. 

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Nate 
Hill
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 12:49 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] server side vs client side

As I was struggling with the syntax trying to figure out how to use javascript 
to load a .txt file, process it and then spit out some html on a web page, I 
suddenly found myself asking why I was trying to do it with javascript rather 
than PHP.

Is there a right/wrong or better/worse approach for doing something like that? 
Why would I want to choose one approach rather then the other?

As always, apologies if I'm asking a terribly basic question.

--
Nate Hill
nathanielh...@gmail.com
http://www.natehill.net

Re: [CODE4LIB] Professional development advice?

[Ken Irwin]

HTML, CSS, and PHP make for a great start. 

For interface development, I'd suggest adding jQuery to the mix (especially 
JQueryUI and JQuery Mobile). I find jQuery to be useful for two particular 
things:
1) modifying interfaces over which you have limited direct control (like OPACs) 
-- it lets you modify the DOM (ie, re-write the HTML).
2) jQueryUI makes it astonishingly easy to create all sorts of interface 
widgets like tabbed browsing, date pickers, etc. JQuery Mobile does similar 
work in "mobilizing" well-formed HTML content.

For some moderately heavy lifting in the background, MySQL (or something 
similar like PostgreSQL) is also enormously useful. I use MySQL databases for 
darn near everything -- our list of journal holdings, the list of databases, 
collection development functions, etc. Large chunks of our library website are 
generated from the database content, which helps with "update once, changes 
appear everywhere" kinds of functions.

I'm kind of "close to the ground" coder in that I mostly work on smaller 
projects that don't require or take advantage of big intermediary tools like 
Drupal. Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with the big tools, 
just that someone else is better positioned to recommend them. (If I were to 
pick up a few new toolsets right now, Drupal and SOLR/Blacklight would probably 
be the ones I'd go for.)

Good luck,
Ken
 

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Anne 
Gresham
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 11:08 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Professional development advice?

Hi code4lib folks,

I'm in my final semester of library school and my first year as a baby 
librarian. At school, I focused on systems and technology, and I'm currently 
running a desktop and mobile site at work. I'm fine with HTML and CSS, and I 
can fumble around in PHP, but I feel very under-prepared for the library web 
developer career I want to have. I was wondering what skills/programming 
languages/experience you think I should be seeking if I want to be able to 
develop (good) interactive online resources/digital collections for library 
patrons and/or staff. 

Thanks for your help!

Anne Gresham
Reference Librarian
Springdale Public Library
479-750-8180 | agres...@springdalelibrary.org

[CODE4LIB] best practices for video accessibility?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm working with someone who's working to make their videos available online 
and is particularly looking for mobile accessibility. That seems to be a moving 
target these days, and I'm wondering if anyone with more experience in this 
area might have some best-practices up their sleeve. 

We're trying to figure out:
1) What size & format to render the original vids in so they will be most 
accessible, and
2) Which sizes and formats to make the lower-res videos available too. 

Flash, OGG, and MP4(H.264) are all on our radar.

I think that Adobe Premier or something similar is probably the tool they'll be 
using. They're looking at about 800 videos, so getting it right the first time 
is highly desirable!

Any thoughts?

Thanks
Ken

[CODE4LIB] mysql: "terminated by AUTO" -- myAdmin v commandline

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Using the ever-handy phpMyAdmin tool for MySQL db management, there's a CSV 
import option to parse lines like this (all GUI-like):

LOAD DATA INFILE 'file.csv'
INTO TABLE tbl_name
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
FIELDS ENCLOSED BY '\"',
FIELDS ESCAPED BY '\"'
LINES TERMINATED BY 'auto'

However, when I try that same sort of thing on the command-line, I can't get 
"terminated by auto" to work, with or without quotes. Looking at the MySQL 
documentation, this doesn't actually seem to be a legitimate instruction - 
maybe it's something slick that phpMyAdmin is doing in the background?

I want to be that slick too - does anyone know of a way to introduce that kind 
of flexibility at the code level? Have you already written a script that 
handles these variations? Any ideas?

Thanks
ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?

[Ken Irwin]

That's a great point, Same. Thanks.
The spam-bots have been falling for the "confirm_email" and filling it in with 
the "correct" value, but I think I'll try switching it to something obtuse that 
the auto-fillin isn't likely to have a value for. 
"what_would_you_do_for_a_klondike_bar" comes to mind...

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sam 
McDonald
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 11:26 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?

Hi all,

Long time reader, 2nd time poster?! (since 2000?).
Regarding honey-pot field labels...in some recent Chrome versions (and probably 
in current versions) Chrome helpfully auto-populates fields based upon the 
field label.(under default config, can be changed via Options, Personal stuff, 
autofill).   
If a field label has been used before (presumably on any previously filled out 
form using that browser, but perhaps only to forms served from that domain), it 
will auto-populate it. So, if your trap presumes that a field should be null, 
since you "hid" it from the spam bots, AND Chrome helpfully (& invisibly) 
auto-populates it (without the user knowing about it at all), the form will be 
trapped, and fail, and the user will have nearly no way to figure this out..the 
clever users will try a different browser and then meet success.

I don't believe that the mass-attack spam bots look for labels that are needed 
to be filled in. 
That being said, perhaps a label needs to look tempting, but unlikely to be 
used by a developer, maybe something like
First__Name_   the caps, double underscore and trailing underscore are unlikely 
to be used on purpose elsewhere, but not quite as obvious as "spam_trap"  or 
"asdhgashdvasbmvf"

Ah, here's some other people noting the problem 
http://www.electrictoolbox.com/html-form-honeypots-autofill/
http://www.alexanderinteractive.com/blog/2011/02/chrome%E2%80%99s-autofill-and-honeypot-fields/
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?727720-Trouble-with-Chrome-filling-in-honeypot
...more can be found via Google using "chrome autofill honeypot"

PS I originally discovered the Chrome form thing the hard way. 

-Sam

Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?

[Ken Irwin]

Using Dre and Erin's method, I've got a fix in place. It caught two spams in 
the first 10 minutes!

I named the field  to see if I can trick it into 
knowing exactly what to fill in. I just realized that I didn't echo the results 
of that field in my notification of the possible spam; I'm going to catch it 
from now on and see if that trick seems to work on them. 

It's good to hear that JAWS is respecting the "display: none" now; I'm going to 
check with my usability posse and see if there are any other tricks to know 
here...

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of 
Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 10:50 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?

Is there a particular label you give it that causes spambots to fill it out, or 
you find that spambots stick some text in any  you include?

On 10/24/2011 10:46 AM, Erin R White/FS/VCU wrote:
> I'll second Dre's method here. We've used it with great success on our 
> mobile website - it adds zero effort for users and we've had maybe one 
> false positive since March 2010.
>
> The field is input type="text" with CSS hiding it and its label from 
> display. From my extensive googling it like as of JAWS 10 (released 
> 2009), elements hidden by CSS aren't read, but I'm not sure about 
> support from other readers. I'm assuming some kind of "skip" mechanism 
> will be built in to WAI-ARIA too.
>
> Spam catcher - do not complete 
> this field  />
>
> --
> Erin White
> Web Applications Developer, VCU Libraries
> 804-827-3552 | erwh...@vcu.edu | http://library.vcu.edu/
>
>
>
>
> From:   Ken Irwin
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date:   10/24/2011 10:35 AM
> Subject:Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?
> Sent by:Code for Libraries
>
>
>
> This is an intriguing approach, Dre. I wonder how to render this 
> non-problematic for folks with screen-readers too. You could just say 
> "leave this field blank" but that's sort of weird too. Is there a 
> WAI-ARIA approach that would get screen readers to hide this field too?
>
> I'm looking into Mollom too -- looks like that could work in a few 
> areas of our site.
>
> Thanks all!
> Ken
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf 
> Of Andreas Orphanides
> Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 10:13 AM
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?
>
>
> Here's a method that's by no means foolproof but is practically zero 
> cost (you may be using a version already). Disclaimer -- I have not 
> actually tested this to any extent:
>
> Include a text input field in your form that needs to be blank for the 
> form to validate in the back end. Keep the field hidden with CSS (or 
> z-indexed behind another element, size set to zero, etc). Users will 
> never see it, so their forms will validate; I doubt that most spambots 
> are sophisticated enough to check whether a form field is hidden or 
> obfuscated before filling it in. Then silently reject submissions with 
> that field filled.
>
> I am not sure whether this would cause any problems with tab 
> navigation, screen readers or other assistive technologies, but you 
> may be able to do something to sidestep those issues On the other 
> hand, captcha brings its own host of accessibility problems.
>
> One other disadvantage is that this might be hard to implement in a 
> CMS-based form plugin. But if you're coding forms the old-fashioned 
> way, it's worth a shot.
>
> -dre.
>
>
>

Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?

