Re: [CODE4LIB] Creating/maintaining metadata for intangible concepts

[Laura Krier]

I don't know what system these collections are in, but isn't this what
tagging is for? The idea has died out in libraries, but this seems like a
perfect use case for a folksonomy. :-)

Laura
On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 5:21 AM Brian Kennison  wrote:

> > Has anyone come up with a good way to provide this sort of access?
> Thanks,
>
> Isn't this what topic-maps are for?
>
> Topics exist independently of any resources but allow you to link
> resources to topics (it's kind of like classification in traditional
> library setting). The problem I'm having is that it is hard to find an
> engine. No one is working on it any more but the problem still exist. I've
> been looking at a python engine (mappa) and a python base wiki
> (meduse-wiki) but I'm still not there. There are lots of unanswered
> questions but I haven't seen any better solutions.
>
> --Brian
>

Re: [CODE4LIB] Alexander Street Press and Google Analytics

[Laura Krier]

Hi Paige,
If you have time next week that would be great. I'm actually out of the
library until October 12. I will try to google it too. :-)

Laura
On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 7:38 PM Paige Mann  wrote:

> Hi Laura,
>
> We encountered this earlier in the year with Web of Science databases. As
> Ranti pointed out, if you've configured Google Analytics to do cross-domain
> tracking between library domains, Google Analytics will attach some code at
> the end of cross-domain tracked URLs. We fixed the problem so that Google
> Analytics no longer adds code to the end of a URL, but I can't remember
> quite what we did. I won't have time this week but might be able to dig
> around next week if you'd like. Let me know. Also, do you use Google
> Analytics by itself or do you use Google Tag Manager?
>
> Thanks,
> Paige
>
>
> Paige Mann
> Physical Sciences Librarian/Web Experiences Librarian
> Armacost Library
> University of Redlands
>
>

[CODE4LIB] Alexander Street Press and Google Analytics

[Laura Krier]

Hey folks,
I'm hoping someone else on this list has experienced this and might have
some ideas for me. We use Google Analytics on our website, catalog, and our
discovery system. GA appends a string of characters to the end of URLs when
you leave a site, and while this plays fine with most of our e-resources,
it breaks Alexander Street Press's link resolver system.

Has anyone else noticed this? Any ideas how to resolve this? I'm talking
with the folks at ASP but they have never heard of this.

Laura

Re: [CODE4LIB] talking about digital collections vs electronic resources

[Laura Krier]

I agree that articles is incomplete, but I also think sometimes we shoot
ourselves in the feet trying to be totally comprehensive in how we describe
things, and end up confusing people. What students think they want are
articles so we should use that term as a pointer to our databases. Good
instruction can help them understand all the different kinds of resources
available to them.

As far as digital collections go (and whatever print special collections we
have) the key is helping students understand what primary source materials
are and why they might use them. The format isn't as relevant, in my
opinion. I personally prefer to call all our primary source collections
Special Collections or primary source collections without immediately
differentiating between digital and print.

I think too often we present our collections to students through the
framework of our own workflows and functional handling of materials and
less in terms of what they might be used for by students. It would be
interesting to wipe out our current categorizations and really re-think how
we present resources in terms of their functions for research and teaching.

Just my $0.02. :-)

Laura



On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:42 AM McCanna, Terran 
tmcca...@georgialibraries.org wrote:

 Agreed - most patrons are usually confused by all of those terms
 (including databases) and aren't going to care about the differences
 between them, they just want the content. Articles is understandable, but
 incomplete - Articles and Other Online Resources is inclusive and easier
 to understand, but too long. I usually go with something like Online
 Resources to try to balance the understandability with the intent.


 Terran McCanna
 PINES Program Manager
 Georgia Public Library Service
 1800 Century Place, Suite 150
 Atlanta, GA 30345
 404-235-7138
 tmcca...@georgialibraries.org
 - Original Message -
 From: Erik Sandall esand...@milibrary.org
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2015 12:34:03 PM
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] talking about digital collections vs electronic
 resources

 Most patrons won't understand the meanings of digital collections and
 electronic resources. We should use terminology that they would use.
 My brain is a fog this morning so I don't have any brilliant suggestions
 at the moment. There is likely to be UX-type research about this in the
 current literature. Databases is probably better, for example.
 Articles is probably even better than databases.

 For what it's worth...

 /Erik

 --
 Erik Sandall, MLIS
 Electronic Services Librarian  Webmaster
 Mechanics' Institute
 57 Post Street
 San Francisco, CA 94104
 415-393-0111
 esand...@milibrary.org


 On 3/18/2015 9:25 AM, Matt Sherman wrote:
  I haven't done any testing on that, but your understanding it the
  conventional on in the field.
 
