Brimbank Libraries are considering stopping the use of barcodes. Fairly soon we will be totally RFID and, when that happens, we don't see the need to have barcodes AND an RFID tag on the book. In fact, the only things we are looking to stick on our items are an RFID tag and a call number sticker. No more stamping and spotting and stickering for us! Our RFID tags will be printed with a pretty design and come with a barcode number printed onto the tag itself. We will then pop that tag on the outside of the item so that the book is 'branded' as one of ours.
There are some problems with this. Our vendor have given us dire warnings about sticking the tag on the outside of the book. They believe that the constant rubbing of the book against other books (and in bags, etc) will damage the tag beyond belief. We are testing this currently and, after heaps of tests, the only thing that seems to kill the tag is if the tag is bent in the wrong spot (which will occur whether it is stuck inside the book or outside the book) or if you scour the small chip in the middle of the tag with something sharp.
Honestly, our items are only meant to last between 5-8 years anyway so it's not going to cause untold grief if they die early.
I think that I must be missing something important though. I have not been able to find another library that has stopped using barcodes because they are using RFID tags. 3M (our RFID vendor) know of only one other library in the world who don't use barcodes, and they were a library that went direct from a card catalogue to RFID...they are also a special use library in a government department and don't have our turnover issues.
If anyone out there can think of any other negatives to doing this then I'd love to hear them. Currently, all I have are the fact that RFID tags could be damaged on the outside of the item (even though I will cover them with contact or some kind of plastic laminate) and that our RFID tags will have numbers printed in a range and we won't have duplicates (so multi-part sets in Chinese or Vietnamese will not have an RFID tag on each item). I am getting around this second bit by probably buying a Brother P-Touch printer to print up labels with the barcode number on them. We will then stick these to items such as mutli-part sets and onto part of an AV item.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Amlib goes to OCLC and our catalogue comes underway
Hello all, today is a good day. Yesterday Amlib (our library management system) announced that they had been acquired by OCLC. Lucky Amlib! I'm a bit suprised actually, Amlib is quite a small LMS compared to, well, OCLC's company size. I know that they are interested in AmlibNet, the online version of Amlib. They're possibly interested in it because you can change everything about the interface. That would mean they could use the one piece of software and port it over to many different language groups. A Chinese language version of Amlib could easily be created by an enterprising customer (or, as OCLC have just purchased it, probably by an enterprising staff member).
Some other good news is that I am going on holiday for 2 weeks on Monday. Yay to time off work!
Some updates from work. I am still creating our library catalogue. I have posted some screen shots below to show you what it will look like. The 'New Books' box on the right comes direct from an rss feed and scrolls whilst you're looking at it. Results are grouped and I'm still working on neatening some things up on that page. Enjoy!
The catalogue search page
The results page
Some other good news is that I am going on holiday for 2 weeks on Monday. Yay to time off work!
Some updates from work. I am still creating our library catalogue. I have posted some screen shots below to show you what it will look like. The 'New Books' box on the right comes direct from an rss feed and scrolls whilst you're looking at it. Results are grouped and I'm still working on neatening some things up on that page. Enjoy!
The catalogue search page
The results page
Monday, July 28, 2008
Slackers update
Hello to the few people left who check this.
Sorry I've been away from blogging for 2 months. I am a slack-arse.
Let us see, what has happened in the past few months?
1. http://www.brimbank.vic.gov.au/ got launched. We have met mostly positive feedback from the public. Staff have had mixed reactions, mostly to do with not being able to find things. The speed is an issue too, we have too many style-sheets and they all take AGES to load in IE (not so bad in Firefox for some reason).
2. I finally got rss feeds working from Amlib using very hack-ish methods. I edited a report file to be in rss format (which took ages I can tell you, stupid validators). I then ran the report to create a file called maltese.rss.txt (because Amlib wouldn't let me call it maltese.rss). I then upload the file to our server and alter the name of the file in the process.
Currently all of the above is happening manually. I am working on getting it all happening automatically. I can definately run the report and create the maltese.rss.txt file automatically. My only problems is in the auto-ftping (and that is to do with network restrictions more than anything else). I am planning to sweet-talk IT around tomorrow, so here's hoping.
3. I began creating the shell for the new Brimbank Libraries Catalogue. Oddly enough, it looks very similar to the website and uses the same style sheets (which of course means it initially takes ages to load). I've popped a screen display of it at http://www.tas666.com/library/brimbank_netopacs/MainMenu.htm . None of the links work really so don't bother with those. And things will look odd in certain parts as I adjust them. Feel free to comment on it if you hate it (or love it).
How's that for an update?!
Sorry I've been away from blogging for 2 months. I am a slack-arse.
Let us see, what has happened in the past few months?
1. http://www.brimbank.vic.gov.au/ got launched. We have met mostly positive feedback from the public. Staff have had mixed reactions, mostly to do with not being able to find things. The speed is an issue too, we have too many style-sheets and they all take AGES to load in IE (not so bad in Firefox for some reason).
2. I finally got rss feeds working from Amlib using very hack-ish methods. I edited a report file to be in rss format (which took ages I can tell you, stupid validators). I then ran the report to create a file called maltese.rss.txt (because Amlib wouldn't let me call it maltese.rss). I then upload the file to our server and alter the name of the file in the process.
Currently all of the above is happening manually. I am working on getting it all happening automatically. I can definately run the report and create the maltese.rss.txt file automatically. My only problems is in the auto-ftping (and that is to do with network restrictions more than anything else). I am planning to sweet-talk IT around tomorrow, so here's hoping.
