Code4Lib - a nonprogrammer's adventure into the programming world

I am extremely fortunate to have the opportunity of attending the 2009 Code4Lib Conference Feb. 23-26 in Providence, RI. Many thanks to the Conference host Brown University (and last year's host Oregan State University) for their generosity for making this happen.

Having observed the Code4Lib group for more than an year, I am just so excited that I will get to meet some of the developers in person and attend their talks on different wonderful technologies projects. Never a programmer myself, this will be my adventure into the programming world in the library community.

I have to admit that I am a bit nervous about being probably the only person at the conference who doesn't really speak... codes. Instead of improving programming skills that don't really exist in me, my goal instead is to get an in-depth understanding of these projects from a library system administrator's perspective. I'm hoping to learn what we (system librarians) can contribute, and how we can work with developers/programmers to make a project successful. Hopefully my small goal still makes sense at the end of each day. :)

So Providence, here I come.

This is hardly news anymore but I had to share it

It was not until I read this post on The Shifted Librarian did I realize... June 17th was Firefox 3 download day! A total of 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox on that day and they set a Guinness Record! I did download Firefox 3 very recently but I don't think I did it on the 17th. Too bad. There is even a certificate that you can download saying that you helped setting a World Record. Oh well... Still proud to be a ff user.

The graphic is too cute so I have to put it here. Credit goes to Matthew Inman and his State of the Web - Summer 2008.

Soon to be launched -- LCPL's catalog review/rating system via Chilifresh

I'm so excited. In one week we are going to launch our catalog review/rating system via Chilifresh. I first heard about them in February on Horizon-L, and have been trying to push for it since. Lots of other Horizon libraries have signed on and it was only until last week my boss finally gave a go after we made sure we have the money to pay for it (the price is very reasonable, it's just that we were too short of money!).

Folks at Chilifresh have been very responsive even we are only still on free trail. I am so excited and hope that our patrons will like this new service. It would have been even nicer if we could do this in-house but we just don't have enough man-power or resources. Chilifresh is the second best thing! Easy to implement, takes me very little time to put it up and is quite flexible.

The more the better! But what happened if they are scattered all over the place!

We have our summer reading program going on at the library I work for. The library purchased the software/program from Evanced to handle the online reading logs, and reviews for the program. This is not in my area and I was never involved in the decision making process. Anyway it is up and running as it is, and as far as I know we have a pretty good turn out. Lots of patrons signed up online and posted their reviews.

On the other hand, I have pushed to purchase yet another catalog review/rating engine for our library -- Chilifresh. It can be easily integrated into our online catalog and is already very popular among some public libraries. Anyway, this will be yet another place for our patrons to post reviews.

Now here comes the question. What to do with these reviews posted on our Summer Reading Program after it ends. This was asked by a staff member on our staff blog. Are we simply going to just delete them? Keep them for next summer? Add them to our online catalog? (well this person does not know that this cannot be easily done)

The person asking the question does not know about the Chilifresh project I am working on but this person asked a very good question. It is a key to think about how we offer our services.

More is better, isn't it? More services to our patrons is of course better. But what happens if they are scattered all over the place?? Does that really offer much convenience to our patrons? Log in here to leave a review in our SRP... log in there to leave a review on our catalog...

This is not user friendly at all. More is not better when you are sending patrons all over the place to do things they should be able to do in one place.

I do not have a specific solution to the issue that our staff raised. I don't think that there is a way for Chilifresh to load the reviews we got from Evanced into their database so that they will show up in our catalog. We may have to manually do this if we want to preserve the reviews our patrons wrote for the Summer Reading Program.

If only we could have thought more about these two separate but yet similar services we are offering to our patrons and planned a better way to integrate them rather than offering both but at separate places. Personally I don't like the review section on Evanced. It looks pretty ugly. There is a rating system but it does not display. On the other hand, Chilifresh has a star rating system that displays right up front. The reviews look like they are part of our catalog. We get reviews from not just our patrons but from all participating libraries.

I don't know how my boss will answer our staff. I am just frustrated that we did not do a better planning job as we should have, and I feel like we do not have the vision to offer more integrated an user-friendly services to our patrons.

This is when I really regret that I don't have a CS background...

and/or too lazy (according to hubby) to pick up any significant programming skills!! AW!!!

Library Applications Developer
The Brown University Library seeks a talented software developer to design new and innovative web-based library services, systems, and tools which anticipate the needs of library users.

In addition to developing new applications, the incumbent

• makes creative use of APIs
• continually enhances and extends commercial software applications
• works with library departments to develop tools which increase internal workflow efficiencies
• provides vision and leadership in the investigation and implementation of emerging information technologies

The Library Applications Developer is part of the Library's Integrated Technology Services department.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Science, or a related field; or the equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Experience in the designand manipulation of relational databases; demonstrated proficiency in developing and maintaining database-driven web applications
• Experience developing and coding interactive web applications using PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, HTML, XML, CSS , SQL, Javascript, AJAX, and/or other common tools. (AW!)
• Demonstrated experience with Unix or Linux server platforms, related software, and basic system administration utilities
• In depth knowledge of Website design, development, implementation, standards, and accessibility/usability guidelines.
• Experience with Web 2.0 technologies such as RDF and AJAX and with designing and implementing web services (REST). Ability to integrate Web 2.0 services to ensure the seamless delivery (this is the key!) of online library services.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and organizational skills
• Creativity and strong analytical and problem-solving skills
  Ability to learn new technical skills quickly; ability to meet deadlines; strong service-orientation. Ability to adapt emerging technologies to new domains.

Preferred Qualifications:

• MLS from an ALA accredited university
• Hands-on experience implementing and managing library enterprise systems

Ok so I am not a programmer and probably will never be. But where could one go to work with someone like that? That would be any system librarian's dream to work with a team of developer(s).

