This document discusses communication strategies for library colleagues, including writing concisely and focusing on the purpose and audience. It also summarizes tools like Creative Commons licensing and maintaining an online presence. Finally, it examines software development models and challenges facing library systems, including integrating library data and collections onto the open web.
With the cost of purchasing an ILS completely out of reach for a library in a village of 128 people, Beth Kulacz, the Director of the Broadwater (NE) Public Library, decided she was going to build her own. Join us to learn how Beth designed and coded a system specifically for her small library and how you can get a copy of her shareware application to use for your own library.
With the cost of purchasing an ILS completely out of reach for a library in a village of 128 people, Beth Kulacz, the Director of the Broadwater (NE) Public Library, decided she was going to build her own. Join us to learn how Beth designed and coded a system specifically for her small library and how you can get a copy of her shareware application to use for your own library.
Prototyping Accessibility - WordCamp Europe 2018Adrian Roselli
Learn some fundamentals of accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review differing abilities, generate (minimal) user stories and personas, discuss best practices for design and development, prototype some ideas (on paper), and discuss where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive into technologies, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start with accessibility nor how it helps them.
This presentation is a part of the MosesCore project that encourages the development and usage of open source machine translation tools, notably the Moses statistical MT toolkit.
MosesCore is supported by the European Commission Grant Number 288487 under the 7th Framework Programme.
For the latest updates, follow us on Twitter - #MosesCore
The Software Challenges of Building Smart Chatbots - ICSE'21Jordi Cabot
Chatbots are popular solutions assisting humans in multiple fields, such as customer support or e-learning. However, building such applications has become a complex task requiring a high-level of expertise in a variety of technical domains. Chatbots need to integrate (AI-based) NLU components, but also connect to internal/external services, deploy on various platforms, etc.
The briefing will first cover the current landscape of chatbot frameworks. Then, we’ll get our hands dirty and create a few bots of increasing difficulty playing with aspects like entity recognition, sentiment analysis, event processing, or testing. By the end of the session, attendees will have all the keys to understand the main steps and obstacles to building a good chatbot.
I gave this talk on IEEE Day (October 7, 2014). I covered Introduction to Open Source, Various Projects and Products in Open Source, What students can get from Open Source and various different aspects of Open Source during this talk.
Please feel free to download, modify and use the slides for your talks. Lets keep rocking the Free Web ! :)
Selfish Accessibility — WordCamp Europe 2017Adrian Roselli
We can all pretend that we’re helping others by making web sites and software accessible, but we are really making them better for our future selves. Learn some fundamentals of accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review simple testing techniques, basic features and enhancements, coming trends, and where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start nor how it helps them.
Guelph A11y Conf: Everything I Know About Accessibility I Learned from Stack ...Adrian Roselli
Accessibility practitioners tend to live in a bubble, taking for granted many of the basics with which developers struggle. Explore questions developers ask one another.
Learn some fundamentals of accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review differing abilities, generate (minimal) user stories and personas, discuss best practices for design and development, prototype some ideas (on paper), and discuss where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive into technologies, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start with accessibility nor how it helps them.
You spend your precious time building the perfect application. You do everything right. You carefully craft every piece of code and rigorously follow the best practices and design patterns, you apply the most successful methodologies software engineering has to offer with discipline, and you pay attention to the most minuscule of details to produce the best user experience possible. It all pays off eventually, and you end up with a beautiful code base that is not only reliable but also performs well. You proudly watch your baby grow, as new users come in bringing more traffic your way and craving new features. You keep them happy and they keep coming back. One morning, you wake up to servers crashing under load, and data stores failing to keep up with all the demand. You panic. You throw in more hardware and try optimize, but the hungry crowd that was once your happy user base catches up to you. Your success is slipping through your fingers. You find yourself stuck between having to rewrite the whole application and a hard place. It's frustrating, dreadful, and painful to say the least. Don't be that guy! Save your soul before it's too late, and come to learn how to build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-grade Java applications that scale from day one. Topics covered include: parallelism, load distribution, state management, caching, big data, asynchronous processing, and static content delivery. Leveraging cloud computing, scaling teams and DevOps will also be discuss. P.S. This session is more technical than you might think.
