Archive for March 27, 2012

San Jose Public Library’s website redesign in Drupal

March 27, 2012 / Gabor Por / No comments

The latest podcast of Drupal Easy had a 4.5 minute interview with Nate Hill, the web librarian at San Jose Public Library (starting at around the 2 second minute of the podcast) recorded at DrupalCon Denver 2012. In it he mentioned how SJPL’s website was redesigned in Drupal 6 and now converted to 7. Nate showcased the custom theme he built on his site along with a short description. It’s worth checking out as he has the technical knowledge of Drupal the user experience skills and understanding of library needs.

 

Category: Drupal, Librarianship / Tags: , ,

Libraries Going Mobile with Drupal

March 25, 2012 / Gabor Por / No comments

Libraries Going Mobile with DrupalI just discovered Katherine Lynch‘s presentation from last June on “Libraries Going Mobile with Drupal“, given at LITA’s Drupal Interest Group meeting. I like when my worlds collide: part of my daytime job as an SEO developer is to think about how the increasing mobile usage affects our customers’ business and how we can maximize it for them. Meanwhile I am a trained librarian, who is on the lookout for the best tech tools for libraries and an avid/relapsed Drupal user. So this presentation covered three of my interest areas.

I downloaded the 280 MB PPTX presentation, but couldn’t listen to the audio, because after the conversion to a format that OpenOffice could access the audio was stripped. Nevertheless I clicked through the 63 slides. Here is a barebone summary

  • Percentage of mobile users is increasing
  • There are three trends of designs for mobile: app-like, list-like and bare-bones
  • Each has its pros and cons and their detailed analysis is the best part of the presentation
  • Drupal has pre-built themes to get started: Mobile, Garland Mobile, Nokia Mobile, Fusion Mobile
  • Drupal has tools and  modules to get started: Mobile plugin, Mobile Tools,
  • Pros and cons why go mobile.

Her conclusion:

  • Mobile device users are greatly on the rise
  • …with the potential to replace desktop devices
  • Many libraries have begun establishing standards for mobile library websites
  • Mobile development with Drupal is fast, easy, and as customizable as you want

I found this presentation through a page on Isovera’s website, who provide “Drupal solutions for smart organizations…”

Category: Drupal, Librarianship, SEO / Tags: , , , ,

Drupal in Libraries

March 23, 2012 / Gabor Por / One comment

I got my MLIS March 2008 and started actively working with Drupal a year after that. (I say “actively”, because in 2006 I did a bit of configuration on a  Drupal 4.7 site, but not for long.) However I never focused my efforts to learn how these two passions of mine, Library science and Drupal, relate to each other. I wanted to, ever since I posted about Drupal’s Biblio module three months ago.

The time is now. The prompt was the end of DrupalCon Denver today, where there was a “Birds of a Feather” session on Drupal in Libraries. LibraryWebHead, an librarian attendee of the event had this to say:

“Working with Drupal has made me more professional in my web work than I had ever been before. It keeps me on the cutting edge. I’m always learning from people building the most amazing sites on the web. [..] this mission – similar to the mission of today’s libraries – is to allow all people to create their best possible lives online. Mozilla, heck, open-source software itself is about empowerment and freedom. These are core tenets that all librarians can embrace.”

Below is a quick summary of resources about Drupal in Libraries, starting with the top four + 1

  • The Libraries group at drupal.org is the best place to stay in the loop about what’s new in the Drupal/library world.
  • The very active  Drupal4Lib email list, with 60+ messages a month, mostly helping members with hands-on troubleshooting issues
  • The Drupal4Lib Interest Group at ALA’s LITA  (Library & Information Technology Association) with only 25 entires in 3 years.
  • Drupalib is intended as “a place for library drupallers to hang out” It’s been around for years and has about 200 entries. But it’s not a lively “place” 1 entry in 2011 and 5 in 2011.
  • Ambient Relish has little info about itself, but collects people, modules and themes on the topic

Two upcoming events:

How to Quickly Build a Web App Using Drupal
We will demonstrate techniques for pulling together a web application using Drupal 7 along with modules and other free components. We will focus on creating a site that provides a good see experience and has a distinctive look without taking a huge effort.

