Supplies are wiki’ed

In honor of the change from pbwiki to pbworks (well, thrown in the honor), I’ve added a new page to the staff wiki for Supplies.

This is one of those “I’ve been meaning to get around to something for this purpose for some time” kind of things.

This is basically just a staff info page to keep everything important where we all can find it easily and quickly, when it comes time to reorder.

Caveat emptor: this is what we presently buy, based on our state contracts with vendors and other factors which may or may not be optimal for anybody else. We may not go to the same vendor or use the same product next time we order — this is just a starting point.  This should not be considered any kind of endorsement for the products or vendors listed.

We have some things that we don’t order very often (targets for the security system, barcode scanners, printer drums, etc.) and we end up shuffling through backfiles to find where we got them originally, or where to go for parts, or where we got that better deal.  This is intended to shortcut that process.

Office Supplies

Office supplies are usually cheaper from office supply vendors (rather than a library supply vendor).

Routine things like pens and paper clips and such, not needed.  But things such as “what’s the label stock number for those labels we use for …” are appropriate.

Library Supplies

Specialized library/archival-only supplies.  Targets for the security system, covering supplies, etc.

Equipment

This I broke down into sections like Audio-Visual (for things like headphones), Barcode Scanners, Printers, Scanners, etc., with links to my online manuals.

I think it will be useful  — to me and maybe to others here.

Tipping my Fedora, part 3

[updated 2009.6.17]

This is another in a series of posts on my attempt to get acquainted with Fedora on VirtualBox.  YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), of course.

[The computers are a Windows XP Pro 32-bit (2GB RAM with 512MB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox) and a Vista 64-bit laptop (4GB RAM with 1GB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox).]

I’m using the book Fedora 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux by Negus and Foster-Johnson [9780470413395] but not the included discs, as I wanted to make sure I had the latest version of Fedora, and I wanted to run it in VirtualBox as a virtual machine, so I could switch back to Windows when needed.  Having a big book on this can be a help in trying to learn a new system, although the variations due to running Fedora inside VirtualBox are not covered.

The book has tips such as:

* double-clicking on a folder to move down to a subfolder, or clicking the folder name at the bottom-left to move up to a parent.  This gives you a menu for selection.  This varies from the little green up-arrow folder in Windows Explorer.

* the “window shade” feature (double-click in the title bar “rolls up” the window instead of maximizing it) needs to be turned on.  System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Windows and in the pop-up, change Maximize to Roll Up. Not a perfectly working gimmick, IMHO.

Screen Resizing

I can log in, and once the Fedora is up, I can use the Auto-Resize Guest Display in VirtualBox (provided I have VirtualBox already set to full screen) to expand Fedora to fit completely inside VirtualBox.  There’s also a full screen option, but it’s easier to switch back to Windows if I just expand to size inside VirtualBox, and that’s enough to get a decent window for Firefox, etc.  (See Part 2 of this series for how that was enabled.)  Mind, it make take several tries to get it to work at times, and you have to have Fedora up for at least 2 or 3 minutes before it seems to want to work.

This also gives me access to the VirtualBox icons at the bottom of the window, which can help when I’m sitting wondering if anything is happening… oh, look, the drive icon is flashing.  Something is still working.  Fedora is not exactly encouraging on a lot of activities, as the little blue circling-around arrow doesn’t always appear for the cursor so you know something is going on.

Media Manipulating

I figured playing a few MP3 files would test the media capabilities… oops.

Fedora, it turns out, can’t do MP3 files.  It’s a matter of licensing.  So, I looked for and found a workaround called Fluendo and installed it, by downloading it (in Fedora using Firefox) and opening it, giving the root password several times in the process, and it installed.  Doing workarounds like this is something I expected, although not for something I had considered this basic (MP3 files).

Then I used Firefox to download some free MP3 files as samples and tried them out by importing them to Fedora’s Rhythmbox music player (which couldn’t handle MP3s before Fluendo).  Worked fine.  (I did this mostly just to see if I could get the connection to the sound card even through VirtualBox.)

