mysiteonline™ - Work

Statistics on answering patrons' questions.

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:34:47 -0500

So I've been asked by the Adult Services department head to come up with a means to retrieve and store statistics for "Questions Answered at the Public Service Desks". Currently, they're using a pen and paper approach from a template created in Microsoft Word. Each staff member (reference librarian) at the desks (currently using the paper document) has to print out one sheet per day (therefore, the Reference Desk has 2 sheets each day, Information Desk has one sheet) and will tally (slash slash slash slash, cross) the number of questions asked, separated by hour(s) (9-11, 11-1, 1-3, 3-5, 5-9). There's also a section for notes such as "We need the following items...", "Interesting Questions", and "Suggested books/items to order".

He mostly wanted a way to reduce the paper trail and become more "green". All those papers are then returned to his desk at the end of the day. He tallies the results at the end of the month. That's approximately 3*5*4 = 60 full pieces of paper to go through to count (by hand) all of the stats, as well as read (all at once) the comments and/or notes. Granted, I don't know if he keeps a running tally (one would hope), but either way, that's a lot of unnecessary work.

Since other desks/departments may find this useful, I've extended the schema in the database that will hold the information to account for that. Although it can all be managed via a web page (and is currently working as such in skeletal form -- thank you, CakePHP and 5 minutes of time), I've opted for a better solution. Since it'd be unruly to require a webpage to be open at all times, or dealing with load-times on a webpage from a favorite or desktop shortcut, I'll be developing a dynamically created UI using Adobe Air to allow for a desktop application. All it will require from the staff member is to either click on a button (and then verify -- requested from the department head), or fill in a text box. Upon installation the application will verify which public service desk it is at and use that information from then on.

The department heads in charge of each service desk (in case any other departments wish to use this) will then be able to view reports and statistical data from a staff intranet page, as the database will be maintained on our webserver. I'll probably integrate it with Open Flash Chart like I did on a personal project - it turned out really nice looking and was easily stylized (with a little understanding of its settings).

Hopefully when all done I can post some screenshots of the first draft of the final product. It's meant to be very simple, but nice with features...we'll have to see if I deal with connection issues to the database (as Adobe Air also has a local file store and can check on server responses). Either way, I have a lot of reading ahead of me on Adobe Air now that the database schema is complete. The statistics will come last...but we should have hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly break downs.

CoverFlow Fun at Work

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:39:02 -0400

I had some fun mixing a couple different JavaScript technologies and web services together to create something "interesting", and helpful for our Children's Room.

Introducing the Saratoga Springs Public Library's Children's Room Photo Gallery!

For the services, I am using Google's AJAX API to serve up my jQuery library, rather than me having to deal with keeping it upgraded and gzip/compressing it. You can read more about it here. For the photographs, I am using Flickr, as many other libraries do. It was one of the easiest and quickest that I could use with a nice desktop-based management tool that also didn't hog network bandwidth while searching for new photos (ala Picasa, or Microsoft Live Photo Gallery). Now staffers in that department can create their own photo sets (or photo categories) and manage their own images.

For the JS effects, I am using two separate libraries. Since I'm using Google's AJAX API to serve up jQuery I'll start with that one... I'm using ThickBox to show a larger version image of a thumbnail when clicked on. The nice things about Thickbox is that (1)it integrates with the other script I'm using, (2)it automatically resizes the images to fit (if too big for the viewport), and (3)is very versatile in its use of modal dialog support. The other library I am using is something called "ImageFlow" written by Finn Rudolph, which is one of the best JS-based CoverFlow implementations I have seen. The Official ImageFlow website isn't as fancy as someone else's implementation, so you may wish to check out the version that also has YouTube integration, and automatic rotation/slideshow.

I know there's currently no way to get from that page back to our home page or other areas of our website. To be honest, I'm not entirely concerned about that at the moment, I have many more pressing non-web-related projects of higher importance (at work) to work on, unfortunately.

Update: Apparently ThickBox is not being fired with the newest photoset, and I'm not sure why...it worked before a staff member updated the textual descriptions of the images, because I tried it. No idea why it's not working now - anyone have any ideas?

Twine: The Semantic Puzzle (RDFa Group)

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:46:51 -0400

From my new subscription to the Twine (data?) service, I subscribed to the RDFa group to hear, and read about new (or interesting) technologies around the web. It's been quite some time since I had heard about Freebase Parallax (last read about in the Web4Lib digest), and when reading over the article in my Twine digest email, I took a second look. The video demo really showed its power. But, to understand the Semantic Web (RDFa), I'd suggest anyone interested read over that article first. It discusses ideologies on how one should be able to find information and data over the web.

A Good Data Browser Allows You to Navigate the Knowledge Space by Car
...and...
Twine, if you're interested - currently in private Beta.