http://jaxconf.com/sessions/economies-scaling-software
The economies of scaling software - Abdel Remanijaxconf
You spend your precious time building the perfect application. You do everything right. You carefully craft every piece of code and rigorously follow the best practices and design patterns, you apply the most successful methodologies software engineering has to offer with discipline, and you pay attention to the most minuscule of details to produce the best user experience possible. It all pays off eventually, and you end up with a beautiful code base that is not only reliable but also performs well. You proudly watch your baby grow, as new users come in bringing more traffic your way and craving new features. You keep them happy and they keep coming back. One morning, you wake up to servers crashing under load, and data stores failing to keep up with all the demand. You panic. You throw in more hardware and try optimize, but the hungry crowd that was once your happy user base catches up to you. Your success is slipping through your fingers. You find yourself stuck between having to rewrite the whole application and a hard place. It's frustrating, dreadful, and painful to say the least. Don't be that guy! Save your soul before it's too late, and come to learn how to build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-grade Java applications that scale from day one. Topics covered include: parallelism, load distribution, state management, caching, big data, asynchronous processing, and static content delivery. Leveraging cloud computing, scaling teams and DevOps will also be discuss. P.S. This session is more technical than you might think.
But We're Already Open Source! Why Would I Want To Bring My Code To Apache?gagravarr
So, your business has already opened sourced some of it's code? Great! But now, someone's asking you about giving it to these Apache people? What's up with that, and why isn't just being open source enough?
In this talk, we'll look at several real world examples of where companies have chosen to contribute their existing open source code to the Apache Software Foundation. We'll see the advantages they got from it, the problems they faced along the way, why they did it, and how it helped their business. We'll also look briefly at where it may not be the right fit.
Wondering about how to take your business's open source involvement to the next level, and if contributing to projects at the Apache Software Foundation will deliver RoI, then this is the talk for you!
But we're already open source! Why would I want to bring my code to Apache?gagravarr
From ApacheCon Europe 2015 in Budapest
So, your business has already opened sourced some of its code? Great! Or you're thinking about it? That's fine! But now, someone's asking you about giving it to these Apache people? What's up with that, and why isn't just being open source enough?
In this talk, we'll look at several real world examples of where companies have chosen to contribute their existing open source code to the Apache Software Foundation. We'll see the advantages they got from it, the problems they faced along the way, why they did it, and how it helped their business. We'll also look briefly at where it may not be the right fit.
Wondering about how to take your business's open source involvement to the next level, and if contributing to projects at the Apache Software Foundation will deliver RoI, then this is the talk for you!
Geek out: Adding Coding Skills to Your Professional RepertoireBohyun Kim
Presented at the 2012 Charleston Conference Charleston Conference XXXII. November 9, 2012. An article version of this presentation at the Conference Proceedings is downloadable at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/charleston/2012/Tech/8/
Program description: http://2012charlestonconference.sched.org/event/b7cd8aed0d21408e6c23fd95b6162837#.UJLWcoWQkbQ
Oss and libraries enabling arabic libraries and creating opportunitiesMassoud AlShareef
What is Open Source?
Who is using Open Source?
Open Source Community and Governance
Why should libraries care?
Library Software Overview
Open Source and Library Software today
Open Source and Arabic Libraries today
Why should Arabic libraries care even more?
Arabic Library Software Success Stories
Creating Opportunities: Open Source Software should play a role in driving our National ICT Strategy?
Prototyping Accessibility - WordCamp Europe 2018Adrian Roselli
Learn some fundamentals of accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review differing abilities, generate (minimal) user stories and personas, discuss best practices for design and development, prototype some ideas (on paper), and discuss where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive into technologies, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start with accessibility nor how it helps them.
This presentation is a part of the MosesCore project that encourages the development and usage of open source machine translation tools, notably the Moses statistical MT toolkit.
MosesCore is supported by the European Commission Grant Number 288487 under the 7th Framework Programme.
For the latest updates, follow us on Twitter - #MosesCore
The Software Challenges of Building Smart Chatbots - ICSE'21Jordi Cabot
Chatbots are popular solutions assisting humans in multiple fields, such as customer support or e-learning. However, building such applications has become a complex task requiring a high-level of expertise in a variety of technical domains. Chatbots need to integrate (AI-based) NLU components, but also connect to internal/external services, deploy on various platforms, etc.
