Stupendous Amazing

Install Ubuntu 11.04 on Lenovo C205 All-in-one PC

2011-10-10T15:59:00.000-05:00

Recently I bought myself a low-cost Lenovo C205 All-In-One for home use, and quickly came to hate the Windows 7 Starter version it came installed with. So, I tried to run Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) on it, only to find that graphics support would not work out of the box.

So, looking around, I cobbled together these instructions; I'm posting them hoping it might help out others in a similar situation:

1. Start out by grabbing the Ubuntu Alternate Install ISO disc and burning it to a CD. This provides a text-based install that will get us a running Ubuntu terminal from where we'll be able to install the graphics drivers to get the full-blown Ubuntu.

2. Install Ubuntu!

2. After you finish installation, you should now boot into text mode. If you don't force text mode, you will just get a black screen, or a garbled GUI.

You force text mode by: using the Grub menu (purple screen) that shows up when restarting your computer. Select Ubuntu from the menu, then hit the e key and add the word text to the end of that line. Once you do that, hit b to continue on to booting.

After booting completes, hit CTRL-ALT-F1, and log in using the username/password you gave during installation at the prompt.

3. Once you're logged in, fetch and install the proper drivers. I used some of the steps outlined in http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=106898 Of course you need a working Internet connection to do this.

Note: Last I checked, the ATI Catalyst driver version was 11.7; some of the following won't work if for some reason the driver version has changed.

Run the following commands one by one.

sudo apt-get install -y dkms

cd ~; mkdir catalyst11.7; cd catalyst11.7

wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-11-8-x86.x86_64.run

chmod +x ati-driver-installer-11-8-x86.x86_64.run

sudo sh ./ati-driver-installer-11-8-x86.x86_64.run --extract ati

cd ati

sudo ./ati-installer.sh 8.881 --buildpkg Ubuntu/natty

cd ..

rm -rf ati

sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

sudo aticonfig --initial -f

sudo aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1

After running all of the above commands, you have to reboot:

sudo reboot

Now, let the normal boot sequence start and lo an behold, graphics should now work! Yay!

Experimenting with Kinect for education

2011-09-30T09:31:00.000-05:00

We've had a Kinect at the Center for the last few weeks. Sadly, we've not been able to spend that much time with it (and is also not on the top of our priorities), but clearly see there are a lot of possibilities.

To me it seems that, in regards to educational purposes, Kinect will help out by engaging learners; forcing them to move just fires up some of those lazy neurons. By itself, this clearly brings an advantage to whatever app you hook it up to.

Imagine playing a math game with mouse clicks, vs. a Kinect-based game where you wave your arms, turn, crouch or jump to acheive goals. I think the latter might make reaching learning goals easier than the former. Of course, research has to be done =)

That aside, just getting the thing to work hasn't been that hard; basically there are several libraries out there that form the basic drivers on which developers can build on. The libraries seem pretty stable and work fine, but there aren't too many downloadable examples (or we're having a hard time finding them).

In future posts I plan to offer some updates documenting some of the stuff we've found. Some topics might be:

low-level SDKs or libraries that talk to Kinect
development stacks (from drivers to graphics/game framework) for Windows, Mac and/or Linux
ideas of real-world educational applications to build with Kinect (or showcasing existing ones)

For now, we've covered some of the basics:

Windows: installed the available OpenNI + NITE + SensorKinect binaries. On top of that, FAAST. This allowed us to emulate key presses through Kinect gestures. Thus, we can now have Kinect Tetris, Kinect Doom, etc. Interactive but not that innovative =)
Linux (Ubuntu): this was a tad harder. Some bits are available as downloadable binaries (and only then for Ubuntu 10.10), but most other require getting a bunch of libraries and then compiling. Not horrific, but not quite straightforward either. End result: we're a step behind the work on Windows: just the skeleton tracking on some of the sample demos, no app control yet.
Mac: coming soon.

Why are we doing this?
I have to say this whole experience is interesting: I have almost zero experience developing native applications on any platform, which is our target audience exactly--students and teachers who want to build things, but need a kickstart (which we would like to provide).

Our goal isn't clearly defined at the moment, but we are confident this (like other technologies we work with) is a tool that will improve learning, or enable different ways of doing so. That might be an obvious statement to make, but part of our job is to actually test and prove it to be so.

And, I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm also having fun. Gladly, that's a part of my job too.

New OAI-PMH harvesting application: OAIConnect

2011-09-28T11:46:00.000-05:00

Some months ago, I was hired to work on a web application that would grab metadata records from different document repositories (mainly in universities) and join them into a central catalog. This application should:

work with OAI-PMH repositories such as DSpace
provide faceted search of the harvested items
use open source products
be itself released as an open source product

The application was to be installed, and used by actual people in a project to harvest educational materials for a research project. That site is available at http://www.educonector.info/

Last week I released the code to the public as OAIConnect. The application can be installed by anyone who can meet some basic requirements (Apache, MySQL and PHP). The application is built on top of Drupal and a host of freely available modules (plus some custom glue), so you can basically extend, restyle and reconfigure it to your liking.

Screenshots
Installer:

Starting page:

Sample record:

Millennium Integration module for Drupal 2.0 screenshots

2010-11-12T09:57:00.000-06:00

Here are some screenshots from the 2.0 version of the Drupal Millennium Integration module in action.

These records were imported from a live library catalog. This example is using the Fusion theme.

Teasers for nodes with imported records.

A full node view. The Table of Contents section below is provided by the optional (included) Millennium Enrichment module which brings in data from the Library of Congress at import time. All the information would be in Drupal's full text index and thus is searchable.

This node shows an embedded Google Book Search reader. It only shows when the item actually has a preview or full view in Google Book Search.

This is a wall of books from the included Views integration. This example uses the Garland theme.

You can easily do manual or automatic batch imports in a variety of ways; this screenshot shows an example.

Here are some of the configuration/settings screens.

General settings and sources. The module can handle several OPACs simultaneously.

Read more over at the Millennium Integration module project page.

Remove empty space above tabs in Firefox 4 beta 6 title bar

2010-09-15T11:14:00.000-05:00

These instructions for Firefox 4 beta 5/6.

