Most of the findings line up with experience but nice to see them quantified. Many preferred html versions for printability, layout, etc. Also covers workflow, costs.

ACLS Humanities E-Book XML Conversion Experiment: Report on Workflow, Costs, and User Preferences (pdf)

An old article but still applicable for those with small spaces.

But our deck is on the wrong side of the house. Then an idea came to me that was a little unusual and might involve a little risk. The idea is essential this: Why not put rain gutters in rows along the wood siding on the sunny side of the house. It might look weird, but that was where all the heat, sun and protection from damage is best.

We recently overhauled the public computing setup at AADL, though it hasn’t been rolled out at all the branches yet. It consists of a mix of linux hosted web management software, linux thin clients and windows terminal servers. It is a bit of a unique setup so figure I should share. Once we get it farther towards complete we’ll probably release the code.

Some History

For some background the previous setup consisted of windows thinclients and windows servers running Citrix. The thin clients had published application sets that connected to a fairly basic server farm. The farm wasn’t really setup well resulting in high loads and slow logins. A custom set of flash applications and php gateways administered it all.

As I researched options I decided I wanted to drop Citrix as I didn’t really see it as needed and the licensing costs aren’t exactly small. I also decided I would prefer as much be opensource as possible though we decided on keeping Windows for the public facing part for now.

• Patrons can use the computer as long as they want without interruption unless there are other patrons waiting for a computer. They have a minimum 30 minutes if there is a line, after which they are given 5, 2, 1 minute warnings.
• They can be idle for a total of 10 minutes before being ended (given a warning after 5)
• They swipe their card at an assigner first that gives them a station. These are spaced out then random

The New Thin Clients

The thin clients we settled on are HP Compaq t5735 Thin Clients. In bulk they ran under $250 each. The specs worked out for what we needed:

• VESA mountable on both sides. Made it easy to securely mount to tables and even to the back of monitors
• 1 GB Flash, 256M RAM
• VGA and DVI
• Lots of USB ports including back, front and secure (within case)
• Debian Linux preinstalled (stock plus some custom HP packages)

The thing I like most about the thin clients is the imaging process. The clients come with a HP programs called HPThinState which can write a bootable imager to a USB drive. Once the USB is imaged you can boot other machines from the USB and walk through a simple imaging process. The process is simple enough that front line staff now image machines themselves when needed (usually ext3 partition corruption after power failure). This has significantly cut time of IT staff and reduced how long a client is out of order for simple problems.

Another nice thing is that all changes are put on flash immediately, no special write/flashing software needed. You can apt-get upgrade and have the changes there on reboot with no further interaction.

Break Out Boxes

One of the biggest problems we had previously was USB ports being damaged on clients. We tried multiple things like hubs, etc but nothing really lasted. Our latest attempt is using a modular box that is meant to be inserted in a 5.25 cd bay on a tower. We put 2 usb extenders and a headphone jack extender in it and mount it to the table. This leaves an easily replaceable port and also lets us move the thin client out of harms way. So far this has worked great and we haven’t had to replace a port yet. At about $10-12 it can’t be beat.

Other Hardware

We have USB floppy drives available for use and may expand to other formats. The monitors are stock though we add on privacy screens. Each station is also equipped with a USB based barcode reader that is used for signin purposes.

We also have one of the thin clients VESA mounted to a monitor and barcode reader that acts as the assigner.

More information on the actual software / workflow behind it coming up in a second post. Overall though we’ve been really happy with the hardware described above. Really stable and much better priced.

As soon as an app has been rated more than once, it becomes mathematically very unlikely that it will ever see a 1 or 5 star overall rating again. So, it’s nearly pointless to have scales of 5 stars, 10 stars, or 100 stars, when all you really need is: “Liked it, Didn’t Like It, and Neutral”.

The next Library Camp will be held Thursday, March 20th, 2008, at the Downtown Branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, from 9:30 AM – 4:00 PM.

The goal is to get a bunch of people together, and let them talk about whatever they’d like to talk about, within the rough purview of libraries and library technology. We’ll start with all getting together with a blank schedule to talk about what we’d like to talk about and fill in a few slots on the agenda. We’ve got time for four sessions and room for at least 3 concurrent sessions, so there could easily be 10-12 different things to talk about during the day.

We’re working on providing breakfast; lunch is on your own, but there will surely be groups heading out to nearby places in downtown Ann Arbor. There is also a mid-range hotel near by (The Campus Inn, $200/night, orbitz has for $99/night), and a very cheap place a little further out that’s not half bad (Lamp Post Inn, $45/night).

Most of my SMS plans allowed free incoming so I would have probably used this during my long college years. With the potential younger audience at public libraries I’ve heard discussion on whether kids racking up SMS charges using the catalog would be a good thing. Ed would also like free alternatives which probably wouldn’t be hard for email if your already using the email gateways. I’ve already thought about all his options including adding it to our twitter script. When I revisit catwrap I’m going to look more into custom catalog experiences based on profile information such as twitter, email, phone, etc. With a little information in the profile it would be possible to slim down the display with just the applicable features (send to twitter, send to del.icio.us, etc).

And as Tim at LibraryThing and jrochkind found they seem to be going for basic and client side which limits what you can do with it. I haven’t had time to look into what’s allowed in terms of caching or how many requests per client before being shut down. It would probably help to do the calls server side and cache for all the lccn/oclc/isbn possibilities in the long run.

Our catalogers began to disappear with the takeover of that function by OCLC, the nonprofit that aspires to be a corporation in this brave new retail library world. The standardized result of the effort is bypassed by patron and librarian alike, as they turn to the more friendly Amazons, Googles, et al., for the less precise, more watered-down “metadata” that has replaced what used to be cataloging. Apparently, users don’t miss the old catalog, except as a familiar artifact, which is testimony to how low this dumbing down has taken us.

…

The resulting “destination” libraries resemble the cookie-cutter design of the grocery store, aimed at making sure everyone who comes in goes out with “product” (books, CDs, DVDs, or downloads). What the patron takes is of as little concern to the storekeeper librarian as it is to the supermarket manager. The success of the enterprise is measured in the number of products collected by patrons, now called “customers.” It is no longer measured in the usefulness or impact of the service on the quality of life in the community served.

• MDOT feed of lane/road closures on my commute route
• Alerts from my favorite bars when happy hour, new tap, etc happens

There’s actually already a commuter aggregator called CommuterFeed which looks interesting and I remember reading at least one story about a DOT using twitter. Flying Dog is on twitter but i see quite a few business possibilities. Slow hour at the pub? Twitter a special on beers for the next 20 minutes (presuming you have foot traffic).

Quite a few libraries also got on twitter. David Lee King has at least a partial list. Most have gone the route of using rss2twitter or similar to send out additions to their sites, etc. I didn’t really see the major benefit of that so I’ve stayed away from it. I do see the benefit of doing some announcements on it, especially since the audience may be the kind that want’s to try out beta quality apps or are technology friendly.

The big use I see are for events. Since we’ve recently rehauled our event backend I thought I’d try hooking it into Twitter. Since there is a PHP class available for the api, it became really quick and easy to try things out. Now 30 minutes before each event a tweet is sent out as a reminder. I’ve also sent out a few manual tweets asking for feedback on some quick iCal feeds and alerts of some videos added to the site (also built on the new events system). You can follow at twitter.com/aadl if you think you would get benefit from it. The route will likely be towards a SMS/IM bot type of application.

Here are some of the other ideas I’ve had, some more feasible than others. Ed has also been helpful with trying things out and giving some feedback.

• Notices of event cancellations / library closures
• Direct Messages of when holds are ready for pickup
• Direct message to put a hold such as “d aadl hold 1580538908″
• Message for hours, etc

There’s quite a few possibilities for mobile/time/location dependent services a library provides that show potential. You’ll probably see quite a few posts about the event system in the future. It has become the backbone of quite a few services including our recently launched streaming video. Once iCal is done I’ll probably move on to hcal Atom service or similar for building external apps on.

Library Camp doesn’t mean burned marshmallows, mosquito bites, or popsicle stick-based art projects. Library Camp is a series of informal Unconference gatherings to share ideas, technologies, and discussions.

The next Library Camp will be held Thursday, March 20th, 2008, at the Downtown Branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, from 9:30 AM – 4:00 PM.

The goal is to get a bunch of people together, and let them talk about whatever they’d like to talk about, within the rough purview of libraries and library technology. We’ll start with all getting together with a blank schedule to talk about what we’d like to talk about and fill in a few slots on the agenda. We’ve got time for four sessions and room for at least 3 concurrent sessions, so there could easily be 10-12 different things to talk about during the day.

For those that can’t get to Ann Arbor there also appears to be a Library Camp Kansas on March 19.

Library Camp Kansas is a library unconference that will be held March 19, 2008 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Hale Library on Kansas State University’s Manhattan campus. Participation is open to anyone who is interested in dialogue and conversation about customer-friendly libraries, library 2.0 and how we can all improve our services and organizations to meet the needs of our communities.

It’s probably a little too early here to even start some of the transplants but for those who like to garden, you might be interested in the Victory Garden Drive.

Pattie Baker, publisher of FoodShed Planet (www.foodshedplanet.com) announces the FoodShed Planet Victory Garden Drive, with a goal of inspiring the creation of two million new organic gardens worldwide in 2008. Backyard gardens, windowsill gardens, community gardens, school gardens. They all count.

The gist is to get some friends and/or neighbors that haven’t to start at least a small garden this year. As for the term victory garden, from wikipedia:

Amid regular rationing of canned food in the United States, a poster campaign (”Plant more in ‘44!”) encouraged the planting of Victory Gardens by nearly 20 million Americans. These gardens produced up to 40 percent of all the vegetable produce consumed nationally. It was emphasised to home front urbanites and suburbanites that the produce from their gardens would help to lower the price of vegetables needed by the War Department to feed the troops, thus saving money that could be spent elsewhere on the military: “Our food is fighting”, one poster read.

Since we’re in a war, I guess now is as good as any time.

Another Yahoo product I’ve looked into is Zimbra, a partially open-source collaboration suite which has taken off in recent years. It offers a replacement to Microsoft Exchange with the ability of Outlook and iSync to seamlessly use the calendaring, etc (with installed commercial addon). With quite a few businesses and universities using Zimbra, it looked like a promising product.

Obviously the buyout by Microsoft could mean the death of the commercial version. The interesting discussion was regarding whether the open source part of the product could be forked under the licenses the part is under. The debate regarding GPL versus everything else turned into almost mouth foaming. Still, it was interesting to see the concerns various people had when it seems like many fear open source projects that don’t have a commercial version/option. Many are calling for the commercial code to be put into a escrow that will be released under GPL if the commercial support for the product is pulled or the company bought out. Others hope yahoo spins it off or sells it prior to a takeover. Most didn’t seem to like the alternative of Scalix. You can see some of the debates here:

• Zimbra Forums: MS offering to buy yahoo?
• Groklaw: What will happen to Zimbra

Most of the library open-source ILS projects don’t seem to be in this area. They tend to sell support or custom implementations. The problem seems to occur when the companies start selling the more important features or features that set them apart as commercial. Email? Sure. Exchange replacement? Extra. I don’t see LibLime or Equinox going the route of building pieces that libraries request as only commercial. From what I’ve heard LibLime requires all custom work for libraries to be GPL’d. I could potentially see other vendors like Innovative, SirsiDynix or OCLC releasing part of a product under GPL while keeping the parts libraries actually want closed source. Whether that’s a model you want probably depends on what your looking for, but the yahoo debate should show that you may need to look closely on what they really mean by “open”.

When I asked for a definite answer, he verified that libraries who loaned the Kindle were violating the ToS.

and

We have reviewed through our Terms and Conditions regarding this matter and the Amazon Kindle. You will be able to purchase Kindles for your library to use for checking out to patrons, as long as you are not reselling the digital content.

One of the other problems that came up is the Amazon 1-click buying on the kindle (without password verification). Some decided to unregister the device from the account preventing purchases from being made though it was unclear if you can reregister later on. Another solution was just to have a policy for patrons:

If I understand correctly, the Sparta Library (the one mentioned in LJ) allows patrons to add 1 new title to the Kindle during the circ period at the library’s expense. Beyond that, they charge the patrons the reimbursement cost of the additional materials.

Sounds like a solution. I’m wondering how the libraries advertise what content is currently available on it.

Amazon SimpleDB makes it really easy and straightforward to store and to retrieve structured data. You no longer need to worry about creating, maintaining, or migrating database schemas, monitoring and tuning the performance of your queries, outgrowing the storage or processing capacity of your database server, making backups, or replicating data.

This offering removes one more barrier to scaling software. Dave Winer comments that Amazon is becoming the place for developers to work with in order to scale their products.

Their move makes many things possible. As I said earlier, if it existed when we had to scale weblogs.com, we would certainly have used it. One could build an open identity system on it, probably in an afternoon, it would be perfect for that. A Twitter-like messaging system, again, would be easy. It’s amazing that Microsoft and Google are sitting by and letting Amazon take all this ground in developer-land without even a hint of a response. It seems likely they have something in the works. Let’s hope there’s some compatibility.

I’ve thought about using the systems for record indexing and some of the more intensive processes that libraries wouldn’t necessarily have the hardware investment for.

Inside looking out has a nice short breakdown including that it may be written in erlang. Marcelo looked at the API and thinks it’s really a directory service and that search might be the killer use:

Imagine that Redfin is not a gazillion-dollar VC-backed startup. They are just getting started and want to index all listings from MLS to do a kind of search that you cannot do directly to the MLS database. They can put all that data into SimpleDB (the flexible schema is a huge plus) and not have to worry about having Terabytes of data on their own database. Do you know how much it costs in time and money to maintain a Terabyte database? A lot. There is backup, there is perf issues, there is hardware redundancy, etc.

There’s also a breakdown on prices and comparison with the other services on O’reilly radar.

I’ve seen various projects for using S3 as the storage backend for databases like mysql. It will be interesting to see what projects come out for SimpleDB.

From Ed:

We have space for about 100 people, up from the 40 or so that squeezed into the first Library Camp.

More info and sign ups in the near future.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including “obscene” cartoons and drawings–or face fines of up to $300,000. That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user’s account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

The full article is available on news.com

And they end up pretty damn big at the end:

Skinning is probably the most involved of the process, with lots of slicing. It took about an hour with three people.

The cutting goes rather quickly and was almost a social event.

We ended up taking half a pig home, giving the other half to the girlfriend’s brother and sister in law. Overall a good yield, with plenty of bacon, loin and roasting meat. We’re not fans of ham.