The briefing will first cover the current landscape of chatbot frameworks. Then, we’ll get our hands dirty and create a few bots of increasing difficulty playing with aspects like entity recognition, sentiment analysis, event processing, or testing. By the end of the session, attendees will have all the keys to understand the main steps and obstacles to building a good chatbot.
I gave this talk on IEEE Day (October 7, 2014). I covered Introduction to Open Source, Various Projects and Products in Open Source, What students can get from Open Source and various different aspects of Open Source during this talk.
Please feel free to download, modify and use the slides for your talks. Lets keep rocking the Free Web ! :)
Selfish Accessibility — WordCamp Europe 2017Adrian Roselli
We can all pretend that we’re helping others by making web sites and software accessible, but we are really making them better for our future selves. Learn some fundamentals of accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review simple testing techniques, basic features and enhancements, coming trends, and where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start nor how it helps them.
Guelph A11y Conf: Everything I Know About Accessibility I Learned from Stack ...Adrian Roselli
Accessibility practitioners tend to live in a bubble, taking for granted many of the basics with which developers struggle. Explore questions developers ask one another.
Learn some fundamentals of accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review differing abilities, generate (minimal) user stories and personas, discuss best practices for design and development, prototype some ideas (on paper), and discuss where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive into technologies, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start with accessibility nor how it helps them.
You spend your precious time building the perfect application. You do everything right. You carefully craft every piece of code and rigorously follow the best practices and design patterns, you apply the most successful methodologies software engineering has to offer with discipline, and you pay attention to the most minuscule of details to produce the best user experience possible. It all pays off eventually, and you end up with a beautiful code base that is not only reliable but also performs well. You proudly watch your baby grow, as new users come in bringing more traffic your way and craving new features. You keep them happy and they keep coming back. One morning, you wake up to servers crashing under load, and data stores failing to keep up with all the demand. You panic. You throw in more hardware and try optimize, but the hungry crowd that was once your happy user base catches up to you. Your success is slipping through your fingers. You find yourself stuck between having to rewrite the whole application and a hard place. It's frustrating, dreadful, and painful to say the least. Don't be that guy! Save your soul before it's too late, and come to learn how to build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-grade Java applications that scale from day one. Topics covered include: parallelism, load distribution, state management, caching, big data, asynchronous processing, and static content delivery. Leveraging cloud computing, scaling teams and DevOps will also be discuss. P.S. This session is more technical than you might think.
http://jaxconf.com/sessions/economies-scaling-software
The economies of scaling software - Abdel Remanijaxconf
You spend your precious time building the perfect application. You do everything right. You carefully craft every piece of code and rigorously follow the best practices and design patterns, you apply the most successful methodologies software engineering has to offer with discipline, and you pay attention to the most minuscule of details to produce the best user experience possible. It all pays off eventually, and you end up with a beautiful code base that is not only reliable but also performs well. You proudly watch your baby grow, as new users come in bringing more traffic your way and craving new features. You keep them happy and they keep coming back. One morning, you wake up to servers crashing under load, and data stores failing to keep up with all the demand. You panic. You throw in more hardware and try optimize, but the hungry crowd that was once your happy user base catches up to you. Your success is slipping through your fingers. You find yourself stuck between having to rewrite the whole application and a hard place. It's frustrating, dreadful, and painful to say the least. Don't be that guy! Save your soul before it's too late, and come to learn how to build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-grade Java applications that scale from day one. Topics covered include: parallelism, load distribution, state management, caching, big data, asynchronous processing, and static content delivery. Leveraging cloud computing, scaling teams and DevOps will also be discuss. P.S. This session is more technical than you might think.
But We're Already Open Source! Why Would I Want To Bring My Code To Apache?gagravarr
So, your business has already opened sourced some of it's code? Great! But now, someone's asking you about giving it to these Apache people? What's up with that, and why isn't just being open source enough?
In this talk, we'll look at several real world examples of where companies have chosen to contribute their existing open source code to the Apache Software Foundation. We'll see the advantages they got from it, the problems they faced along the way, why they did it, and how it helped their business. We'll also look briefly at where it may not be the right fit.
Wondering about how to take your business's open source involvement to the next level, and if contributing to projects at the Apache Software Foundation will deliver RoI, then this is the talk for you!
But we're already open source! Why would I want to bring my code to Apache?gagravarr
From ApacheCon Europe 2015 in Budapest
So, your business has already opened sourced some of its code? Great! Or you're thinking about it? That's fine! But now, someone's asking you about giving it to these Apache people? What's up with that, and why isn't just being open source enough?
In this talk, we'll look at several real world examples of where companies have chosen to contribute their existing open source code to the Apache Software Foundation. We'll see the advantages they got from it, the problems they faced along the way, why they did it, and how it helped their business. We'll also look briefly at where it may not be the right fit.
Wondering about how to take your business's open source involvement to the next level, and if contributing to projects at the Apache Software Foundation will deliver RoI, then this is the talk for you!
Geek out: Adding Coding Skills to Your Professional RepertoireBohyun Kim
Presented at the 2012 Charleston Conference Charleston Conference XXXII. November 9, 2012. An article version of this presentation at the Conference Proceedings is downloadable at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/charleston/2012/Tech/8/
Program description: http://2012charlestonconference.sched.org/event/b7cd8aed0d21408e6c23fd95b6162837#.UJLWcoWQkbQ
Oss and libraries enabling arabic libraries and creating opportunitiesMassoud AlShareef
What is Open Source?
Who is using Open Source?
Open Source Community and Governance
Why should libraries care?
Library Software Overview
Open Source and Library Software today
Open Source and Arabic Libraries today
Why should Arabic libraries care even more?
Arabic Library Software Success Stories
Creating Opportunities: Open Source Software should play a role in driving our National ICT Strategy?
OA in the Library Collection: The Challenge of Identifying and Managing Open ...NASIG
Librarians, researchers, and the general public have largely embraced the concept of open access (OA). Yet, incorporating OA resources into existing discovery and tracking systems is often a complicated process. Open access material can be delivered through a variety of publishing or archival mechanisms, creating certain challenges, particularly for those managing e-resources. Although an increasing proportion of research output is becoming open access each year, organization and discovery of these resources remains imperfect.
The debate between the relative merits of Green and Gold OA is regularly discussed in academic circles but less attention is devoted towards Hybrid OA and the challenges inherent in this model. Most major publishers offer open access through one or more of these models, but open access metadata standards seem to be lacking among these content providers. The presenters will discuss some of these challenges identified in the literature and through other mechanisms, including data gathered by NISO and an original survey. By identifying these issues, the scholarly communication community can work together to improve discovery for end users.
Chris Bulock
Electronic Resources Librarian, SIUE Lovejoy Library
Chris is an Electronic Resources Librarian and NASIG member from the St. Louis area. His research and work are focused on improving the library user's experience. Chris is the recipient of the 2012 HARRASSOWITZ Charleston Conference Scholarship.
Nathan Hosburgh
Discovery & Systems Librarian, Rollins College
Nate Hosburgh is currently the Discovery & Systems Librarian at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida as part of a revamped Collections & Systems department that includes ILL, collection development, acquisitions, systems, and technical services. Previously, he held positions managing e-resources at Montana State University and managing interlibrary loan & document delivery at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne
Apache Kafka lies at the heart of the largest data pipelines, handling trillions of messages and petabytes of data every day. Learn the right approach for getting the most out of Kafka from the experts at LinkedIn and Confluent. Todd Palino and Gwen Shapira demonstrate how to monitor, optimize, and troubleshoot performance of your data pipelines—from producer to consumer, development to production—as they explore some of the common problems that Kafka developers and administrators encounter when they take Apache Kafka from a proof of concept to production usage. Too often, systems are overprovisioned and underutilized and still have trouble meeting reasonable performance agreements.
Topics include:
- What latencies and throughputs you should expect from Kafka
- How to select hardware and size components
- What you should be monitoring
- Design patterns and antipatterns for client applications
- How to go about diagnosing performance bottlenecks
- Which configurations to examine and which ones to avoid
Challenges and opportunities in library discovery services genrobin fay
A 2016 survey conducted by Simon Inger Consulting found that library web pages (i.e. search engines) are as important to many academics as abstracting and indexing sources. At the same time, library service platforms such as WMS and Alma have been widely adopted, but the “discovery of library-provided resources remains a complex issue with many unfulfilled expectations… and many challenges remain in improving discoverability” as noted by Marshall Breeding in his 2018 library systems report.
