Libraries

I just wanted to quickly recap the Library BoF that took place at DrupalCamp Colorado this past weekend. There were about 10 people interested in libraries and Drupal attending, spanning a variety of disciplines, including public, academic, and special libraries, vendors, and consultants.

Discussion centered around the following:

Okay, this is going to be our get-together at ALA's Convention in Chicago! It'll be a chance to talk about what we're doing and to exchange ideas.

Part of our discussion will be about Drupal 7x and what to expect. Part of our discussion will be about the projects we're doing or would like to do. You're all invited to present!

All levels of experience are welcome. If you're a librarian and interested in Drupal, please come.

Date:
Sunday, July 12 (3:30p-5:00p)

Location:
McCormick Place
Exact Location/Room TBA
Chicago, IL.

For more information or if you have a question or suggestion, feel free to email me through the Contact Form...

My library is getting ready to migrate to Drupal shortly and I am interested to see examples of RFP's that other libraries have used to hire their consultants. I don't know that it would be appropriate to post them to this site, so please send examples directly to me.

If there is interest, I would be glad to post and/or forward them.

Just a request for ideas and suggestions for a Drupal4Lib BoF at ALA in Chicago. Time is marching on!

Last year in Anaheim, we had a fine get-together. A number of people presented projects they were working on and we had a general discussion on implementing Drupal in a library environment.

Here's my write-up: http://chicagolibrarian.com/node/289

ALA CHICAGO

This year we're in Chicago (my home town!) so I'm really looking forward to repeating the event here.

Digital Services Specialist, Boulder Public Library, Boulder Public Library - Main Branch

This is a 2 year temporary position.

40 hours per week

Apply by May 07, 2009

Salary Range: $21.88 - $26.25/hr

Required Education: Bachelor's Degree

Preferred Education: Master's Degree

Masters Degree in a program of Library and Information Studies preferred

Application requirements:
Applications are required and must be received by 12 noon at 1101 Arapahoe on the closing date of the recruitment period. No exceptions.

An application is required for all city of Boulder jobs.

There's a growing number of libraries and library-like organizations using Drupal to manage various parts of their systems in Colorado. Having Amy Qualls-McClure come to Denver gives us an incentive to get folks together.

Location

Denver Open Media at 7th and Kalamath in Denver (this is where the monthly Denver Drupal User's Group meetings happen). Google maps can help you figure out bus or light rail options, or parking is available in a lot across the street.

Project information

(Original) Project page on drupal.org: http://drupal.org/project/biblio
Student: Kornel Lugosi (Coornail on d.o, Coornail on g.d.o)
Mentor: Kristof Van Tomme (kvantomme)
Co-mentor(s):
* Ron Jerome (rjerome@drupal.org)
* Robert Douglass (robertDouglass)
* Benjamin Melançon ( http://drupal.org/user/64383 ; http://agaric.com/contact )

Current status: Planning.

Description

Biblio is a Drupal module that allows users to manage and display lists of scholarly publications. It is currently used on approximately a 1000 installations (and raising). Its use in projects like The Science Collaboration Framework, however is bound to increase its use even more.

Currently the module is still using custom nodes with its own database tables instead of CCK nodes/fields. Because of this it has to implement and maintain it's own widgets, integration with CCK reduce redundancy in the Drupal contrib codebase.  Lately several features from Biblio have been reimplemented in the CCK framework. Also several glue-modules emerged that seek to incorporate functionality that already works for CCK

I have been trying to shoehorn a specific form into drupal using cck and views, then date api with cck and views, and it just ain't working. :) What I am trying to do is track when issues of a magazine arrive. So I want fields for title and issue, and fields that can be filled in when the magazine arrives. I could do this with MySQL and PHP, but in this particular situation end user access would be easier if I could put it on a drupal site. Does anyone know of a module that might fill the bill?

Thanks,
Carol

Since implementing Drupal on our library website, I've spoken to a number of library Drupal programmers and seen many implementations of Drupal for library websites. Many of the implementations do the same things as one another but in different ways, which can cause module clashes and frustration for new Drupal users trying to maintain newly-transformed library websites. While all of these sites have needs unique to them, they also all have some basic needs in common that are unique to library sites.

We had a wonderful turnout of close to 20 librarians from all parts of the Chicagoland area. Knowledge and skill-level ran from seasoned veterans to people being introduced to Drupal for the first time.

[read more after the jump...]

Event Page: http://groups.drupal.org/node/18820
Date & Time: March 20, 2009 (1:30p-4p)
Location: DePaul Loop Campus, 1 E. Jackson, Rm 10028, Chicago

Introductions & Welcome

Round Robin of Participants

Tell us your name and your experience or interest in Drupal.

