Dilettante’s Ball

…although LinuX_Xploit_Crew, with all due respect, I think it actually is.

Oh well, we’re back with a new theme (which nobody will see except to read comments, since I’m pretty sure all traffic comes from the code4lib planet) and an updated WordPress install. Look out, world!

So, in the downtime here’s a non-comprehensive rundown of what I’ve been working on:

1. I’ve written an improved (at least, I think it’s improved) alternative to Docutek’s Eres RSS interface. Frankly, Docutek’s sucked. Maybe we have an outdated version of Eres, but the RSS feeds would give errors because you have to click through a copyright scare page before you can view reserves, but you can’t link the RSS links to this form and get the item. I wrote a little Ruby/Camping app that takes urls like: http://eres.library.gatech.edu/course/WS-1001-A/Fall/2007 and turns that into a usable feed. I needed the course id/term/year format to show them in Sakai. My favorite part of this project was finding Rubyscript2exe. This allows me to just bundle one file (the compiled camping app) plus a configuration file. Granted, an asp.net app would be even easier for sites to install, but I didn’t have time to learn asp.net. I have more ideas of what I would like to do with this (such as show current circ status for physical reserves), but in the chaos that is our library reorg, I haven’t gotten around to even showing anybody what I’ve written so far.
2. I broke ground on a Metalib X-Server Ruby library. It took me a while to wrap my head around how this needed to be modelled, but I think it’s starting to take shape. It doesn’t actually perform queries, yet, but it connects to the server, allows you to set the portal association and find and set the category to search. Quicksets and MySets are all derivations of the same concept, so I don’t think it will be take me long to actually incorporate actual searching. For proof-of-concept, I plan on embedding this library in MemoryHole, our Solr-based discovery app. I’ve actually stopped development of MemoryHole so we can focus on vuFind, since they do functionally the same thing and I’d rather help make vuFind better than replicate everything it does, only in Ruby. The reason I’m doing this proof-of-concept in MemoryHole rather than vuFind is solely due to familiarity and time.

In other news, my last post seems to have caused a bit of a stir. My plan is to write a response, but the short of it is that I feel the arguments for an MLS are extremely classist.

Also my bathroom is finished and it looks great.

ERESidue

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Tags: libraries

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