Library Web Chic

Okay, I have very little free time these days with juggling work obligations, article and book writing, blogging, and domestic duties. So I want my tech to work, particularly when it is supposed to make my life easier. ALA it seems enjoys making everyone’s life more difficult. First, there was this issue with the Event Planner only working in IE. Hello ALA what about us Mac users?!?!Don’t give me any BS about Parallels either. It isn’t free thank you and therefore I don’t have it at home. Granted I don’t use the event planner to keep track of events I’m going to. However, it is the only reasonable method I’ve found for searching for event information (ie what’s going on when at ALA) which I then put in Google Calendar then ones of interest. Then this morning I encountered the registration/hotel loop from hell. I’d try to get a hotel for ALA annual and one of two things would happen when I logged in. I either ended up on the Midwinter hotel request page or on a page that said registration was closed, which it shouldn’t have been since the website said it opened today. I finally gave up and used more reliable old tech, ie. phone to call and make a reservation. This of course involved and extended hold period (thank you speaker phone) but at least it got the job done.

ALA please, pretty please you need to think about this stuff. Scalable, cross platform web sites are a MUST. You aren’t setting a good example for libraries and librarians!

There is an interesting post over at ALA Techsource about whether or not Drupal has too steep a learning curve for libraries. The post was prompted by a letter from Kyle Jones in December’s American Libraries in which he said that Drupal has a “steep learning curve”. As someone who has been working with Drupal and whose library has a homegrown CMS because of that steep learning curve, I’d like to comment. First, yes Drupal has a steep learning curve but I think that it is important to keep two things in mind.

1. All CMS have a pretty steep learning curve. I’ve used Joomla, Drupal, and Plone none of them have a UI that is up to snuff in my opinion. This is one of the reasons we built our CMS at UH. In fact, several people have commented to me that it was “the best CMS interface” they’d ever seen. One reason I think we get these kinds of comments is because we really wanted to make it dead easy to use. It isn’t as easy as we or the librarians would like, but it is world’s better than Drupal (a lesson some folks at our library are learning as we implement our Drupal-backed intranet).
2. Drupal is getting better, and better with each version upgrade. The interface for simple pages, once you add a WYSIWYG module is quite good. The Panels module in particular is getting closer to the type of functionality we’d like to see in a CMS because it allows you to deal with different sections of a give page in context and allows you to easily put different things into them. Drupal is on the right track but it is going to take some time to get there. The Drupal folks ought to take a page from the Wordpress UI redesign which I personally think is great. Maybe libraries should think about helping to make the UI better by either contributing code or features requests.

Second, for people who want to learn Drupal there are lots of good resources out there. I’ve posted about a few of them here before. Personally I love Packt’s book on Drupal. I’ve never learned so much or been so enthused after reading a tech book. For those folks who want real world experience, the drupal4lib camp taking place in February is full but look for streamed content as well as stuff posted afterwards. Also, check out the slides from my Open Source CMS preconference. There is stuff here on Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. I also can say that there is going to be a chapter on Drupal in a book I’m working on. As a result, I’m likely to be creating some tutorial videos and you’ll see more Drupal posts here for sure.

I’ve been slowly pegging away at getting different things from our Intranet moved into Drupal. One thing that I was worried about was a bunch of forms which our Computer Systems department uses for account requests. The current form is emailed to our Help Desk which takes the email and transforms it into a ticket. In the past I’ve used the Web Form module for this type of thing. However, when I’ve used the Web Form module before I let it collect the data. What I didn’t realize is that you can also ask the Web Form module to send every submission of a form to a specific email address(es). Once I discovered this I was able to easily able to replicate the account forms we currently have without writing any custom code!

Lesson - If you want to use Drupal to collect data and have that data submitted someplace that can receive the data as an email then the Web Form module will save you lots of time. Just setup the Web Form so that it is submitted to an email address. Lots of services allow you to submit via email. Cases in point: Flickr, Wordpress. Also many people seem to be using ping.fm to allow them to post to various social networking sites via chat, SMS and email. (For more on this check out this post) This may sound stupid to use a Drupal form to send a email to post to Flickr or Wordpress, but if you are trying to create a unified portal for people and there isn’t a module that allows you to add content to these systems from within Drupal, the Web Form Module might be your best quick workaround. In the case of Flickr it also saves you the time of everyone havingt o know the library’s username and password for Flickr. I’d love to be able to do something like this with YouTube or Blip.tv because it would save us developing a module in Drupal, which while probably a more sustainable solution takes time.

Another possibility is to use the Web Form module to send SMS messages. Most wireless carriers offer their customers an email address version of their phone number.  For Verizon this is your_ten_digit_phone_number@vtext.com . Granted you can only send short messages, but if you control the form then you can control the amount of input. If you want trouble reports to be received by people on their cell phones then just put their cell email into the Web Form.  Voila instant SMS!

Just goes to show you that basic functionality can be extended to meet people’s needs in new ways. If you think about the problem and possible solutions creatively.

So I’ve been working on our Intranet redesign with Drupal and one issue we have is we want people to be able to post PDFs to the Intranet. The simplest way to handle this in Drupal is to create a content type for PDF and use the CCK file field to give people the ability to upload files. This way the PDFs sit by themselves and won’t have to be attached to a particular page (which is what happens if you use the default Drupal upload module). Also the upload module makes it so that any node can have files attached which I didn’t want.

The issue with doing it this way is that when you click on a PDF node you end up at a page that has the Title and a link to the PDF you uploaded. This isn’t what we wanted. Instead we wanted the link to take us to the PDF proper. To do this one has to make a template for that content type. Normally when you want to alter the template for a content type you create a new node template. But this only allows you to alter the content portion of the screen (ie. the portion where the node displays usually the center of the screen). If you want to change something more than this you need to alter both the page and node template along with adding some new info to your template.php file. The basic steps are as follows:

1. Alter template.php to add code for your new template. It will be something like the following
   function my_theme_preprocess_page(&$variables) {
   if ($variables['node']->type == ‘my_content_type’ && arg(2)!=’edit’ && arg(1) !=’add’) {
   $variables['template_files'][] = ‘page-node-my_content_type’;
   }
   }
2. Create a page-your_content_type.tpl.php file
   Put into this file changes to the sections of the page other than the main content area
3. Create a node-your_content_type.tpl.php file
   Put changes here to how you want the content to display. The default node.tpl.php just drops in all the content but you can selectively show certain fields and govern how you want those fields to be displayed.
4. Clear your cache
   Site Configuration | Performance

The key part of this whole process was discovering the drupal_goto function which basically is a way to do a redirect within Drupal. The advantage over a traditional PHP redirect is that you can go to a full url or an internal Drupal url like node/4. So my node-pdf.tpl.php file has the following in it

drupal_goto($field_pdf[0]['filepath']);

Now my PDFs nodes all redirect to the actual PDF if you are viewing the node. If you edit the node then you get the normal edit form.

Some key Drupal documentation that really helped me with this

• Core templates and Suggestions - really important to get to information about which variable are available to use in which template files
• Working with Template Suggestions - Read both the page and the comments which have good information

I’m one of those people who likes to keep up with software upgrades. So to that end I upgraded my Wordpress instance tonight to 2.7. It has some MAJOR UI changes which I’m going to have to get used to. Personally I think it looks cleaner and I like the icons they choose to represent different things. The biggest downside? I have way too many screenshots to redo for my CMS preconference and Wordpress book chapter. SIGH! The other big thing is it made me realize how behind we are on upgrades to our WordpressMU instance at work. I’ve got to take some time over the break to upgrade and fix a few things. At least I won’t be disrupting too much if I do it over the break.

As part of a book I’m working on I’m writing a chapter on open source wikis. The one I’m most familiar with is MediaWiki. It is what UH used when we first put wikis in place 2 years ago. Customizing MediaWiki wasn’t always the easiest task and we took the easy route of just putting our logo in the top left corner. Recently though I had the chance to read a book entitled “MediaWiki Skins Design” which made me wish I had such a resource available when I was trying to customize our wikis.

This book is a terrific thorough overview of how to customize the layout, design, look and feel of a MediaWiki wiki. It provides an overview of “skins” and their purposes. Then delves deeply into the nitty gritty providing a detailed walkthrough of how to make MediaWiki look like an example site which he created. One of the things I like best about this book is that the author outlines which CSS classes control which elements within the template. This is extremely helpful because MediaWiki uses an overly complex stylesheet. He also outlines key functions which are part of the MediaWiki template. Using an understanding of these functions designers can move elements around on the page or eliminate them completely. The latter half of the book shifts focus to adding more attractive design elements, creating a dynamic UI, and adding media. The discussion of these topics is extremely helpful because most websites today have an engaging user interface and media-rich pages. The discussion of how to embed content from video sites such as YouTube, and social bookmarking sites such as Furl is particularly good. I was also happy to see a chapter on creating print stylesheets for MediaWiki. Many wikis are used for documentation purposes and without a good print stylesheet printing often can be a problem.

Overall, this is a great book for designers who want to customize the look and feel of MediaWiki, create a more dynamic user interface and add media. I wish I had it as a reference when I was working on MediaWiki and I’ll certainly use tips from it in my MediaWiki sites in the future.

Sometimes serendity is so terrific. I started a conversation with Amanda Etches-Johnson at Internet Librarian about the need for a Drupal in libraries conference or unconference. Then we dragged John Blyberg and into the mix. The result was the following:

Darien Library will be hosting a “Drupal4Lib Camp” on Friday, February 27, 2009 from 9 am to 4 pm.

The camp will be an opportunity for libraries who are working with Drupal, or interested in implementing Drupal, to get together, share experiences, solve problems, and collaborate. This unconference will be a combination of a series of 10 min lightning talks given by Drupal veterans in the morning followed by break-out sessions in the afternoon.

Audio and video from Drupal4Lib Camp sessions will also be streamed lived online.

There is no registration fee. However, participation is limited to 70.  Please register for the Drupal4Lib Camp at http://drupalib.interoperating.info/node/167

As I have mentioned several times on this blog I’ve been doing a lot of work with Drupal of late. One way I’ve been learning about Drupal is through a series of books by Packt publishing. The most recent one is entitled “Drupal Multimedia”.

This book provides an excellent overview of how to use Drupal for multimedia. It discusses how to incorporate images, video and sound into your Drupal site. In describes Drupal modules which can be used to manage each of these types of content. What is really nice about this book is that it clearly describes the differences between the modules and their strengths and weaknesses. Its comparison of Image and ImageField is particularly good. It also discusses the configuration options for the different modules. Another strength of this books is that is clearly outlines how to use CCK and Views to manage and display media.

One way in which this book excels over other books is the fact that this book goes into detail of how to customize Drupal template files to better handle media. One key set of customizations that the book discusses is how to embed media. Images can be embedded in a more usable fashion using the Lightbox module. The author also outlines how to use images as part of slideshows and galleries. A gallery function comes with the Image module. But the book delves deeper into galleries and show how to create them using Views, Taxonomies and the customization of templates.

Customizations can also be made to better display video files. Either those uploaded to the site or those from third party services such as Blip.tv, YouTube or JumpCut to name a few. Local videos can also be nicely displayed by using the jQuery Media module. This module takes a media link and wraps it in the appropriate media player. This works with both video and audio files.

Like images, audio has it own module. This or the File Field module can be used to add audio to Drupal. Another cool customization for sound files that the book discusses is how to allow users to create their own playlists.

This book is chock full of helpful tips on how to handle media within Drupal. It has terrific examples not only of administrative configuration but also relevant PHP needed to customize templates. Drupal is an extremely powerful platform but the accompanying documentation available is lacking, particularly for the most recent version (6.x). This book helps to fill in major gaps in the documentation available on the Drupal website. Additionally, it contains some of the most easy to read documentation I’ve been of customizing themes and templates.

The only downside of this book is the fact that several of the modules it reccomends were still being updated for Drupal 6 at the time of publication. This means some of the directions and screenshots don’t match the current interface exactly. Additionally, the following modules mentioned in the book still haven’t been updated from Drupal 6.

• Acidfree Albums
• Image watermark
• jCarousel
• Magnifier
• Asset
• Media Mover
• XSPF Playlist Module

This aside though. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and learned SO much from it. I’ve been working with Drupal for about a year and learning as I go via books and hands on experience. This book gave me a much better sense of what Drupal is capable of in terms of media. I actually know where to start for a change. Additionally, I actually developed a useful understand themes and templates enough so I can make changes. If you want to incorporate media into your Drupal site I HIGHLY recommend this book.

For the last two days I’ve been attending the TRLN Management Academy in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from the Management Academy, or how much I’d learn. As with many learning opportunities, much of the experience is about the participants. There is a diverse group of interesting, smart folks here, from different libraries and background. I enjoy the variety of perspectives that different people bring to the table and getting to spend time with colleagues. The same can be said for the presenters, who thus far have been really good.

Different bits of the material is review for me, due in part to the fact that in addition to an MLS, I also have a Masters in Information Management from Syracuse. Why does this mean that bits of the materials are review? Well, my IM degree is sort of technology, meets information science meets MBA. The review is good though because it helps me dust off skills and knowledge that it rusty. Also, when you look at stuff again you gain new perspectives and insights. I had a particularly “AH HA” moment today during the discussion about personality traits.

I’m looking forward to the discussions about influence and communication tomorrow and the resource planning discussions on Thursday. I have a lot less knowledge of these areas and I think learning about this stuff will be really challenging.

I’ve been working with a variety of digital library metadata standards the last week or so. Developing project specifications and doing some rapid prototyping of forms for cataloging digital library objects both born digital and digitized. Digital library metadata standards are a hodge-podge of acronyms (METS, MODS, MIX) each of them equally complex on its own. However, when you put them together to form a complete record for a digital object it makes ones head hurt. A lot. So I’ve been working with the pieces one by one. MODS first because it intimidates me the least. Then MIX which is for digital images. Now I’m working with METS which stitches everything together. METS is what is making my head hurt the most. It is deceptively simple on the surface. However, when you spend time with it you realize that it is very complex. The good part of the complexity is that it is really flexible. The bad part is that there is a whole lot to absorb.

There are still lots of technical metadata specs for different formats to deal with but UH really hasn’t got to far into media, YET. I’m making some headway with my prototypes and looking forward to handing stuff over to my staff in December. In the meantime there is quite a bit of reading left to do.

Some key resources I’ve been using to educate myself and make decisions.

MODS

• Library of Congress MODS site
• LOC MODS Implementation Registry - sites using MODS
• MODS in action - Open Search of Georgia PINES catalog for “pottery”
• MODS Editor at Brown University - helpful for getting an idea what a MODS editor interface can look like

METS

• METS website at Library of Congress - examples here that are useful to see what METS looks like
• METS Implementation Registry - see who else is using METS and for what
• The Australian METS Profile – A Journey about Metadata - an article at D-Lib which discusses implementing METS at the National Library of Australia. Really good diagram