NCIP, Standards, and why we need RFCs

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:45:23 -0400

So, in attempting to figure out this rather obnoxiously generically defined protocol, I've found that our vendor's implementation of the protocol is not what I would have expected from first attempts. Properly formatted XML with line breaks to denote a new tag in the structure is apparently not desired as the query fails. If I remove all newlines (and I did remove all leading whitespace, though I'd imagine it was possibly unnecessary?) the query was successful. ...not to mention that a test was given where we would access it using Telnet under Microsoft's DOS. Well... MS-DOS prompt's telnet seems to be quite finicky and doesn't work as expected. Using PuTTy seemed to work OK though. Go figure. I'm glad I have that for SSH to our host otherwise I wouldn't have thought of it.

Without an RFC to describe exactly how communication is to be sent, received, and expected...bug testing has become a chore and a bore...not to mention that in trying to get a PHP socket client working just does not seem to be working. I can read information sent from my test server, but I cannot send data to the test server; though it works with PuTTy. If only it were a webservice with SOAP or something similar instead...which is probably what I'd extend this to do anyway, eventually...for use by the consortia.

Oh yes, NCIP v2 should be coming along within the year as well since I believe it's now been passed. Yay. Give me more technical specifications or an actual library example to work from! ARGH!

The Website has Launched

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:42:00 -0400

Well it's about time, the site is now live! As I've said in a previous post about this, it's not complete - all the content (sans images...which was almost all clipart) is directly from the old version of the site, just rearranged.

Put in use to this design are some rather obnoxiously tricky CSS tweaks along with JavaScript, Flash, and RSS feeds all pulled together to create a single site.

JavaScript:
sIFR
Dustin Diaz's SweetTitles (tooltips)
Homebrew DL list FAQ
NiftyCube
AmberJack Tour Script (temporarily)
...and some other various stuff...

CSS:
Tripoli CSS "Framework"
Stuart Landridge's Image Replacement Technique

Flash:
Monoslideshow ($20 purchase, site license)
sIFR

...and lots of HTML! Ha! I also used the WeatherBug API, and MagpieRSS (I used my own SimpleXML RSS reader but I didn't write a caching method, Magpie seemed faster and it already had caching, so...), as well as a "Beta_RSS" feed of our Event Calendar (which is incorrectly serving non-ISO-8859-1 as ISO-8859-1, causing problems I can't figure out how to fix. Regardless, it looks pretty!

Now, to wait for the dust to clear and the smoke to settle (all the little things that bug me that I will fix, but aren't important) so I can move on to updating the content and more visual hierarchy of things. After that I should start talking about programming some more here.

New Feature from Polaris

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:44:47 -0500

Clarification for those of you that read my blog for non-library-related information: this is library related.

I just got an email from one of the sales associates (I somehow got added to the list) on a new product that can be incorporated into the PAC: NoveList Select.

Polaris is pleased to offer NoveList Select - a quick and easy way for patrons to find books similar to those that interest them. NoveList Select pulls from a database of over 4 million titles and retrieves only books that are included in your collection. What's more, a "Find more like this" link appears right in the PAC and sorts results by popularity, making it easier for readers to find additional books they will enjoy.

I can't recall if other PAC software does this either by default or with a company-supported plugin (I know there are third party plugins), but I'm quite happy to hear about this. I'd imagine it works under a library consortia running Polaris just fine, so now I guess I just have to hope our consortia decides to take a serious look at this.

Coming to a Library Near Me!

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:32:14 -0500

I've been rather quiet on my blog for the past few months, and I might be for the next few as well. The reasoning is simply because I haven't had a whole lot of interesting things to talk about, I've mostly been designing and redesigning our "new" website's look and feel. I've been quite embarrassed to tell people where I work simply because the website was not of my own creation and did not reflect my talents. As I am a one man band here (except for PC repair and networking, my boss does that and I assist him), I do graphic work, design, programming, cost/benefit analysis, future planning/research for technology, and a slew of other mindless yet time consuming things -- I haven't been able to work through this as quickly as I had envisioned. Not only that, but getting a consensus in a new design, knowing that everyone deciding on it had liked it (and not just thought that anything is better than our current design) was a difficult task. I'm still having trouble getting any help on actual content...due to this fact, it's more of a visual redesign than an overhaul, which is quite unfortunate.

Regardless, since I'm itching to show off the website, I'll give a small treat in its place...
Continue reading "Coming to a Library Near Me!"

Web Imagery, Libraries, and Copyright Policies

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:53:56 -0500

Okay, so... Working for a library, but also knowing all about ownership rights and the blurry lines between proper usage and improper usage, it always irks me when I don't know what the correct thing to do is.