Find your userChrome folder inside your Profile folder: to find your profile folder, see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder
Find the "chrome" folder and open it.
Edit userChrome.css

Add this snippet to that file:

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);

/* Note: assumes app button is visible (menu bar disabled) */

/* Move tabs up to titlebar */
#main-window[sizemode="maximized"] #navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] #TabsToolbar {
    padding-left: 112px !important;
    padding-right: 112px !important;
}
#main-window[sizemode="normal"] #navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] #TabsToolbar {
    padding-left: 112px !important;
    padding-right: 109px !important;
}

/* Move the menubar above the tabs so it moves the tab bar down when activated */
#main-window[sizemode="maximized"] #navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] #toolbar-menubar {
    margin: -19px 0px 3px 112px !important;
}
#main-window[sizemode="normal"] #navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] #toolbar-menubar {
    margin: -24px 0px 3px 112px !important;
}

/* Curved corners when tabs-on-top and normal window */
#main-window[sizemode="normal"] #navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] #nav-bar {
    -moz-border-radius-topleft: 5px !important;
    -moz-border-radius-topright: 5px !important;
}

(taken from http://userstyles.org/styles/36432)

Restart Firefox.

Usage of library Drupal modules

2010-09-10T10:53:00.000-05:00

Edit: Failed to include (my own) HILCC module. How embarassing.

Out of curiosity, I did a quick sampling of usage stats (according to Drupal.org) of different library-related Drupal modules. I left out some that didn't have usage information or are not hosted on D.O. and of course, didn't count many other modules useful to libraries (like Apache Solr, booking modules, etc.)

These stats also reflect only those sites that have module update tracking turned on; it'd be a good question to ask Drupal library service providers what's their best practice on that.

Usage statistics for EZProxy
http://drupal.org/project/usage/ezproxy

Usage statistics for SOPAC
http://drupal.org/project/usage/sopac

Usage statistics for The eXtensible Catalog (XC) Drupal Toolkit
http://drupal.org/project/xc

Usage statistics for Millennium OPAC Integration
http://drupal.org/project/millennium

Usage statistics for Cite
http://drupal.org/project/cite

Usage statistics for DigitalNZ API
http://drupal.org/project/digitalnz

Usage statistics for MARC
http://drupal.org/project/marc

Usage statistics for OAI-PMH Module
http://drupal.org/project/oai2

Usage statistics for Library
http://drupal.org/project/library

Usage statistics for OAI2 for CCK
http://drupal.org/project/oai2forcck

Usage statistics for Book Post
http://drupal.org/project/bookpost

Usage statistics for HILCC Taxonomy autotag
http://drupal.org/project/hilcc

Wonderful handmade video from New Zealand Book Council

2010-02-22T15:22:00.000-06:00

Wonderful video to promote the New Zealand Book Council. "Where Books Come Alive".
Via Craftzine.com.

How to hide a Drupal-in-a-subdirectory installation in GoDaddy

2010-02-19T11:40:00.001-06:00

Say you have a Drupal installation for testing purposes inside a subdirectory in your hosting account, like so:

http://example.com/drupal-6/

and you want to make that installation replace/take over your site's home at:

http://example.com/

The .htaccess file in your document root needs some changing, as well as the base_url in your settings.php file.

For the full instructions, read on at http://drupal.org/node/520700#comment-1819902

Drupal tip: Adding "number of results" message to your View

2010-01-22T09:06:00.000-06:00

Quick Drupal tip for Views 2. You can add some PHP code in your header or footer to display the amount of total results AND the number displayed in the page (if you're using paged results) using this tip:

http://drupal.org/node/131031#comment-2507598

Thanks to matteo.boria and kingandy for figuring it out!

Adding RSS feeds to Drupal's Apache Solr Search module

2009-10-12T13:27:00.000-05:00

(Drupal 6.x branches only!)

It's actually embarrassingly simple:

1. Install and enable the OpenSearch Feed module.

That's it! To test, try a launching a search; an "XML" button will appear next to the "Search" button on all Apache Solr Search results pages.

By the way, this makes your site OpenSearch-compliant, meaning that IE7+, Firefox and others will auto-detect your search engine and let you add it to your browser's "Quick Search" bar.

Applying code patches in Windows Vista

2009-07-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

(I'm speaking of .patch files, BTW) =)

In Vista it was particularly frustrating figuring out how to do this in Windows:

   patch -p0 <patchfile

...something that's pretty simple in the UNIX shell of your choice.

I started by installing GNU Patch for Windows... but Vista didn't want to run it because of Windows UAC. Also, to me it seemed too cumbersome to have to open up a Windows commmand prompt JUST to apply patches, when I was doing everything else from the Windows Explorer UI thanks to the awesome TortoiseCVS.

So, here's what I did:

Install GNU Patch for windows, using the Binaries ZIP file; I installed it in C:\Program Files
Make sure patch.exe now lives in c:\program files\patch\bin\patch.exe
Create the .bat file c:\program files\patch\bin\patch.bat with these commands:
```
@echo off
"c:\program files\patch\bin\patch" -p0 < %1
pause
```

Create two .manifest files to keep UAC happy:

c:\program files\patch\bin\patch.exe.manifest

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> 
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> 
<trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2"> 
<security> 
<requestedPrivileges> 
<requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker"/> 
</requestedPrivileges> 
</security> 
</trustInfo> 
</assembly>

c:\program files\patch\bin\patch.bat.manifest
With the exact above contents of patch.exe.manifest

Associate .batch files with the new patch.bat file. You can do this by creating an empty file and renaming it something.patch. On Windows Explorer, right-click this new file and use the "Open with" option, and tell Windows to always use c:\program files\patch\bin\patch.bat to open this file type.

There! Now, when you double-click on .patch files from Windows Explorer, a command line will open up with the Patch results, and wait for a keystroke before closing.

Tip: Always remember to place your patches in the correct directory!

My article about our Drupal library discovery layer

2009-06-26T08:42:00.001-05:00

At last, it's out.

From the abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to document how the library at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey Campus came to use the open source Drupal with other freely available tools as the basis for an extensible platform for current and future information discovery gateways.

The article is available here:
From OPAC to CMS: Drupal as an extensible library platform (subscription required; you can get a pre-print version).

Basically the article relates how we built a library discovery layer built on Drupal, which contains the portion of our collections that is relevant to the School of Biotech and Health at the university. It uses the Drupal Millennium and HILCC modules, the Google Custom Search Engine, EZProxy and lots of other Drupal modules to do it.