It Takes a Village: Implementing a Homegrown Solution for Streaming Video Resources
Limited to streaming only those videos a vendor hosted, ASU Libraries sought to expand collection options with a trial project for hosting content locally. Kaltura, was selected as the platform, but Kaltura does not work out of the box. This presentation will cover how using Drupal, along with Kaltura, we built a working video hosting solution. The presentation will cover administrative hurdles, stumbling blocks, pitfalls, enhancements, and lessons learned along the way.

Scaling Drupal: Building a 4 Million+ Union Catalog
Using Drupal, the Genesee Valley School Library System built a 4M+ record union catalog to meet the needs of over 400 school libraries in the Greater Rochester (NY) Region. The team behind FiveSystems.org, including the Drupal in Libraries Library Technology Reports co-authors Christopher Harris and Andy Austin, talk large scale Drupal development including external search engines, theming, the challenges of FRBR, and database scalability.

Drupal in Libraries coverPublications that relate to Drupal in Libraries

Articles, blog entries

A few introductory slideshows, oldies but goodies

What’s missing from this overview is actual examples of libraries using Drupal. I leave that for a later date, as it deserves its own post.

Category: Books, Drupal, Librarianship / Tags: , ,

InfoPeople’s Digital Preservation webinar series

March 21, 2012 / Gabor Por / No comments

I first became aware of Infopeople couple of years ago, when I attended the CLA (California Library Association) conference and they had a great booth with quick presentations. Infopeople is “a statewide LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) project that functions as the training arm of the California State Library.“ Since then I receive regular emails about their upcoming courses, but didn’t make it to any of them. They offer free webinars and for-fee courses (online and on-ground), but even the latter costs only $75 for librarians in California.

Their free, online, four part series on Digital Preservation ended March 20. A great thing about Infopeople’s offering that they make the archive’s of past webinars available for free. Hence I could and did go through all four part of the series, viewed the slides and read the transcripts of the chats and the presentation. I didn’t view the full recording, because I didn’t feel like filling out the required registration form to access that. The PDFs and PPTs are available without registration.

I learned a lot from the series, presented by Jacob Nadal. In the first part, on “Fundamentals” I most appreciated the historical context/analogy and the extensive framework on how to think about preservation. On my own I might have been more focused on the technical aspects, but the short definition of “Digital Preservation” reminded me that it “combines policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time.” Then we got an expounded view on all the key words in this definition.

Defining Digital preservation

The second part, on “Text and Image Formats” didn’t give me that muich new information, because I have been working with digital texts and images for 20 years. The third part, on the other hand, was about “Storing and Managing Digital Collections“, which I didn’t pay as much attention all these years as I could have. Keywords I want to remember from this presentations are OAIS (Open Archival Information System), Fedora Digital repository, LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). I was quite familiar with the contents of the fourth segment on “Audio and Video Formats“, but I got a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of these formats.

If you are novice to the topic, or you want a refresher, I strongly recommend this course. You may also want to check Infopeople’s archives of 200+ webinars on other library related topics.

Category: Librarianship / Tags: , , , ,

Got my Google Analytics Individual Qualification

March 21, 2012 / Gabor Por / No comments

This morning I passed my Google Analytics Individual Qualification, also known as Google Analytics IQ test or GAIQ. My listing on the official site proves it, so does the GoogleIQ Certifiate.

I’ve been using Google Analytics on my personal site since late 2007, but only started to explore its more advanced options since last June, when I got a job as an SEO developer. But I never had to use its e-commerce/AdWords related options so for the questions related to those areas on the test I had to do more research.

Here is what helped to passed the test. These worked for me, may not work for you and you may find similar information on other sites too. I list them in order of helpfulness, top being the most helpful in preparing and passing the exam.

  1. I played with GA a lot on my own to understand  how the features work.
  2. I watched every video of the official GAIQ Lessons. Paused where necessary to explore it in GA itself.
  3. I crammed. The day before I read/studied a lot.
  4. I studied thoroughly Slingshot’s “How to Pass the Google Analytics IQ Test” PDF that I found at this SEOMoz’s blog entry and is also linked from SlongShot’s site.
  5. I went through every question at googleanalyticstest.com. If you don’t have to  take the test right now, you may want to wait a week or two as their FAQ says “The questions are in the process of being updated for Google Analytics 5. The full update is scheduled for completion by March 31, 2012.“
  6. I browsed through Justin Cutroni’s Google Analytics book, published by O’Reilly.

Here is what I kept open during this “open book” exam (How long will we call it “open book’ even thought I had no printed books open?)

Category: SEO, Technology /
 
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