LibLime Developers' Blog - Latest Comments

Re: BarCampOhio aka LibraryCampOhio

Owen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:42:03 -0000

Sounds like fun. Have you been to a BarCamp before?

Re: Hug a sysadmin at your library

Mike Jackiw — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:39:12 -0000

...and who are the guys and gals who get blamed from nearly everything from the Internet being down to the coffee maker not working to someone stealing the Any Key. :-)

If it doesn't work we have to fix it.
If it works we have to upgrade it.
If it's upgraded we have to train staff on it.

IT...the perpetual motion machine (and job security)!

Kudos to all my fellow IT brethren!

Re: Frankenstein, or the modern FRBR

Miklos — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:57:46 -0000

Regarding your suggestion of having publishers provide metadata in machine-readable form, here is what I wrote in 1999:

"Finally, not to forget cataloguers, whose meticulous task is essential to the well-being of a library: why not wish for a not-too-far future, in which all documents (books, periodicals, records, videos, cdroms…) will include a standard self-descriptive computer-readable record in a MARC or XML format, and incorporated in the document by its publisher?"

(Michael Fingerhut, "The IRCAM Multimedia Library: a Digital Music Library", in IEEE Forum on Research and Technology Advances in Digital Libraries (IEEE ADL'99), Baltimore, MD (USA), May 19-21, 1999, ISBN 0-7695-0219-9/99. Available online here: http://mediatheque.ircam.fr/articles/textes/Fin...).

Never too late...

Re: Deciding on an API for Biblios

Chris Catalfo — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:31:09 -0000

Fernando,

I had not seen your project before: it is very interesting and exciting. It looks as if we have adopted some of the same techniques (not to mention, javascript framework).

I will read over your project's documentation - indeed it seems as if we could collaborate and settle on some best practices as well!

Re: Deciding on an API for Biblios

Chris Catalfo — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:21:35 -0000

Frederic,

Thank you for your comment; I think these are good suggestions.

In fact I think Biblios should allow callbacks at all important events in the record life cycle: on retrieval from z3950 server, on record editing, on record saving (or "send"ing to a remote ils). This way plugins will have the opportunity to modify things as needed.

This also goes hand in hand with the concept of editor plugins, whereby someone could write an editor for another kind of metadata record, like MODS.

Re: Deciding on an API for Biblios

Fernando — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:49:58 -0000

Hi Chris,

I'm happy that you keep working on Biblios and sharing some of your developer thoughts.

My work on a similar project during the last years makes me naturally interested in what you are doing now. I'm wondering if perhaps we could collaborate somehow...

Re: Going Up?

Steve Casburn — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:46:14 -0000

Thanks for putting up this post! I spent a lot of time in the Thompson Library as a student and a student worker, and am glad it is finally getting renovated.

Re: Deciding on an API for Biblios

Frédéric — Sun, 25 May 2008 01:55:41 -0000

I haven't seen yet 'biblio' but I suppose there is a way to target Z39.50 hosts in order to download records. I would be nice to manage Z39.50 list from API. It would be nice also to be able to register a callback function to be called after biblio record has been retrieved from z3950 server and before being displayed in 'biblio'. This function (one by z3950 target) would be able to clean record, do whatever on it, create items, deduplicate, etc.

Thanks and continue the good work.

Re: Making the MARC21 specification usable via XML

Chris Catalfo — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:36:58 -0000

Thanks, Gabriel, for your comment and error finding.

A website for Biblios is basically complete; we're just putting in place some final missing features before we release!

Re: Going Up?

Nicole C. Engard — Sat, 24 May 2008 07:56:40 -0000

Awesome, thanks for adding a picture :)

Re: Going Up?

Galen Charlton — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:26:38 -0000

I'm curious - does OSU currently use off-site storage? If so, will they be able to bring everything home when they complete the renovation?

The University of Chicago is building a new library building, in part to avoid having to use off-site storage.

Re: Going Up?

Nicole Engard — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:34:47 -0000

What? No Pictures?? Hehe

Re: Making the MARC21 specification usable via XML

Gabriel Sean Farrell — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:44:07 -0000

Neat stuff, Chris. BeautifulSoup is my preferred html parser these days. I hope the XML files do the job for Biblios. Any update on the upcoming web site for it?

Oh, also, the only thing I noticed on a quick scan of the extraction scripts was a misspelled "errro" on line 73 of extractControlTags.py. Otherwise, looks great!

Re: Koha, the bacon donut ILS.