The holders of the patent on the MP3 format wanted about 7 1/2 cents (according to the book) per system using this, and Red Hat decided not to include it (well, a lot of people just try Fedora out, much as I’m doing).  Makes sense.  Fluendo, however, legally has an unlimited MP3 license, so this stays within the law.  It’s free; you just can’t redistribute it.

(There’s actually a page in the Fedora wiki on “forbidden items.“  It includes commercial DVDs, since the format for commercial DVD discs is a patented one, so you may not see a lot of movies on Fedora machines without getting some extra software from somewhere — a popular source is rpm.livna.org .)

Terminal

I figured out — even before the book suggested it — that I needed to put an icon for the terminal function on the desktop.

Since Linux systems are aimed at multiple users, you log in as yourself, but often need to become root — the superuser (system administrator) to do certain things.  (I am Root, see me type.)

In the terminal panel, you get a prompt for you as user.  Type su - and enter (the hyphen added puts you in the root directory to begin).  The prompt will change and now you can install stuff, make changes, etc., that you were forbidden to do under your regular login.  Since you (supposedly) set your root password during the setup I described in earlier posts, you are better protected from malware, while using your regular login abilities, which might try to plant viruses, etc.  It does not make you immune to viruses and such; it just makes it harder than usual for the bad guys.

Of course, it also makes it more of an effort to install stuff, but that’s the tradeoff.

Future publishing?

I’m seeing a lot of “predictions” thrown around by various columnists and bloggers trying to foresee the future of publishing.

Ransom Stephens has “Booking the future” and it’s an interesting take.  The timeline, as usual, looks a bit fast (at least to start) but it seems like a pretty practical view of what could (should?) happen.

Tipping My Fedora, part 2

[last updated 2009.6.7]

I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the biggest obstacles in this Linux endeavor is the fact that I’m doing it over and over, trying to describe the steps each time, and each time I lead up to a Fedora that no longer will load, I have to start over and create a whole new virtual machine.  But some files may be updated, and therefore it may behave differently the next time.

Maybe that explains (in part) why, when I try to get advice from forums, the posts there always seem to skip steps.  After you go through something often enough, it’s certainly easy to leave out steps you’ve gone through before without remembering that others haven’t gone through them yet.

I’ll try to avoid skipping steps here.  I hope.  But I will skip a LOT of attempts to get things to work.

BTW: my work system is a Dell Optiplex 745 running Windows XP Pro on 2GB of RAM.  My personal laptop is Windows Vista 64-bit on 4GB of RAM.

In our last thrilling episode, I created a virtual machine in VirtualBox with Fedora 10.  The next step is to be able to control the resolution in Fedora 10 inside VirtualBox.  Better yet, to optimize Fedora to run in VirtualBox.

VBoxAdditions … eventually

Based on experience in several attempts at this, I went to the Applications dropdown menu, selected System Tools, and right-clicked on Terminal.  I chose to send a link for this to the desktop.  Believe me, you’re going to need to use Terminal a lot, and this is more convenient than digging down through the menus to load it each time.

The screen was still limited to 800×600 maximum.  Needed to find a fix for that.  Should be simple, right?  NOT.  There are a lot of people making suggestions in the VirtualBox forum.  None of them worked for me, and some of them locked up the Fedora so it wouldn’t boot up.  I had to delete it and reinstall it.  Several rounds of this ensued.

Loading packages into Fedora

I will consolidate and condense the advice that actually did work for me here:

1. Load Terminal
2. type su - (this will turn you into the root user, and the hyphen puts you in the root directory)
3. type yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel (this runs installations on a number of packages)

I got a Fedora popup about updates right after this. I approved it to install all updates.  There were a number of them, so I let it go a while and watched the little blinker dot on the VirtualBox hard drive icon flickering at me, sometimes orange, sometimes green, which probably means something for each color.