[Ken Irwin]

This is an intriguing approach, Dre. I wonder how to render this 
non-problematic for folks with screen-readers too. You could just say "leave 
this field blank" but that's sort of weird too. Is there a WAI-ARIA approach 
that would get screen readers to hide this field too? 

I'm looking into Mollom too -- looks like that could work in a few areas of our 
site.

Thanks all!
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Andreas 
Orphanides
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 10:13 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?

 
Here's a method that's by no means foolproof but is practically zero cost (you 
may be using a version already). Disclaimer -- I have not actually tested this 
to any extent:
 
Include a text input field in your form that needs to be blank for the form to 
validate in the back end. Keep the field hidden with CSS (or z-indexed behind 
another element, size set to zero, etc). Users will never see it, so their 
forms will validate; I doubt that most spambots are sophisticated enough to 
check whether a form field is hidden or obfuscated before filling it in. Then 
silently reject submissions with that field filled.
 
I am not sure whether this would cause any problems with tab navigation, screen 
readers or other assistive technologies, but you may be able to do something to 
sidestep those issues On the other hand, captcha brings its own host of 
accessibility problems.
 
One other disadvantage is that this might be hard to implement in a CMS-based 
form plugin. But if you're coding forms the old-fashioned way, it's worth a 
shot.
 
-dre.
 
 

[CODE4LIB] web spam block less awful than Captcha?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

Some of our online forms (contact, archives request, etc.) have been getting a 
bunch of spam lately. I have heretofore avoided using any of those obnoxious 
Captcha things and would rather not start now. (I personally loathe them and 
they keep getting harder, which tells me that the spambots are probably better 
at them than we are...)

Does anyone have some good/easy/free/less-stressful spam-inhibiting ideas?

One that occurs to me to try, and I have no idea if this would match well with 
actual bot behavior: at the time the form loads, include at hidden field with 
id=[unixtimestamp]. When the form is submitted, ignore any forms that took less 
than (10? 15? 20 seconds?) to fill out on the assumption that bots probably do 
it way faster - or possibly way slower? Do they save them up for later? Should 
I add an upper bound? Is this just a really dumb idea?

If I try that one, I would start not by eliminating the bad results but by 
marking them as spam and seeing how effective it is.

Other ideas? (PHP-friendly answers would be easiest for me to implement, but 
others may work too.)

What works for you?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] screen scraping

[Ken Irwin]

I don't know that there are two many rules about this, but here's what comes to 
mind for me:

1. respect robots.txt
2. cache content so you don't hit their site more often than is reasonable. 
(i'd say that once a day is pretty reasonable)
3. also cache or mockup or something when you're writing your code, so you're 
not pounding them with live hits while you're working out the bugs.

as far as legality, i'm gonna leave that to someone else. citation is, of 
course, a really good start.

Ken


On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 22:23, Nate Hill  wrote:
> A question: what are the 'rules' around screen scraping?
> If one site doesn't offer an RSS feed and you want to grab (for example)
> their weekly top ten list with a script and then redisplay it on another
> site, is that bad form?  Or even illegal?
> Thanks-
> Nate
>
>
> --
> Nate Hill
> nathanielh...@gmail.com
> http://www.natehill.net
>

[CODE4LIB] mysql subquery response time

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I've not done much with MySQL subqueries, and I'm trying right now with what I 
find to be surprising results. I wonder if someone can help me understand.

I have a pile of data that with columns for "institution" and "date". 
Institution gets repeated a lot, with many different dates. I want to select 
all the institutions that *only* have dates after July 1 and don't appear in 
the table before that. My solution was to do a first query for all the 
institutions that DO have dates before July 1
SELECT distinct institution FROM `renewals` WHERE snap_date < '2011-07-01'

And then to do a SELECT query on all the institutions:
SELECT distinct institution from renewals

And then try to do a NOT IN subquery subtracting the smaller query from the 
larger one:

SELECT distinct institution from renewals
WHERE institution not in
(SELECT distinct institution FROM `renewals` WHERE snap_date < '2011-07-01')

...only it doesn't seem to work. Or rather, the query has been running for 
several minutes and never comes back with an answer. Each of these two queries 
takes just a few milliseconds to run on its own.

Can someone tell me (a) am I just formatting the query wrong, (b) do subqueries 
like this just take forever, and/or (c) is there a better way to do this? (I 
don't really understand about JOIN queries, but from what I can tell they are 
only for mixing the results of two different tables so I think they might not 
apply here.)

Any advice would be most welcome.

Thanks
Ken

[CODE4LIB] memory management for grownups

[Ken Irwin]

I have a feeling it may be time for me to learn some grown-up programming 
skills, and I hope someone here might be able to help.

I have a PHP script chewing over a large MySQL query. It's creating a handful 
of big associative arrays in the process, and punks out after the arrays get to 
32MB.
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 
242 bytes) in analysis.php on line 41

I'm basically building a big associative array encoding the name of the 
borrowing institution, the patron type (student,faculty,staff,etc), the item 
barcode, and the various bits of data we want for each of these items.

// the first time we see a barcode
$stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][first] = $date;
$stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][min] = $renewals;
$stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][call] = $call_no;
//subsequent instances of the barcode
  $stats[$inst][$patron_type][$item_barcode][max] = $renewals;

Once I've chewed over all  4million records (40MB) , I spit it out into a new 
MySQL table that has the collated data that I want. Unfortunately this system 
breaks down when I get to so many millions of records.

Is there a more efficient way of doing this kind of data transformation? I 
*could* not keep so much in the big stats array and instead make millions of 
"UPDATE" calls to the MySQL table, but that doesn't sound like a winning 
proposition to me. I imagine that I could also increase the memory allotment, 
but it will eventually get to big too. Or I suppose that I could do it all in 
chunks - right now I'm parsing the whole raw-data SQL table at once; I could do 
one institution's data at a time and buy myself some wiggle-room.

But fundamentally, it seems to me that asking PHP to hold lots of data in an 
array might not be the most programmerly system; it's just what I've always 
done.

Any advice?

Thanks
Ken

[CODE4LIB] does your OPAC pass HTML validation?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm curious: does ANYONE have an OPAC that passes an HTML validator test?

I've know mine doesn't, and none of the ones I spot-checked do either. (TPD: 
OhioLINK gets a prize for coming way closer than anyone, by at least an order 
of magnitude and sometimes several!)

Do catalogs even validate out-of-the-box? (I've never set up an OPAC before, I 
have no idea what "out-of-the-box" might actually look like.)

I'm presently writing an article about working up a mobile OPAC and am a little 
embarrassed to be talking about validation despite the fact that my own catalog 
doesn't validate. I'm glad to see (?) I'm not alone in this, but...

What do we think about this?

Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper

[Ken Irwin]

AJAX for slickness and ease of use. We could do form html, but I'd prefer 
something that's updated in real time. 

As for the scanner -- my plan was to pre-populate the database from our OPAC, 
so we won't need to scan each book individually.) 

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Dave 
Caroline
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 11:39 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper

Why ajax! just a plain html form
and add a barcode scanner, to pick that books data from the db

Scan shelf, scan contents, you now have updated list of contents and
books gone awol

jump to updating page
scan book, update, rinse repeat



Dave Caroline

Re: [CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper

[Ken Irwin]

It turns out that this is one of those "I should have just searched first" 
questions. Once it became clearer to me that I didn't need a library-specific 
app but that all I really needed was AJAX+CRUD, the problem simplified. 

Solution: http://www.ajaxcrud.com/ 

It looks like it can do all of the basic functions I need, and I can probably 
hack on some extra functionality (like catalog links and color changes) using 
jQuery or minor hacks on the built-in functions. 

Ken

[CODE4LIB] ajaxy CRUD / weeding helper

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm about to embark upon a summer weeding project, and would like to do so with 
the help of a little web tool - perhaps one that you've already invented or for 
which a generic AJAX-based CRUD interface already exists. (Mostly I think I'm 
just looking for a low-power AJAX-based CRUD thing.) I'm going to describe what 
I want it to do, and perhaps you can tell me if you think someone has already 
done the heavy lifting on creating something like this.

Back end: a database containing the current shelf-list along with some useful 
bibdata like title, pubinfo, last-checkout-date, total-checkouts, date added to 
collection, plus some fields for the information we'll be inputing on the front 
end.

Front end: an iPad/laptop-friendly touch-or-click interface that will allow us 
to mark individual fields. Some of those would be multiple choice fields like 
"condition of the book". A free text note field. A few Booleans (e.g. "Someone 
says this books is a classic and we may never discard it.", "Listed in Best 
Books for Acad Lib", "I propose we weed this book")

The idea for this interface would be to allow the (de)selector to make notes on 
each title as s/he goes down the shelf. The selector would be able to easily 
see bib data and would be able to change the data as the process goes on. I'd 
prefer to do this on an AJAX model so the database is updated in real time 
rather than relying on more overt form submission.

I described this as a CRUD (Create, Replace, Update, Delete) thing, but I guess 
it's really just "U" - updating.

Do you have a nice easy tool for doing AJAX-y db updating from a UI that would 
allow for the various types of input (pulldowns, Boolean, text fields). 
Preferably, I'd like to be able to do some visual renderings of some of the 
data to match our in-house "sticker" system - yellow dots for "we might weed 
this", green for "we gotta keep this".

Any ideas? I would love to not re-invent this wheel.

Thanks!
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] What do you wish you had time to learn?

[Ken Irwin]

Drupal
Solr/Blacklight
Rr
Hula-hoop tricks

-Ken


On Apr 26, 2011, at 8:30 AM, Edward Iglesias wrote:
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I am doing a presentation at RILA (Rhode Island Library Association) on
> changing skill sets for Systems Librarians.  I did a formal survey a while
> back (if you participated, thank you) but this stuff changes so quickly I
> thought I would ask this another way.  What do you wish you had time to
> learn?
> 
> My list includes
> 
> 
> CouchDB(NoSQL in general)
> neo4j
> nodejs
> prototype
> API Mashups
> R
> 
> Don't be afraid to include Latin or Greek History.  I'm just going for a
> snapshot of System angst at not knowing everything.

-- 
Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.orgtel:+1-678-235-2955
 
Ass't Director, Technology Services Development   http://dltj.org/about/
Lyrasis   --Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers.
The Disruptive Library Technology Jesterhttp://dltj.org/ 
Attrib-Noncomm-Share   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ 

Re: [CODE4LIB] more general travel considerations: airport transportation

[Ken Irwin]

It turns out that there was already a rideshare page on the wiki:
http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/C4L2011_rideshare

It just didn't have a category tag to associate it with the conference; it does 
now.

Better living through metadata,
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of 
Richard, Joel M
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 9:33 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] more general travel considerations: airport 
transportation

I would be amenable to a wiki page. My schedule means I'm going to either 
sprint to make a 10:40 shuttle or wait roughly two hours waiting for the 12:40 
shuttle, but I know that's monday and some (most) people will be arriving 
sunday. (I couldn't swing the extra hotel night)

--Joel


Joel Richard
IT Specialist, Web Services Department
Smithsonian Institution Libraries | http://www.sil.si.edu/
(202) 633-1706 | (202) 786-2861 (f) | richar...@si.edu



On Jan 24, 2011, at 8:58 AM, Ken Irwin wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Is there any effort currently underway to help folks get from the airport 
> to/from the conference? If not, shall we start one? I'll be driving thru 
> Indianapolis to/from the event and would be glad to pick up a person or two 
> on the way. 
> 
> I'm sure we don't need to work that all out on the mailing list, but if 
> there's not such an effort already underway, perhaps a wiki page to 
> coordinate?
> 
> Ken

[CODE4LIB] more general travel considerations: airport transportation

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

Is there any effort currently underway to help folks get from the airport 
to/from the conference? If not, shall we start one? I'll be driving thru 
Indianapolis to/from the event and would be glad to pick up a person or two on 
the way. 

I'm sure we don't need to work that all out on the mailing list, but if there's 
not such an effort already underway, perhaps a wiki page to coordinate?

Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download

[Ken Irwin]

This is good to know -- the data is likely to be used chiefly in Windows 
contexts, so the \r\n option might make most sense. Appreciate everyone's help 
on this!

joys
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Jonathan Rochkind [mailto:rochk...@jhu.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 11:34 AM
To: Code for Libraries
Cc: Ken Irwin
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download

Windows NotePad probably needs an \r\n combo at the end of every line, 
windows style.  Whether you should worry about that depends on where the 
file is destined for and if it matters. (Becuase an \r\n at the end of 
every line might (or might not) mess up some unix or mac applications. 
Ah, line endings.)

On 1/11/2011 7:57 PM, Ken Irwin wrote:
> Jonathan's questions were right on target. I was opening the files in the 
> standard MS Notepad editor, and it was not observing line breaks. When I went 
> to go open the files in MiniTab they were just fine. (Changing the files to 
> .txt and text/plain did *not* fix the problem in Notepad, and I do wonder 
> what it would take to make that program happy, but in this case it doesn't 
> much matter.)
>
> Thanks for the help
> Ken
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Jonathan Rochkind
> Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 3:41 PM
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited 
> download
>
> line breaks don't appear when you view it with what software?
>
> Can you have your browser save it to disk after it prompts you to do so,
> and open with a reliable text editor you know how to use and confirm if
> \n is really still in the file or not?
>
> If you are viewing it in your web brower, then your web browser is
> probably deciding to display it as HTML. The line breaks are probably
> still there, the web browser is just displaying as HTML. Web browsers
> aren't great places to view text.  If you are viewing it after saving it
> to disk, then your web browser probably won't know to display as text
> unless the filename ends in ".txt".  If you are viewing it without
> saving to disk (but then why are you using
> Content-Disposition:attachment?), then make sure you're still setting
> the content-type appropriately; and you may need to make the filename
> end in .txt anyway.
>
> The line breaks are probably still there, your web browser is just
> rendering the file as html rather than txt, is my guess.
>
> On 1/11/2011 3:29 PM, Ken Irwin wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've got a dataset that I'm trying to make exportable for MiniTab, etc. It's 
>> tab-delimited and lines end with "\n".
>>
>> When I serve it up as "text/plain" and view it in my web browser, it works 
>> just fine and all the line breaks are in the right places.
>>
>> When I send the header to make it a downloadable "attachment":
>> Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="categories.tab"
>> Then there are no line breaks at all - it's all one line, and the 
>> line-breaks don't appear.
>>
>> I tried "\r" instead, and that didn't work either.
>>
>> Any idea what I might be doing wrong here?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Ken
>>

Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download

[Ken Irwin]

Jonathan's questions were right on target. I was opening the files in the 
standard MS Notepad editor, and it was not observing line breaks. When I went 
to go open the files in MiniTab they were just fine. (Changing the files to 
.txt and text/plain did *not* fix the problem in Notepad, and I do wonder what 
it would take to make that program happy, but in this case it doesn't much 
matter.)