As it stands, I'm proud I was able to publish my first article in a peer-reviewed Journal; I, however, think I could have delivered a better product. Something for next time =)

Also, I was rather surprised to find out the journal (Library Hi-Tech) has impact factor metrics from ISI-Thomson.

~~I'm not sure if I can distribute a pre-print version; I'll ask =)~~ Pre-print version is here.

You can also view my earlier post about a presentation on the same subject.

Library of Congress releases LCSH as linked data

2009-05-05T09:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday the LOC announced it is releasing it's first service on id.loc.gov which contains LCSH terms represented as RDF/XML, N-Triples and JSON.

The vocabulary is available for download, or can be searched online at http://id.loc.gov/authorities/

Here are some sample snapshots:

Search for "simple machines"

View for the topical term "Simple machines". Note you can export the term as RDF, N-Triples or JSON.

Each term has a "Visualization" tab which shows related, broader and narrower term relationships.

Authenticating Drupal users against III / Millennium

2009-04-16T14:51:00.000-05:00

The Millenium (III) Integration module for Drupal now has a VERY experimental module that uses screen-scraping to allow authenticating users against an III system using their library credentials (barcode/ID, last name and PIN).

This is done using a bit of screenscraping and using the "usual" Drupal API hooks.

The neat side of doing this is you could, in theory:

[optionally] share your currently loaned items with other users or publicly
receive custom alerts while navigating within the Drupal site ("you owe the library $$")
when looking at an item imported via Millennium module for Drupal, see a message informing this item is one you currently have/is overdue, etc.
let users make some/all of their loaned items public (in profile? RSS? etc)
Mash up any of the previous with other Drupal modules (imagine "Your Friend checked out this book, and rated it ****", or "Subscribe to your friend's checkout feeds", etc.)

Here's a screenshot of how this shows under the /user Drupal path:

Now, of course this is teh fragile, using screenscraping and stuff. Current options are: (1) $hell out for Patron API module for III, (2) use SIP (which still requires a module), or (3) keep at this;

How can YOU help? If you have an III system at your command, you could provide me with a temporary login to test against.

Ideas to improve Drupa 7's admin usability

2009-04-03T09:27:00.000-06:00

I posted some ideas on how to improve administrative usability in Drupal. Care to comment?

Some Possible Drupal 7 Enhancements 3apr09

View more presentations from janusman.

Article on Drupal and RDF

2009-03-26T08:28:00.000-06:00

A great article that simplifies what the fuss over RDF/RDFa is about, and how Drupal is trying to tie into it.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/rdfa-drupal-and-a-practical-semantic-web-004149.php

Thanks @robertDouglass!

HILCC module for Drupal

2009-03-17T16:26:00.000-06:00

In our Drupal sites for our library and now in our Knowledge Hub we've been using LCC to catalog items and then using HILCC to produce a navigatable architecture in our Drupal sites.

This functionality is now available to the public at large as a Drupal module, which you can download here:

http://drupal.org/project/hilcc

HILCC is a hierarchic classification scheme developed originally at Columbia University Libraries, designed to offer library catalogs a way to easily cluster similar-subject items for navigation. HILCC is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC license.

For now it's only available for Drupal 5, but a D6 version is in the works.

LOC (re-)releasing Subject Headings and more

2009-03-05T14:04:00.000-06:00

Karen coyle mentioned LC is bringing back subject headings and other information (some originally available in the now-defunct lcsh.info).

More info is available in http://id.loc.gov/

What this means, is that at last some of LC's controlled vocabularies will be available to build the semantic web.

Intersection of IA and Librarianship

2009-02-11T10:40:00.000-06:00

James Kalbach wrote this piece which, although not its main focus, talks about the intersection of Information Architecture and Librarianship.

Read "IA, Therefore I Am" by James Kalbach.

Auto-tag your content with Calais for Drupal

2009-01-28T07:55:00.000-06:00

This is rebooting my interest in automated classification. =)

Check out the Calais Drupal module, based on the Calais service from Thomson-Reuters.

The Calais modules for Drupal (found at http://drupal.org/project/opencalais) are feature-rich, highly intuitive and designed to make it easy for Drupal users to automatically metatag their content, generating rich Semantic metadata that can be shared via a simple key and integrated into the larger content universe.

The screencast shows what an implementation would look like. I'm ready to use Drupal's RSS aggregator or FeedAPI module to pull in some content and see how Calais auto-tagging would work.

Of course, now I want to see what Calais does to library items imported into Drupal, see how Drupal would expose RDF and other stuff!

Disabling Etags from affecting your YSlow score

2009-01-27T09:11:00.000-06:00

YSlow is a great tool to quickly determine what optimizations can make your site quicker. However, Yahoo determined to include checking for ETags; if the server in question has ETags enabled, YSlow scores will be negatively affected. This should really not always be true, as ETags aren't always "bad"; if your site runs from a single server, having ETags enabled helps.

Looking for an explanation for this, I came across a comment from David C-L inside the Yahoo Developer's Blog:

Type about:config in the Firefox address bar.
look for the setting named extensions.firebug.yslow.pointsEtags and set it to 0. If the setting doesn't exist, you can create it by right-clicking and choosing "Add".

Now Firebug will not ignore the ETags setting on servers to determine the YSlow score.

Why implement federated search tools you hate?

2009-01-23T09:25:00.000-06:00

In my case, I of course don't *hate* federated search engines, I just think some could be MUCH better (that's why I wrote a PHP layer on top of III's Metafind years ago before actually rolling it out to users).

In "Why Reference and Instruction Librarians Hate Federated Searching", the author points out a bunch of shortcomings of these tools, but mid-article reveals the reason:

Given the above, why are federated search products still on the market, and why are libraries still contracting with vendors? What has changed my own mind in the last five years, transforming me from a reluctant community college reference librarian fighting it tooth and nail to a web librarian petitioning the university’s budget priorities committee for extra funds to pay for it? Two things: usability testing and developments in federated search products themselves.

It goes on to mention new features, new attitudes, and the real-world impact of simply exposing all this quality information we have tucked away in our many, many subscription databases: trying to simplify our present too many interfaces, paths, requirements, dead ends, and opportunities for confusion.

Oh! Also, Don't forget to check out http://federatedsearchblog.com/

Userfly: hosted screen recording for usability testing

2009-01-22T08:31:00.000-06:00

UserFly touts itself as a tool to do usability studies by just adding a line of javascript to your pages. In reality, it is a screen recording tool that stores the actions your users did in real time.