During this, there is a little open box with a green down arrow at the top next to the double-terminal icon for network activity, which indicates that downloading is going on, at least.  Then the box finally changes to a page in front of the open box, while it tests the changes.  Then comes a plus sign alternating with circular arrows while it does the actual installing.  Certainly resembles Windows in that it takes a while to do updates.  Go eat lunch.  A big lunch.  With dessert.  And gas up your vehicle while you’re at it.  Maybe change the oil, too.

While I waited for all that, I used the System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Screensaver to set it to 30 minutes and not lock me out.  10 minutes default isn’t much time, especially while you’re waiting for updates.

I also tried something from the book, which is to right-click on the top toolbar, and select Add to panel.  I picked a Drawer to add, and then right-clicked on the narrow little thing’s properties so I could widen it out some.  I put on some widgets: a system load indicator (now I had that CPU activity meter!), sticky notes, and a shutdown button.  I added a weather widget to the bar itself.  Now I could open a drawer and use the widgets in there.  Just a slightly different way to get handy widgets out there.

Finally I get a completed message for the updates and the open box disappears.

Now I open the terminal again and — glutton for punishment that I am — I became root again and typed yum update just be sure.  I got “another app is currently holding the yum lock” and after repeating that multiple times, it finally got to check.  Everything is updated.

Installing the VBOXADDITIONS

Now the best advice I found says “By then it’s time for another run at that install script: [root@fedoravm VBOXADDITIONS_2.2.0_45846]# sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run – which should run smoothly now, install all the guest additions” — only what does that mean?   (Aside from the minor difference in VirtualBox versions, that is.)

It looks like root (judging by the root prompt of #) is inside the directory.  This is the kind of thing that makes Linux harder than it has to be — the advice skipped steps here.

Okay, right-click on the desktop icon for VBOXADDITIONS and look inside it with “browse folder”.  Aha!  There’s the VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run file.  Now I need to get to it inside the Terminal function as root.

Used the “up” green arrow in the browse function until I got up to a batch of folders, starting with “bin” and going on.  Okay, this is main directory stuff in Linux.  There’s the “Media” directory and the VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run file is in that.

Now that I know that, I can use Terminal and become root with privileges to run it.

1. Okay, log into Terminal.
2. Type su without the hyphen, to become root without being in the root directory — I won’t stay there anyway.
3. Type cd / to get to the main directory.  (Well, it used to work in DOS to change directories.  Seems to work here also.)
4. Type dir to see the subdirectories folders.  (Another old DOS command.)
5. There’s the “media” folder.  Type cd media to get into that folder.
6. Type dir and there’s the folder contents.
7. Type cd VBOXADDITIONS_2.2.4_47978 to get into that folder.
8. Type dir and there it is, listed with the other files.
9. Type sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
10. it runs!

And now it wants to restart.  Whew!  I do a full shutdown.  Restarts are not a safe bet.

Please note that you were not party to a LOT of attempts to get something else to work, before I found this advice.  And even then, it did not tell me how to get to the file in order to run it as root.

Success So Far

This time when I boot, I get a message that the guest OS supports mouse pointer integration and it doesn’t need to capture the mouse anymore, just use it over the Fedora panel.  Oh, joy!  Big improvement there, believe me, not having to swap back and forth.

Oh, and the time is correct in the top toolbar.  That bodes well.

And CTRL-F lets the Fedora FINALLY go to full screen mode, and toggle back and forth (you can’t switch to Windows while in full screen).  All the functions under Machine dropdown menu in VirtualBox now appear to be working.

Looks nice, and windows for stuff like Firefox finally allow the full width of the screen.

And it only took me… was it 10 or 11 attempts? — to get Fedora 10 to run properly in VirtualBox 2.2.4.  I hope it gets easier from here.

I took my notes home and tried it on my Vista 64-bit laptop system.  It worked there, too.  Due to the wide screen, I had to adjust the Firefox window a bit, but it worked properly.