Thanks for the help
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of 
Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 3:41 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download

line breaks don't appear when you view it with what software?

Can you have your browser save it to disk after it prompts you to do so, 
and open with a reliable text editor you know how to use and confirm if 
\n is really still in the file or not?

If you are viewing it in your web brower, then your web browser is 
probably deciding to display it as HTML. The line breaks are probably 
still there, the web browser is just displaying as HTML. Web browsers 
aren't great places to view text.  If you are viewing it after saving it 
to disk, then your web browser probably won't know to display as text 
unless the filename ends in ".txt".  If you are viewing it without 
saving to disk (but then why are you using 
Content-Disposition:attachment?), then make sure you're still setting 
the content-type appropriately; and you may need to make the filename 
end in .txt anyway.

The line breaks are probably still there, your web browser is just 
rendering the file as html rather than txt, is my guess.

On 1/11/2011 3:29 PM, Ken Irwin wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've got a dataset that I'm trying to make exportable for MiniTab, etc. It's 
> tab-delimited and lines end with "\n".
>
> When I serve it up as "text/plain" and view it in my web browser, it works 
> just fine and all the line breaks are in the right places.
>
> When I send the header to make it a downloadable "attachment":
> Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="categories.tab"
> Then there are no line breaks at all - it's all one line, and the line-breaks 
> don't appear.
>
> I tried "\r" instead, and that didn't work either.
>
> Any idea what I might be doing wrong here?
>
> Thanks
> Ken
>

[CODE4LIB] data export help: line breaks on tab-delimited download

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I've got a dataset that I'm trying to make exportable for MiniTab, etc. It's 
tab-delimited and lines end with "\n".

When I serve it up as "text/plain" and view it in my web browser, it works just 
fine and all the line breaks are in the right places.

When I send the header to make it a downloadable "attachment":
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="categories.tab"
Then there are no line breaks at all - it's all one line, and the line-breaks 
don't appear.

I tried "\r" instead, and that didn't work either.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong here?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] HTML Load Time

[Ken Irwin]

Nathan,

Would it make sense to break this up into several documents and add a search 
function? You could still have a giant, one-page (and thus easily-printable) 
option, but maybe that wouldn't be the default. 

The search feature I'm envisioning would just be a search of key words in the 
title of a box. A tag-cloud sort of thing might be a useful way of making some 
of the keywords visible too. 

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Nathan 
Tallman
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 2:49 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] HTML Load Time

Hi Cod4Libers,

I've got a LARGE finding aid that was generated from EAD.  It's over 5 MB
and has caused even Notepad++ and Dreamweaver to crash.  My main concern is
client-side load time.  The collection is our most heavily used and the
finding aid will see a lot of traffic.  I'm fairly adept with HTML, but I
can't think of anything.  Does anyone have any tricks or tips to decrease
the load time?  The finding aid can be viewed at <
http://www.americanjewisharchives.com/aja/FindingAids/ms0361.html>.

Thanks,
Nathan Tallman
Associate Archivist
American Jewish Archives

Re: [CODE4LIB] easy/classy save-marked-records functionality?

[Ken Irwin]

Answering my own question:

jQuery does indeed support some functionality that makes this pretty easy. My 
demo is at:
http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/public/picker.php

The Gist:

Onclick (item): add class 'highlight'
Onclick (show items): use the "toggle" method to hide the items that aren't 
highlighted (! hasClass('highlight')).  Since it uses toggle(), clicking the 
button repeatedly will show/hide the highlighted items.

All the rest is gravy.

This doesn't have an email-marked-records function, but it does print ok. I'm 
satisfied for my current purposes. Feel free to re-use/improve the code to your 
heart's content.

Ken

From: Ken Irwin
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 3:38 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: easy/classy save-marked-records functionality?


Hi all,



Thanks for your thoughts yesterday re: dealing with vendors & impermanent URLs 
- I think the advice of the group re: getting vendors to change their ways 
makes more sense than the techno solution I had in mind.



For today's question, I am the db supplier, so I get to make my own choices 
about the interface!



I've got a bunch of indexes to local content, like the student newspaper, and I 
want to add a mark-these-records/print/email-marked-records kind of 
functionality. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with something, but I'm 
wondering what already exists. It seems likely to me that someone has already 
worked up a classy jQuery and/or HTML5 driven tool for doing something like 
this. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought I'd see what's already out 
there.



I'd like to be able to take a page like this:

http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields[]=subject&database=torch&setup=torch.config&terms=football<http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields%5b%5d=subject&database=torch&setup=torch.config&terms=football>



and have users mark individual records that they want to 
save/print/retrieve/etc.



Any ideas for how this has already been worked out?

Thanks

Ken

[CODE4LIB] easy/classy save-marked-records functionality?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,



Thanks for your thoughts yesterday re: dealing with vendors & impermanent URLs 
- I think the advice of the group re: getting vendors to change their ways 
makes more sense than the techno solution I had in mind.



For today's question, I am the db supplier, so I get to make my own choices 
about the interface!



I've got a bunch of indexes to local content, like the student newspaper, and I 
want to add a mark-these-records/print/email-marked-records kind of 
functionality. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with something, but I'm 
wondering what already exists. It seems likely to me that someone has already 
worked up a classy jQuery and/or HTML5 driven tool for doing something like 
this. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought I'd see what's already out 
there.



I'd like to be able to take a page like this:

http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields[]=subject&database=torch&setup=torch.config&terms=football



and have users mark individual records that they want to 
save/print/retrieve/etc.



Any ideas for how this has already been worked out?

Thanks

Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] easy/classy save-marked-records functionality?

[Ken Irwin]

I was just struck with a bit on inspiration on this, so perhaps I'll have a 
thing to share later

Ken

From: Ken Irwin
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 3:38 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: easy/classy save-marked-records functionality?


Hi all,



Thanks for your thoughts yesterday re: dealing with vendors & impermanent URLs 
- I think the advice of the group re: getting vendors to change their ways 
makes more sense than the techno solution I had in mind.



For today's question, I am the db supplier, so I get to make my own choices 
about the interface!



I've got a bunch of indexes to local content, like the student newspaper, and I 
want to add a mark-these-records/print/email-marked-records kind of 
functionality. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with something, but I'm 
wondering what already exists. It seems likely to me that someone has already 
worked up a classy jQuery and/or HTML5 driven tool for doing something like 
this. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought I'd see what's already out 
there.



I'd like to be able to take a page like this:

http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields[]=subject&database=torch&setup=torch.config&terms=football<http://www6b.wittenberg.edu/lib/witt_pubs/torch/search.php?fields%5b%5d=subject&database=torch&setup=torch.config&terms=football>



and have users mark individual records that they want to 
save/print/retrieve/etc.



Any ideas for how this has already been worked out?

Thanks

Ken

[CODE4LIB] detecting user copying URL?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I have just, for the severalth time, just talked to a student who had lost a 
bunch of work in a common way: he had copied-and-pasted a bunch of 
database-content URLs on the fairly-reasonable (but, of course, incorrect) 
assumption that those URLs would get him back to the content later. He happened 
to be in LexisNexis, but it happens in lots of databases.