This short presentation was designed to highlight strengths and weaknesses of search discovery tool for libraries while identifying opportunities to improve the discoverability of our resources using the catalog.
Presentation & Discussion May 2018
Lecture for LIS 644 "Digital Trends, Tools, and Debates." Not my strong point, so I won't swear there are no errors. If you reuse, please respect the CC-BY-NC-SA license on the photo.
This slide is special for master students (MIBS & MIFB) in UUM. Also useful for readers who are interested in the topic of contemporary Islamic banking.
Introduction to AI for Nonprofits with Tapp NetworkTechSoup
Dive into the world of AI! Experts Jon Hill and Tareq Monaur will guide you through AI's role in enhancing nonprofit websites and basic marketing strategies, making it easy to understand and apply.
Delivering Micro-Credentials in Technical and Vocational Education and TrainingAG2 Design
Explore how micro-credentials are transforming Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) with this comprehensive slide deck. Discover what micro-credentials are, their importance in TVET, the advantages they offer, and the insights from industry experts. Additionally, learn about the top software applications available for creating and managing micro-credentials. This presentation also includes valuable resources and a discussion on the future of these specialised certifications.
For more detailed information on delivering micro-credentials in TVET, visit this https://tvettrainer.com/delivering-micro-credentials-in-tvet/
Biological screening of herbal drugs: Introduction and Need for
Phyto-Pharmacological Screening, New Strategies for evaluating
Natural Products, In vitro evaluation techniques for Antioxidants, Antimicrobial and Anticancer drugs. In vivo evaluation techniques
for Anti-inflammatory, Antiulcer, Anticancer, Wound healing, Antidiabetic, Hepatoprotective, Cardio protective, Diuretics and
Antifertility, Toxicity studies as per OECD guidelines
How to Add Chatter in the odoo 17 ERP ModuleCeline George
In Odoo, the chatter is like a chat tool that helps you work together on records. You can leave notes and track things, making it easier to talk with your team and partners. Inside chatter, all communication history, activity, and changes will be displayed.
Acetabularia Information For Class 9 .docxvaibhavrinwa19
Acetabularia acetabulum is a single-celled green alga that in its vegetative state is morphologically differentiated into a basal rhizoid and an axially elongated stalk, which bears whorls of branching hairs. The single diploid nucleus resides in the rhizoid.
Safalta Digital marketing institute in Noida, provide complete applications that encompass a huge range of virtual advertising and marketing additives, which includes search engine optimization, virtual communication advertising, pay-per-click on marketing, content material advertising, internet analytics, and greater. These university courses are designed for students who possess a comprehensive understanding of virtual marketing strategies and attributes.Safalta Digital Marketing Institute in Noida is a first choice for young individuals or students who are looking to start their careers in the field of digital advertising. The institute gives specialized courses designed and certification.
for beginners, providing thorough training in areas such as SEO, digital communication marketing, and PPC training in Noida. After finishing the program, students receive the certifications recognised by top different universitie, setting a strong foundation for a successful career in digital marketing.
it describes the bony anatomy including the femoral head , acetabulum, labrum . also discusses the capsule , ligaments . muscle that act on the hip joint and the range of motion are outlined. factors affecting hip joint stability and weight transmission through the joint are summarized.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
The simplified electron and muon model, Oscillating Spacetime: The Foundation...RitikBhardwaj56
Discover the Simplified Electron and Muon Model: A New Wave-Based Approach to Understanding Particles delves into a groundbreaking theory that presents electrons and muons as rotating soliton waves within oscillating spacetime. Geared towards students, researchers, and science buffs, this book breaks down complex ideas into simple explanations. It covers topics such as electron waves, temporal dynamics, and the implications of this model on particle physics. With clear illustrations and easy-to-follow explanations, readers will gain a new outlook on the universe's fundamental nature.
Thinking of getting a dog? Be aware that breeds like Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, and German Shepherds can be loyal and dangerous. Proper training and socialization are crucial to preventing aggressive behaviors. Ensure safety by understanding their needs and always supervising interactions. Stay safe, and enjoy your furry friends!
