Getting Started with Drupal (a.k.a. Drupal4LITA Bootcamp) Preconference, June 27th, 2008 Anaheim Public Library Cary Gordon of the Cherry Hill Company, a vendor specializing in support of open source software, gave an extremely detailed introduction to Drupal 6.2, the latest version of the open source content management system. The attendees came from a variety of library types, including academic, public, and special, and with a variety of experience levels with the system. Flash drives with the XAMPP server/database combination pre-installed were distributed along with the components for a Drupal installation. The morning focused on setting up Apache, the MySQL database, some PHP settings, and a basic install of Drupal. The afternoon covered modules (the building blocks of a Drupal site), user permissions, basic content creation, and an introduction to Drupal’s specialized vocabulary: nodes, taxonomies, menus, blocks. The program concluded with an excellent list of Drupal-related resources available on the web….
Tag: LITA
Ultimate Debate 2008
Thanks to the Internet Resources and Services Interest Group (IRSIG), there was another Ultimate Debate panel at ALA Annual 2008. The title this year was “There’s No Catalog like No Catalog”, and we are remarkably lucky that we were able to get a full recording of the debate for podcast here on LITABlog. Enjoy!
LITA Top Technology Trends
This is going to have to be more of an experiential post than a factual one, I’m afraid… I attended the Top Tech Trends session and it held my attention throughout the whole thing – everything did. From the larger than life images of Karen Coombs and Sarah Houghton-Jan on one screen that flanked the live panel to the scrolling meebo chat room on the other screen, there was a lot to pay attention to! Karen and Sarah have already written up their trends on this very blog, so I see no point in duplicating their efforts – they can say it much better than I can anyway!
Keeping Your Computers Running Session
In the one of the last session slots of the ALA Conference was a gem of a program geared toward smallish public libraries who have either no IT Department or a very small one. Diane Neal, North Carolina Central University, Brenda Hough, MaintainIT Project and Jennifer Lee Peterson, WebJunction were the panelists for the presentation. The session went from specific things that librarians can do to keep their technology running to a broader look at what resources are out there for troubleshooting specific issues, finding “best practices” and using free tools to plan and maintain your technology at a higher (library-wide, as opposed to a single machine) level. It started off with Diane giving a very nuts-and-bolts presentation about basic PC, printer and network troubleshooting. She went through the basic troubleshooting steps for your PC (reboot, check cables, discover “where it hurts” on the machine…) and then did the same…
You Know FRBR, But Have You Ever Met FRAD
Time and Location: Sunday, 1:30 pm – 5:30 pm, Anaheim Convention Center, 210 A-C One would expect for something that old (in Google time) such as Ferber (FRBR), which has been around since 1998, to have spawned some kin. Meet Fred, er, FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data). And they didn’t tell you that in this program, you also will meet Farsar (FRSAR – Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records). Actually, the first hour and a half of this program dealt with updates on activities at the Library of Congress (by Dave Reser) and at OCLC (by Robert Bremer). The next hour and a half was devoted to the main program topic and the last hour was for a meeting of the LITA/ALCTS Authority Control Interest Group. The cataloging and metadata crowd must have been conferenced out by this time because attendance was low compared to the sessions Getting Ready…
Open Source Open Services – Emerging Technology Interest Group
Joe Ford convened the Emerging Technology Interest group managed discussion on “Open Source, Open Services” Darrell Gunter began by discussing Collexis research projects and applications for libraries. Fascinating work is being undertaken on computationally derived ontology, what Collexis refers to as Fingerprinting. [Bibliographic ontology (like FRBR or FRAD not getting any play in the semantic portion of the presentation). ] Screenshots of tools (presentation slides to be posted to the LITA wiki) included the Knowledge Dashboard, which is being used for Hypothesis Generation by scientists. Biomedexperts.com discussed as a Collexis partner with tools for researchers including expert visualization, social network graphs of who is publishing with whom. Asklepios Group discussed as a user of collexis tools which utilizes mobile technology for patient-side consultation and comparison of relevant treatments. I would characterize Collexis methodology as relying on computationally derived indexing for data visualization (btw-the intellectual foundations of LIS exist (partly) in…
Top Technology Trends from Sarah Houghton-Jan, ALA 2008
I had a lovely time presenting virtually, despite the sound issues on all ends. It still was a rather successful demonstration of virtual participation, and I think that was wonderful. Big thanks to Maurice York for organizing this for myself and Karen. I have 5 Trends I’d like to throw out there. I was able to cover three of them (#s 1-3) in the live presentation, but apparently the echo in the room made parts of what I said difficult to hear. So, here’s what I said verbatim, near as I can remember (plus the bonuses of #s 4 and 5). Let’s hit it. #1: Bandwidth Every library complains about bandwidth. Many people have faster access at home than at the library, which is a reversal of what we used to see when people came into the library to use our connections. The problem is multimedia, which is wonderful, but…
LITA Public Libraries Technology Interest Group Meeting
The PLTIG business meeting focused on further developing our program idea for Annual 2009. The program looks at how various libraries and consortia have used technology to bring their summer reading programs “online”–from patron front-ends to backends for creating statistical and tracking reports. (How many repeat customers did your summer reading program have this year?) Discussion focused on speaker selection, developing guidelines for speakers, preparing a resource list for attendees, and publicity options. The group also discussed plans for Midwinter. Instead of hosting a managed discussion as we have done in the past, we decided simply to hold a business meeting. We’ll work further on the 2009 program at Midwinter as well as begin the process of planning for Annual 2010. As part of the Midwinter discussion, we also touched on the perennial topic of “what’s the purpose of this IG?” We concluded that our purpose was to provide programming…
BIGWIG Business Meeting – Monday morning
Just reminding any who are interested in getting involved in BIGWIG that we are having our business meeting on Monday morning from 8 – 10 in the LITA Blogger’s Room. This is located in Hilton Hotel in the Carmel room. Just go up 2 escalators from the lobby and take a left down a narrow hallway. We are about half-way down. Hope to see you there!
LITA Blogger's Room
Just so that everyone is aware: the LITA Blogger’s room, open to anyone who needs a quick ‘net connection, can be found at: Hilton convention center, Carmel Room. The Carmel room is up 2 escalators from the lobby. See you there!