Here's what I'm wondering: is there any tasteful/sane way of using JavaScript 
to detect when a user clicks into the URL bar and copies/cuts the URL from a 
page that will do the user no good later? It would, to my mind, be completely 
civilized for the database provider to generate a little popup window alerting 
the user to the error of their ways.

User education would be great, of course, but some sort of built-in alert would 
be very friendly. 

What think you all? Would JS or some similar tool be able to achieve this? 

Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] how 'great' are the great books

[Ken Irwin]

I hypothesize that until you get your 100,000 results, that authors like 
Chaucer and Shakespeare will rise to the top because they are the ones we've 
all read; they're going to get more total votes because more people will have 
read them. 

Are you capturing the "losses" as well as the wins here? Can you tell the 
difference between "no one has read this book" and "this book is not as great"? 

How do you control for this?

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Eric 
Lease Morgan
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 11:29 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] how 'great' are the great books

On Nov 4, 2010, at 11:22 AM, McAulay, Elizabeth wrote:

>> http://bit.ly/bPQHIg 
> 
> i had a lot of fun playing with this survey. is it an infinite survey, though 
> -- no end to the questions?

Correct, it is an endless survey.  8-)  

BTW, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare's Macbeth are now #1 and #2.

-- 
Eric M.

Re: [CODE4LIB] III Mobile Catalog

[Ken Irwin]

I've been pretty happy with the results we were able to get with a home-grown 
mobile catalog. It's not a "product" that one could install (though I'd be 
happy to share our code, much of which would likely work out well.)

Basically, my approach was to write mobile stylesheets that kill a lot of the 
extraneous content (excess nav buttons, bulky content, etc.) We also use a bit 
of jQuery to apply CSS more selectively than a plain CSS declaration will 
allow. 

You can see our results at: http://ezra.wittenberg.edu

The biggest downside to this approach is that it's a rendering of our "main" 
catalog -- we dictate that mobile browsers get the mobile stylesheet, and 
there's no opportunity for a user to say "no, gimme the real thing". 

One of the biggest upsides (besides that it's "free") is that it retains the 
capacity for marking/saving books, which AirPac does not. Most of the 
development took just a few days, though tweaking went on for longer. 

I'm not aware of the MobileCat, though, and I'll be interested in checking it 
out. If you (or anyone else) is interested in our code or hearing more about 
our approach, I'll be happy to share it.

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Amy
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 2:03 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] III Mobile Catalog

We are researching possibilities for a mobile version of our III catalog and
are wondering what success people have had.

Right now our list of possible solutions include:
 - AirPac from III - does anyone have any feedback on this product?
 - MobileCat from the Tri-College Libraries
(http://code.google.com/p/mobilecat/)
 - Other options?

MobileCat is more attractive than AirPac because it's free, but I can't find
much information of others out there who have implemented it successfully.  

Does anyone have feedback on either of these solutions or does anyone know
of another mobile catalog option for III?  Any thoughts would be most
appreciated.

Thanks
Amy
--
Amy Deschenes
Library Assistant, Library Technology
Simmons College Library
Boston, MA
desch...@simmons.edu

[CODE4LIB] mobile web design: resources?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

Forking off from the mobile-detection thread:

Does anyone have any favorite books, articles, websites, etc. for the real "how 
to" business of building mobile-friendly websites. I have been astonished at 
the apparent dearth of such books, and was delighted earlier this year to 
discover Jonathan Stark's Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript 
from O'Reilly (2010); he has an Android-oriented version of the book coming out 
soon too. Although the book contains a lot about designing web pages, the 
app-building orientation of the book means that it gives short shrift to 
cross-platform compatibility. What I really want to find is a good guide to 
"building simple websites that will work on any smartphone, yea, verily, even 
BlackBerry." (I don't know about anyone else, but I have found BB to not 
support a lot of things that work well on Droids and iThings.)

For a shorter introduction, I belatedly discovered this article:
Mobile Websites With Minimum Effort.
Authors:Wisniewski, Jeff
Source:Online; Jan/Feb2010, Vol. 34 Issue 1, p54-57, 4p

The number-one thing that I learned from Stark's book is something that I had 
struggled for the longest time with: why does my iThing make all web pages look 
tiny? The answer: iThings assume that all web pages are 980px wide, and you've 
got to disabuse them of that notion by the simple expedient of defining a 
viewport in the page header:

(there are several variations of this, and knowing the key word helps to find 
the rest.)

Does anyone else have a favorite book or three for this kind of work?

Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] SMS headers in email->sms

[Ken Irwin]

We originally tried changing the From and Reply-To mail headers, but the phones 
we tested on didn't honor the email headers. Instead they show an address 
@www6.wittenberg.edu (ie, our web server). That's why I was thinking there 
would be some sort of SMS-equivalent-header that it cared about more.

Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Thomas 
Bennett
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 9:36 AM


I don't know if this will be any help but you would need to replace the reply-
to header I expect.

Thomas

[CODE4LIB] SMS headers in email->sms

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

Does anyone know if there's a way to specify/alter the equivalent of 
email-headers on SMS messages sent from an email address?

We send SMS messages to users through the library website, but the messages 
come from a bogus email address. We'd like it to come from a real email address 
so they can text us back if necessary. I tried changing the "From:" headers on 
the email, but that didn't work. Is there an SMS equivalent of an email header 
that we can modify?

A little bit of searching around makes me think that UDH (User Data Headers) 
might be involved, but I can't make heads or tails of what I'm seeing when I 
look that up.

Alternately: does anyone have a handy PHP/SMS library that handles all of this 
behind the scenes and requires me not to know much?

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing some of you in South Bend this weekend =)
Ken

[CODE4LIB] Duct tape (was: PHP bashing (was: newbie))

[Ken Irwin]

I love how we changed the name of this thread to "PHP bashing" just in time for 
it to become a thread about duct tape.

And y'all are forgetting the best automotive use for duct tape: as a temporary 
scaffolding for smearing Bondo onto. 
I just did this, in fact, and have the pink residue on my fingernails to prove 
it. 

And yes, since you ask: I use PHP all the time... ;) 
Though not for odd jobs -- that's what Perl is for.

Ken

From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of MJ Suhonos 
[...@suhonos.ca]
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 12:11 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] PHP bashing (was: newbie)

> Also...it's pretty good for plugging leaks in ducts.

Actually, true story:

I was in the hardware store, poking around the tape section, with a roll of 
your typical silver duct tape in my hand, obviously browsing.  An employee came 
up to me asking what I was looking for, and for what purpose.

I told him I was actually going to be taping metal ducts, to which he pointed 
at the duct tape in my hand and replied "oh, then that's not what you want, 
this is what you want", and handed me some strange plastic stuff I'd never seen 
before.

So, apparently duct tape isn't even good for taping ducts anymore.

MJ

>> At the risk of taking an off-topic conversation even further into
>> Peanut Heaven, automotive hose repair is actually one of the things
>> duct tape is least well-suited to. The adhesive doesn't bond when wet,
>> it's not strong enough to hold much pressure or vacuum (especially
>> moderate continuous pressure), and it fails very quickly at even
>> moderately high temperatures. And it tends to leave goo all over
>> everything, thus adding headaches to the proper repair you'll still
>> need later.
>>
>> Duct tape is OK for keeping a wire bundle out of your fan or
>> something, but if you try to fix a leak in your radiator hose with it,
>> you'll still be stranded and also have gooey duct tape adhesive all
>> over the place.
>>
>> Extending these points to the ongoing language debate is an exercise
>> that will benefit no one ;-)
>>
>> Cheers (and just get that hose replaced ;-)
>> -Nate

Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Midwest?