The recording works, although since the pages seem to be captured from the Userfly servers and then overlayed with actions from the browser, you will find that if the user is already logged in, Userfly might not playback actions on those pages correctly.

The service seems like it's still in an experimental stage. IMO it still needs some polishing (the demo video is narrated by someone with a cold), and personally adding the javascript to one of my sites really slowed down page loading.

To be honest I would need more testing to judge if it works or not. I love the idea of just adding the javascript and getting instant recordings of site visitors.

userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.

On a side note, a full usability test consists of more than just going by screen recordings of users, just make sure you read up on the subject before actually embarking on a testing spree "just" with this tool =)

Drupal 6.x Starter Theme Comparison

2009-01-21T15:14:00.000-06:00

This courtesy of the Drupal.org aggregator:

This table shows the current crop of themes that identify themeselves as starter themes for Drupal.

A starter or "base" theme is one that typically has very little style and is designed primarly for the purpose of building your own unique Drupal theme. For more information about theming Drupal view the Drupal 6 Theme Guide.

Link

New releases of Biblio and OAI-PMH module for Drupal 6

2008-12-19T11:55:00.000-06:00

The Biblio and OAI-PMH modules mantained by rjerome at Drupal.org have been updated with new releases.

This is exciting because there was no version of these modules for Drupal 6; they were already available for Drupal 5 but Drupal 6 has been out for almost a year now and is the best option for building new websites.

Biblio handles mantaining, displaying and exporting of bibliographic items that can be exposed via the OAI-PMH module. If you also throw in my Millennium Integration module, then you could import items from a library catalog straight into Biblio items. I say "could" because the current Drupal 6 version of Millennium Integration is stand-alone, that is, isn't tied to the Biblio module.

I will now start work on again integrating with Biblio to make Millennium Integration better.

Isn't Open Source great?

Best commercial for a TV yet

2008-11-28T08:49:00.000-06:00

Via MaissonBisson.com

Tasha Saecker on Social Libraries

2008-11-28T08:23:00.000-06:00

This Webinar sounds interesting; it´s part of the "Library Open Source Webinars" from WiLS. It will be held next tuesday (december 2nd) from 2:00-3:00 pm Central Time.

Getting Social with Tasha Saecker

Get you and your library hooked up with the latest in social networking software online. Learn how to use Twitter, Delicious and FriendFeed both personally and professionally to create your own personal brand online.

Tasha Saecker is the director of the Menasha Public Library, Wisconsin Library of the Year for 2008. She has been blogging for over five years at both: Sites & Soundbytes and Kids Lit.

In 2007, the Menasha Public Library won a Webby Award in Wisconsin for its Drupal-based website. Part of their site links to their extensive collection of websites on Delicious. The library will soon be contributing to Twitter too. You can follow Tasha on Twitter as TashRow.

http://librarywebinars.blogspot.com/

Building a Thematic Library with Drupal presentation

2008-11-14T15:54:00.000-06:00

Here is a link to a presentation we did on how we built a special site for library health resources--an OPAC built on Drupal, Solr, the Millennium integration module and Google Custom Search Engine.

http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/mty/workingtogether/Developing_a_Thematic_Library_rev_AGG_IJET_13oct08.ppt

You can visit the working site here: http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/pasteur/

This was part of the University of Maryland/Tecnológico de Monterrey sister libraries conference, "Working Together".

Drupal 6 version of Millennium Module available for testing

2008-11-14T08:19:00.000-06:00

I just created and released a new version (2.0-dev) of the Millennium Integration module for Drupal. The earlier version worked with Drupal 5 and required the Biblio module. This new version is for Drupal 6, and removes the requirement for the Biblio module.

The module currently outputs bibliographic in a themeable table (meaning that with a little PHP, you can completely change the layout). For the final 2.0 version I plan to include other import and/or presentation options, like putting the fields into CCK or import into the Biblio module (when that module is available).

I still insist trying to integrate with Biblio because it already does a lot of cool things like provide a bibliographic citation (APA) view, provide CoINs (embedded machine-readable metadata in pages), export to bibliographic management software and more. For now, releasing this version will (I hope) kickstart a new round of testing by libraries who want to try out options to make their catalog better.

To get more information, download and installation instructions, go to the project page: http://drupal.org/project/millennium

The ugly, ugly results from my Vista voice recognition test

2008-10-14T15:36:00.000-05:00

I tried to make Vista transcribe a presenter's speech during her presentation into Word using Vista's Voice Recognition, which I have barely used. I knew it would turn out ugly.

What?

SOPAC 2 released

2008-09-25T15:34:00.000-05:00

John Blyberg released www.thesocialopac.net, a site that hosts downloads, instructions and forums for SOPAC2, the "social opac" platform that powers Darien Library, and runs on Drupal. It uses Sphinx for fast searching.

At first glance, the install procedure seems a bit lengthy! I guess I could come up with smaller startup instructions for a similar setup using the Millennium module and "just" Drupal, but then I would still have to narrate how to install all of the modules to really get some great functionality. I guess I'll just have to install it myself and see how it works.

Congratulations, John!

What I found in my switch to Mac, Drupal-wise

2008-09-24T15:25:00.000-05:00

The last 7 days I've *had* to work on a MacBook pro, due to me switching jobs, and this being the only available laptop.

It's a beautiful machine, but making the switch was... well... interesting =)

Here are some of the things I found about switching to a Mac from Windows AND working with Drupal:

If you want to run apache/mysql in a Mac, best to install MAMP. It's dead simple! Large download though (then I found about universal binaries and architecture-specific dowloads--d'oh!)
For text editing, TextMate is great, but it's not free. It can sort-of upload stuff via FTP with an added bundle, but you have to type in a lot of information manually for each file. I found out you can use the Fetch FTP client (commercial, but free to educational institutions and other uses) to automatically FTP your files whenever you change them with any text editor (you have to download them via Fetch first!) So, now instead of TextMate I could get by with other editors like Smultron.
For screengrabbing, get Skitch! You'll love it.
Although the Mac does run under UNIX, it does not have CVS support by default. So you'll have to install a client of some sort. I haven't gotten this far, though (I use CVS from our test server); as I understand it, you can get it from the Development tools provided by Apple (but it's a huge download)--more about that here.