1. Lipstick on a Pig:
Integrated Library Systems
30 November 2010
2. Tip of the week: Communication
• Writing for your library colleagues is not like
writing academic papers.
• No required pagecounts, and no points for prolixity
• Nobody cares about your erudition. (Lit review only to make a
serious point, or to leverage peer pressure.)
• Get to the point. Fast.
• “Executive summary” for people who won’t read it all (which is
most of them!).
• Bullet points are good. Compound-complex sentences and ten-
dollar words are bad.
• Always ask:What is the purpose of this thing I
am writing? Who cares?
• Communicate? Persuade? Train?
• Upbeat matters. Even if you’re frustrated, tired, fed up.
3. Tool of the week: Creative
Commons
• Creators who license their creations for
reuse; no need to ask permission
• But observe any conditions on the license!
• Images: http://flickr.com/creativecommons/
• or Compfight: http://compfight.com/
• or Flickr Storm: http://zoo-m.com/flickr-storm
• Music: search for “podsafe music”
• Brilliant for decorating presentations and
podcasts
• Remember to give back!
4. Tool of the week: Online presence
• Yes, you need to worry about your egoGoogle.
• You also need to worry if you don’t have one.
• Are you missing a chance to stand out in a competitive field?
• Once you’re on the job market,THEY ALL HAVE MLS-ES.
• You’ll have to take the bad with the good... and
only you can decide what’s worth it. Consider:
• Professional network (assists, job leads, conference buddies)
• What fits your way of presenting yourself (blog, Flickr,YouTube,
Ravelry, FriendFeed, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare)
• Whether and how to pull all of it together into a portfolio.
5. Weekly reflection
(for next week’s discussion)
• Google yourself. Could you find yourself?
Do you have Googlegangers?
• Any surprises, good or bad?
• Is this what you want a potential employer
knowing about you?
• If not, what do you plan to do about it?
• Are you satisfied with your own online
privacy?
6. Software development
models: why you care
• How your software was built affects:
• how much you pay for it, up-front and ongoing
• which chunk of budget those costs come from
• how much you can do with and to it
• how much it will cost to support and train people on it
• how much control you have over your data and how your
data are presented to your patrons
• how good it is
• There is no one right answer.There are only
tradeoffs, which you need to understand.
7. Building it yourself
• Some libraries deliberately and intentionally
develop their own software. Go them!
• Some libraries do it by accident!
• One bright tinkerer whomps something up.
• The library comes to depend on it.
• ... and then the tinkerer leaves. Oops.
• ... or the computing world changes such that the
whomped-up thing no longer works. Oops.
• Tinkerers are great. But make them document. And have
a plan for transitioning off the whomped-up thing!
8. Off-the-shelf software
• What you buy in the TechStore
• Made by for-profit companies
• Though small developers and shareware makers are still
out there!
• Certain expectations of performance,
stability, polish, documentation
• May vary somewhat depending on customer base
• May rely on proprietary file formats for
customer lock-in
• Pricing: usually “per seat” or “site licensed”
9. Vendor software
• Usually springs up in niches where off-the-shelf
software can’t sell enough seats
• ... e.g. ILS software for libraries! Also learning-management systems!
• You pay to run the software AND for a certain
level of customer service
• Installation help
• Employee training, user groups, conferences
• Technical support (up to and including vendor-run servers)
• You’ll still need local tech staff, often!
• Installing and customizing these things is a HASSLE.
• But there will be strict limits on what you can do.
10. Use the source, Luke!
• “Source code” = the instructions that
humans write for computers to follow
• “Compiled code” or “binary code” =
source code that has been munged to be
directly understandable by the computer
• Not interpretable by humans any more!
• This is the only form in which proprietary software is
distributed (usually), and why you can’t peek under its
hood.
• “Compiler,” “interpreter,” “virtual machine” all bits and
pieces of the source-code to compiled-code
transformation.
11. Open-source software
• The source code is open!
• You can (legally) download and install it without paying.
• You can (legally) read it.
• You can (legally) change it.
• You can (legally) resell it (sometimes with caveats).
• Developers “license” their code under one
of a number of open-source licenses
• Commonest: GNU General Public License (GPL), which
has a sting in its tail
• Also notable: BSD license, Artistic License
• OSI maintains a vetted list of open-source licenses.
12. Brief digression: open source,
open standard, open access
• Open source: refers to SOFTWARE
• Open standard: refers to RULES for
protocols, file formats, software specs, etc.
• “Reference implementation:” software that shows how
software that complies with a particular standard should
work
• Example:W3C’s Amaya browser
• Open access: refers to the SCHOLARLY
LITERATURE
13. I’m not a programmer.Why
should I care about the source?
• Do you benefit when other people hack on
the software?
• With open source, quite possibly yes.
• If there’s a good API, quite possibly yes.
• With API-less proprietary software, rarely and only indirectly.
• What happens when a software company goes
out of business? Or kills a product?
• Proprietary software: decay and obsolescence.
• Open-source software: new companies, forks, options.
• Security
• Security-through-obscurity doesn’t work. No software is
perfectly secure, but OSS has a good track record of fast
patches.
14. Should I use open-source or
proprietary software, Dorothea?
• It depends.There are tradeoffs.
• $$$ vs. staff time/expertise:“free as in kittens”
• Ease of use/installation vs. control
• Professional support vs. ad-hoc online communities
• You can’t always know what your experience will be.
• Some vendor support is horrible. Some is great. Some online
communities are horrible. Some are great.
• Some open-source projects move fast. Some don’t. Some vendors move
fast. Most don’t (most can’t!).
• Only you understand your library’s situation.
• ASK AROUND before you invest, either way.
15. The worst of OSS: DSpace
• Few developers (and until recently, all
volunteers), so change is slow.
• Arrogant developers, so change is out-of-
touch with actual user needs.
• Why did publicly-accessible statistics takeYEARS?
• This has gotten better of late. It’s still not perfect.
• Architecture deeply hostile to casual
hacking, so innovation is slow.
• APIs? What APIs? Plugins? Who needs plugins? And why
should we have a space to share code?
• Usability? This is open-source software! We
don’t need no stinkin’ usability!
16. The worst of vendor
software: ILSes
• Migration is a huge hassle, so vendors lock in
customers and have little further incentive to
serve them.
• Heinous hardware-price markup
• Totally opaque data models; few APIs; licenses that
forbid tinkering
• Horrendous customer support
• Stunningly slow to innovate (partly our fault!)
17. What’s an ILS?
• Integrated Library System
• THE system that handles library operations.
• “Modules”
• Acquisitions
• Cataloguing
• OPAC
• Circulation/patron management
• Also: serials, metasearch, e-resource managers (sometimes),
link resolvers... separately or bundled
• Underneath: heap big relational database!
18. State of the market
• Big consolidations in mid-decade
• Players: Endeavor (Voyager), Ex Libris, Sirsi/Dynix (Horizon)
• Up-and-coming open-source packages
• Koha: geared toward public libraries
• Evergreen: geared toward library consortia, is building code
for academic libraries (e.g. serials management)
• eXtensible Catalog Project: University of Rochester
• Some service innovation
• WorldCat Local
• LibraryThing for Libraries
• Typical ILS replacement cycle: 5 to 10 years
19. Lipsticking the pig
• Libraries turned to outside vendors, homegrown
solutions
• NCSU: adopted Endeca, who are a web-commerce firm
• UVa: Solr/Flare/Blacklight (ha ha ha)
• Scriblio,VuFind, etc.
• What were they looking for?
• USABILITY!
• Faceted searching/browsing
• Better associations among records (quasi-FRBRization)
• Better correlation between user language and controlled vocabularies
• Generally: making the data work harder!
20. More pieces: Link resolvers
and OpenURL
• You have a citation. How do you find out if the
library has the article among its e-resources?
• OpenURL: protocol for checking citation
information against a library’s list of vendor-
provided e-journals and article databases
• Pack citation info into a URL or a teeny XML document
• Link resolver: gizmo that takes in an OpenURL
and returns list of available copies.
• SFX (Ex Libris) current market leader
21. Still more pieces: e-resource
management
• You just bought a Big Deal. How do you
update holdings and URLs in your OPAC?
How do you update your link resolver?
• How do you keep track of who bought
what out of which fund? Or who to call
when something breaks? Or usage stats?
• Market leader: Serials Solutions
• Service (auto-holdings-updating), not just product.