Discussion of Websites & Projects

Round-robin of projects people are working on or would like to be working on.

Book or Resource of the Month

Most probably already have a module local as this is so easy but here is a snippet people can work off of. The code below doesn't do much error checking or anything. You'd likely want to edit the below to make it more robust. The one below checks a SOPAC 2 table to make sure that they have a verified library card associated with the account. This prevents normal drupal accounts that don't have a library card from accessing resources. If you use some other module to add cards to profiles you would want to use that field instead. You may also want to use SSL though I haven't checked how well EZProxy handles it for external script auth. This presumes your using normal drupal accounts and not things like LDAP, etc.

For ezproxy you would use something like this for your auth:

::external=http://yourdrupallib.org/ezproxyauth,post=ezuser=^u&ezpass=^p,valid=+OK

Feel free to edit the below to make it better.

There are many Drupal consulting and service provider companies who provide services that are useful for libraries or who have domain specific knowledge which makes them valuable to libraries. This wiki is meant to provide an overview of some of those companies. If you should be listed here, edit away.

We will post the room on the BoFs board when it becomes available, hursday morning.

See you there.

Post questions here or look for highermath (me) or domesticat on IRC (#drupalcon).

I'm pleased to announce a Chicagoland Drupal4Lib BoF on Friday, 3/20 (1:30p-4p) at DePaul's Loop Campus, 1 E. Jackson (10th fl., Rm# 10028), Chicago.

GOALS OF THE CHICAGOLAND DRUPAL4LIB BoF

The Chicagoland Drupal4Lib BoF will be an opportunity for librarians to get together and discuss how they use (or would like to use) Drupal in a library context. We'll ask people to present projects they're working on and we'll field questions on problems and approaches to implementing Drupal. All levels of knowledge from expert to n00b are welcome.

Also, since we're the 'host' city for the ALA Convention in Chicago in July, we'll have an opportunity to think about what we might want to do for that.

This Chicagoland Drupal4Lib BoF is a follow-up to our successful get-togethers last year at the Metropolitan Librarian System and at the wildly sold-out Chicago Drupal BarCamp in October.

CHICAGOLAND DRUPAL4LIB BoF - QUARTERLY BASIS

We'll be doing one of these on a quarterly basis -- or at least that's the intention. The people at DePaul have kindly made their location available for March; We'll be meeting at McCormick Place as part of ALA in July; After that we'll be meeting at the downtown offices of the Metropolitan Library System (MLS).

PARTICIPATION AND SUGGESTIONS

It goes without saying that your participation and suggestions are welcome. The format is free and open enough to accommodate a ton of different ideas and needs.

Feel free to sign up below and either leave a comment or email me. And everyone start planning for an informative and rewarding event -- on 3/20!

Hope to see you,

Leo Klein
ChicagoLibrarian.org

UPDATE: TRANSPORTATION

LINK TO: Driving instructions to DePaul's Loop Campus...

There are a number of Parking Lots close to the DePaul Center (Jackson & State). You need to come south on Wabash to just past Jackson. There's a Self-Service Parking Lot on the west and east sides of the street between Jackson and VanBuren.

LINK TO: Street map from DePaul (pdf)...

UPDATE: See Draft Agenda...

Libraries new to Drupal often wonder where to begin with finding a theme for their website. If you are planning to customize a theme, there are several starter themes that will give you a basic layout along with many of the dreaded cross browser CSS fixes. Choosing one of these starter themes can still be daunting.

Luckily I found a fantastic chart that compares the features of most of them.

This is a dev release.

http://drupal.org/project/millennium

I excised the personal contact info from the quoted email.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Drupal 6 version of Millennium module available for download
From: Alejandro Garza Gonzalez
Organization: Dirección de Biblioteca, Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Monterrey
To: NGC4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU

Just a quick note...

The development version (e.g. "still changing") of the Millennium
integration module for Drupal 6 is now out.

http://drupal.org/project/millennium

Can Drupal IP authenticate users? I'm looking to use Drupal in a law library setting. We have several subscriptions that are IP authenticated so you do not have to enter a user name or password.

Thaks for any tips or suggestions,
John

This is still a while off but I thought I'd put out an initial request before the holidays officially begin. It's a request for ideas and suggestions for the meeting of the LITA Drupal4Lib Interest Group at the 2009 ALA Conference in Chicago.