Integrated, easy and transparent user experience!

Folks at the Brown University Library have been doing some interesting stuff. I just happened to come across this while visiting there not too long ago. But they put out a new service called Easy Borrow, which provides "a single user interface for automated requesting of returnable items from multiple shared resource systems."

It's not something of great interest to public libraries unless you are part of a consortium. But it is a wonderful new service for users of academic libraries. Users only need to log in once. The automated system repeats their search in each one of the resource systems (start with Brown's own catalog) until it finds one with a copy available. If none of the other resource sharing systems have an available copy, it then goes into their ILL system ILLiad.

Users do not have to repeat their search in different catalogs/databases. Users do not have to log into different databases because they only have one single user interface they have to deal with. Plus, they don't even have to know where their materials were borrowed from, why should they!! This has made it much easier for staff also because they do not have to repeat users' search because the system is automated so it will attempt each resource before it goes into ILLiad.

Great example of integrating technologies and resources to present a wonderful, easy and transparent user experience!!

Brown is currently sharing the code in Google Code. Eventually they will host the code themselves and continue to share it with others. I wonder if the academic communities have expressed a lot of interest in this!

Amazing Race 2008?? -- the planning of our Switzerland, France and Italy trip

We started talking about doing a "real" trip for this year. Our previous trip to Orlando, Providence and Boston in May really didnt' count because it was for Ming's graduation and conference and we had relatives with us -- not our regular "Amazing Race" style. So we are hoping we could do Amazing Race 2008 sometime in September, and I'd like to go to Switzerland. We also have to visit Nice again(which I'd love to) because Ming is working with some people on his research there. But anyway, we started uing Google Map to plan this trip. I don't know for sure yet if we'll end up having the trip but it's nice just to look at the map and think about it!!

Google Map has added some new features. Now it's easier than ever to embed a map into another website. Just copy and paste the block of code Google has ready for you and off you go! This is really cool!!


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France and Spain Trip 2007

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Amazing Race 2007 -- Leg 1 Côte d’Azur

I arrived in Nice the night of Friday May 18th. Ming was already there since he arrived two days before I did. From 19th-21th we drove from Nice through Cannes (right when the 60th Cannes Film Festival was going on), Grasse (European perfume capital), Toulon(the famous military port in France) and Marseille (with special highlight in tasting bouillabaisse).










Salad Nicoise & fried smelt (left) Nice Fish Soup (right)
The 60th Cannes Film Festival. And after 1 hour wait, I finally captured a red carpet moment! Hey I think I know one of the actors in that picture. He's a famous movie star from Taiwan and is a lead charater in this Korean film.






Grasse, visiting the Fragonard Perfume Factory. (all right, trust me, that is not an alien base!, it was just an antique equipment on display, something that they used to use to extract the essence out of flowers)






Marseilles Sea Port (left), and the famous bouillabaisse (right), which took a good 2 hours to cook!! At the price of 35 euros per person and 2 persons minumum, it "uh.....starts to be good", the lady at the Tourist Office who recommended the restaurant to us said. It indeed was very tasty, as long as I could avoid the fish's eye! ;) After the soup was done, fish were separated out to be presented to the guests.

Amazing Race 2007

6 more days and we'll be out on our Amazing Race 2007 -- our trip to Southern France and Spain. My husband calls it the Amazing Race because we are too ambitious and plan on going to many places within 18 days. Check out our entire trip which is marked out here on Google Map.


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Hubby leaves the night of May16. He's meeting his professor in Nice to supposedly have some scientific discussion over glasses of red wine (Ha!). Then I will leave here the night of May 18 next Thursday and join hubby to start the official first leg of our Race. We'll start our trip from Nice, France, and will make our way through Cote d'Azur, Marseille, spending about a week in Provence, then move on to Spain and will visit Barcelona and Valencia. Our trip will end with a highlight of the America's Cup, on board of a cruise ship observing the first race of the Louis Vuitton cup final for the cup challengers in Valencia. We have booked most hotels except 2 open nights (wing it!), and rented a car for about 1 week. This will be a great trip and I just can't wait!!! :)

What I bought on Ebay

Thing 23 -- Yeaaahhhh ! I made it !!!

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This has been such a fun journey. Thanks very much, LCPL, for setting it up. There are certainly 'things' that I enjoyed more than others, such as blogging, web2.0 tool, flickr, librarything ... etc. A few are a little bit boring. But that's ok. In the end it was great to be able to do them all. This has been a wonderful learning experience!!

Thing 13 -- Del.icio.us more tagging!

For some reason I don't like Del.icio.us' layout very much. But I finally found my ways around after spending a little time. So here's my Del.icio.us bookmarks. Since I'm donig this from my home PC, I installed the buttons on my Firefox. They are all right. I just don't like the look of the bookmarks. Not sleek enough.
I find it interesting to see the hotlist and what others are tagging. The suggested tags function is very handy because when I bookmark things because I didn't have hand-type it. I don't find the bundle tag feature very useful. I can't seem to view bookmarks under the bundled tag together.

Thing 12 -- Rollyo

Okey dokey. I've created a Rollyo search roll for electronic gadgets on my blog. The results came back very slowly because it searches quite a few sites all at the same time. But they are pretty precise though, if you can provide a very precise search term. We are looking for another digital camera, so I entered "Nikon digital camera L12", and each entry in the result list pretty much took me right to the result page on the specific website. Not bad.
I don't like the Rollyo website itself, though. Find it hard to navigate, it took me a while to get to the places I needed.

Thing 10 -- Image Generator

No! No! This is not for me. This is for our little cute town Berwyn Heights which the Washington Post called the Jewel of P.G.!!!




And this one is for hubby!