  On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Derek Merleaux 
 derek.merle...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
  I've always been inclined to use digital collections to talk about a
  collection of things that have been digitized or perhaps including born
  digital things that are part of a collection in an archival sort of
 way.
  I prefer the term electronic resources for the databases and other
  things...
  -Derek
 
  On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 12:04 PM, Jenn C jen...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Hi-
 
  We're having a discussion about some web site labeling and navigation.
 We
  have a list of digital collections which are collections that contain
  items we've digitized. There was concern expressed that we have
 something
  labeled digital collections patrons might think that includes
 databases
  and other items.
 
  Has anyone done user testing around this or have any experience/ideas
  about
  how to handle the difference between these?
 
  Thanks!
  jenn
 
 

[CODE4LIB] software to limit computer login time

[Laura Krier]

Hey folks,
I'm starting to investigate software that we could install on a few of our
public workstations that would limit the length of time a user could be
logged in. This would be done to establish a few computers as print only
or brief use only computers. I've seen this in other libraries, but I'm
having a hard time searching: all I'm finding are tools for parental
control of home computers.

Does anyone have any software recommendations for me?

Laura

Re: [CODE4LIB] Technology for Librarians / Libraries for Technologians

[Laura Krier]

I think Craig's comment about technologists in libraries needing to
understand how patrons gather and consume information points to something a
little bit bigger: most libraries differ from traditional IT companies in
that there are far fewer people to work on large tech projects. So
technologists need to have a better understanding of things that, in a tech
company, would probably be handled by project managers, content
strategists, or user experience designers. They are wearing way more hats,
and need to be involved in more of the conceptualizing and design parts of
IT projects, not just the programming.

Laura


[image: Laura Krier on about.me]

Laura Krier
about.me/laurakrier
  http://about.me/laurakrier


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 12:50 PM, Craig Boman craig.bo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Micheal,

 You present some interesting questions. I think the answers you get might
 depend entirely on what you define as the role of librarians in IT. For
 instance, yes library IT professionals do have a role in PC support in
 libraries, and sadly printing still takes up a lot of our time. These types
 of skills are translatable across the IT industry. However, when you are
 considering the role of IT librarians in the support and distribution of
 online resources, the skills are much different. If I may explain, to
 assist reference librarians in designing information delivery mechanisms
 (ie- library catalogs, patron APIs, proxied databases, etc) we IT
 librarians must have a thorough knowledge of how patrons gather and consume
 information, and often we are required to anticipate information needs,
 skills which an MLIS is great at developing but skills which traditional IT
 professionals may lack.

 Based on the assumption that most Directors of library IT more than likely
 delegate PC support, I presume a good library IT director would do best to
 know more about the about Library IT rather than Traditional IT.
 However I am always open to changing my opinion.

  All the best,

 Craig Boman, MLIS (Ph.D student)
 Applications Support Specialist
 University of Dayton Libraries
 937-229-3674
 cbom...@udayton.edu



 On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Michael B. Klein mbkl...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Hi all,
 
  I was talking this afternoon with a friend of mine about what makes a
 good
  Director of Library IT. Does the job lie more within librarianship or IT?
  (Depends on the library.) Is there a natural separation between the
  Library IT of ILS/MARC/e-resource/circ. technology maintenance and the
  Traditional IT of network management, staff and public workstation
  provisioning, telecom, etc? (Also depends on the library.)
 
  I know a lot gets said (here and elsewhere) about Technology for
 Librarians
  - important skills and standards, what's
  important/useful/trending/ignorable, and the like. But I'd love to start
 a
  discussion (or join one, if it already exists elsewhere) about the other
  side of things - the library-specific stuff that experienced IT folks
 might
  need to learn or get used to to be successful in a library environment.
 Not
  just technical stuff like MARC, but also ethical issues like fair use,
  information privacy, freedom of access, and the like.
 
  Of course there are plenty of snarky answers, and I welcome them all, but
  some constructive input would be nice, too. :-) I hope to compile a So
  You're an Experienced IT Worker/Administrator Who Wants to Work in a
  Library? wiki page with pointers to resources.
 
  So there's my vague intro. Have at it, code4lib.
 
  Michael
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Creating a Linked Data Service

[Laura Krier]

And a further thought: I thought part of the point of linked data is that
we don't really know what people might want to do with our data. Who
knows--maybe there is some enterprising CS student on your campus who will
make an awesome app using your real-time availability data. Maybe once
you've figured out how it works you can apply it to other things (ahem,
circulation availability, anyone?).

