AARGH! I have just spent an entire day reading about how to get my website to go from "Trang chủ" to "Trang chủ". Did you know that the version of MySQL that I'm using is non-Unicode compliant? I did, I discovered it last week. I thought that this wouldn't cause too much grief, a random tag here and there not changing or something. I didn't realise that it meant that I could not translate ANY frigging headings/labels/site names/etc. I've got NCRs all over the place (no, I don't know what NCR means, something character something probably, I just know that the ủ thing is an NCR, &# defines it's an NCR, the number is the actual unicode code for the letter and the ; closes it off).
Anyways, what I have to do is convert the entire database into a new format (a unicode compliant one) which sounds like it'll be a nightmare. I read quite a number of articles on how to do it and usually got stuck after it said "step one". Ah well.
On a lighter note, all of you who are using RSS feeds will have just been re-sent ALL of my blog posts. Why this is I do not know, but har har.
Happy Festivus all! It's the festival for the rest of us!
Monday, December 17, 2007
Joomla! content management system
Everyone lately seems very smitten with OpenSource software. I understand the lure, it's free and your support comes from the people who use and mantain it, not from the most holy of holies, the programmer.
I recently became one half of the Online Community Development Officer and, as such, have been having a bit of a look at OpenSource Content Management Systems (CMS). We are planning to use Joomla!.
Joomla is supposedly great. It does everything from a to z and will even wash the dishes (ha!). In reality I'm finding some quite critical flaws in it. The biggest flaw for me is it's un-Unicodeness. I don't know to what level of compliance it currently has, but it's not 100%. I read somewhere that the next version will be fully compliant but, well, I'm not using that one! It's not even doing some Vietnamese characters correctly. Liên lạc ended up as Li?n lạc. Also, the ạ went odd, in the title bar of the page it displays with the coding instead of the character.
Another bad thing is the difficulty in actually putting content into it. I don't know if it's just because I'm used to a different system that has a tree structure, but it's quite difficult for the novice to just enter the stuff they need...and why do they need different terminology to everyone else???
The good things though are very good. I am very easily able install new components that have been designed by others. I even created my own component by following the steps (so now my webpage searches my library catalogue directly). And there are a LOT of components out there that I can download, sometimes I think a few too many (because I don't really know what is good and what isn't). So now I have a website with Google maps, LibraryThing things and an events calendar. A pity it's still in super-beta (alpha?) so I can't show you all...and I'm pretty proud that it translates three words on the site into Vietnamese (hey, I'm getting there).
Hope this doesn't bore you too much until next week! I'll try and be less technical then.
I recently became one half of the Online Community Development Officer and, as such, have been having a bit of a look at OpenSource Content Management Systems (CMS). We are planning to use Joomla!.
Joomla is supposedly great. It does everything from a to z and will even wash the dishes (ha!). In reality I'm finding some quite critical flaws in it. The biggest flaw for me is it's un-Unicodeness. I don't know to what level of compliance it currently has, but it's not 100%. I read somewhere that the next version will be fully compliant but, well, I'm not using that one! It's not even doing some Vietnamese characters correctly. Liên lạc ended up as Li?n lạc. Also, the ạ went odd, in the title bar of the page it displays with the coding instead of the character.
Another bad thing is the difficulty in actually putting content into it. I don't know if it's just because I'm used to a different system that has a tree structure, but it's quite difficult for the novice to just enter the stuff they need...and why do they need different terminology to everyone else???
The good things though are very good. I am very easily able install new components that have been designed by others. I even created my own component by following the steps (so now my webpage searches my library catalogue directly). And there are a LOT of components out there that I can download, sometimes I think a few too many (because I don't really know what is good and what isn't). So now I have a website with Google maps, LibraryThing things and an events calendar. A pity it's still in super-beta (alpha?) so I can't show you all...and I'm pretty proud that it translates three words on the site into Vietnamese (hey, I'm getting there).
Hope this doesn't bore you too much until next week! I'll try and be less technical then.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Pharos - Print management for patrons
I like Pharos. I've used to work for a place that wrote all of the internet bookings on a big arsed piece of paper and then took money at the desk for each printout. If someone claimed they hadn't had their allocated internet time then they would bitch and moan and generally annoy others.
Enter Pharos.
Pharos allows patrons to make their own internet bookings. Currently they can do it from our internal catalogue (looks the same as our external catalogue but doesn't show web results) but not our external catalogue. I think that the reason it's not external yet is due to the fear that it might not work and then people will expect us to make it work (bad excuse I know).
Pharos controls the length of time a person can use the computer (you can have a maximum of an hour service-wide, that means you can have 60 one minute sessions or one hour session) and gives warning when time is nearly up. It also allows us to specify which computers have which length (multimedia PC = one hour, quick internet = 15 minutes) and lets patrons book their own session or just hop on to a free PC.
Pharos also controls the printing. Patrons can put money onto their card via a coin loader (or we can do it at the desk for them) and then, when they print, it subtracts money based on what we tell it. It stores the print jobs in a queue that the patron has to release themself (they scan their barcode on a machine next to the photocopier and enter their pin number). This also means that Pharos controls photocopies, you just scan the card and tada, you can photocopy.
