Chicago Librarian

I know a couple of library people are going to DrupalCon in Portland in a week or two.

Looks to me like a great opportunity to get together and talk shop. So how about if we organize a Drupal4Lib BoF -- maybe on the Wednesday (5/22) sometime mid-day or in the early afternoon?

Topics could be open or suggested ahead of time. People could present projects they're working on, ask whatever questions they want. It'd be a great time!

If you've got a suggestion, either email me back or leave a comment here.

Is this a good general time to meet? Do you have a topic you'd want to suggest?

Any feedback would be appreciated! And hope to see you in Portland!

(UPDATE1): I set up a poll at the Drupal Library Group asking people what timeslot they prefer:

Poll: Drupal4Lib BoF - 10:45a-12p or 3:15p-4:30p?
http://groups.drupal.org/node/297483

(UPDATE2): Okay, '10:45a-12p' wins. Here's a link to the event on the Drupal Library Group:

Library BoF at DrupalCon Portland (5/22, 10:45a-12p)
http://groups.drupal.org/node/297878

From a short cursory look at some of the proposed sessions, in no particular order:

• The Library of the Future - Solr Search and Responsive Design for Multnomah County Library
• Re-imagining libraries on the web: a case study of the Stanford University Libraries website redesign
• Migrating the Library [GWU]

I may have missed something so feel free to add.

I swear if I get another one of these as a design proposal for the main page of a website, I'm going to sue Microsoft for crimes against usability. (P.S. Why Microsoft? Hint...)

Mom at the Reference Desk dealing with an unruly patron.

Slides from the presentation I gave today. A couple people came up afterwards and said it had inspired them to go off and try it themselves.

Matt Enis from Library Journal writes about the 'Fail4Lib pre-conference workshop' at this year's Code4Lib Conference where people talked about failed or problematic projects and the lessons they learned.

As I wrote in comments to the piece, I find the greatest cause of failed projects to be those based on received wisdom. Let’s call it, the ‘Wrong Bandwagon Effect’. Some mis-identified trend is taken up and you can’t argue against it because “everyone knows” (i.e. received wisdom) that it's the way of the future. Everyone knows! Only "everyone" never seems to include the end-user. But that doesn't matter since before you know it, yet another mis-identified trend pops up and nothing says ‘cutting edge’ like jumping from one of these trends to the other. (Classic example.)

This isn’t an argument against innovation. Rather it’s an argument against not doing one’s homework, of coasting along without anyone ever looking back and asking, what’s the guru's record so far?

UPDATE (3/28/2013): Here's an even better, not to mention more contemporary example ...

If I sleep long enough, maybe it'll go away!

Well, here's some interesting news: A French TV production company called 'Temps Noir' is producing a documentary for the French TV station 'Arte' on the history of anarchism 'all around the world' and they want to use photos from an online project I did several years ago while at Library School at Queens College, CUNY.

The project was called 'Red Scare (1918-1921), an Image Database' and represented both my interest in American labor history as well as the still rather nascent technology of web content production. We're talking 1997-1998 here.

Anyway, once the project was completed, my colleagues at Baruch College, CUNY, were kind enough to put the exhibit on their servers where it has remained to this day. Every so often, I get a request to use one or more of the photos -- typically for print publication. This is my first documentary. Needless to say I look forward to getting a copy of the final product.

Kind of ironic ad considering it's from the people who (almost) gave us 'smart tags'. See: http://www.pcworld.com/article/54004/article.html

Talk I'll be giving in April at the UIC IT Professionals Forum :

Turning Dates to Places on UIC's Recruitment Calendar - Mapping with Drupal

Location mapping presents a world of possibilities particularly when wedded with a powerful content management system. We will discuss some of the possibilities particularly in relation to UIC's Recruitment Calendar. This calendar takes advantage of the relatively simple Leaflet mapping library together with the highly configurable Drupal CMS. This dynamic combination allows for staff input of all content, location mapping at different levels (city, state, world) and other advantages such as a built-in reporting mechanism.