Laura


[image: Laura Krier on about.me]

Laura Krier
about.me/laurakrier
  http://about.me/laurakrier


On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 7:07 AM, Mark A. Matienzo mark.matie...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Per Laura's message, and what I think was the underlying idea behind Mike's
 post, I think there's still a great opportunity to learn something new.
 Perhaps you might want to look at WebSocket [0], and Jason Ronallo's
 presentation from Code4lib 2014 [1] was a great intro. It seems like this
 might be a good candidate for showing real-time availability information.

 [0] https://www.websocket.org/
 [1] http://jronallo.github.io/presentations/code4lib-2014-websockets/

 Cheers,
 Mark


 --
 Mark A. Matienzo m...@matienzo.org
 Director of Technology, Digital Public Library of America


 On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:23 AM, Shaun Ellis sha...@princeton.edu wrote:

  I don't understand the publish it and they will come mentality when it
  comes to linked data.  If you can't define a clear use case for your own
  data infrastructure, then I can't see how you would justify the time
 spent.
 
  The making data available to the world at large is a nice byproduct,
 but
  you can't write a use case for unknown users with unknown goals.  So,
  if you have no plans to use the data in some productive way, then I'm
 sure
  you have more pressing things to do with your time.
 
  -Shaun
 
 
  On 8/7/14 9:48 AM, Scott Prater wrote:
 
  Echoing others... the use case for linked data appears to be making data
  available to the world at large, unknown consumers, who may find a use
  for it that you never imagined.
 
  Name authority services (like VIAF), catalogs of public resources, map
  data -- all these are good candidates for a linked data approach.
 
  Hardware availability at your library?  Not so much.  It's hard to
  imagine a case where that information would be useful outside your
 walls.
 
  -- Scott
 
  On 08/07/2014 08:09 AM, Ethan Gruber wrote:
 
  I agree with others saying linked data is overkill here. If you don't
  have
  an audience in mind or a specific purpose for implementing linked data,
  it's not worth it.
 
 
  On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Jason Stirnaman jstirna...@kumc.edu
  wrote:
 
   Mike,
  Check out
  http://json-ld.org/,
  http://json-ld.org/primer/latest/, and
  https://github.com/digitalbazaar/pyld
 
  But, if you haven't yet sketched out a model for *your* data, then
  the LD
  stuff will just be a distraction. The information on Linked Data seems
  overly complex because trying to represent data for the Semantic Web
  gets
  complex - and verbose.
 
  As others have suggested, it's never a bad idea to just do the
 simplest
  thing that could possibly work.[1] Mark recommended writing a simple
  API.
  That would be a good start to understanding your data model and to
  eventually serving LD. And, you may find that it's enough for now.
 
  1. http://www.xprogramming.com/Practices/PracSimplest.html
 
  Jason
 
  Jason Stirnaman
  Lead, Library Technology Services
  University of Kansas Medical Center
  jstirna...@kumc.edu
  913-588-7319
 
  On Aug 6, 2014, at 1:45 PM, Michael Beccaria 
 mbecca...@paulsmiths.edu
  wrote:
 
   I have recently had the opportunity to create a new library web page
  and
 
  host it on my own servers. One of the elements of the new page that I
  want
  to improve upon is providing live or near live information on
 technology
  availability (10 of 12 laptops available, etc.). That data resides on
 my
  ILS server and I thought it might be a good time to upgrade the
  bubble gum
  and duct tape solution I now have to creating a real linked data
 service
  that would provide that availability information to the web server.
 
 
  The problem is there is a lot of overly complex and complicated
 
  information out there onlinked data and RDF and the semantic web etc.
  and
  I'm looking for a simple guide to creating a very simple linked data
  service with php or python or whatever. Does such a resource exist?
 Any
  advice on where to start?
 
  Thanks,
 
  Mike Beccaria
  Systems Librarian
  Head of Digital Initiative
  Paul Smith's College
  518.327.6376
  mbecca...@paulsmiths.edu
  Become a friend of Paul Smith's Library on Facebook today!
 
 
 
 
 
  --
  Shaun Ellis
  User Interface Developer, Digital Initiatives
  Princeton University Library
  609.258.1698
 
  “Any darn fool can get complicated. It takes genius to attain
 simplicity.”
  -Pete Seeger
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Creating a Linked Data Service

[Laura Krier]

Well, I am in the same boat as you and my thought was, although it might be 
overkill, it might also be a good, small scale opportunity to experiment with 
something new and learn a new technology. Sometimes we have to take those 
learning opportunities where we can get them. 

