With a little help from the DrupalEasy folks in Orlando, the Miami and Fort Lauderdale groups are finally putting on a Drupal Camp! (Thanks Mike Anello, for giving it the final push!)

Nova Southeaster University in Davie is hosting the event on Saturday, October 22. Admission is a only $10 — if you are anywhere in South Florida, come!  There are corporate sponsors, but consider chipping in $40 to be an individual sponsor.  Details are at the Drupalcamp website.

For the Drupal wary:  there is a Beginner’s track, using Drupal 7, the easiest Drupal ever!

For experienced Drupalers, there will be plenty to chew on, such as drush awesomeness!

If you are somewhere in between, trust me, you won’t be bored.

What started out as a 3-4 month hiatus to do an intranet site redesign, is now winding down after 6 months.  After the first couple months when it became apparent no progress was going to be made, I regrouped and put together a different, motivated but novice team. It’s been a little over three months since that team started on the project, and the results are impressive.  Although we could go live with it, I decided to do some “beta testing” on our unsuspecting end-users.  That has been enlightening: there may be some revisions in store before we finally get this baby to bed.

The terms usually associated with Drupal are “steep learning curve.”  I was the only one in my organization who even knew what Drupal is, although some seemed to have a vague concept of “content management system.” But I recommended we go with Drupal over other options because of (1) it’s potential, (2) the growing and active group of libraries with Drupal, and (3) because it’s the CMS I was most familiar with.  Looking back, I’d have done some things differently (isn’t that always the case?), but I would still choose Drupal. We haven’t fully taken advantage of all Drupal’s potential, but that’s only because I decided to hold off development of more advanced features until after we completed the initial project.

I was fortunate to have 2 others who were eager to learn and undaunted by Drupal’s complexity.  In a little over two months, with 1 1/2 days of one-on-one training and many many hours of phone conferences with them, they understand Drupal better than I did after two years of playing with it. This is a good thing, since they will likely be the ones left with the task of maintaining the site over the long run.  But we needed more than us three to migrate the content from the previous site, so I recruited 4 others, 3 of whom were apprehensive about approaching technology at this level.  One had a Technical Services background, and provided us with the taxonomy structure we needed. Two added content directly into special content types I set up, and one tracked down copyright-free pictures we needed.  It was an interesting exercise in project management: finding the team members we needed by dividing the tasks by skill level required, configuring Drupal to be easier to use for technophobes, and by approaching prospects individually to ask for help on a limited scale.

About half way through the project, as I struggled with trying to get the site to display the same in IE7 and Firefox, I shifted gears and decided to do the layout completely in CSS.  Actually I was shamed into it after a query to the Drupal library group.  I finished those changes just about the same time everything else fell into place.  And it works just fine in both browsers, thank you!  But we had been designing with the assumption most end users would be using a set screen size and resolution.  This week we discovered those assumptions were way off.  The good news is that we have found a lot more real estate to work with.  The bad news is that while things aren’t broken, the site doesn’t look quite the way we envisioned.

There may be some more tweaking involved, but there are now two others who have enough experience to do the tweaking.  Life is good.  Now to get back to the digitization project.

In the not too distant past, I was manning the reference desk, listening to a man say he had to come to the library to use the computers because his laptop was so badly infested with viruses that he had to throw it away.

“You threw it away?” I asked, incredulously.

“Yeah, it’s worthless now.  I can’t use it.  I’m just going to throw it away.”

Realizing he hadn’t actually thrown it away yet, but was willing to, I glibly asked if he’d throw it my way.  He looked at me incredulously at the same time I realized there was probably some intervening ethics involved.  So I said, “Or, I could show you how to make it usable again so there will never be another virus on it.”

He was still incredulous.  I assured him it can be done.  He wanted to know what he could do for me.  I told him “Never tell anyone about this,” forming a mental image of what would happen if he went out and told all his friends, or worse, wrote to the director about what I’d done for him.

He came back a couple days later, but didn’t have the laptop with him.  I hooked him up with a copy of Keir Thomas’ Beginning Ubuntu Linux, and a newer version of the CD included in the book.  He was still somewhat incredulous.  He left the book, but promised to come back the next day with the laptop.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see him again after that. I’m still wondering whether the original story was true, or if my comments prompted him to find someone to clean up the laptop for him.

I’ve since left that job.  Sometimes I miss the interesting world of public libraries.

I am currently evaluating options for implementing a digital library.  It’s an ongoing process. )  Since there are probably more proprietary systems out there, I’m hoping people will leave comments letting me know about them (same thing for open source).  I’ll post the charted results when I’m done (hopefully in the near future).

