Millennium Integration module for Drupal 2.0 screenshots

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

These instructions for Firefox 4 beta 5/6.

1. Find your userChrome folder inside your Profile folder: to find your profile folder, see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder
   
   
2. Find the "chrome" folder and open it.
   
   
3. Edit userChrome.css
   
   
4. 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)
   
   
5. Restart Firefox.
   

Usage of library Drupal modules

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

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

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

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

(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

(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:

1. Install GNU Patch for windows, using the Binaries ZIP file; I installed it in C:\Program Files
   
2. Make sure patch.exe now lives in c:\program files\patch\bin\patch.exe
   
3. 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
   

4. 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
   
   
5. 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

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

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.