[Ken Irwin]

I would come from Ohio to wherever we choose. Kalamazoo would suit me just 
fine; I've not been back there in entirely too long! 
Ken

> -Original Message-
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
> Scott Garrison
> Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 8:37 AM
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Midwest?
>
> +1
>
> ELM, I'm happy to help coordinate in whatever way you need.
>
> Also, if we can find a drummer, we could do a blues trio (count me in on 
> bass). I
> could bring our band's drummer (a HUGE ND fan) down for a day or two if
> needed--he's awesome.
>
> --SG
> WMU in Kalamazoo
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Eric Lease Morgan" 
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Sent: Thursday, March 4, 2010 4:38:53 PM
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib Midwest?
>
> On Mar 4, 2010, at 3:29 PM, Jonathan Brinley wrote:
>
> >>  2. share demonstrations
> >
> > I'd like to see this be something like a blend between lightning talks
> > and the ask anything session at the last conference
>
> This certainly works for me, and the length of time of each "talk" 
> would/could be
> directly proportional to the number of people who attend.
>
>
> >>  4. give a presentation to library staff
> >
> > What sort of presentation did you have in mind, Eric?
> >
> > This also raises the issue of weekday vs. weekend. I'm game for
> > either. Anyone else have a preference?
>
> What I was thinking here was a possible presentation to library faculty/staff
> and/or computing faculty/staff from across campus. The presentation could be
> one or two cool hacks or solutions that solved wider, less geeky problems.
> Instead of "tweaking Solr's term-weighting algorithms to index OAI-harvested
> content" it would be "making journal articles easier to find". This would be 
> an
> opportunity to show off the good work done by institutions outside Notre Dame.
> A prophet in their own land is not as convincing as the expert from afar.
>
> I was thinking it would happen on a weekday. There would be more stuff going
> on here on campus, as well as give everybody a break from their normal work
> week. More specifically, I would suggest such an event take place on a Friday
> so the poeple who stayed over night would not have to take so many days off of
> work.
>
>
> >>  5. have a hack session
> >
> > It would be good to have 2 or 3 projects we can/should work on decided
> > ahead of time (in case no one has any good ideas at the time), and
> > perhaps a couple more inspired by the earlier presentations.
>
>
>
> True.
>
> --
> ELM
> University of Notre Dame

[CODE4LIB] favorite jQuery plugins for libraries?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm on a mission to finally learn some jQuery, and I'm kind of falling in love 
with it. In particular, I'm finding in it the perfect tool for modifying our 
OPAC in ways that the catalog vendor never intended, tweaking the DOM to my 
heart's content. 

Having worked my way through the basics of the language (I'm using the 
"Learning jQuery" book, which is a good introduction but has a nearly-useless 
index) I'm curious about the vast array of jQuery plugins. There are too many 
to know, and reading the descriptions it is not immediately apparent to me what 
they do. 

So I ask those of you who use jQuery: Do you have favorites, or ones that you 
find particularly relevant to the kind of work that we do? ("The kind of work 
that we do" varies quite a bit, but still...) The only one I've really explored 
so far is the dataTables plugin, which I will be keeping in mind for future 
applications.

Nicole: your "Library Mashups" book is next on my list; I'm looking forward to 
it. 

joys,
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc -- SOLVED

[Ken Irwin]

Sometimes the answer is "quit working, go home, and ask your sweetie".

My partner is a genius and had a very straightforward solution: get rid of the 
imagemap and replace it with some absolutely-positioned links that use regular 
anchor tags. Not only does this solve the problem in a lightbox-friendly way, 
it also improves accessibility -- the links are now text with a font-size of 
zero: usable for a screen-reader and invisible to others.

Simple demo here: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/testbed/imagemap/

Tomorrow perhaps I'll write a little script to convert my image maps to 
absolutely positioned elements for the more complex real-life image maps.

Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc (clarified)

[Ken Irwin]

I think I should have been clearer about my quandary: 
I want to link to lightbox-style pseudo-popups by clicking links FROM an 
image-map (not to the map). 

*-box style linkers all seem to be keyed into the anchor-tag functionality, 
whereas image maps use the area-tag. So I either need:
- an lightbox-style tool that can work with the area tag, or
- an way of doing image maps that uses the anchor-tag instead of the area tag.

Does anyone know of a solution here? ("Re-write the lightbox code" is of course 
a theoretical possibility, but I'd prefer not to get into that!)

Thanks
ken 


From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Ken Irwin 
[kir...@wittenberg.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 2:20 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc

Hi all,

Does anyone have an-AJAX "pop-up window" style tool that works with image maps? 
I'm thinking of something in the the lightbox, thickbox, ibox family. I've 
found a bunch of references to people online *looking* for this functionality, 
but no one finding it. Any ideas?

Thanks!
Ken

[CODE4LIB] image maps + lightbox/thickbox/ibox/etc

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

Does anyone have an-AJAX "pop-up window" style tool that works with image maps? 
I'm thinking of something in the the lightbox, thickbox, ibox family. I've 
found a bunch of references to people online *looking* for this functionality, 
but no one finding it. Any ideas?

Thanks!
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] character-sets for dummies? THANKS

[Ken Irwin]

Thank you all for this abundance of guidance and information. I feel much 
better equipped to face this now. I'm much farther along with this than I was 
this morning. 

Thanks!
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] character-sets for dummies?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all -- thanks for these fabulous replies. I'm learning a lot. 

Armed with a bit of new knowledge, I've done some tinkering. I think I've 
solved my original quandaries, and have opened new cans of worms. I have a few 
more specific questions:

1) It appears that once I switch my MySQL table over from a latin character set 
to UTF-8, it is not longer case-insensitive (this makes sense based on what I 
learned from the Joel on Software post). All of the scripting I've done until 
now takes advantage of the case insensitivity; is there an easy way to keep 
this case insensitive while in UTF-8? 

2) Is there a good/easy way to make the database agnostic about diacritics, so 
that a search for "cafe" will also find "café" 

The answers to both of these may be "convert data to some normalized A-Z field 
that never displays, but I can only imagine that normalizing even 
most-Roman-characters-with-diacritics to plain ASCII-style characters can be 
daunting task.

Any advice on these particulars? 

Thanks,
Ken

[CODE4LIB] character-sets for dummies?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a good source to help me understand character sets and how to 
use them. I pretty much know nothing about this - the whole world of Unicode, 
ASCII, octal, UTF-8, etc. is baffling to me.

My immediate issue is that I think I need to integrate data from a variety of 
character sets into one MySQL table - I expect I need some way to convert from 
one to another, but I don't really even know how to tell which data are in 
which format.

Our homegrown journal list (akin to SerialsSolutions) includes data ingested 
from publishers, vendors, the library catalog (III), etc. When I look at the 
data in emacs, some of it renders like this:
 Revista de Oncolog\303\255a  [slashes-and-digits instead of 
diacritics]
And other data looks more like:
 Revista de Música Latinoamericana[weird characters instead of diacritics]

My MySQL table is currently set up with the collation set to: utf8-bin , and 
the titles from the second category (weird characters display in emacs) render 
properly when the database data is output to the a web browser. The data from 
the former example (\###) renders as an "I don't know what character this is" 
placeholder in Firefox and IE.

So, can someone please point me toward any or all of the following?

· A good primer for understanding all of this stuff

· A method for converting all of my data to the same character set so 
it plays nicely in the database

· The names of which character-sets I might be working with here

Many thanks!

Ken

[CODE4LIB] calling another webpage within CGI script - solved!

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

Thanks for your extensive suggestions and comments. A few folks suggested that 
SELinux might be the issue. Tobin's suggestion to change one of the settings 
proved effective:
"# setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1".

Thanks to everyone who helped -- I learned a lot.

