Monthly Archives: July 2007

Developing an acq/serials module without subject expertise?

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I have been following the admirable efforts of the folks at open-ils.org since the beginning of their work, and I am excited by all that they have accomplished in a relatively short timeframe.  One of the things I noted at the outset was the lack of necessary “backend” functionality relating to acquisitions and serials (or as they are more officially labelled now, continuing resources).  This has been true of other open source ILS efforts such as the well-known Koha system, although I think progress has been made on this front there in the past few years.

From this post at their blog, it appears that the open-ils.org folks are tackling this hornet’s nest with their usual enthusiasm and creativity.  I don’t know anyone in the group personally but I know by reputation that every one of them is very good at what he (or she) does.  However, I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like there is a serials expert on their team.  If I am wrong and there is someone involved who is a serials expert, please correct me!  In this area of systems (acq/serials), just about more than any other area, I think subject expertise is vital.  And I’m not talking just about someone having the techie skills but also having a broad understanding of this entire area of technical services librarianship and how it is changing.  So, folks, may I suggest you try to find someone to fill this gap asap (if you haven’t done so already)?  And no, I am not angling for the task; I’m merely making a suggestion.

You need to flock to Flock

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Ok, that’s a dumb title for this post, but deal with it.  After abandoning Flock for several months in favor of tricking out a standard Firefox browser setup, I decided to give Flock a try again.  Fortunately, my timing was great because around the same time as I decided to return to using Flock as my main browser, they release their 0.9 beta version, which is miles ahead of previous iterations in terms of functionality, stability, and performance.

I’m not sure why it has taken the Flock wizards to get this far, since the initial preview release came out almost two years ago.  But I’m not complaining now.  As far as I am concerned, Flock beats a tricked-out Firefox any day, because of its neatly integrated functionality, and also because it can do anything Firefox can do, including using all of Firefox’s lengthy list of handy plugins.  This latter point was the main reason I abandoned Flock for a while, because there were plugins I routinely use in Firefox that I couldn’t get to work in Flock and just didn’t feel like working without that functionality.  Now I don’t have to.

There are still some areas where Flock can improve, most notably in terms of initial load time.  I also have played around with Flock’s built-in blog editor and although I like its simplicity, I haven’t been able to use it to edit posts that I’ve published through other means (i.e. through a different editor or in my WordPress admin).  This is something that Flock’s built-in blog editor used to do but now does not.

Still, I am happy using it and recommend anyone to give it a try.

[tag]flock[/tag]

Accidents happen

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Last night just before going to bed, I took off my glasses and tried to clean them with my shirt, only to have the rim on the left side break. :-(

Unfortunately my last pair of glasses was already broken (I think one of the kids stepped on them, if I remember correctly). That left me with the glasses I wore more than ten years ago, which are really scratched up and two or three presciptions old. In other words, they aren’t good substitute glasses. I had no choice but miss a day of work today in order to get an appointment for a new prescription. I decided to try contacts again. I’m tired of having to clean my glasses all the time, and shoving them up my nose all the time, too. Right now I have some Accuvue Advanced contacts with correction for astigmatism and I will wear them for a week to try them out. If they don’t work out well, then my next choice is to get gas permeable contacts, which are harder to get used to but provide the best quality vision in a contact lens. We’ll see.

A brief review of blog traffic for the past year

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I don’t pay as much attention to blog traffic for FML as I probably should. I know there are a lot of things I could improve if I paid more attention to the various details. Instead, I tend to look for trends and broad numbers and that’s about it.

This evening I checked summary statistics from Google Analytics for the past year. Here is what I found:

  • There were 6,713 unique visitors to the site, which averages out to about 18.4 visitors per day
  • Visitors tend to spend only about a minute on the site each visit
  • The browser used by visitors breaks down as follows:
    • Internet Explorer – 46.51%
    • Firefox – 41.53%
    • Safari – 9.65%
    • Mozilla – 1.02%
    • Netscape – .48%
  • Traffic sources include 38.36% of visitors who find FML via search engines; 31.68% who go directly to the site (in other words, the site is bookmarked or the URL is typed in directly); and 27.42% of traffic comes from referring sites. Of the 38.36% of visitors who find FML via a search engine, the vast majority of them uses Google (over 80%).
  • The vast majority of visitors uses Windows as their operating system (80.45%). 17.93% use Mac OS X. 1.38% use Linux.