So, it seems I can actually run a virtual machine for Fedora 10 inside VirtualBox on my XP Pro and Vista 64-bit systems.  At least, the basics seem to work.

Tipping my Fedora, part 1

[last updated 2009.6.7]

So, we’re planning to move our library web site onto a Linux server on the campus system (long story omitted, for which all should be grateful).

Finally I have a practical reason to learn Linux.  The question is, do I enjoy or dread it?  I’d like to like it, really.

First, bear in mind that I started out (way back in the ’80s) with a Radio Shack Model 3, upgraded it to a Model 4, and then moved to a 80286 and MS-DOS, Radio Shack Xenix, Windows 3.1, and onwards.  The point being, I started with text-based operating systems, so it’s not a matter of avoiding them just because I can’t do everything with a mouse.

And Linux, at this point, is still very text-based because you seem to need to do some kind of typed instruction or file editing every time you want to do just about anything, including even the basic setup.

As a number of bloggers and columnists have commented, this kind of technical tweaking is a big barrier to acceptance of Linux by the general computer-using public.  Granted, it allows versatility, but most people don’t want to bother with that.  I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of most of it, myself.

Special note: I’m going to skip a lot (a LOT) of the trial and error that went into this and just cover what actually worked in the end… mostly.  That will save a lot of space, believe me.  I’m also omitting all the “capture” dialogs when I go in and out of VirtualBox/Fedora back and forth to Windows.

Picking the distro

Linux comes in distributions, which are commonly called “distros” (not to be confused with “discos”).  The campus will use Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is a “pay” distro, for the web site.

However, Red Hat set up an interesting system some time ago.  They took the Fedora distro of Linux and let it be available for free, and when people developed and tested out enough new good stuff on Fedora, Red Hat moved it into the next version of Enterprise.  Very enterprising of them, even if I do pun that myself.

So, to get more familiar with Red Hat Enterprise, I can just use Fedora for free.  In fact, the book I got to help is Fedora 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible by Negus and Foster-Johnson (9780470413395).

VirtualBox for a Virtual Machine

However, I was a little wary of dual-booting using my work PC (Windows XP Pro) or even my laptop (Windows Vista 64-bit), because I would need to switch operating systems about 15 or 20 times a day at work (I get a lot of rush interruptions, like the rest of our staff).  I had to be able to switch back to Windows to use programs there (many of them not compatible with Linux).

So, I decided to try using VirtualBox to create a “virtual” machine on each computer and then installing Fedora inside that.  That, of course, creates a separate set of problems and fixes, but that should be interesting.

I did look at some other virtual systems, but this was the one that seemed to have the most functionality with “guest” OS (operating system) while handling various systems on various host systems.

Off we go….

Downloads

First, I got the latest distro of Fedora, which turned out to be version 10.

Now, Fedora comes with either a Gnome (default) or a KDE graphic interface.  Pick one.  Or, pick both and try them both as separate installations.  I don’t know yet which one will be on the campus server, but I’m not sure it matters all that much for what we’ll be doing to manage the web site.

I created a folder in Windows for all the Linux stuff, and started downloading.

Downloaded the stock version of Fedora, which apparently uses Gnome.  This is freeware.  I had the option to get the version with the KDE interface, and I got that on my laptop at home, just to see the differences.

I also got the freeware for VirtualBox which allows me to run other operating systems (such as Windows or Linux) like a program inside Windows.  (You can also run Windows inside Linux, but that’s not relevant to my situation.)  You can set up several different virtual “machines” and start up whichever one you choose — say, have both Gnome and KDE versions of Fedora, a copy of Ubuntu, a beta version of some new system, etc.

Initial Setup for Fedora in VirtualBox

I loaded VirtualBox (version 2.2.4) and it showed a window with a “new” blue sun (well, it’s a Sun product).   This lets you set up the virtual machine for each system.

I set it up by naming my new virtual machine “fedora 10″ and giving it 512MB of memory to work with (out of my 2GB, so that’s 25% of my memory and still more than the minimum of 256MB recommended by default).