Laura

Sent from my iPad

 On Aug 7, 2014, at 5:55 AM, Michael Beccaria mbecca...@paulsmiths.edu wrote:
 
 I'm a one man shop and sometimes go to these conferences where many of you 
 brilliant people are making these brilliant solutions making these ubiquitous 
 black box data services that talk to one another using a standardized query 
 language and I felt inspired and thought maybe I have been doing patch work 
 on a job that really ought to be done a better way. I'm all about the bubble 
 gum and duct tape stuff but I was at a point where it would have been a good 
 time to migrate to something a little more robust. I'm getting the impression 
 that for the size of the projects I'm working on linked data and other 
 similar solutions are very much overkill. I'll have a PHP script output some 
 custom xml that can be ingested on the other end and call it a day. Done :-)
 
 This is also, at least for me, a challenge I have with being a 
 wear-a-lot-of-hats-and-sometimes-write-code person at a small institution. 
 Most of the time I'm not sure what I am supposed to be doing so I just make a 
 solution that works without having others to bounce ideas off of. Thanks for 
 the support.
 
 Mike Beccaria
 Systems Librarian
 Head of Digital Initiative
 Paul Smith's College
 518.327.6376
 mbecca...@paulsmiths.edu
 Become a friend of Paul Smith's Library on Facebook today!
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of 
 Riley-Huff, Debra
 Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2014 11:52 PM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Creating a Linked Data Service
 
 I agree with Roy. Seems like something that could be easily handled with PHP 
 or Python scripts. Someone on the list may even have a homegrown solution 
 (improved duct tape) they would be happy to share. I fail to see what the 
 project has to do with linked data or why you would go that route.
 
 Debra Riley-Huff
 Head of Web Services  Associate Professor JD Williams Library University of 
 Mississippi University, MS 38677
 662-915-7353
 riley...@olemiss.edu
 
 
 On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Roy Tennant roytenn...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I'm puzzled about why you want to use linked data for this. At first 
 glance the requirement simply seems to be to fetch data from your ILS 
 server, which likely could be sent in any number of simple packages 
 that don't require an RDF wrapper. If you are the only one consuming 
 this data then you can use whatever (simplistic, proprietary) format 
 you want. I just don't see what benefits you would get by creating 
 linked data in this case that you wouldn't get by doing something 
 much more straightforward and simple. And don't be harshing on duct 
 tape. Duct tape is a perfectly fine solution for many problems.
 Roy
 
 
 On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Michael Beccaria 
 mbecca...@paulsmiths.edu
 wrote:
 
 I have recently had the opportunity to create a new library web page 
 and host it on my own servers. One of the elements of the new page 
 that I
 want
 to improve upon is providing live or near live information on 
 technology availability (10 of 12 laptops available, etc.). That 
 data resides on my ILS server and I thought it might be a good time 
 to upgrade the bubble
 gum
 and duct tape solution I now have to creating a real linked data 
 service that would provide that availability information to the web server.
 
 The problem is there is a lot of overly complex and complicated 
 information out there onlinked data and RDF and the semantic web 
 etc. and I'm looking for a simple guide to creating a very simple 
 linked data service with php or python or whatever. Does such a 
 resource exist? Any advice on where to start?
 Thanks,
 
 Mike Beccaria
 Systems Librarian
 Head of Digital Initiative
 Paul Smith's College
 518.327.6376
 mbecca...@paulsmiths.edu
 Become a friend of Paul Smith's Library on Facebook today!
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] sharing google analytics data

[Laura Krier]

This request brings to mind something I've been thinking about for a long
time: There is a serious dearth of web analytics benchmarking data in the
library community. I know our web stats but I have no idea if they are good
or bad or average. Trying to compare with other general sites is not very
meaningful, because library websites have such specific goals that are very
different from the goals of commercial websites.

I've been pondering for awhile how we could collectively build a dataset
for benchmarking, but my pondering hasn't gotten very far. I would love to
hear what other people think.

Laura


[image: Laura Krier on about.me]

Laura Krier
about.me/laurakrier
  http://about.me/laurakrier


On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 6:24 AM, Hicks, William william.hi...@unt.edu
wrote:

 Morning All,

 Would anyone of you be able to share some of your Google Analytics Data
 with me?  I’m looking at updating some IA and design on our main library
 site and want to see what other people’s data look like since we all share
 many of the same types of problems and many of us have variant approaches
 to shuffling our users around.  I’d love a “Read  Analyze” permissions if
 you’d be willing to give it out, but a PDF export of the top several
 hundred rows of your top content “all pages” report (over the last 12
 months) would work too. Please email me off list if you are interested.

 Thanks in advance.

 William Hicks

 Digital Libraries: User Interfaces
 University of North Texas
 1155 Union Circle #305190
 Denton, TX 76203-5017

 email: william.hi...@unt.edu  | phone: 940.891.6703 | fax: 940.369.8882 |
 web: http://www.library.unt.edu

Re: [CODE4LIB] College Question!