I am especially pleased at the good showing for non-IE browsers. Something else that is of interest is what keywords people use in a search engine that leads them to FML. Here are some of the top keywords, aside from the obvious ones such as “family man librarian”: “portable browsers”, “everyone has a double”, “library related wordpress theme” and “praise you in the storm.”

[tags]blog traffic, google analytics[/tags]

Movies galore

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I’ve seen two new movies in the theaters in the past few days, and that is extremely unusual. Fortunately I liked both of them very much. Thursday night I went with Keegan to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and this afternoon Michele and I took Cohen and Brinley to see Ratatouille, the latest Pixar movie. Tristan and Keegan are with their grandparents for the weekend.

[tags]harry potter and the order of the phoenix, ratatouille, pixar[/tags]

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

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Yesterday (and the night before it) were pretty difficult for us because all three of the little ones were sick with colds and fevers. But we still had a bit of fun when, yesterday afternoon, I managed to pull a second loose tooth from the front of Tristan’s mouth. Thus the title of this post, which refers to a song I heard when I was younger.

Tristan Missing Two Front Teeth
[tag]tristan[/tag]

New functionality from Zotero

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Zotero – The Next-Generation Research Tool » Blog Archive » Zotero and Google Tools Screencast

Oh, my. Thanks to Jay Datema for pointing out the above-mentioned blog posting from the Zotero wizards. Love it, love it, love it.

Ok, so back to reality, though. Fact #1: At my place of work, 99.9% of people are not allowed to have admin privileges on their PCs. (Fortunately I am, for now anyway, one of those lucky 0.1% who does have this ability.) Fact #2: The workplace standard browser is Internet Explorer.

Combine these two facts and what do you get? No way to benefit from this amazing tool, which is entirely based on Firefox.

How frustrating this is for me, because it is precisely this kind of tool that my library’s users would greatly benefit from.

The IT Nazis deeply frown on this (can we say, security hazard ten times in rapid succession with increasing volume?). I am so tired of — even though I do, I truly do understand why this attitude and caution are present — narrow-minded IT policies and practices that inhibit cost savings in so many ways. I’d better stop now before I say something I’ll really regret.

[tags]zotero, jay datema, firefox, internet explorer[/tags]

A reaction to notes from the third Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

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Jay Datema posted a good writeup of his notes from the third meeting of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control yesterday. I read it with interest because I wasn’t able to connect to the live webcast the day before. This morning, I read Mark Lindner’s (Off the Mark) reaction to the meeting (he was able to “attend” via webcast). Next time, Mark, tell us how you really feel ;-)

I don’t feel quite as passionate about some of this as Mark and others do. Maybe I should and because I don’t, that reflects poorly on me. I don’t know.

Yet I do have a reaction to the meeting to share, and it is based solely on Jay’s writeup (i.e. second hand at best). My reaction to the whole deal is, why oh why are we still debating and tossing around the same observations and identifying the same issues over and over again, and presenting them as if they are something new and revelatory?! For instance, Rick Lugg of R2 Consulting (whom I know from his days at YBP) gave a presentation that outlined challenges facing those who work in or management bibliographic control (i.e. cataloging) operations. Jay wrote that Rick’s presentation ended with him making the following summary:

 

  1. How do we reduce our efforts and redirect our focus?
  2. How can we redirect our expertise to new metadata schemes?
  3. How can we open our systems and cultures to external support from authors, publishers, abstract and indexing (A&I) services, etc?

No offense meant to Rick, but none of this is new at all! This is something we’ve been talking about for well over 10 years.

Part of Jay’s writeup also included a summary of a presentation by Mechael Charbonneau of Indiana University in which (in Jay’s words) she “sees the need to optimize the allocation of staff in large research libraries and to free up catalogers to do new things, starting with user needs.” Hello? Why on earth are we not yet way past this stage?

Mark says he is mad; I’m just irked and discouraged by the lack of progress I see.

[tags]working group on the future of bibliographic control, rick lugg, l2 consulting, mark lindner, jay datema[/tags]