• Open-source (though dependent on MS Access) entrant:
ERMes
22. Catalog vs.“resource discovery”
• What’s actually in an OPAC?
• Print books, maps, sheet music
• Title-level serials
• Maybe govdocs, theses/dissertations, collection records
for stuff in special collections
• What’s not?
• The rest of the world! Including digital collections, stuff on
the web, article-level access to journals, finding aids...
• The information world is bigger than it
used to be!
• So is the ILS/OPAC an INVENTORY tool, or a
DISCOVERY tool?
• And what is our inventory, really?
23. First-cut solution: Metasearch
• How many databases are you willing to
search? With all their different interfaces?
• Metasearch to the rescue! or something.
• Single search interface presented to the user.
• Sends user’s query to various databases; receives, processes
(deduping, relevance ranking), and presents the results.
• Some databases use search protocols like Z39.50 and SRU/
SRW. Others have to be screenscraped.
• Lousy solution.
• Slow, not always good at processing results, coverage not
always the best, search bells and whistles gone.
24. Next try: Building local
index for search
• Tricky to do!
• Which data sources can you legally build your index from?
• Of those, how many have an API? Or will you be stuck
screenscraping HTML?
• Or do you have to work with your link resolver?
• See also: Google Scholar
• Essentially this is what GS does.They make special
arrangements to crawl publisher sites, even behind
firewalls.
25. Now:“web-scale” discovery
• OPAC layers (or ILS replacements, or ILS add-
ins) that purport to offer one-stop shopping:
OPAC, digital collections, serials, etc.
• Serials Solutions: Summon
• WorldCat Local
• Ex Libris: Primo Central
• EBSCO: EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS)
• First question: is this a SEARCH TOOL or a
CONTENT DATABASE or both?
• Next question: coverage?
• PlayersVERY close-mouthed about serials coverage.
26. The future of MARC
• Bluntly: it doesn’t have one.
• As a file format, it’s LONG past its sell-by date.
• Does not fit into the mashup universe at all.
• Making it work with current-gen technology is a tremendous
resource drain.
• In hindsight, decisions made so that MARC could easily output
human-readable catalog cards are hurting us badly now that
catalog cards aren’t what we want any more.
• That said, we have a lot of data in it.
• If you become a cataloger, you will be involved in a mass data
migration. Have fun! (Believe me, I feel your pain.)
• Migration to what? Well, that’s the question.
• The answer is probably multiple. But RDA is part of the answer.
27. What is RDA?
• Resource Description and Access
• the next analogue to AACR2
• Does not assume MARC or ISBD underneath!
• Diane Hillmann, others actively working on linked-data/RDF
expressions.
• Claimed benefits
• Expand the universe of what is describable
• Spend less time on rules pilpul, punctuation, and other cruft
• Less emphasis on “record,” more on linkages
• Ability to make our records work with/for outside world
• FRBRization
28. Right, so what’s FRBR?
• Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
Records
• Relational data model for catalog records.
• Recognizes that not all parts of a bibliographic
record describe the same thing
• Author: of a “work”
• Page count: of an “edition”
• “FRBRizing” a catalog means drawing all those
relationship arrows between records, and then
doing something with them for patrons.
• We can do this mechanically. Sort of. Some of it.
29. Next problem:Who owns
our records?
• OCLC controls union catalog in the US.
• But OCLC didn’t author most of the records!
• Huge, ongoing flap about who can use/remix
those records, with or without permission.
• Open-records initiatives springing up
• Open Library
• Michigan: http://blog.okfn.org/2010/11/29/open-
bibliographic-data-how-should-the-ecosystem-work/
• To be clear: legal restrictions on reuse and
mashups damage librarianship’s presence
online.We can’t afford not to settle this.
30. Last problem: How does
our data fit into the Web?
• This is not entirely a catalog problem.
• What about our digitized collections? Born-digital
holdings? Finding aids? Usage data? Authority data?
• What are our APIs?
• To what extent do we NEED local catalogs?
• Uncomfortable but necessary question! Do we need to
reinvent Google? If so, how do we exchange records for
stuff that isn’t in our ILS?
• Are we overinvested in the ILS?
• How do we facilitate appropriate reuse of
our data? Do we/can we bar inappropriate
reuse?