I pointed the CD/ROM to the F10-i686-Live.iso file  (to start with) to use.

I set a shared file pointing to the directories where I keep some HTML files, so I could use them in the browser in Fedora, and the Linux downloads, and I set a USB device filter up so it would detect my printer on a USB port.

I also set it up with an “expanding” default space of 8GB to start, so anything I added or changed would have room to be saved.

Once I had that, I used the green arrow “start” button.  Things progressed.  Patience was certainly required; sometimes there are long pauses with little or no activity shown in the VirtualBox “guest OS” window.  I sat there wondering if the program had locked up or what, and then something would happen…  but the little icon for the drive activity (a single CD) kept blinking at me every little bit, so I kept waiting.  (There’s also a little blue spinning arrow around the cursor some of the time, which may or may not be visible depending on the type of action.)

BTW (By The Way): the virtual machine shows up as a window inside the VirtualBox window, and while you can enlarge the VirtualBox to full screen, the virtual machine window of Fedora stays at 800×600 by default.  There is a “resize” option in VirtualBox but that just reduces the VirtualBox to fit around the 800×600 panel.  The “Auto-resize guest display” function in VirtualBox is grayed out at this point.  There’s supposed to be a way around this — more later.

The initial login is “automatic” so I did that, and Fedora loaded, using the .iso (”Live”) file to run.

Now I had a nice 800×600 window with Fedora inside VirtualBox.  VirtualBox has something in the icons along the bottom of the window for the USB (which says the printer is on that) and a file folder (which says the shared files I set up are there).

Whenever I clicked inside the Fedora window, I got a little popup from VirtualBox saying that Fedora could capture the cursor/keyboard action for use in Fedora, and I could swap in and out of that using the right CTRL key.  When I approved that, I could work in Fedora.  I could get out by hitting the right CTRL key again.

Fedora 10 has the taskbar at the top with Applications  Places  System and the Firefox button and one for the mail/calendar app provided.  Fedora 10 with Gnome comes with a nice little batch of basic application software like Firefox and ABI Word and such.

In the “panel” (Microsoft doesn’t like you to say “window” when it’s not in Windows, apparently — but at least Linux didn’t elect to call them “doors”) below, are icons for Computer, liveuser’s Home, Trash, and an opened box with a disc saying Install to Hard Drive.  For starters, I am simply “liveuser”.

The “install to hard drive” function lets Fedora (inside VirtualBox) set up a space on my hard drive so Fedora runs faster from that and I can do some long-term work that gets saved.   I started with that and doubleclicked.

Little green dot flashes on the single CD icon at the bottom of the VirtualBox window.  Got a big white box with a small Fedora graphic and a Next button.  Clicked on that.  Got to select my language (U.S. English, as opposed to U.S. International or United Kingdom).  Got to choose a host name, and the default was localhost.localdomain, so I went with that.  Select a city for time zone — but nothing in a lot of states in the middle of the U.S., so I ended up with Chicago as being in the same time zone as Arkansas, at least.

Root password was next, so I set that.  Very important, as I was going to need to do a lot of stuff as root.  Warned my choice was “weak” but stuck with it.

Next I got a scary warning:

The partition table on device sda (ATA VBOX HARDDISK 8189 MB) was unreadable.

To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on this drive.

This operation will override any previous installation choices about which about which drives to ignore.

Would you like to initialize this drive, erasing ALL DATA?

Very nice — obscure, confusing, and scary, all in one.  Went to the VirtualBox forum, and finally learned that all this does is format the one little spot you already reserved, and not your entire hard drive.  Given that Fedora doesn’t “know” it’s running in VirtualBox, it also doesn’t “know” that it’s only formatting that one little spot only, rather than setting up a normal boot.  I can cut it some slack on that, but it’s nerve-wracking the first time.  I thought that’s what it meant, but I wasn’t eager to find out that I had guessed wrong.