There are several digital asset management systems for digital libraries. On the proprietary side (closed source) there are (this is not an exhaustive list):

• ContentDM (OCLC): software that handles the storage, management and delivery of library digital collections to the Web
• DigiTool (ExLibris)
• Archivalware (PTFS): a web-based, full-text search and retrieval content management system.
• SKCA (CuadraStar):  Star Knowledge Center for Archives
• Eloquent: A suite of applications, Librarian (ILS), Archives (software for physical archives management). Records (records management), Museum, which can be purchased individually or combined for a complete content management system (Museum+Librarian+Archives).
• Mint: a “cultural asset management system” mix of their individual products M2A (archives), M2L (libraries), and M3 (museums).  Based in Canada
• PastPerfect: primarily for museums, includes library integration.
• Proficio: collections management system from Re:discovery.
• Gallery Systems: a suite of software products for management and web publishing
• Questor Argus: Collection management and portal software
• Mimsy XG: collection management and web publishing software
• IDEA: content management and web publishing software, with modules for libraries, archives, and museums
• EMu: Museum and Archive management software from KEsoft, (includes web publishing)
• Digital Commons: A repository system developed by Berkeley Electronic Press.  They set up and maintain a hosted site.
• SimpleDL: options for hosted library or licensed software on a local server.  Unfortunately, there is not much information on who, what, or how within the site.
• AdLib: Library, archival, and museum software systems from Adlib Information Systems.  There is a free “lite” version of the Library and Museum software (requires registration).

On the open source side, there are (also not an exhaustive list):

• CollectiveAccess: a highly configurable cataloguing tool and web-based application for museums, archives and digital collections. There is a demo to try it out.
• Greenstone: a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections.Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project
• Omeka: a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions.  There is a sandbox to try it out.
• DSpace: software to host and manage subject based repositories, dataset repositories or media based repositories
• ResourceSpace: a web-based, open source digital asset management system which has been designed to give your content creators easy and fast access to print and web ready assets.)
• CDS Invenio:  a suite of applications which provides the framework and tools for building and managing an autonomous digital library server. There is a demo here.
• Islandora: A project combining Fedora and Drupal (web content management system).  It has a VirtualBox demo download available.
• Razuna: an open source digital asset management with hosting options and consulting services to set up and deploy the system.
• Digital Collection Builder (DCB):  from Canadiana.org, a software distribution built from the Qubit Toolkit for Libraries & Museums.
• ICA-AtoM Project (“International Council on Archives – Access to Memory”): a software distribution built from the Qubit Toolkit, for Archives.  An online demo is available, as well as a downloadable version.
• CollectionSpace: a collections management system and collection information system platform, primarily for museums. Current version is 0.6
• NotreDAM: Open source system developed in Italy by Sardegna Richerche.  A demo is available, as well as documentation.  It is not a trivial install, requiring two instances of Ubuntu 9.10, but there is a VirtualBox instance for evaluation purposes.

There is also repository software, like Fedora, which can be used with a discovery interface such as Blacklight, or Islandora.

The main difference between proprietary systems and the open source systems listed above is economics.  While the argument in the past has been that open source systems are not as developed and require more in-house expertise to implement, that is not the case any more.  For one thing, even proprietary systems require in-house expertise in varying levels in order to realize full functionality of their features (see, e.g., Creating an Institutional Repository for State Government Digital Publications).  For another, as the number of libraries implementing Digital Libraries with resource discovery have increased, development of Digital Asset Management Systems has matured beyond the Alpha, and sometimes even Beta, stage.  Open source Systems which did not reach critical mass have quietly died or been absorbed into better supported products.  In the proprietary field, systems typically are developed within a parent organization that includes other software, such as an Integrated Library System, whose profits support R&D for the DAM.

So, while economics should broadly encompass all aspects of  implementation, including time and asset costs, in this case the economics is primarily the money involved, since the difference in the other factors has pretty much been leveled.  With any system, you will be involved in user forums, in bug fix requests, in creating (or updating) documentation, in training, in local tweaking, with or without outside help.  Proprietary systems are currently asking between $10,000 and $20,000 per year for a (relatively) small archive, from what I have seen and heard.

Another issue which may come up is “Cloud Computing.”  Proprietary vendors (and even some open source systems) offer the option of hosting your digital library repository (where all the digital objects live) on their servers.  The issue with remote hosting, of course, is control.  Who has ultimate control and responsibility for the items in the repository?  If the archive is intended to be open and public, the issue is more one of accountability and curation:  how securely is the data being backed up, and what is/will be done to ensure long term viable access?

If the archive is intended to be for local use only (for example, on an intranet), the issues change dramatically regarding remote hosting by an outside vendor.  It is no longer just a matter of secure backups, but the security of the system itself.  Who can access the respository?  How secure is the repository from outside crackers?  With even Google admitting to a breach of their network security, how much security can be expected from a vendor?

In some cases, we may want both public and private (local) access to archive materials.  While originally my thinking was to simply control access using the metadata for each object, others more experienced than I am recommend creating separate repositories for public and private archives, which adds another layer of complexity.