Bad things from my point of view - it doesn't allow you to set limits for branches currently. ie if we set an hour limit, it is service wide. I cannot set an hour limit at Deer Park and then a two hour limit for the Word Processor and have them seperate. It also means we have no coin boxes at our photocopiers so that we have to put money on to a card every time someone wants to photocopy. Similarly, there's no 'guest' login for tourists (although we have a bunch of 'guest' card numbers that we give to patrons on a little slip of paper).
I know there's a whole bunch of these out there, some are better than others. I quite like Pharos (although I find the interface to actually book a computer a bit confusing).
That's all til next week!
Enter Pharos.
Pharos allows patrons to make their own internet bookings. Currently they can do it from our internal catalogue (looks the same as our external catalogue but doesn't show web results) but not our external catalogue. I think that the reason it's not external yet is due to the fear that it might not work and then people will expect us to make it work (bad excuse I know).
Pharos controls the length of time a person can use the computer (you can have a maximum of an hour service-wide, that means you can have 60 one minute sessions or one hour session) and gives warning when time is nearly up. It also allows us to specify which computers have which length (multimedia PC = one hour, quick internet = 15 minutes) and lets patrons book their own session or just hop on to a free PC.
Pharos also controls the printing. Patrons can put money onto their card via a coin loader (or we can do it at the desk for them) and then, when they print, it subtracts money based on what we tell it. It stores the print jobs in a queue that the patron has to release themself (they scan their barcode on a machine next to the photocopier and enter their pin number). This also means that Pharos controls photocopies, you just scan the card and tada, you can photocopy.
Bad things from my point of view - it doesn't allow you to set limits for branches currently. ie if we set an hour limit, it is service wide. I cannot set an hour limit at Deer Park and then a two hour limit for the Word Processor and have them seperate. It also means we have no coin boxes at our photocopiers so that we have to put money on to a card every time someone wants to photocopy. Similarly, there's no 'guest' login for tourists (although we have a bunch of 'guest' card numbers that we give to patrons on a little slip of paper).
I know there's a whole bunch of these out there, some are better than others. I quite like Pharos (although I find the interface to actually book a computer a bit confusing).
That's all til next week!
Monday, December 3, 2007
LibraryThing for Libraries
Whilst doing statistics in Amlib (my Library's management system), I found some data corruption and decided to fix it. Deciding to update the 50,000 borrowers listed as belonging to Sunshine all at once was probably not my smartest ever idea. Due to this, I now have quite a bit of time to kill whilst the system does its thang.
I am lucky enough to be in charge of Amlib at Brimbank. I get to do exciting things like running reports, pulling out statistics and deciding whether or not we have the ability to do x, y or z. I also have the lovely task of fixing it when I screw it up (not if). Due to this, I went to an Amlib usergroup meeting last week at Cheltenham Library.
One of the items I was fascinated with was integrating LibraryThing data into our online catalogue. The demonstration by Kingston Library was VERY impressive. For quite a low cost, LibraryThing will show various 'user-created' items such as tags and links to similar items. This wasn't that impressive (Global Books in Print will do that). What was impressive is that it will only show similar books that are already held by the library. I honestly can't remember if it did this by searching the catalogue for the books (z39.50 protocol) or by uploading a list of the books each week. If it's a list of the books then I might have to get off my arse and get the LibrariesAustralia deletions working (don't ask, LibAust irritate me sometimes).
If you're interested in having a look, head to the Kingston Library Catalogue and perform a title search for the book jPod. If you click on the title of the book, you will be taken to the full catalogue record which SHOULD load the LibraryThing data. Unfortunately Kingston's catalogue is rather slow so it may take you a while to get there (and then, today, it wouldn't load the LibraryThing data). Impressive nonetheless.
I am lucky enough to be in charge of Amlib at Brimbank. I get to do exciting things like running reports, pulling out statistics and deciding whether or not we have the ability to do x, y or z. I also have the lovely task of fixing it when I screw it up (not if). Due to this, I went to an Amlib usergroup meeting last week at Cheltenham Library.
One of the items I was fascinated with was integrating LibraryThing data into our online catalogue. The demonstration by Kingston Library was VERY impressive. For quite a low cost, LibraryThing will show various 'user-created' items such as tags and links to similar items. This wasn't that impressive (Global Books in Print will do that). What was impressive is that it will only show similar books that are already held by the library. I honestly can't remember if it did this by searching the catalogue for the books (z39.50 protocol) or by uploading a list of the books each week. If it's a list of the books then I might have to get off my arse and get the LibrariesAustralia deletions working (don't ask, LibAust irritate me sometimes).
If you're interested in having a look, head to the Kingston Library Catalogue and perform a title search for the book jPod. If you click on the title of the book, you will be taken to the full catalogue record which SHOULD load the LibraryThing data. Unfortunately Kingston's catalogue is rather slow so it may take you a while to get there (and then, today, it wouldn't load the LibraryThing data). Impressive nonetheless.