Using Google Analytics to track searches in Drupal

2008-09-05T10:12:00.000-05:00

Updated: Added some PHP code to complete the example

Google Analytics needs you to specify part of a query string in order for you to get specialized "Site Search" reports. However in Drupal you might have nice Clean URLs like this:

http://example.com/search/bananas

instead of what GA wants, something like

http://example.com/search?query=bananas

You can still get Site Search reports for searches using Clean URLs, using the Google Analytics API.

You just need to:

Use the "new" GA handling code.
Add code like this at the end of your page; I recommend putting it inside a Block (be sure to mark the Input Format to be "PHP code"):

<?php
if (arg(0) == 'apachesolr_search' || arg(0) == 'search') {
$keys = search_get_keys();
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
pageTracker._trackPageview('/site_search?query=<?php echo $keys; ?>');
</script>
<?php
}
?>

You then tell your GA report's settings to activate Site Search reporting and to look for "query" as the search argument.

After a day of logging, your GA reports will include the report. See a site searching report sample.

Video Tour of OPAC Discovery Layer Tools

2008-09-02T12:24:00.000-05:00

The Disruptive Library Technology Jester posted (a while back!) the video for this presentation which demos OPACs from different libraries which are either: OPAC enhancements, OPAC wrappers or OPAC replacements.

It's a good watch.

http://dltj.org/article/discovery-layer-video-tour/

To me, some lessons are:

for user tags to be useful in an OPAC, you need critical mass, or seed the catalog with tags from an external source (LibraryThing?)
while there are a lot of similarities in the way the interfaces work, there are some things that *maybe* should be standardized; like the location of facets, labelling, etc. A research opportunity.
If I had to pick an [open source] discovery layer from those presented, I'd have to say Scriblio; it just seems solid, everything looks dead simple and keeps you clicking. One thing I'd change is the facet layout, as they seem rather "mashed together"--whitespace to the rescue?

Drupal + SOPAC + Community power Darien Library's new site and OPAC

2008-09-01T14:04:00.000-05:00

Step by Darien Library's website, where you can see their new catalog powered by Drupal and SOPAC2, created by John Blyberg. John created the Ann Arbor District Library site, which uses an III system for its ILS, and was--according to Richard Wallis--"the poster child of Library 2.0" websites.

You can find out more about SOPAC:

From the interview, it seems that the code for SOPAC will be available in a week or two, and John stated that it will be GPL-licensed.

Congratulations!

Drupal in the Cloud presentation from Drupalcon 2008

2008-09-01T09:56:00.000-05:00

This presentation is not only interesting for Drupal developers; it's a great starting point for learning about what cloud computing is, the difference between platform-as-service and infrastructure-as-service, a list of companies offering these services, what some dangers and benefits are... and more. They detail what it takes to put Drupal into the Amazon EC2 service, and show a video of what a Firefox-based cloud administration tool looks like.

Recommended.

http://www.archive.org/details/drupal_in_the_cloud

More Drupalcon videos here

P.S.: The sound isn't perfect, though =)

McGill U Library scanning books with Kirtas

2008-08-26T14:39:00.000-05:00

Via Campus Technology:

McGill University Library in Montreal will be using a Kirtas Technologies APT BookScan 2400RA to digitize its collections. The company said that the 2400RA is capable of acquiring page images at the rate of 2,400 pages per hour. The library will be working with Ristech, a Canadian reseller, to implement the digitization solution.

The post says they will make scanned books available via print-on-demand services.

Drupal Rocks Libraries slideshow

2008-08-25T17:34:00.000-05:00

I couldn't really track down the real author(s) of this slideshow; Acquia and the Libraries group @ Drupal.org are mentioned, but I'm not sure who made this =)

Our library's homepage is in there =)

Click To Play

View in Blip.tv

Via Acquia's blog.

SOPAC 2.0: a discovery layer for every library?

2008-08-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

John Blyberg (creator of AADL.org and now at Darien Library) posts about the new version of SOPAC-- a "Social Opac" discovery layer which, it seems, will be ILS-independent. SOPAC 1.0 works with III (or "Millennium") ILSs and Drupal, and apart from normal catalog searching, it adds features like tag clouds, reviews and more.

It seems to me that if SOPAC can have an abstraction layer so that you can plug in translators for different ILSs, it really opens the door to using all of the great modules we already have in Drupal and have the tools to "easily" build Library Catalogs Just The Way We Like.

This is our philosophy--and I guess John's--for picking Drupal: have a solid base (in code AND community) from which to build on, and... build!

I envy Darien Library, I'm sure they'll get a great new website to match their library =) Full steam ahead!

Two more libraries to go Drupal

2008-08-15T14:39:00.001-05:00

Via LibrarianInBlack.net

Two libraries, U of M's and San Jose Library pciked Drupal as their next platform for their library web pages.

U of M's blog post details how they compared between several options like Joomla, Drupal, Plone, Typo3 and others.

It would be nice to know if they mean to only host their information pages, or if they were planning on building something more (like some OPAC functionality, or A-Z lists of journals, etc.)

Yay! I contributed to core Drupal

2008-08-14T16:30:00.000-05:00

Well, I only tested a patch for required field validation =) But still exiting!

Oh, by the way, this is part of the Drupal 5.10 security release... so scoot and go update your sites!

Drupal Millennium Module 1.4 released

2008-08-13T10:36:00.001-05:00

This release mainly fixes some MARC import problems and adds a few new features.

You can try out our live implementation in PASTEUR, our thematic library oriented towards our Health, Chemistry and Biotechnology faculty and students. This site is also running Apache Solr for faceted search, a custom (not yet released) Millennium Authentication module and others.

From the project release page:

Fixes:
Fixed [#263310]
Fixes for [#253593]
Holdings ajax call now locale-aware
Fixed ids for coverimages; were incorrect if ISSN or ISBN inculded a dash.
Added missing "real names" for MARC language codes (e.g.: eng => English)
Cleanup of CSS file
New features:
Added more placeholders for book jacket image call (title, author)
Tries to get Call number from first item if not available in MARC bibliographic record
Adds all biblio information to Drupal's fulltext index.
[#260858] Added .pot file for translators
Changes:
Dropped auto URL alias generation; should be handled by pathauto.module + biblio.module (see [#89038])

A million free covers from Library Thing

2008-08-12T13:48:00.000-05:00

LibraryThing just opened access to around a million cover images uploaded by LT users; you can get to them just by signing up for an API key and grabbing them from a special URL.