[Laura Krier]

I wouldn't knock a liberal arts education, especially based only on high
school experience. It's sort of the point of college: to be able to learn
and understand about a wide range of fields and subjects. Otherwise you
might as well go to trade school. College isn't just about getting a job
when you graduate, but about learning how to think and understand different
perspectives.

And liberal arts includes the sciences, which I think people tend to
forget. We think oh, liberal arts are the arts and humanities but they
really encompass every school and department in a university.

And as other people have mentioned, there are key skills you can learn from
courses in English, anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology, etc. This
is where you learn to write, to communicate effectively, to understand how
people think (user experience, anyone?). These are all crucial skills that
separate leaders and those who are more successful in their fields from
those who are not. I'm not saying you can ONLY learn these skills in
college, from a liberal arts education, but it sure helps.

I also don't think there's anything wrong at all with going to a trade
school or whatever we call them these days, and learning a skill set
outside of the realm of a liberal arts education. It really depends on what
you want to do and how fast you want to get to doing it.

Laura


[image: Laura Krier on about.me]

Laura Krier
about.me/laurakrier
  http://about.me/laurakrier


On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 11:11 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.com
wrote:

 
 From: Code for Libraries [CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Laura
 Krier [laura.kr...@gmail.com]
 Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 1:22 AM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] College Question!

 Hi Riley,
 Congrats on starting college in the fall! If you like to learn, college
 is pretty much the best place ever.

 College next fall, but almost there, pretty scary  :)

 I second others in not necessarily recommending a bachelors in library/
 information science. I would actually suggest computer science if you're at
 all skilled with math and logic. You'll probably have the best
 post-graduate opportunities even if you change your mind about libraries.
 
 But make sure you get a well-rounded liberal arts education. Take
 advantage of gen ed courses to study things outside of your major whenever
 you can. All people are served well by having a broad base of knowledge, in
 my opinion. And you'll need solid writing skills no matter what you do in
 life so make sure you practice those every chance you get. :-)

 I am meh on liberal arts, my high school is Liberal Arts and I really
 don't like it

 Basically, as long as you learn to be a lifelong learner, it doesn't
 really matter what you major in I think. You'll always have to learn new
 things anyway.

 Congratulations again!

 Laura
 PS- To more directly answer your question, I majored in literature and
 women's studies in college. Now I'm a web services librarian. I kind of
 wish I had a more solid computer science background but I'm still able to
 learn what I need to.

 Sent from my iPhone

  On May 28, 2014, at 9:49 PM, Amy Drayer amost...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Dear Riley et al:
 
  I was thinking the same thing as Coral.  I have a humanities undergrad
  degree; a computer science oriented degree would certainly have been
  beneficial, especially with an emphasis on network and server
  administration, or even web development depending on your interest (as a
  systems librarian I also managed the website and catalog).  The
  library-oriented education can wait until grad school.
 
  Honestly, I think we come from a variety of backgrounds.  My liberal arts
  foundation works for me (I feel my education was well rounded in a way a
  science or IT degree may not have been), but I would definitely have
 wanted
  some more technical classes such as I mentioned above if I had known I
  would be in this field.
 
  In peace,
 
  Amy
 
  In peace,
 
  Amy M. Drayer, MLIS
  Senior IT Specialist, Web Developer
  amost...@gmail.com
  http://www.puzumaki.com
 
 
  On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 11:24 PM, Coral Sheldon-Hess 
 co...@sheldon-hess.org
  wrote:
 
  Riley,
 
  Whatever you do, don't major in library science as an undergrad. Maybe
  minor in it, along with some other major, if you want, but it's not
 useful
  by itself as an undergraduate degree--most libraries want librarians to
  have the MLIS. And what if you change your mind after a few years and
 don't
  want to get the masters? Do something you could get a career in--or work
  in, part time, to afford the MLIS.
 
  If you want to be a systems librarian, why not get a degree in systems
  engineering or IT? (Seriously, there are degrees in
  IThttp://www.ccsu.edu/page.cfm?p=332now, what a world!) Computer
  science wouldn't hurt, if you don't mind
  theory, and you can get some good foundational stuff that will help

Re: [CODE4LIB] College Question!

[Laura Krier]

Hi Riley,
Congrats on starting college in the fall! If you like to learn, college is 
pretty much the best place ever. 

I second others in not necessarily recommending a bachelors in library/ 
information science. I would actually suggest computer science if you're at all 
skilled with math and logic. You'll probably have the best post-graduate 
opportunities even if you change your mind about libraries. 

