If I have one complaint, it was with the food. I was disappointed, but I’ve been South enough not to be surprised, that the meals were quite dissatisfying from a vegetarian perspective. It is possible to create yummy meals with enough variety that a vegetarian can get something to eat, but it doesn’t happen very often around here. Breakfast this morning was sausage on biscuits, bacon on biscuits, ham and cheese croissants, bagels, sugary muffins, juice, and coffee. Yesterday I watched a more strict vegetarian than I build herself a cheese sandwich out of hamburger condiments because the meal was burgers, hotdogs, fried chicken, and macaroni salad.

Otherwise the conference center was comfortable and the room was very well laid out for presentations. Ample power was available, and after a few glitches on day one, the wireless worked well enough.

Content-wise, apart from feeling a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of presentations, I am excited by a couple things. Perhaps, on a personal note, I was most excited that at no time during this conference did I feel like the presenters were speaking a different language. I’ve learned a lot since Access 2002, my first library geek conference. As far as what people actually said, I think the most exciting development is the way in which a cluster of technologies for indexing, searching, and presenting documents and representations of documents are coming to maturity. There appears to be some money behind open source ILS development, and some first-rank talent as well. There are neat things happening in terms of presentation of results and data visualization, and the exciting potential for a social layer built on top of library data. Seamless authentication remains a huge hurdle, but we can dream.

So I’m very glad I came. I got a heck of a lot more out of this conference than simply an opportunity to be with Jodi on my employer’s ticket. I’m going to need to learn a lot more about how to implement some of the things I’ve seen as part of a music project I’ve been planning. I also couldn’t help but notice the potential usefulness of much that was presented to projects my library’s web team has talked about. And now, once Jodi is done teaching at 3.30, I get a weekend holiday in the sun.

Andrew Darby, Ithaca College Library: Adopting an Orphanware Project
keen on fixing subject guides using Pirate Source (E Carolina U)
ECU released with “download now” link, later pulled
AD fixed it up to his liking, wrote an article on it, augmented admin views
received a request for his code, but of course his was based on ECU’s
wrote ECU and received permission to redistribute, has since received permission to release under GNU-type license

Ryan Wick, Oregon State U: EAD PDF Generator
server-side, no client/editor setup needed
designed to assist archives in making PDFs from finding aids
automatic series outline/toc
support for external links
future plans
– better EAD support
– enhanced container list display
– possible cusomization
related work
– http://paulingcatalogue.org/; output to Adobe InDesign

Tim Dohohue, U of Illinois: IDEALS
http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/
DSpace archive
wanted to allow researchers to submit in any format
used OpenOffice free api to build document converter
– Word to PDF
would like to generate a better preservation format (DocBook XML, OpenOffice Writer perhaps)
basic Java programme
command line script available outside DSpace
future plans to create disseminator for DSPace: rather than storing all formats in DSpace, do conversion on download on the fly
– would be a delay for larger files

Ralph LeVan, OCLC Research Office: Identities Project
extract identities from WorldCat
http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/
– timeline
– alternate names
– audience levels
– works about
– related names
would like to add ability to link from bib records

Tito Sierra, NCSU Libraries: Best Bets: Improving Search to High Demand Resources
analyze search log to see what people search most
build a custom index
integrate with web site search to bring most common to top
top 100 queries (NCSU Lib website) are 30.2% of all searches
include alternate keywords feature (eg. lexus to lexis)
quick search module based on 50 total Best Bets
implementation: small xml files
forces popular results to top
can create for items that may not be included in your search crawl
keyword field enables misspelling/synonym matches
custom description displays
Best Bets account for 16.6% of search clickthroughs
local logging of all serves and clicks
can use click % to improve service

Nicole Engard, Jenkins Law Library (Philadelphia): Intranet
nice, light, clean, friendly interface
more fun than the stodgier public face
includes a blog-like message board
links to key resources
calendering EXTcalender
uses WYSiWYG Pro editor ($40 for non-profit)

#bugs ~ lines of code ^ 1.5

demo: http://catalog.spl.org/catalog/
code: http://extranet.spl.org/code/code4lib2007.zip
presentation: http://extranet.spl.org/talks/open_source_endeca/

Solr shortcuts
– results in Python format
– no database
– lucene search syntax

Django
– faster than Rails, can handle concurrent users
– forces you to do things the right way; forces split between coding and design
– object-oriented templates

goal to keep the URL as simple as possible
– no bizarre numeric codes

Solr performance tricks
– <optimize/>
– huge filterCache, very important for faceting; roughly equal to number of bib records in database
– some facets are faster than others; need to warm facets: query all records and do facets on every field (facetwarmer.py run every 10 minutes)

developers working for institutions likely do not own the copyright on their software, and therefore don’t have the right to release the software under open source

university will have IP office
– intellectual property disclosure process

does this IP stuff apply to me? – very likely yes
does it apply to this particular software?
– use common sense or ask
– “easier to get forgiveness than permission” will only work once, if that

a couple cautionary tales: in the first, the software is released and then (oops) the IP disclosure process is undertaken retrospectively

in the second, the UTA IP committee decides not to allow the free release (no right of appeal), decision is supported by provost; initially attempt to license back to ILS vendor, who don’t want it; then try to sell the software to other institutions directly; MD then pleads with the provost to allow him to address the committee again, and is able to explain open source in a way that they understand and the software is finally released

advice: have a plan
– find out about the process beforehand
– understand the committee’s viewpoint, generally patent/profit oriented, can’t assume they know what open source is
– work out a strategy
– be clear about what you want and why
– add context

under questioning, Doran also suggested the inclusion of a “poison pill”, which I assume would be to include some code released under GPL or better yet CC non-commercial

hybrid federated search service

Ruby on Rails application
– Rails only works with one request at a time
– in a metasearch environment, this is a problem
– clustering solution using Mongrel
– Ruby’s built in XML support not particularly good