Tim Spalding makes some disclaimers: Amazon has more and probably better cover images, and they impose no maximum limit. However Amazon requires you to backlink to them from each image. LT has no such limit, and in fact encourages you to locally store images in order to reduce load on LT's servers.

If you installed the Millennium Module for Drupal, you can take advantage of LT's cover images like this:

Sign up to LibraryThing if you haven't done so already
Get an API key from LT
Put this URL into your Millennium module's settings, replacing KEY with your actual LT API key:

http://covers.librarything.com/devkey/KEY/medium/isbn/!id

It will look like this:

Spelling suggestions in Drupal + Solr search

2008-08-08T08:48:00.000-05:00

Apache Solr has the option to build a dictionary to suggest words to search for when a search returns zero hits. I suggested a patch to the Drupal Apache Solr module that adds support for that.

If you're running this module, please help try it!

You can see it live in our production site, PASTEUR.

Atiz Bookdrive DIY demo in an hour

2008-08-08T08:40:00.000-05:00

Sales reps from Atiz installed this monster yesterday. Look at the size of it! We have a demo in a few... I hope to post my impressions afterward.

Stay tuned!

Nice Drupal theme: Marianelli

2008-07-15T18:22:00.001-05:00

Marianelli is a nice configurable 3-column theme by Lioz. Try the live demo!

http://drupal.org/project/marinelli

Exploring faculty experiences with e-books: a focus group

2008-07-15T13:42:00.001-05:00

An interesting read. Here's the article.

"In spring of 2007, Arizona State University Libraries held a focus group of selected faculty to discover their perceptions and use of electronic books (e-books) in their research and teaching."

Scanner for patrons in Alaska

2008-06-27T18:00:00.001-05:00

The University of Alaska Anchorage
Consortium library in Anchorage Alaska
has a KIC II Scanner for users to scan directly into their USB drives or email. Nifty, eh?

Check out the stats page showing how patrons are using them at the vendor's site.

Via librarian.net

Major ILS vendors not really interested in interoperating

2008-06-27T17:38:00.001-05:00

From DLTJ:

...the authors interviewed the four major vendors of integrated library systems in higher education in the U.K.: Ex Libris, Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix and Talis. Among the “who are you” and “what do you do” questions were two that get to the heart of what many of us are clamoring for from our vendors:

* How do your products interoperate with products those from other LMS/ERM vendors?
* Do you have partnerships with other LMS/ERM vendors?

For example, one question asked Innovative:

Does Innovative have partnerships with other LMS/ERM vendors?

No. Our aim is to provide best of breed across the whole range of library needs. Of course we don’t stand in the way of libraries that wish for example to add Aquabrowser or Endeca. However we want to provide solutions that are better. To date, we haven’t seen a big groundswell for these types of products…for all of the press and interest it has gotten, products like Endeca haven’t made a major dent in the marketplace.

Here's a link to the study:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/resourcediscovery/lmsstudy.pdf

Mention in Weill Cornell Medical Library's "The Case for Drupal..." video

2008-06-16T14:25:00.000-05:00

This great video was put up by the Weill Cornell Medical Library to help others convince management why an open source solution like Drupal would be better than some alternatives.

I'm pretty glad the Drupal Millennium module got a mention (at 19:38)!

Link to the video.

The Case for Drupal-- Why the Open Source CMS is Well-Suited for a Medical Academic Library from Paul Albert on Vimeo.

Drupal Millennium Module 1.3 released

2008-05-22T16:38:00.000-05:00

The Millennium module for Drupal is now at version 1.3. It fixes a number of bugs (mainly with MARC import) and has some new features:

added option to show Google Books links (thanks Tim Spalding!)
now shows a direct link to "Place hold" for current item. It only shows if this is really possible, by contacting Millennium when the node is generated.
provides a block which shows actions (comment, hold, favorites, etc) which normally show under the item. (This should probably go into another module, though, as it is not really Millennium-related!)

The Google Books links show like this. It only shows if the current item has a "Full view" or "Preview" available at Google Books.
The other nice feature is a more cosmetic one; I made a block to join all the actions that can be made on an item on a Drupal block, so you can more fully place and style it:
Now, the only link that's actually generated by the Millennium module is the "Place hold or request delivery" link; the others come from other modules (Add This Button, Views Bookmark, and the core Comment module).

Thanks to everyone contributing! See the project page for more info, or you can go see our live demo.

What to show when you have no book cover images?

2008-05-22T09:01:00.001-05:00

Whipping up a new (test) face for our OPAC brings many things to the table: researching wanted functionality, usability in interface design, and of course--looking great. ("Look" impacts users' perception of site credibility and ease of use, here)

So, of course, trying to put cover images was a must. For our current OPAC, which we share amongst 30+ libraries, has lot of book covers, thanks to cover digitizing being done in several libraries. But, we don't have cover images for all books. Those books either didn't get the process done, or didn't have book jackets--just a plain-color hardcover.

So, our super-duper social-powered wall of books ends up looking like this:

...which is not super at all.

So, fishing around I found my answer: make book covers on the fly. Library Thing and Google Books are doing this, with different methods (it seems!)

Google Books' looks like this: [link]
and Library Thing's like this: [link]
So, how are these made?

a background image with a blank cover. I'm thinking it would be cool if, say, a book from 1950 had a worn-out cover, a classic novel with a stylized cover, etc.
overlaid text (html) with the title and author.

So my strategies will be:

keep digitizing or getting book covers from our vendors
add some code to provide blank-book images when we don't have a local image, and count views of books with no local image (so you can prioritize the first strategy).

The dirty tech aspects will be the subject of a future post =)

Firefox 3 RC 1 released

2008-05-21T11:11:00.000-05:00

It's been out for a few days, but I wanted to try it out first.

I'm happy! It's solid, lightning fast, and worked with some extensions I really need like Firebug and Live HTTP Headers.

Go ahead and Get It Now!

Firebug for Firefox 3.0b+

2008-05-21T11:03:00.000-05:00

Firefox 3 being so fast, it's painful to have to go back to Firefox 2 just for the great extensions like FireBug. However, I found out that the beta 1.1 of Firebug works great!

Run Firefox 3
Go to: http://getfirebug.com/releases/
Click the link under Firebug 1.1 Betas
Confirm the XPI install in Firefox.
Restart!
Ta da!

2nd generation OLPC laptop an ebook

2008-05-20T14:03:00.000-05:00

Nicholas Negroponte unveiled plans for the second generation of its OLPC (One laptop Per Child) project, which is now more an e-book than a laptop:

The book-like design of the device “comes from something we’ve learned over the past couple of years—that the book experience is key,” Negroponte said during his presentation this morning. “Some people have asked me why not just give kids cell phones? And in fact there will be 1.2 billion cell phones manufactured this year, and cell phones are of huge consequence in the developing world—but the cell phone is not a learning device. The next generation laptop should be a book.”

Via XConomy (read more)

Better Drupal Performance Guide

2008-05-19T13:23:00.001-05:00

This guide absolutely rocks.

http://wimleers.com/article/improving-drupals-page-loading-performance

Faceted search prototype: FaceTag

2008-05-19T12:15:00.001-05:00

Watch the video for the FaceTag demo interface. It looks like faceting done right....

http://www.facetag.org/download/facetag.swf

Creating a Multilingual OPAC

2008-05-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

Do you have students that speak different languages (say spanish, german, english) visiting your Library? Do you offer an OPAC in different language? Do you do keep subject headings in different languages in your MARC records?

As we are trying to build a new OPAC based on Drupal, and our users are coming more and more from other countries, what should we do?

It turns out that as Drupal has some great functionality for multilingual content, as well as doing some of that for categories. You can set up "automatic" translation for certain phrases (you tell Drupal to, say, always translate the english phrase "Chemical Engineering" for the spanish equivalent "Ingeniería Química"), and it just goes and translates wherever there´s a complete phrase (and case-sensitive) match. This is one way to do it for categories.

Just porting MARC into Drupal nodes has a whole set of pros and cons; now, doing something like automatic (well, semi-automatic) translation MUST have some pros and cons... guess I'm about to find out =)

I'll keep you posted.

Translating your home page in Drupal

2008-05-07T19:01:00.001-05:00

Agaric Design, you made my day:

http://agaricdesign.com/translated-home-page-using-i18n-module-and-paths

This works using the i18n module.

Kudos to Scriblio and thoughts

2008-04-24T11:28:00.000-05:00

Scriblio is a fantastic Wordpress module that makes it easy to build a discovery layer over your regular library catalog (or to make a completely new one). It is completely free and built by folks how care about libraries and users: Casey Bisson, Lichen Rancourt and Jessamyn West.

It seems to me that there are different people hacking away at OPACs--trying to mine & mash them and teach them new tricks. Efforts like Scriblio, LibraryThing for Libraries, John Blyberg's Drupal-based AADL.org, Library Elf, and more.

I think we can reach some sort of synergy if we, at lease, share some code =)

Just counting the different implementations for "getting stuff out of a Millennium WebOpac record", I can count 3 (Scriblio's, AADL.org's and mine)... and they´re all PHP. And I can tell you I didn't use code from any of them (at the time I started I think Scriblio only had MARC import capabilities. Darn!)

With the Berkeley Accord, there might also be some standards, to boot. =)

Drupal Millennium module screenshots

2008-04-23T16:49:00.000-05:00

Below are pics of the admin portion of the module; for a live demo you can try our implementation at http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/pasteur/en

These are the general settings for the Drupal Millennium module, from where you can jumpstart your Next-Generation Library Catalog =)

Here's where you can manually queue items for import:

Apologies: Please download Millennium module v.1.2

2008-04-23T16:46:00.000-05:00

I messed up; I did not thoroughly test version 1.1 of the module. However, you can now download 1.2 which also has some added niceties (thanks, roblivian!)

Drupal Millennium Integration now at 1.1

2008-04-23T08:51:00.000-05:00

Added: Ajax loading of holdings information. Check it out.

Using ajax to load parts of a page in Drupal

2008-04-16T12:21:00.000-05:00

I wanted to load some time-consuming content into Drupal nodes in the Millennium module, but didn't want the whole page to suffer for it. It looked rather hard at first, but I came across some code that made it clearer for me.

You will be putting funcionality in a module, so you'll need to know how to write a Drupal modules first.

First, you will need a DIV in your final page's HTML that will be updated via Ajax. It can be result of your module adding stuff to a node via the nodeapi hook, for example. I tagged mine like this:

<div class="millennium holdings load" id="nid-12345"> Text before loading goes here. </div>

Also, you will need a backend portion that outputs HTML.

Now, remember your node or page can be listed along with others! (For example in search results showing teasers, Views, or the standard front page view in Drupal which shows teasers for all new published + promoted pages). So we will have to deal with multiple DIVs appearing from different pages, and write JS to deal with ALL of those.

You will have to write some JS to modify this div; I placed mine in the module's directory as millennium.js

// The following is Javascript
// Call millenniumUpdateNext() when page first loads.
$(document).ready(millenniumUpdateNext);

/**
* Looks for first div element with class "load" and updates it depending on its *id attribute.(DIVs should already have an id="nid-XXXX" attribute, where XXXX * is the node's id.
*/
function millenniumUpdateNext() {
// Get the first div element with the classes we are looking for
var div = $("div.load").get(0);
if (! div) return;
var id = div.id;
if (! id || id.substr(0,4) != "nid-" ) return;

// Get the node id from the id attribute
var nid = id.substr(4); //nid-123456 --> 123456

/**
* URL to get information from. If you go here in your browser you get plain HTML * depending on the nid argument. This URL is defined in the module under * millennium_menu()
*/
var url = "/millennium_ajax?nid=" + nid;

// Show 'loading' message.
div.innerHTML = 'Loading...';

// Activate the ajax fetch from url. When done function(data) will get executed.
$.get(url, function(data) {
$("#"+id).hide(); // Hide
$("#"+id).html(data); // Replace 'loading' message with fetched HTML
$("#"+id).slideDown("slow"); // Un-hide it // Now, "unmark" it so millenniumUpdateNext() skips this element
$("#"+id).removeClass("load");
millenniumUpdateNext(); // Start over for another element
}
);
}

Back in your module, you should implement two things to handle the ajax calls: an item in the _menu hook, and the handler function itself.

First, the item in the menu hook:

<?phpfunction millennium_menu($may_cache) { $items=array(); // cached menu items here... if(! $may_cache) { $items[] = array( 'path' => 'millennium_ajax', 'callback' => 'millennium_ajax_handler', 'type' => MENU_CALLBACK, 'access' => true ); } // ... more stuff return ($items); } ?>

And now the handler function itself

<?php /** * This function is the one that takes a long time to run... * This is the whole point; to not delay the whole page load waiting for this * to be put inline with all the other page elements. */ function millennium_ajax_handler() { $nid = intval($_GET['nid']); $output = "<h2>You calledmillennium_ajax with argument nid = $nid</h2>";echo $output; exit(); } ?>

Now, you have the server-side code, and you have the client Javascript code, now you just need to tell Drupal to add the Ajax-able bits to nodes, and also load in the Javascript. Let's do this.