Joys
Ken

-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Greg 
McClellan
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:04 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] calling another webpage within CGI script

Hi,

I had a similar problem a while back which was solved by disabling 
SELinux. http://www.crypt.gen.nz/selinux/disable_selinux.html

-Greg

Re: [CODE4LIB] calling another webpage within CGI script

[Ken Irwin]

Hi Joe,

That's really helpful, thanks.
Actually finding out what the error message is nice:

HTTP Error : 500 Can't connect to www.npr.org:80 (connect: Permission denied)

I've tried this with a few websites and always get the same error, which tells 
me that the problem is on my server side. Any idea what I can change so I don't 
get a permission-denied rejection? I'm not even sure what system I should be 
looking at.

I tried Vishwam's suggestion of granting 777 permissions to both the file and 
the directory and I get the same response. 

Is there some Apache setting someplace that says "hey, don't you go making web 
calls while I'm in charge"? 

(This is a Fedora server running Apache, btw). 

I don't know what to poke at!

Ken


-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Joe 
Hourcle
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 2:29 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] calling another webpage within CGI script


I'd suggest testing the results of the call, rather than just looking for 
content, as an empty response could be a result of the server you're 
connecting to.  (unlikely in this case, but it happens once in a while, 
particularly if you turn off redirection, or support caching). 
Unfortunately, you might have to use LWP::UserAgent, rather than 
LWP::Simple:

#!/bin/perl --

use strict; use warnings;
use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new( timeout => 60 );

my $response = $ua->get('http://www.npr.org/');
if ( $response->is_success() ) {
my $content = $response->decoded_content();
...
} else {
print "HTTP Error : ",$response->status_line(),"\n";
}

__END__

(and changing the shebang line for my location of perl, your version 
worked via both CGI and command line)


oh ... and you don't need the foreach loop:

my $i = @lines;

-Joe

[CODE4LIB] calling another webpage within CGI script

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

I'm moving to a new web server and struggling to get it configured properly. 
The problem of the moment: having a Perl CGI script call another web page in 
the background and make decisions based on its content. On the old server I 
used an antique Perl script called "hcat" (from the Pelican 
book); I've also tried curl 
and LWP::Simple.

In all three cases, I get the same behavior: it works just fine on the command 
line, but when called by the web server through a CGI script, the LWP (or other 
socket connection) gets no results. It sounds like a permissions thing, but I 
don't know what kind of permissions setting to tinker with. In the test script 
below, my command line outputs:

Content-type: text/plain
Getting URL: http://www.npr.org
885 lines

Whereas the web output just says "Getting URL: http://www.npr.org"; - and 
doesn't even get to the "Couldn't get" error message.

Any clue how I can make use of a web page's contents from w/in a CGI script? 
(The actual application has to do with exporting data from our catalog, but I 
need to work out the basic mechanism first.)

Here's the script I'm using.

#!/bin/perl
use LWP::Simple;
print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
my $url = "http://www.npr.org";;
print "Getting URL: $url\n";
my $content = get $url;
die "Couldn't get $url" unless defined $content;
@lines = split (/\n/, $content);
foreach (@lines) { $i++; }
print "\n\n$i lines\n\n";

Any ideas?

Thanks
Ken

Re: [CODE4LIB] find in page, diacritics, etc

[Ken Irwin]

This sounds like a great idea for a Firefox plugin...

Ken

> -Original Message-
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
> Tim Shearer
> Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 12:18 PM
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] find in page, diacritics, etc
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> Looking for help/perspectives.
> 
> Anyone got any clever solutions for allowing folks to find a word with
> diacritics in a rendered web page regardless of whether or not the user
> tries with or without diacritics.
> 
> In indexes this is usually solved by indexing the word with and without,
> so the user gets what they want regardless of how they search.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any ideas/enlightenment,
> Tim

Re: [CODE4LIB] another distribution question: got it!

[Ken Irwin]

Quoth Erik:

There is no difference between tar files created on 32 bit or 64 bit
machines. There can be differences between GNU tar & (for instance)
solaris tar. What problem are you having specifically?

This is the error I was getting:

tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Our sysadmin thought the problem was because server #1 has a 64-bit 
architecture, and server #2 is 32-bit machine.


But Erik's hint on the GNU/Solaris divide lead me in the right 
direction: I found someone referencing a tar+gnu+solaris problem when 
files are FTP'd as text, not as binary. I transferred the files in 
binary mode and everything was fine. I had mistakenly believed that was 
the default mode...


Thanks!
Ken

[CODE4LIB] another distribution question: 32- or 64-bit tarballs

[Ken Irwin]

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone who responded last week about creating an 
installation workflow. I've got that mostly sorted out, and am on to the 
next stage.


I thought it would be a simple matter to TAR up my pile of files. But as 
soon as I tried installing the package on a new server, I ran into 
trouble: my library server is a 64-bit machine, and the second server is 
32-bits. I normally consider that information to be unimportant to daily 
life (read: I really don't know or usually care...). But to my surprise 
that seems to mean that the tarball from one doesn't work on the other.


Is this a common problem? Is there a way around it? Are tarballs really 
mutually unintelligible? I don't generally recall seeing two versions of 
software being distributed. Is there a standard approach to dealing with 
this? It's just a pile of text (php, sql, html) and image files -- 
there's no compiled code of any sort. I would have thought it was sort 
of architecture-neutral. Except it seems that the packaging mechanism 
itself is a problem.


I did check out the book Erik recommended: http://producingoss.com/ to 
see what it has to say about this matter; all it says is "Use Tar!" with 
no ambiguity about architecture. Is everyone in the world on 64-bit 
architecture except this one test server that I have access to?


Any advice?

Thanks!
Ken

--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

[CODE4LIB] code to guide installation of software?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I've got a homegrown piece of software that I'll be presenting at a 
conference in a few weeks (to track title & call-number request 
histories using III's InnReach module). I'm trying to package it up in 
such a way that other users will be able to use the software too, and 
I've never done this before.


Is there any open-source or otherwise freely-available software to 
handle the installation of a LAMP-type product:


- displaying readme type information until everything's set up
- creating databases
- creating data tables (in this case, with a dynamic list of fields 
depending on some user input)

- loading up some pre-determined data into database tables
- editing the config file variables

I could make this up myself, but I wonder if someone has genericized 
this process. (I'm particularly concerned about how to effectively 
pre-load the data tables, not assuming the user has command-line mysql 
access.)


Any ideas?

Thanks
Ken

--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

Re: [CODE4LIB] what's friendlier & less powerful than phpMyAdmin?

[Ken Irwin]

Shawn Boyette ☠ wrote:

I don't think he was asking about *programmers* creating or modifying *schema*.


It's true -- I just want a simple little data entry tool (which I've got 
now! That was easy.)


I've been doing all of my development by hand, without the luxury of 
frameworks, not out of any programmerly virtue, but just out of 
simplicity -- ie, I've not taken the time to learn about frameworks. It 
sure would be nice to take the time at some point, and I'll keep Tim's 
injunctions about abstraction in mind when I do.


*thanks and joy*
Ken


On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Tim Spalding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
  

This gets religious quickly, but, in my experience, programmers who
learn on a framework miss out on their understanding of database
necessities. They may not matter much when you have a low-traffic,
low-content situation, but as your traffic and data grow you're going
to want an understanding of how MySQL optimizes queries, what's
expensive and what's not, and so forth. Although anyone can learn
anything, experience is the best teacher, and, in my experience,
frameworks encourage you to avoid that experience.

For example, the Ruby programmers I've worked with have been unaware
that MySQL only uses one index per table per select, causing them to
index far more than they need, how joins work across different MySQL
data types, the advantages of ganging your inserts together, etc. This
stuff adds up fast.

Of course, the same arguments could be leveled against PHP in favor of
C, against C in favor of assembly, etc.. Abstraction always has merits
and demerits.

Tim





--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

Re: [CODE4LIB] what's friendlier & less powerful than phpMyAdmin?