But make sure you get a well-rounded liberal arts education. Take advantage of 
gen ed courses to study things outside of your major whenever you can. All 
people are served well by having a broad base of knowledge, in my opinion. And 
you'll need solid writing skills no matter what you do in life so make sure you 
practice those every chance you get. :-)

Basically, as long as you learn to be a lifelong learner, it doesn't really 
matter what you major in I think. You'll always have to learn new things 
anyway. 

Congratulations again! 

Laura
PS- To more directly answer your question, I majored in literature and women's 
studies in college. Now I'm a web services librarian. I kind of wish I had a 
more solid computer science background but I'm still able to learn what I need 
to. 

Sent from my iPhone

 On May 28, 2014, at 9:49 PM, Amy Drayer amost...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Dear Riley et al:
 
 I was thinking the same thing as Coral.  I have a humanities undergrad
 degree; a computer science oriented degree would certainly have been
 beneficial, especially with an emphasis on network and server
 administration, or even web development depending on your interest (as a
 systems librarian I also managed the website and catalog).  The
 library-oriented education can wait until grad school.
 
 Honestly, I think we come from a variety of backgrounds.  My liberal arts
 foundation works for me (I feel my education was well rounded in a way a
 science or IT degree may not have been), but I would definitely have wanted
 some more technical classes such as I mentioned above if I had known I
 would be in this field.
 
 In peace,
 
 Amy
 
 In peace,
 
 Amy M. Drayer, MLIS
 Senior IT Specialist, Web Developer
 amost...@gmail.com
 http://www.puzumaki.com
 
 
 On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 11:24 PM, Coral Sheldon-Hess co...@sheldon-hess.org
 wrote:
 
 Riley,
 
 Whatever you do, don't major in library science as an undergrad. Maybe
 minor in it, along with some other major, if you want, but it's not useful
 by itself as an undergraduate degree--most libraries want librarians to
 have the MLIS. And what if you change your mind after a few years and don't
 want to get the masters? Do something you could get a career in--or work
 in, part time, to afford the MLIS.
 
 If you want to be a systems librarian, why not get a degree in systems
 engineering or IT? (Seriously, there are degrees in
 IThttp://www.ccsu.edu/page.cfm?p=332now, what a world!) Computer
 science wouldn't hurt, if you don't mind
 theory, and you can get some good foundational stuff that will help with
 the information science part of libraries and information science.
 
 The school where I got my MLIS had an Information Science department that
 was mostly IT, too. So, that's a possibility.
 
 --
 Coral Sheldon-Hess
 http://sheldon-hess.org/coral
 @web_kunoichi
 
 
 On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 7:17 PM, Riley Childs rchi...@cucawarriors.com
 wrote:
 
 I was curious about the type of degrees people had. I am heading off to
 college next year (class of 2015) and am trying to figure out what to
 major
 in. I want to be a systems librarian, but I can't tell what to major in!
 I
 wanted to hear about what paths people took and how they ended up where
 they are now.
 
 BTW Y'All at NC State need a better tour bus driver (not the c4l tour,
 the
 admissions tour) ;) the bus ride was like a rickety roller coaster...
 
 
 Also, if you know of any scholarships please let me know ;) you would be
 my BFF :P
 
 
 Riley Childs
 Student
 Asst. Head of IT Services
 Charlotte United Christian Academy
 (704) 497-2086
 RileyChilds.net
 Sent from my Windows Phone, please excuse mistakes
 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Job Interview : A Libcoder's Helpful Advices

[Laura Krier]

One of the pieces of advice I give to job seekers is to keep in mind that
the interview is a two-way thing. It's not so much that you need to go in
and prove that you deserve to work there, but that you should also be
thinking about whether you WANT to work there. They have to win you over,
too. I think reframing the situation mentally can be very helpful for job
seekers because it puts you in a position where you are more confident, and
on an equal footing.

If you've been asked in for an interview, they've already determined that
you're qualified. Now they want to find out if it'll be a good fit. And you
want to know that, too! It's frustrating to get a new job and then realize
that you don't actually want to work there or feel happy there. So in terms
of thinking about questions for them, think about what you need to know to
determine if you'll be happy working somewhere, if the culture is one you
can thrive in.

Just my 2 cents.

Laura


On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Jimmy Ghaphery jghap...@vcu.edu wrote:

 In responding I'm not raining on the idea of wiki, etc...

 My perspective is from that of a hiring manager for technical positions.
 Some of my current favorite soft questions:

 1. What was the last program you wrote and what did it do?
 2. What was the last thing you learned about programming?
 3. Tell us about a programming mistake you made, and how you corrected it.
 4. Have you ever worked on another person's code that you thought was any
 good?