Feel free to leave comments either here or on the LITA Blog at:

http://tinyurl.com/Drupal4LibALAchicago

LAST JUNE/JULY IN ANAHEIM

I'm getting pumped for Do It With Drupal coming up in December. (That, and for getting to visit New Orleans for the first time in 15 years!) I'd like to organize a library meetup either over lunch or in the evening on the 10th. It would be great to meet some of you in person and hear how you are using Drupal at your library. Who's with me??

Hello Drupal library people!

I'd like to extend a 10% registration discount for The Do It With Drupal Seminar to everyone in the Libraries group. To receive the discount enter the code LIBRARY at the checkout. This discount code expires on November 21st (a week from tomorrow).

Do It With Drupal is a large-scale conference-style learning event happening in New Orleans, December 10, 11, and 12th. We've got a lot of superstar speakers from both Drupal and the greater web community. The event is being organized by Lullabot and features speakers such as Earl Miles (Views), Karen Stevenson (CCK), Moshe Weitzman (Organic Groups), John Resig (author of jQuery), Chris Pirillo (Lockergnome), Heather Champ (Flickr Community Manager), Chris Messina (Flock, DiSo, etc), Angie Byron (Drupal 7 maintainer), Addi Berry (Drupal Dojo), and many more.

For more information about the event please visit http://doitwithdrupal.com . Be sure not to miss the latest schedule and the blog for the latest news.

Here is a link to a presentation we did on how we built a special site for library health resources--an OPAC built on Drupal, Solr, the Millennium integration module and Google Custom Search Engine.

http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/mty/workingtogether/Developing_a_Thematic...

You can visit the working site here: http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx/pasteur/

This was part of the University of Maryland/Tecnológico de Monterrey sister libraries conference, "Working Together".

I'm in the process of setting up a Drupal 6 site for a reasonably large urban public library in Canada, with an expectation that the site will receive about 5,000 visits a day. It's going on a Windows box that will be hosting two other separate applications, each on different installed servers (IIS with a library events application and ezproxy). We have a separate database server in place to hopefully give us plenty of room to grow. [more]

Does anyone have any good advice for creating a content type for links? Does anyone know a better way to do this than what I describe in the following?

Our library has a huge page of links for finding good books to read. There are several headings that take you to different parts to the page via anchors. Anyhow, take a look at it. You'll get it as soon as you see it.

http://www.hooverlibrary.org/goodbooks

It would be helpful if we could share details on what themes we are using and how they've been modified, especially front pages. Currently I am developing a site for Stony Brook University Libraries using the Beginning W2 theme, and I would appreciate learning what others use and why, and how you've modified it.

Related to this, I am bursting to learn how others have modified any of your *.tpl.php pages.

I will post more as I continue my design and implementation for SBU libs.

Thanks very much :)

The Cherry Hill Company

Job Description: Drupal developer

Job type: contract to hire

Location: One day a week in Culver city office and telecommute, or more office time at developer option.

Summary

• As a member of a team of autonomous Drupalistas. the developer will create and maintain Drupal modules and themes (code side).
• As a representative of the Cherry Hill Company, the developer will be given time to work on projects benefiting the Drupal community.

Responsibilities

The Libraries birds of a feather session at the Bay Area Drupal Camp will be held at 11:15 AM on Sunday, October 12th. The schedule should be up soon at http://badcamp.net/

Drupal in the Libraries [340007]

John Blyberg has released the first public beta of SOPAC2, the social catalog system for Drupal that he started at Ann Arbor District Library and has continued to develop for the newly launched Darien Public Library catalog.

Just a preliminary head's up that we'll be having a Library Drupal BoF as part of the Chicago Drupal Camp taking place at UIC on Friday & Saturday, Oct. 24 & 25.

They're still working on the program, but the Library BoF will be on Friday (10/24) in the early afternoon (probably starting at 2pm or 3pm). Location: Innovation Center (1240 W. Harrison - near Racine) in Chicago. (website: http://drupalcampchicago.org)

The goals of the Library BoF (besides getting together) are:

• Showcase library-related Drupal projects in the Chicagoland area.
• Talk about future plans and aspirations, field questions and compare experiences.

So whether you've done a project or would like to do a project, this event is for you. We had a great time doing this in Anaheim for ALA and it's good to organize something similar for the home team.

Mark you calendars today!

UPDATE (9/26/08): Here's the official link for the event on the Drupal Camp Chicago site:

http://drupalcampchicago.org/day1-session3b

BADCamp is shaping up to be a great regional event. If you will be in the Bay Area, you should sign up immediately at http://badcamp.net, as there is limited room at the venue on the Cal campus. There is a star-studded roster of presenters and attendees.

Got something to show? You can propose a session!

I have proposed a BoF session on Drupal in Libraries.

From the original post: