Code4LibBC Day 1: Lightning Talks Part 2

Code4LibBC mornings are all about lightning talks. Here’s Part2.##AtoM’s XML-to-XSLT conversion feature for creating user-friendly PDF finding aids

Dan Gillean

  • What is AtoM? Access to Memory
  • migrating SFU Archives and Special Collections to Archivematica and AtoM
  • researchers browse whole descriptions into PDF finding aids
  • transform EAD output into PDF
  • EAD + XSLT + XSL-FO / ApacheFOP = PDF
  • job scheduler does it asynchronously by admin
  • next steps: dev project undersway: print full lower-level descriptions, make available in PDF, RTF, and TXT; make options configurable for AtoM ; custom style sheets; will be included in AtoM 2.2 release (2015)

Web Scraping for Fun and Profit

Mark Jordan

  • normally would need walk through the structure to pull the information you want
  • why scrape? No API to content, want very specific data, but don’t care about visual layout
  • why not? there is an API to content, and sometimes it won’t work on a site
  • real examples: convert author pages in SFU’s IR to linked data; gathering info about OJS journals; getting a full list of CONTENTdm collections (but didn’t work due to use of JavaScript)
  • some little scripts to grab titles. Code on Github* Non-Coding Approaches to Scraping e.g. import.io, ScraperWiki; Browser plugins: Web Scrape (Chrome), Outwit Hub (Firefox)

Hive Vancouver

Dethe Elza

  • Webmaker – tools to help people create things for the web and learn to code
  • embedded journalist
  • Software Carpentry to teach scientists to code
  • Hive Vancouver – unite all the learning activities in a city e.g. after school clubs
  • it’s a catalogue, and hosts events
  • 1st event was a pop up event at VPL
  • Vancouver or web based learning resources to go up on the website

Lunch Break

cute fluffy squirrel in snow
TIme to Brave the Cold