 In general what I try to look for is not any specific right answer, but
 an adventurous and open attitude embedded in answers:

 Do they have some reason/calling for working in the education sector, some
 enthusiasm to providing information access?
 Will they be able to learn next year's challenge?
 How will they work with both technical and non-technical people?
 Can they listen?
 Do they have enough ego to be disruptive and move us forward?
 Can they keep their ego in check to avoid disruption?

 I also love hearing and thinking about candidates' questions. Are they
 reeling off boilerplate stuff or is there some research behind them? Does
 the question arise out of any of the conversation we've already had about
 the position (demonstrated listening)?

 So for me...while there is certainly a technical proficiency that needs to
 be there depending on the position, potential for growth and people skills
 are often distinguishing characteristics.

 All the best and good luck with the interview,

 Jimmy



 On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Samantha Winn samantharw...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Although it is not specific to code-oriented positions, the Hiring
  Librarians blog maintains a very extensive spreadsheet of interview
  questions. You can access the spreadsheet on the Hiring Librarians
  homepagehttp://hiringlibrarians.com/or at the link below.
 
 
 
 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuYsyqpmSJUHdFJOS0toVC1tTmNwTXVBM0xMdW5UR3c#gid=0
  
 
 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuYsyqpmSJUHdFJOS0toVC1tTmNwTXVBM0xMdW5UR3c#gid=0
  
 



 --
 Jimmy Ghaphery
 Head, Digital Technologies
 VCU Libraries
 804-827-3551




-- 
Laura Krier

laurapants.comhttp://laurapants.com/?utm_source=email_sigutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=email

Re: [CODE4LIB] barriers to open metadata?

[Laura Krier]

 be easier for a) as they should be able to
 identify
 the OCLC Number and hence use the linked data from it’s URI 
 http://worldcat.org/oclc/{ocn} to pick up the link to it’s work.

 Tools such as xISBN http://xisbn.worldcat.org/
 xisbnadmin/doc/api.htm
 can
 step you towards identifier lookups and are openly available for low
 volume
 usage.

 Citation lookup is more a bib lookup feature, that you could get an

 OCLC

 Number from. One of colleagues may be helpful on the particulars of

 this.

 Apologies for being WorldCat specific, but Karen did ask.

 ~Richard.


 On 30 April 2014 17:15, Karen Coyle li...@kcoyle.net wrote:

My question has to do with discoverability. Let's say that I have
 a

 bibliographic database and I want to add the OCLC work identifiers
 to
 it.
 Obviously I don't want to do it by hand. I might have ISBNs, but in

 some

 cases I will have a regular author/title-type citation.

 and let's say that I am asking this for two different institutions:
 a) is an OCLC member institution
 b) is not

 Thanks,
 kc




 On 4/30/14, 8:47 AM, Dan Scott wrote:

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Roy Tennant 
 roytenn...@gmail.com

 wrote:

This has now instead become a reasonable recommendation

 concerning ODC-BY licensing [3] but the confusion and uncertainty
 about which records an OCLC member may redistribute remains.

 [3] http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/2012/201248.en.html

Allow me to try to put this confusion and uncertainty to rest

 once

 and
 for
 all:

 ALL THE THINGS. ALL.

 At least as far as we are concerned. I think it's well past time
 to
 put
 the
 past in the past.

That's great, Roy. That's a *lot* simpler than parsing the

 recommendations, WCRR, community norms, and such at [A, B] :)

 Meanwhile, we have just put nearly 200 million works records up

 as

 linked
 open data. [1], [2], [3]. If that doesn't rock the library open

 linked

 data
 world, then no one is paying attention.
 Roy

 [1] http://oclc.org/en-US/news/releases/2014/201414dublin.html
 [2]
 http://dataliberate.com/2014/04/worldcat-works-197-million-
 nuggets-of-linked-data/
 [3] http://hangingtogether.org/?p=3811

Yes, that is really awesome. But Laura was asking about
 barriers

 to

 open metadata, so damn you for going off-topic with PR around a lack
 of barriers to some metadata (which, for those who have not looked
 yet, have a nice ODC-BY licensing statement at the bottom of a
 given
 Works page) :)

 A. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use.en.html
 B. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use/data-
 licensing/questions.en.html

--

 Karen Coyle
 kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
 m: 1-510-435-8234
 skype: kcoylenet


  --
 Richard Wallis
 Founder, Data Liberate
 http://dataliberate.com
 Tel: +44 (0)7767 886 005

 Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
 Skype: richard.wallis1
 Twitter: @rjw


  --
 Karen Coyle
 kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
 m: 1-510-435-8234
 skype: kcoylenet

  --
 Karen Coyle
 kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
 m: 1-510-435-8234
 skype: kcoylenet


 --
 Karen Coyle
 kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
 m: 1-510-435-8234
 skype: kcoylenet




-- 
Laura Krier

laurapants.comhttp://laurapants.com/?utm_source=email_sigutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=email

[CODE4LIB] barriers to open metadata?