First, to output some custom portions into existing nodes, you use [modulename]_nodeapi(), like this:

<?php function millennium_nodeapi(&$node, $op, $teaser, $page) { switch($op) { case 'view': // Load JS file in an orderly fashion. drupal_add_js( drupal_get_path('module','millennium') . '/millennium.js'); // You can also load a custom CSS file here with drupal_add_css()... // Add the custom content $node->content['millennium_whatever'] = array( '#value' => "<div class='millennium load' id='nid-". $node->nid ."'>This will be updated sometime after the page finishes loading.</div>\n", '#weight' => 0, ); break; } ?>

This will add a DIV inside every node, with the classes millennium and load, and also an id attribute of nid-xxxxx

That's it! See how it shows on my test site showcasing the Millennium module.

Beta release of Millennium integration module

2008-04-11T09:22:00.000-05:00

I am proud to announce the newest version of the Millennium integration module, which crawls a Millennium WebOpac and converts MARC into Biblio nodes, adds taxonomy terms, and can show holdings information in real-time.

Check it out here: http://drupal.org/project/millennium

For a demo, go to http://enlinea.mty.itesm.mx/

Communicate with your ILS via SIP2 in PHP

2008-04-11T09:18:00.000-05:00

That's a mouthful of acronyms right there =)

cap60552 posted some code over at Google Code that lets you communicate via SIP2 with your library system. Badly needed, very welcome!

http://code.google.com/p/php-sip2/

Thanks amyq! Via: http://drupalib.interoperating.info/node/110#new

Tables with fixed headers with CSS

2007-07-25T16:38:00.000-05:00

Neat stuff. http://www.imaputz.com/cssStuff/bigFourVersion.html

Wikipedia for books? A universal catalog? The Open Library project

2007-07-16T17:45:00.000-05:00

Several people have started with millions of records from the Library of Congress, data from LibraryThing and digitized pages from real books from the Internet Archive and started The Open Library. Their goal: be the central place to go for book information.

In its present state, you can search among 12M records gathered from the Library of Congress, and whatever books are currently available from the Internet Archive, you can start reading away. This currently represents about 150,000 out-of-copyright books.

Now... what exactly *is* this? Just another catalog? Another place for digitized books? It seems they are trying to be a cross between all we've seen before: a Wiki'd Worldcat, Google Books, and the OPAC. (However, right now libraries would still have to keep their own OPACs).

A Wiki'd Worldcat? That's sure to rattle more than a few librarians. Worldcat is good, I think, because of the quality work librarians do; however, contributing data to it is only thru an "elite" group of librarians. It seems The Open Library wants to remove that barrier. I'm sure that's good, but also a bit dangerous. Will we, as librarians, also have to battle over which subject heading and LC class number is best, ala Wikipedia?

Metasearching @ ALA

2007-06-28T13:55:00.001-05:00

Well, I´m back from the ALA conference in Washington, and there seems to be some progress to metasearch products; nothing revolutionary, but the interfaces are getting more attention oriented towards letting the users find what they need.

These improvements are mainly related to faceting and clustering. If you thought both were the same thing, look at the earlier post.

Webfeat seems to be, setup-wise, the simplest of all. The pricing is fixed for a hosted 50-database setup, $85 for each extra database, has its own proxy and interacts with almost anything out there. They can facet by date, author, database (or "resource" as some call it). And they are doing some sort of clustering using propietary technology. It seems to have something to do with NLM subjects, however I am not sure of this. Webfeat is out now. It also has consortium support.

MetaLib by Ex-Libris seems to be getting better; they are also doing more types of facets, and just incorporated Vivisimo clustering to cluster results by subject. Metalib is also taking advantage of their knowledgebase of periodicals (part of SFX) so that if the metasearch result isn't actually fulltext, you can get a link to the full document if your institution subscribes to it on another database. MetaLib prices by FTE and has consortia support.

Serials Solutions was also demoing 360 Search, an update to their product previously called Central Search. They are also doing Vivisimo clustering, faceting, and are also taking advantage of their periodicals title and holdings database to link users to fulltext like Metalib; however, it seemd they went a step further and if there was no direct link to an article (like from within Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe) it would at least offer the user a link to the publication. They do not offer consortia support, however you can (for now) talk to them to set up several instances of the product.

TDNet's eContent Searcher Analyzer was also being demoed, and had similar capabilites. I, however, think that although they seem to have some great technology (the clustering algorithm worked even with spanish language results) they have a somewhat confusing interface, and seemed to be unsure about adding non-supported databases. This product also integrates with the company's own serials coverage product. They also have consortia support.

Innovative was, I think, the only one not actually doing any clustering or faceting! (Well, they do "facet" by resource type, however it is the only possible facet they are supporting.) Their product is the new Research Pro, which is set to replace their current Metafind solution. Research Pro is set to ship around fall 2007 to libraries running release 2007. Research Pro does not seem to be, at present, taking advantage of their own CASE serials coverage product. I forgot to ask about consortium support!

I didn't get the chance to talk to other notable vendors to see their products: IndexData with their Masterkey (which is derived from the open source project pazpar2); also veteran MuseGlobal with their Muse Search product.

Now, are these guys still in business? Fretwell-Downing/OCLC and Zportal, and Endeavor's ENCompass?

Federated Searching report from Palinet

2007-06-28T13:50:00.001-05:00

For a quick overview of the current state of federated search, be sure to look at John Houser's presentation Federated Searching (ppt).

Faceting and clustering

2007-06-28T13:48:00.001-05:00

Faceting is a "simple" grouping of data from the results, like say, grouping all results from a certain database, or for a certain publication date, or for a certain author. However, clustering actually goes deeper into the semantic meaning--or ideas--expressed within titles, abstracts, publication names, etc. so that you have results grouped into subjects, even though the actual subject words didn't appear in the original result's information (example: 3 articles talking about the bombing of Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor and Nazi Germany might--if you're lucky enough--to be clustered under "World War II" even though they didn't specifically mention it in their abstract or metadata.