Nicole C. Engard — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:01:52 -0000

I totally agree - it doesn't even look like a donut!!

Re: Koha, the bacon donut ILS.

Russel — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:45:34 -0000

Joe that just looks like a heart attack ready to happen :-)

Re: Library jargon, or translating Koha from English to English

Russel — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:56:01 -0000

Galen, you summarised my point exactly.

One of the great things about the Koha project is that we have such an easy to use translation tool available. I completely agree that there should be a standardised version that the developers are working on, so that they all at least use the same term for development. But this does not need to be the language that is presented to the end user.

In my new job, I do quite a bit of user testing. It is really interesting to watch people get hung up on words. For some people, it puts them into a complete tail spin and makes them very frustrated with the system.

When you implement a new library system, in place of an existing one (or any system for that matter), you have to overcome the fact that even though they didn't like the old system, they were used to it and understood it. Little things like using different terms than what they are used to, gives them the excuse to start not liking the new system.

All over something that is such a small change.

So seeing as we have such an easy to use system (Kartouche), I would think that if someone wants to put their hand up to maintain a translation to the language used in their region, then why not? They just need to be aware that whenever there is a change, they will need to update their translation.

I see this as a point of difference that Koha can offer.

Re: Biblios at Code4LibCon 2008

Joe — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:51:59 -0000

Did you mean "next week" or "last week"??

Re: Library jargon, or translating Koha from English to English

Joshua Ferraro — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:30:20 -0000

And in fact, something like en-US-small_public is within the capability of the RFC4646 conventions we use in Koha. Part of the reason I chose RFC4646 to represent language codes during the langtag redesign is that it supports 'extensions'. So you could have something like:

en-NZ-l-small_public-i-opac-t-prog-v-3000000

The first two subtags are valid in the subtag registry, but the rest of them are context-specific extensions ... in this case, specific to Koha itself. The l- prefix might refer to library type, the i- prefix is 'Interface' (opac or staff), the t- prefix refers to the template used, and the v- prefix to the version string.

For more details on RFC4646 and it's use, I'd recommend: http://www.w3.org/International/articles/langua...

Re: Library jargon, or translating Koha from English to English

Frédéric — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:25:26 -0000

There is a 'master' English interface from which each localized version derives from. This English is both a common terminology and a specialized (library) terminology, preferably chosen to facilitate translation.

The common terminology could be a least common denominator English, more and less understandable by English speakers throughout the world:

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

The library terminology, as suggested, could come from an authoritative reference:

http://lu.com/odlis/

So master (developers) interface could be named: en-odlis.

In the first place, terms are chosen by developers who are not necessary neither good English speaker (en-IT) nor librarians at all. So a quality control process should involve English technical redactors and librarians.

Re: Biblios at Code4LibCon 2008

Chris Catalfo — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:07:42 -0000

Hi Saskia,

Thanks for your comment and your interest in Biblios. I certainly hope your library will be able to use it.

Re: Biblios at Code4LibCon 2008

Saskia — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:06:27 -0000

Biblios looks very interesting. I follow your project since last summer when it got announced at Google Summer of Code. Looking forward to see the website next week. I hope it is something we can use in our library. The presentation you gave at Code4Lib has already partly been coverd by Nicole Engard on Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/nengard/2297219454... ;-)

Re: LibLime bibliography at LibraryThing

CMueller — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:25:30 -0000

The question: "What’s out there for sharing citations and articles?"
An answer: CiteULike @ http://www.citeulike.org/

Try a search on "koha"

From the CiteULike FAQ:

"What is CiteULike?

CiteULike is a free service to help you to store, organise and share the scholarly papers you are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself....CiteULike has a flexible filing system based on tags....Groups are collections of users creating shared libraries of links. They are useful for keeping track of a particular topic or what everyone else in a lab, class or academic department is reading. You can start your own groups and join existing groups."

Re: Instant Message your ILS

Chris — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:00:37 -0000

No reason why not, just have to come up with a nice easy syntax for the search. And yep anything can be a link.
I hope to do some more work on the bot in the near future.

Re: Instant Message your ILS

Jon — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:31:42 -0000

Along with expanding the search, would there be a way to limit results? I can think of situations where a patron would want to confine the search to a particular branch or department. Also, could the items issued results act as a link the same way the items searched results do?

Re: Instant Message your ILS

Chris — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:31:20 -0000

Yep the code is there to send sms, emails etc.

What we would want to do is allow the user to specify their IM name, in their profile, then we could message them if we see them, and they need a warning something is due.
Much the same as we store their email address now.