Code4libBC Day 2 lightning talk notes!
Code club for adults/seniors – Dethe Elza
- Richmond Public Library, Digital Services Technician
- started code clubs, about 2 years ago
- used to call code and coffee, chain event, got little attendance
- had code codes for kids, teens, so started one for adults and seniors
- for people who have done some coding, dedicated time to work on something with a mentor if they get stuck or want mentoring
- kids do a lot of coding in school now but don’t get to finish them so come to code club
- a lot of seniors that attend want to know more about code, so show some code and talk about how to bring things they do or have interest in into code
- variety of levels: never seen code to programmers
- have hardware to take out
- some work on their own and come in with questions
- others come in with a blank slate, will have something to present and work on in case
- start with what you know and love: HTML & CSS is super popular, but even things like Scratch
- provide laptops, some bring in their own
- encourage to peer mentor
- pre-“installed” environments: use glitch a lot for server side code, editing P5, rifle.it for python and others in a linux box, codepen (JSBin), built in editors and versioning, Scratch online, BBC microbits
- biggest challenge: not knowing who is going to show up and their experience level
- volunteer mentor group: would love to do that, have it with
- laminated sheets to self-learn/run, help get each other to
- in the process of identifying resources for different languages
- for Scratch, have a list of challenges that get progressively harder
Review of open-source ERM options in 2019 – James Fournie
- VCC, paper proposal for Code4lib Journal
- market consolidating continues
- library services platform, confusing term, the new ILS with more ERM and cloud based
- some vendors have created walled gardens; have to use ILS + ERM from same vendor
- few standalone ERMs, link resolvers, etc. that
- big fan of open source, prioritize if possible
- ERM = electronic resource management; keeps track of vendors, workflows, db issues, workflows including purchasing
- active options: CORAL, FOLIO (not done)
- anti-ERM ERM: trello, spreadsheet, etc.
- CORAL: released in 2008, PHP & MySQL; mature product
- FOLIO: not yet released, Apache License (not GPL, so don’t need to reshare code), Java/JavaScript/Groovy; very modular, rapid development, large community, but no en user docs, no admin interface, rough edges
Organizing Ideas podcast – Allison Jones / Karen Ng
- iSchool students
- connection between organizing information and organizing community
- continue conversations from library school, good excuse to talk to really smart people
- just started in fall
- topics include library school, community led libraries, queer and radical knowledge organization, rare books
- interested in new projects or bit more behind the scenes
- 1273 listens/10 episodes; transcribed
- more complex and political aspects
- how libraries can support podcasting; mostly at VPL, have done at VIRL; studio with microphones and
- problem is scheduling is often inflexible, and location may not work for guests, so would like to be able to borrow microphone to record elsewhere
- provide space/loan equipment, offer training, offer help, help creators connect
- VPL recently had a podcast festival: workshops, live recordings, panels, meet other podcasters
- use Audacity; at VPL use Reaper
- how to support publishing of podcast? looked it up online. Uses Anchor to publish to all the platforms
Intranet and Wikis – Scott Leslie
- BC Libraries Cooperative, all open source software in use
- lot of discussion around Confluence (commercial product) from Atlassian was discussed greatly during yesterday’s breakout
- DokuWiki: open source wiki
- when joined, they wanted to kill the wiki, so talked about instead to make it work
- other platforms may not be as great for organizations
- DokuWiki has access control. What’s public, login only, access for groups or specific users
- every barrier that you can remove to write documentation, the more documentation people are willing to write
- super simple to create, edit, and remove pages with versioning
- can embed Google Suite pieces e.g. gDrive folder, gCal
- wiki gardening to weed
- coop will host for members if interested
FAIR data sharing in the Global South – Alicia Urquidi
- iSchool student
- doing coop at UVic part of Ocena Networks Canada, part of Internaltional Technology Office, part of World Data System
- membership of RDA membership regions: used World Bank income country categories. Most members are from high income and mostly northern hemisphere. Lower income more likely participation from researchers. Higher income countries
- Tableau was nice but very difficult to set up
Break
Looking forward to more talks after the break!
RefDesk Dashboard for Springshare data – Trevor Smith
- Douglas College Library
- Springshare > Lib answers > Ref Aanalytics
- data: campus, who, service point, ref level, question type
- built in reports were not that useful for their use
- needed to report year end report including cumulative
- originally pulled into Excel and duplicated effort every year
- created interactive dashboards where pivot tables, slicers and reports are in Excel, set up access to contain data
- db to hold all transactions and created SQL queries to add info on semester, academic year
- use Springshare transaction ID as primary key to prevent duplicates from being loaded
Implementing OpenAthens for eResource authentication – Hillary Webb
- Emily Carr University Library
- difficult to do assessment during this time because there were too many changes happening at once
- OpenAthens via EBSCO: UK IP and single sign on
- 8 hour session for all eResources
- wanted a better UX, fulfill license agreements, better usage, outsource IT
- was previously using EZproxy, had some issues with security certificates
- have a lot of EBSCO product, wanted to outsource IT support, increased cost but major decrease use/stress of in-house resources
- previously did not require login to public computers, so with OpenAthens, could restrict guest access
- privacy impact assessment, questionnaires, vendor list, connect user directory, URL cleanup and bulk changes, education and promo
- use Shibboleth as well
- IDs are made up of keys, but IT has list of users tied to each key
- only difference is having to log in even on campus
- con: no project manager on the vendor side, and having to go through long email threads to find information
- done: news on website, social media, educated faculty; to do: FAQs, how to guides, improve staff documentation, continue to explore/train staff, still a bit of a mystery
- post implementation: updated URLs on all other platforms, adding new resources (mostly done by EBSCO), setting up stats
- future: true single sign on
Telling library stories with Tableau – Tania Alekson
- Student Experience Librarian, Capilano University
- more than just charts
- types of data to show
- examples: budgets and spending, user needs and space use to advocate for more space
- dashboards examples: teaching stats, collection survey
- Tableau public is free download, save to cloud, embed, static with having to “refresh” data
- data and visualization saved to external servers (in US?) so using anonymized data
- when populate data will tell you which visualizations are possible
Privacy – Camille
- The things you own end up owning you.
- context: US fourth amendment on search and seizure, Canada Charter and Privacy Act
- what’s happening is eroding our freedom
- email: Tutanota, ProtonMail
- IM: Signal includes interface for SMS, Telegram
- Tor network vs. VPN has data on you
- can install on library computers
- privatetools.io
- Scott: if member libraries would like to sponsor Tor server, please contact the co-op
- Brave private mode uses Tor
End of all talks
Time for lunch!