[Ken Irwin]

Thanks for all the database suggestions. The Scaffolding function Sean 
suggested is more perfect than I dreamed possible.
One day I'd probably benefit from learning the whole CodeIgniter 
framework; for now, this function will do just what I need.


Thanks so much!
Ken

Sean Hannan wrote:

I was in a similar situation and I just used CodeIgniter's scaffolding 
(http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/scaffolding.html ) feature to allow 
my users to add/edit data.  It's pretty safe, and it looks neat and clean, too.

Sean Hannan
Web Developer, Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
 
  
Ken Irwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/30/08 9:35 AM >>> 


Hi folks,

I have some straightforward MySQL data tables that I would like to be 
editable by some of my less- techy colleagues. I tend to think of 
phpMyAdmin as a perfectly serviceable and reasonably interface for 
updating database tables, but I'm told that it's kind of intimidating to 
the uninitiated.


Are there alternatives that are meant for non- admin- types? I'd want 
something with read/write permissions, but that could be targeted at 
just a few tables, wouldn't have any of the more potent tools (drop, 
empty, etc.). In the ideal world, I might like something that would 
prevent users from doing things like accidentally changing primary key 
data and things like that.


I've thought about writing something, but I suspect that would be 
reinventing the wheel. Any ideas?


Thanks,
Ken

--  
Ken Irwin

Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
  


--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

[CODE4LIB] what's friendlier & less powerful than phpMyAdmin?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I have some straightforward MySQL data tables that I would like to be 
editable by some of my less-techy colleagues. I tend to think of 
phpMyAdmin as a perfectly serviceable and reasonably interface for 
updating database tables, but I'm told that it's kind of intimidating to 
the uninitiated.


Are there alternatives that are meant for non-admin-types? I'd want 
something with read/write permissions, but that could be targeted at 
just a few tables, wouldn't have any of the more potent tools (drop, 
empty, etc.). In the ideal world, I might like something that would 
prevent users from doing things like accidentally changing primary key 
data and things like that.


I've thought about writing something, but I suspect that would be 
reinventing the wheel. Any ideas?


Thanks,
Ken

--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

Re: [CODE4LIB] free movie cover images?

[Ken Irwin]

I'm puzzling through all of this too. Could it be the case that the
acquisition of the images would be problematic (the files are owned or
licensed by other companies) but that the use of the images is ok? That
would be a particularly annoying snarl: if you've got it, you can use
it, but you can't get it...

Ken


Peter Keane wrote:

Actually, this is one of a number of links out there (esp. regarding the
Arriba Soft case) suggesting that fair use, regarding thumbnail images,
is quite often the applicable standard, the key (often) being that there
is no "Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work".

It's just depressing to me that the society, in the shadow of DCMA, RIAA
action, etc. has essentially cowered in the face of these copyright
issues, and I would go so far as to say the we librarians often abrogate
our duty. I mean it is our job to *create* access to information
not *prevent* it. Right? Geez, nothing like the free flow of information
getting privatized. My aim is just to promote the idea of assuming that
"information wants to be free" and proceed under that assumption unless
there is clear and obvious proof otherwise.

Looked at another way: a thumbnail is just a bit of "visual" metadata,
and you cannot copyright metadata.

--peter keane

Re: [CODE4LIB] free movie cover images?

[Ken Irwin]

I suppose I'm more concerned with copyright than harvesting -- I can
have a minion harvest the images by hand if they're legal to use.

Ken

Peter Murray wrote:

IMDB has cover art for films, but I haven't looked to see if they
provide an API to get to them /a la/ Google Books.


Peter
- --
Peter Murrayhttp://www.pandc.org/peter/work/
Assistant Director, New Service Development  tel:+1-614-728-3600;ext=338
OhioLINK: the Ohio Library and Information NetworkColumbus, Ohio
The Disruptive Library Technology Jesterhttp://dltj.org/
Attrib-Noncomm-Share   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

[CODE4LIB] free movie cover images?

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

With some limitations, the Google Books API allows folks to access book
covers for free. (How's that working out? Anyone having luck with it?)
-- what about movie/DVD/VHS covers? Are there any free sources for those
images?

I'd like to work up a virtual-browsing interface for our library's
pretty small collection of feature films, and I'd love to include
covers. Any ideas on how I might get them? Anyone else doing this?

Thanks
Ken

--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect

[Ken Irwin]

Is their any hope for those of us who rely on our Expect-monkeys in III?
My most important Expect scripts use the create-list function, and I
hope that'll stay around for a while. But I'm sure they'll eventually go
away too.

Has III shown any interest in building in their own macros/automation
features to do the sorts of tasks for which we rely on Expect?

Ken

Kyle Banerjee wrote:

Last week, III announced that they are removing a number of
circulation functions from the telnet menus in a software update that
became generally available this month. From what I've been able to
surmise, functions that will be removed include placing holds and
checking things in or or out. Removing these menu options will break
scripts that have been in use for years at institutions in our
consortium, and lots more staff time will be required to perform
certain tasks after some systems are upgraded.

Apparently, III recently discovered that a bug involving holds was
caused by the character-based system, but it is also related to a
desire to port everything to Millennium. Based on the reasoning behind
the announcement, future updates are likely result in other mission
critical scripts breaking as other character-based functionality is
deprecated.

Just a reminder of the risks of relying on automation that depend on
interfaces that are losing vendor support.

kyle



--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

[CODE4LIB] PS-Re: looking for code example: AJAX + MySQL + PHP

[Ken Irwin]

It occurs to me that I didn't specify much about my environment. I'm
using PHP + MySQL to do my searching, and hoping for AJAX to make it a
bit more dynamic. I don't have and am not at all familiar with Ruby on
Rails, so I'm mostly hoping for a lightweight JavaScript approach. I did
download the Scriptaculous framework/library which I thought might do
the trick, but I've not figured out a way to make that work. (It seems
to be more into regular auto-completion rather than narrowing the
results display.

Ken

Ken Irwin wrote:

Hi folks,

I'm looking for what ought to be a straightfoward and easily-available
code example to copy from: an html form that narrows its search
results on the fly based on user input. I've had no trouble finding
form-autocomplete functions that help the user find a search term, but
I'm looking for something a little different. I want:

1. The textbox up here; user types content and the content of #2
narrows accordingly

2. A separate div with some fairly complicated entries based on the
search results down here in a separate div

Does anyone have some straightforward code for this? (I'm fairly
certain that Ch. 4 of /Ajax for dummies/ had a Google-search example
of this, but the sample code I downloaded for that a year ago has
ceased functioning, and I don't have the book in my possession right
now to re-download that book's examples.

And likewise: any favorite Ajax sites that give lots of examples +
code? I'm finding that to be less prevalent than I'd imagined...

Thanks!
Ken


--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University


--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University

[CODE4LIB] looking for code example: AJAX narrowing search results

[Ken Irwin]

Hi folks,

I'm looking for what ought to be a straightfoward and easily-available
code example to copy from: an html form that narrows its search results
on the fly based on user input. I've had no trouble finding
form-autocomplete functions that help the user find a search term, but
I'm looking for something a little different. I want:

1. The textbox up here; user types content and the content of #2 narrows
accordingly

2. A separate div with some fairly complicated entries based on the
search results down here in a separate div

Does anyone have some straightforward code for this? (I'm fairly certain
that Ch. 4 of /Ajax for dummies/ had a Google-search example of this,
but the sample code I downloaded for that a year ago has ceased
functioning, and I don't have the book in my possession right now to
re-download that book's examples.

And likewise: any favorite Ajax sites that give lots of examples + code?
I'm finding that to be less prevalent than I'd imagined...

Thanks!
Ken


--
Ken Irwin
Reference Librarian
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University