[Laura Krier]

Hi Code4Libbers,

I'd like to find out from as many people as are interested what barriers
you feel exist right now to you releasing your library's bibliographic
metadata openly. I'm curious about all kinds of barriers: technical,
political, financial, cultural. Even if it seems obvious, I'd like to hear
about it.

Thanks in advance for your feedback! You can send it to me privately if
you'd prefer.

Laura

-- 
Laura Krier

laurapants.comhttp://laurapants.com/?utm_source=email_sigutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=email

Re: [CODE4LIB] Libraries and IT Innovation

[Laura Krier]

I agree with Peter, that we have to stop thinking about what we do in terms
of the technology du jour. That will keep us squarely in the realm of
doing the things that we have always done and are already doing. When I
think about innovation in libraries, I think about going back to our
mission and thinking very large-scale about how we would achieve that
mission without reference to existing systems.

For example, why do we focus so much on user discovery through our
catalogs? Even when we are trying to create innovative catalogs, we are
still focused on the catalog. Users (or members, if you ascribe to Lankes
philosophy of librarianship) don't find information that way, and they
don't want to. We need to start thinking from a community perspective, not
from a library perspective. What are people who don't use the library doing?

I wonder sometimes how many of us use our own services, as users, not as
librarians. For example, I work in an academic library setting, but I'm an
active user of my public library, and it's very interesting to me to
contrast my use of the different libraries. I think it gives me a good
perspective on what users want to do.

I do think there are roles for big data crunching in libraries, on a
consortial or regional level. The work OCLC Research is doing with
mega-regions is an interesting example. Looking at data in aggregate can
tell us a lot of useful things about resource sharing and collection
development. I'd like to see more aggregated research on users and library
use.

The area where I'm most involved right now is in releasing library holdings
metadata openly on the web, in discoverable and re-usable forms. It's
amazing to me that we still don't do this. Imagine the things that could be
created by users and software developers if they had access to information
about which libraries hold which resources.

Laura Krier


On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:01 PM, Peter Schlumpf pschlu...@earthlink.netwrote:

 I have come to believe that to really innovate, one has to stop thinking
 in terms of clouds (whatever the hell those things are) tables,
 relational database, MARC records, the technology du jour.   Throw that all
 away.  Don't even think about it.  Even more important, don't worry about
 what other people are doing or thinking.  Don't even get caught up in
 programming languages or operating systems.  That's like being a person
 driven by his tools.

 Find ideas in other things beyond the techie stuff.  I have found that Zen
 Buddhism has a lot to say about semantics and how words are only imperfect
 labels to meaning.

 Come up with an idea and keep working at it, even if it may take decades.
 Don't worry about anything else. Listen to your critics, but don't let them
 drive you.  That's how innovation happens.


 -Original Message-
 From: Matthew Sherman matt.r.sher...@gmail.com
 Sent: Jul 17, 2013 1:01 PM
 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
 Subject: [CODE4LIB] Libraries and IT Innovation
 
 Hello Code4Lib folks,
 
 I was having a conversation with my father, who is an enterprise
 architect,
 a while ago when I was working on a presentation.  I thought it was
 interesting enough that I wanted to toss out some of the ideas and see if
 anybody was using them in their libraries.  We were discussing innovation,
 and he was telling me about the areas of innovation his field was looking
 into.  He was saying how the business IT realm was seeing four main areas
 for innovation: mobile computing, social computing, business
 intelligence/analytics, and cloud computing.  While these are four
 different areas he was noting how they all relate to making content
 active,
 having all this information do something either for the user or the
 institution.
 
 He provided an example of making content active through the area of big
 data.  For those not familiar with big data Wikipedia describes it as “a
 collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to
 process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data
 processing applications”.  An example he mentioned of how this was useful
 was with Amazon.com’s search logs as they have quite a bit of information
 about their users and their searches.  These logs and the customer
 information can be analyzed using big data solutions to see who was
 searching, what they were they searching for, the terms they used, and
 what
 worked.  This information then can be taken and compared to others who
 have
 similar backgrounds or have done similar searches and provide them with
 suggestions for items others have found useful, as well as search results
 slightly more tailored to them.  It also lets Amazon adjust their
 controlled vocabulary so all customers have better search results.  All of
 which makes the content active.
 
 Over the course of this conversation I was thinking on how some of this
 could be applied to the library realm.  Mobile computing is an area we as
 a
 profession are getting better