UPDATE:  Added Digital Collection Builder (DCB) and ICAToAtoM (2010/5/5)

UPDATE: Added CollectionSpace, Eloquent, Mint, PastPerfect, Proficio, Gallery Systems, Questor Argus, Mimsy XG, IDEA, EMu, and Digital Commons (2010/5/21)

UPDATE: Added SimpleDL, AdLib, and NotreDAM (2010/6/10)

UPDATE:  Fixed broken links:  Mint, DSpace, Islandora demo, removed reference to online demo for Digital Collection Builder (2011/4/11)

Keynote #2:  Paul Jones

catfish, cthulhu, code, clouds and levenshtein cloud (what is the levenshtein distance between Cathy Marshall and Paul Jones?)

Brains: create the code using certain assumptions about the recipient, which may or may not be accurate

Brains map based on how they are used.

(images showing difference in brain usage between users who are Internet Naive, and Internet Savvy: for Internet Naive, “reading text” image closely matches “Internet searching” image, but is very different for the Internet Savvy image)

Robin Dunbar: anthropologist who studies apes & monkeys.  Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language (book).  Neocortex ratio (ability to retain social relationship memory).  ”Grooming” in groups maintains relationship memory.  In humans, the relationship can be maintained long distance via communication (“gossip”).  Dunbar circles of intimacy; lower the number, higher the “intimacy” relationship.

Who do you trust and how do you trust them?

Attributed source matters (S.S. Sundar, & C. Nass: “Source effects in users’ perception of online news”).  Preference for source: 1.others, 2.computer, 3.self, 4.news editor; quality preference: 1.others, 2.computer, 3.news editors, 4.self (others=random preset; computer=according to computer generated profile; self=according to psychological profile)

Significance:  small talk leads to big talk, which leads to trust.

Small talk “helps” big talk when there is: 1. likeness (homophily) 2. grooming and gossip 3. peer to peer in an informal setting 4. narrative over instruction

Perception of american nerds problems: 1.ADD 2. asperger (inability to get visual emotional cues) 3.hyperliterality, & jargon of the tasks and games 4. friendless, 5. idiocentric humor(but this gets engineered away?)

but they: 1.multitask, 2. use text based interactions (visual cues become emoticons), 3.mainstream jargon into slang, 4. redefine friendship 5. use the power of Internet memes, shared mindspace

The gossipy part of social interactions around information is what makes it accessible, memorable and actionable.  But it’s the part we strip out.

Lightning Talks

Batch OCR with open source tools

Tesseract (no layout analysis) & Ocropus (includes layout analysis): both in google code

HocrConverter.py (python script builds a PDF file from an image)

xplus3.net for code

VuFind at Western Mich.U

Uses marc 005 field to determine new book (now -5 days, now -14 days, etc.)

Please clean my data

Cleaning harvested metadata & cleaning ocr text

Transformation and translation steps added to the harvesting process (all metadata records are in xml); regex as part of step templates; velocity template variables store each regex (gives direct access to the xml elements, then use the java dom4j api to do effectively whatever we wish)

Using newspapers:  example of “fix this text” (within browser).  Cool

Who the heck uses Fedora disseminators anyway?

Fedora content models are just content streams.

(They put their stuff in Drupal.)

Disseminator lives in Fedora, extended with PHP to display in Drupal, & edit

Library a la carte Update

Ajax tool to create library guides, open source style

Built on building blocks (reuse, copy, share)

Every guide type has a portal page (e.g., subject guide, tutorial (new), quiz)

Local install or hosted: tech stack: ruby, gems, rails, database, web server

Open source evangelism:  open source instances in the cloud!

Digital Video Made Easier

Small shop needed to set up video services quickly.  Solution: use online video services for ingest, data store, metadata, file conversion, distribution, video player.

Put 3 demos in place (will be posted on twitter stream): blip.tv api, youtube api

Disadvantages: data in the cloud, Terms of service, api lag, varying support (youtube supportive, blip not so much)

GroupFinder

Tool to help students find physical space more easily.

Launched oct. 2009, approx 65 posts per week.

php + MySql + jQuery

creativecommons licensed

EAD, Apis & Cooliris

Limited by contentdm (sympathy from audience), but tricked out to integrate cooliris.

(Pretty slick)

Talks

You Either Surf or You Fight: Integrating Library Services With Google Wave

Why?  go where your users are

Wave apps: gadgets & robots (real time interaction)

Real time interaction

Google has libraries in java and python, deployed using google app engine (google’s cloud computing platform.  Free for up to 1.3 million requests per day)

Create an app at appengine.google.com; Get app engine SDK, which includes the app engine launcher (creates skeleton application & deploys into app engine)

Set up the app.yaml (give app a name, version number [really important]).  api version is the api version of app engine.  Handler url is /_wave/.*

Get the wave robot api (not really stable yet, but shouldn’t be a problem) & drop it into the app directory

Wave concepts:  wavelet is the current conversation taking place within google wave; blip is each message part of the wavelet (hierarchical); each (wavelet & blip) have unique identifiers, which can be programmatically addressed.

Code avail on github.com/MrDys/

External libs are ok – just drop in the proj directory.  Using beautifulsoup to scrape the OPAC

Google wave will do html content, sort of.  Use OpBuilder instead (but it is not well documented).  Doesn’t like CSS

For debugging, use logging library (one of the better parts)