LibraryFind
– metasearch tool: items harvested and federated (wanted to include access to IRs – built under the assumption that federated search isn’t a long-term solution, but that eventually everything will be harvested)
– openURL resolver/server
– web service

LF is a component of OSU’s vision of a library as platform

unique metasearch tool
– integrated openURL resolution
– both harvester/indexer (OAI and MARC repositories; 65 databases) and federated search too
– metadata-based knowledge base, using abstract connection classes (e.g. can create one generic connector for all Z39.50 sites, another for all web service sites, another for OAI sites, etc)
– as a result, adding new resources and sharing the knowledge base with other institutions is possible

caching
– daily cache of all searches held for 3 days
– top 15% of searches then stored to a permanent cache; considerably faster!

three search types
– general
– images (repositories)
– books and more (includes local catalogue)

To do
– scaling; current production version supports 5 simultaneous connections
– harvesting potentially 100s of millions of records; foresee as many as 20 trillion (!?!)
– umlaut integration
– opensearch
– json
– coins
– improved installation (shooting for WordPress 5 minute install)

no authentication needed to search the tool, only to connect to resources; so far, haven’t talked to any vendors who have a problem with that

http://libraryfind.org/

Who is eIFL?

eIFL’s mission is to lower barriers to information in the developing world
– do not give out money
– negotiate with publishers
– library consortium building
– open access advocacy
– IP subgroup – represent developing countries at WIPO
– knowledge sharing
– OSS for libraries

Library-in-a-box
– follows the Tactical Technology Collective NGO-in-a-box model
– easily distributed, easily installed ILS
– need to build a community before you write a line of code
– sustainable model, implementing libraries rely on each other for support (source-camp model)
– leap-frog: better to create a high-quality, next-gen product

Benefits for eIFL libraries
– financial savings obvious; also keeping local currency local
– building in-house, in-country expertise
– for many, it’s their only option

Current activities
– business plan (Open Business Readiness Rating)
– recruiting country coordinators
– appliying for funding, building partnerships/community
– choosing pilot sites
– later this year contracting for software development

will be returned to open source community, conceivably of benefit to global community; not aiming to be best of breed, but may contribute to that development

What is Atom, and why you might be interested

Karen Schneider said people don’t care about standards; lots of standards propagation within libraries, tend not to look outside
– most think of Atom as a syndication feed
– looking at elements, can see metadata markup (title, date stamp, entries with titles, authors, etc)

Representational State Transfer (REST)
– application state and functionality are divided
– resources are uniquely addressable (uri)
– uniform interface for the transfer of state between client and resource (http)

Atom + REST = Atom Publishing Protocol (APP)

Why doesn’t the library work like iTunes?

ZeroConf
– networking with no configuration needed

iTunes uses Apple developed daap thingy built on zeroconf to power iShare

DC created in-house net called Library Clique and showed as folks around the room connected and began uploading shared data (viewed through iStumbler) – anyone offering any services over zeroconf shows up; shared music in iTunes, web servers, ftp, http, other protocols, printers

in Libraries?
– Open URL COinS requires an install; nothing else comparable

OpenMetaSearch
– add OpenSearch to metasearch
– put your library in their browser
– what if metasearch and open url used same interface?

search and resolve aren’t that different – user won’t notice the difference!

so – ZeroConfOpenMetaSearch
– having merged in metasearch and added opensearch, advertise the interface using zeroconf AND find users’ resolvers using zeroconf: when somebody visits your network, they will immediately find your search and openURL resolver interfaces
– everyone who visits you finds your search interface
– everyone you visit finds your resolver
– no installation required

onebiglibrary.net

All Lightning Talks are listed here

Karen Coombs: CMS on Steroids
Homegrown CMS built at U of Houston Libraries
– anybody can edit any page
– different kinds of content types on one page
– each page built out of modules (rss feeds, staff, databases, etc)
– easy to create portal-like pages for subject areas
– need to expand existing modules, expand the UI
– display order can be changed, would like to add position on the page

Aaron Krowne, Emory University: SouthComb
– meta-collection/DL/portal (harvesting)
– collection dev. rather than just presentation
– focus on Southern studies
– OAI harvesting to gather data
– also focused web crawling and library catalogs (only Emory so far)
– system consists of repository core, coll dev layer, admin layer
– portal environment either Java-based or custom (Rails)
– connect to data as web services (SOA)
– repository in Fedora
– content model, Fedora putting together CMDA spec
– use DBMS for some aspects
– coll dev curation tasks in OXF framework (OAI/OCKHAM Xforms)
– standardized XML configs and modularization
– presentation will be online

Linux for public access computers one of the best things they’ve ever done
300 public computers
used Groovix flavour of Linux (built on Ubuntu)
early iteration in Lumix
– no longer need to be a geek to get it to work

browser-based
– no login needed
– rewrite firefox history etc. on close and reopen
– open documents in Open Office; originally no support for authoring own docs
– no time limits for users

q. regarding patron expectations for MS software
– Groovix runs Open Office 2.0; installed update overnight and patrons just came in and started using
– LS couldn’t help pointing out how much he hates MS for what they’ve done to computer science and the internet
– did about 6 months training for info desk people regarding OSS and Linux, but very few problems arise