3. I began creating the shell for the new Brimbank Libraries Catalogue. Oddly enough, it looks very similar to the website and uses the same style sheets (which of course means it initially takes ages to load). I've popped a screen display of it at http://www.tas666.com/library/brimbank_netopacs/MainMenu.htm . None of the links work really so don't bother with those. And things will look odd in certain parts as I adjust them. Feel free to comment on it if you hate it (or love it).
How's that for an update?!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Brimbank launches trial website
That's right, after a month or so away, I've finally updated and with news this time. If you all head on down to http://development.brimbanklibraries.vic.gov.au/ then you can give comments and stuff on our website. I'd appreciate it if anyone who reads this did.
Some things to note, I've FINALLY gotten around to doing some multilingual things. If you go to Services and then Collections you'll see some of what will happen for the live website. Click on the Dinka button (err, Thuɔŋjäŋ in the top right) and the page should translate. You'll also see that some of the menu items will translate too. If you go back to English they'll go back. Eventually the whole site will translate. I don't think I have funding to get the alt text for images translated just yet but I will in the next fin year (come on July!).
Also look at the quick pick section (ignore the animation, we're working on that)...I finally found a use for a reading blog! Noone will go to it if we advertise it as 'reading blog' but if we stick it on every page as a review of our material, hopefully people will go to it. I'll just have to remember to put links in so that people can reserve the items.
That's all for now. Enjoy peoples!
Some things to note, I've FINALLY gotten around to doing some multilingual things. If you go to Services and then Collections you'll see some of what will happen for the live website. Click on the Dinka button (err, Thuɔŋjäŋ in the top right) and the page should translate. You'll also see that some of the menu items will translate too. If you go back to English they'll go back. Eventually the whole site will translate. I don't think I have funding to get the alt text for images translated just yet but I will in the next fin year (come on July!).
Also look at the quick pick section (ignore the animation, we're working on that)...I finally found a use for a reading blog! Noone will go to it if we advertise it as 'reading blog' but if we stick it on every page as a review of our material, hopefully people will go to it. I'll just have to remember to put links in so that people can reserve the items.
That's all for now. Enjoy peoples!
Friday, April 11, 2008
Translating a library webpage
Everyone has told me that setting up translations for a library webpage is difficult and involves a lot of planning and careful consideration of blah blah blah. Maybe I missed something but I have found the translation part of our new library website to be one of the easiest parts (so far).
Here are the steps I've followed.
Step 1: Make a website.
Step 2: Decide that you want the entire website to be in this alternate language (with the exception of news items which will be translated into alternate languages at different times).
Step 3: Copy all of the text you want translated into a Word document.
Step 4: Send to accredited translators.
The only real problems I have had with this is creating some language-specific content for each of my key languages. ie finding online resources to link to in the website links pages. Apart from that it all seems quite straightforward.
Using the above, I have translated all of the menus, all of the image descriptions and all of the content. The only pages I have not translated so far are topical news articles that won't be around when we launch the website. Instead I am going to write up some articles specific to the communities that read these languages and use those instead. Oh, I also haven't translated the minor language specific pages I have (ie I have a list of languages that we collect material in, each of those languages has a brief description of the library services we offer and then our standard brochure translated into that particular language).
To get all of this done, I have used a Joomla tool called Joom!Fish. It is marvellous. It allows you to easily translate a webpage without changing the structure of anything OR having to re-create your entire website. The program does not automatically translate things (like Google Translate or Babelfish) but instead gives you a box containing the current page data and then another box where you type in what you want to appear in that language. So when my patron looks at our website and changes it into Dinka, the main page will contain Dinka language translations of everything I've translated. I could also, if I wanted to, change pictures and applets to be Dinka specific. It's quite clever.
Joom!Fish, relies on a language file being present which contains all of the default text that Joomla supplies translated into different languages. For example, when you try to log in and the password is incorrect, Joomla supplies a message saying "your password is incorrect". The language file changes that to "blah blah blah" in whatever language it is for. Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding a Dinka language version (which wasn't unexpected) and an MSA/Arabic version (which was unexpected). Ah well, if it comes down to it I'll just make one.
Here are the steps I've followed.
Step 1: Make a website.
Step 2: Decide that you want the entire website to be in this alternate language (with the exception of news items which will be translated into alternate languages at different times).
Step 3: Copy all of the text you want translated into a Word document.
Step 4: Send to accredited translators.
The only real problems I have had with this is creating some language-specific content for each of my key languages. ie finding online resources to link to in the website links pages. Apart from that it all seems quite straightforward.
Using the above, I have translated all of the menus, all of the image descriptions and all of the content. The only pages I have not translated so far are topical news articles that won't be around when we launch the website. Instead I am going to write up some articles specific to the communities that read these languages and use those instead. Oh, I also haven't translated the minor language specific pages I have (ie I have a list of languages that we collect material in, each of those languages has a brief description of the library services we offer and then our standard brochure translated into that particular language).
To get all of this done, I have used a Joomla tool called Joom!Fish. It is marvellous. It allows you to easily translate a webpage without changing the structure of anything OR having to re-create your entire website. The program does not automatically translate things (like Google Translate or Babelfish) but instead gives you a box containing the current page data and then another box where you type in what you want to appear in that language. So when my patron looks at our website and changes it into Dinka, the main page will contain Dinka language translations of everything I've translated. I could also, if I wanted to, change pictures and applets to be Dinka specific. It's quite clever.
Joom!Fish, relies on a language file being present which contains all of the default text that Joomla supplies translated into different languages. For example, when you try to log in and the password is incorrect, Joomla supplies a message saying "your password is incorrect". The language file changes that to "blah blah blah" in whatever language it is for. Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding a Dinka language version (which wasn't unexpected) and an MSA/Arabic version (which was unexpected). Ah well, if it comes down to it I'll just make one.
