A Lot To Do

The question was asked about the pace of the tech assignments compared to the "intensive Intro course"? At 12:30 am Wednesday morning in Nashville, 10:30 pm in Tucson about 30 minutes to deadline, I'm still slogging through Drupal assignment for this week. Until this week I would say that they were at the right pace. It is similar to the summer's pace minus the quiz and some drop box items but there is the additional management component. I'm not sure if I really see the difference. Grumble Grumble!

On a more positive note, I found the readings for this week interesting. I can finally make sense of the various forms of the classification of objects.

Content Management Solutions

Matt Benzing in his article, "Luwak: a content management solution" appearing in Library Hi Tech (2006 Volume 24 Issue 1, pgs 8-13) discusses how the Library at Renssealer Polytechnic Institute solved its problems caused by users accessing its "website with a multitude of browser types". The Library needed to adapt their web pages to accommodate these browser types. Also there was a need for librarians of "various skill levels" to create and update web pages. For a time Macromedia Dreamweaver was use as a site management and design tool. Benzing reported that this was not a satisfactory solution. It did not solve the need for transforming pages for different delivery methods. It was also susceptible to the erasure or alteration of pages.

The answer to this was a content management system An XML based system was developed by the Communication & Collaborative Technologies division of Renssealer Polytechnic Institute. This home grown solution was too the name Luwak after, as Benzing describes it, the ferret-like Asian mammal and the coffee that bears its name and benefits from the animals biological functions. There is a Java Java thing going n here. This system offered answered many of the Library's needs. In publishing web pages roles can be assigned to various players. Various style sheets could be created for different devices that would be applied on the fly such as hand held devices. One of the more interesting changes was that it became much easier for librarians, who are not, for the most part web designers or content publishers to go in and make a quick fix to a page in either XML or plain text. Benzing concludes that "the Library's website is more flexible, efficient and consistent than it has ever been.

The library at RPI is fortunate that its school has a division that served as the CMS developer. This helped keep costs down. This really depends on how the bookkeeping is done. Luwak is based on open source software. Though the cost savings gained from having the CMS developed on campus is questionable, there is a saving from using open source software.
This is only one solution to content management systems. Others are buying an answer in a box and others are developing systems based on open source software solutions. Later this week I will be starting to work with Drupal, a content management system based on open source software.

Collections

It’s the fall semester in my course of study at the University of Arizona, two courses both dealing with digital collections. Some interesting readings this week in both 675 and 671. On in particular pqued my interest was Clay Shirky’s essay, Ontology is Overrated ,. In it he raised the question, of how strict must should we be with the way we categorize, should we let the caategories fall as each person calls them. I think that it wont lead to chaos but instead might make it easier to find items.

This current assignment is to put together a collection to enter into Drupal in a few weeks. I'm going to continue dealing with the family photos, particularly those from the past 5 years. For the purpose of this exercise, I want to keep them generic tied to place as opposed to person. The audience would be friends and family. Some terms would include Alaska, ships, ocean, mountains, party, New York