Many times, I'm asked to place up imagery on our website that is not our own. We do not own the material, it is not from a free* clipart library, and it was not created by me (or in the case of generalization - anyone else within the organization). More often than not, it is book cover imagery directly from our "Patron Access Catalog"...the web-based book/item search for libraries. Now, the vendor (maker of our PAC) has an agreement with Syndetics and therefore with all of the book manufacturers to license these images, and it extends to our use of it within our own organization for use within the PAC.

However, does this grant satellite libraries with their own website (namely, us) the exclusive right to also pull these images and use them? Amazon also allows users of their API to pull book cover imagery, and because of that, I would think if I were to use that, I would be OK in doing so. But - am I? Is it really lawful and legal to use these images for our own use of marketing and publication (in either instance)?

* "Free" depending on the terms of use from the author and distributor.

Free Wireless at the Library

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:10:15 -0400

Although this is not meant as a marketing scheme (we've had wireless for a very long time), I couldn't figure out what to title this as. At our library, such as many medium to large sized libraries (and even some smaller ones now) offer free wireless internet access for their patrons. However, this sometimes brings in the oddball PlayStation Portable (PSP) gamer, the "sit in my car outside the building with my laptop" internet surfer, and the creepy "oh sweet, porn!" people in to the library. Some of it isn't bad:

- Oh, I see you have a playstation portable. If you're interested, we have some game play strategy books for you.
- (While walking back from lunch break) Hey, nice laptop. You know, if you actually want to come inside the library, we do have a café with coffee, bagels, deserts, sandwiches... We also have some DIY books that show you how to extend the range of your computer's wireless signal.
- ....ok, so I can't think of anything for this guy except maybe pointing him towards the picture books of modern dance or realistic painters/sculptors, but then I'd be ever afraid to go near those books again. We usually kick them out anyway.

However, today, we had something a little different. Can you see what's odd in this picture?

Read on for a close up and explanation...
Continue reading "Free Wireless at the Library"

Preventing Changes in Sections of Word 2007

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:14:12 -0400

I've been doing a lot of design work lately, and have had very little time in doing any web-related programming or similar activity. This is no different, but because I've been working in the new Microsoft Office 2007 product suite (mostly Microsoft Word), I've had an opportunity to learn a few things I didn't know how to do before. Today, I needed to try to prevent an image from being modified (moved, resized, removed, changed, etc...) within a document (a redesigned organizational letterhead). This worked fairly well, except I had used a document header and footer which also needed to allow for modification (in the header), but preventing changes wouldn't let me access the header. Regardless, the instructions and steps used in the article I'm about to link you all to were extremely useful and quite cool. I know some of these existed in earlier versions of Word, but even so...

"What Does Structured Editing Mean, Anyway?"
I hope this can help someone else someday.

Reasons Not to Allow Comments

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:46:33 -0400

Sometimes you know that allowing comments is a bad thing. Comment moderation is only so good, and Akismet and similar filters are better suited for certain situations or applications. Therefore, you need reasons why not to allow comments, and to prove to your stakeholders and target audience that this is a bad thing. So, what reasons could there be? Well, if your stakeholders have a bit of trashy humor and can watch some semi-vulgar language video, here are two reasons:

1. http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1771556
2. http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1776175
Continue reading "Reasons Not to Allow Comments"

Ah, how I love thee, XKCD

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 10:35:42 -0400

Courtesy of XKCD:

The Universal Survivor's Guide to Working with Librarians

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:24:12 -0400

I love my daily dose of XKCD.

...also befitting if you date a librarian.

Michael Stephens and my Word Count Tally

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:51:48 -0400

As promised to Mike, I kept a running tally of the number of times I heard Michael say the word "Hot". Seemingly this word had been popularized within his presentations, but that time seems to have since passed, as you can see from the stats below. However, whilst listening to Michael speak, I did notice a different word that was much more prominent (though definitely helpful during the presentation to emphasize points). I also tracked a different, never oft-used word.

"Hot": 5
"Yay": 18
"Kerfuffle": 2

Kerfuffle?! Ha! Neat.
In context (I think): "Without first learning how to use the (blank) before releasing it to the hounds, it caused an unnecessary kerfuffle." ...he so much more eloquently used this interesting word. I don't think I quite captured its spirit.
Continue reading "Michael Stephens and my Word Count Tally"

Dinner with Michael Stephens

nospam@example.com (Brendon Kozlowski) — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:24:49 -0400

I was lucky enough this evening to be asked to have dinner with the famed library blogger of TameTheWeb, Michael Stephens. I wasn't entirely sure of what to expect. I sat in on a presentation he gave at the Polaris Users' Group conference in Syracuse last summer and his talk was very inspiring and motivational. He'll be providing a day long presentation on two days (tomorrow and the following day) to a sold-out crowd of librarians and staff members interested in his talks (or told they had to attend by superiors, though I believe it's more of the former); I'll be attending Friday's session (long weekend, anyone?).
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