I told it Yes, and it then moved to another screen about partitioning the hard drive.  I didn’t change anything, but I did check the Review and modify partitioning layout box so I could doublecheck on what was being done.  Yes, just the one little spot being done, according to the layout screen — under 8GB.

Another warning, and then an install boot loader option, which I left in place.  Approved that and moved on.  Another option about replacing files, and approved that (the default was to stop, but I changed it).

Copying live image to hard drive was shown, and the blue line crawled slowly across to mark progress while the little blue arrow circled around the cursor.  Don’t plan on doing much while this is going on, but you only do it once per virtual machine.

Finished up and displayed a congrats screen and told me to reboot the system.  That only means rebooting the virtual machine, not the entire PC.

Went back to the Fedora desktop, and System dropdown menu, and selected Shutdown (not Restart – I needed to change something in VirtualBox) and went through those steps.

Fedora 10 showed up as “powered off” in VirtualBox, so I changed the CDROM in the VirtualBox Settings (that’s why I shutdown rather than restarted) to use the Host CD and checked the “Passthrough” box, using the E: drive (not the D, which would be my hardware CD drive) and then started Fedora 10 again.  You don’t want to use the same .iso file as before since that is for a “Live” version, and you are running on the virtual E: hard drive now.

This time the little VirtualBox icon that looks like a stack of CDs indicating the virtual hard disk was the one with the blinking green dot activity.

Welcome screen, ready to finish the setup.  It wanted to create a standard user and password, for when I didn’t need the extended authorizations of root.  I set up a login for that.

Time and date came next, and I set the time.  It then asked permission to send info on my PC’s configuration to Fedora, and I agreed (nothing confidential in there — I checked).

Now it showed a login for the user I’d just created, and “Other”.

After logging in as my regular user, I got the desktop, but now my user name was on the Home icon.

Now I went up to the Devices menu in VirtualBox and clicked on Install Guest Additions and it told me the software should be automatically started, and asked if I wanted to run it.  I approved.  It installed the VirtualBox Guest Additions and now in the VirtualBox window it showed that .iso file as the CD/DVD-ROM image (instead of the E: drive).

That created a desktop icon with a CD graphic labeled VBOXADDITIONS_2.2.4_47978 .  That showed I was using the VBoxGuest Additions for this release of VirtualBox, which made it more compatible with use in VirtualBox (I certainly hoped).

I checked System and printers — and no printer.  It searched and didn’t find it.  I turned my printer off and back on, and got a Windows popup for the VirtualBox USB to be installed, so I installed it.

Shutdown Fedora, and start it again — this time with the printer showing in the VirtualBox USB icon.

System > Administration > Printing and install a printer.  Looked for and found my Canon inkjet.

Now, Linux apparently has some trouble here, as a lot of manufacturers haven’t bothered to create printer drivers for Linux.  I did some checking, and the one for a printer can be found at the Linux Foundation site search box.  The one for my Canon i560 was called bj8pa06n.upp (well, that’s certainly descriptive…NOT) which is described as “a set of UPP files for the Canon BJC-8200 which comes with Ghostscript 6.50 or newer”.  I looked for the BJC-8200 in the list instead and used that one, and did a test print.  Seemed to work fine, so I went with that.

Still stuck at 800×600 resolution.  That’s next.

Ebooks and Type-casting

A Wired article on Why E-Books Look So Ugly had some insight into the limitations of Kindle and some other readers as they evolve.

I’d always wondered about those little blurbs on the type font used in a book that I sometimes saw appended to the last page.  Who cared that much?

But it matters as part of the reading experience, and this article covers why.

I especially noted one section:

“A big part of the problem with the Kindle (the largest selling e-books reader) is its use of the Amazon-specific .mobi file format, rather than the open standard ePub. ePub is based on the XML and CSS standards used in millions of web pages and allows for far more control over layouts than is currently possible with the .mobi file format.

As a result, if publishers want to sell Kindle books, producers like Defendini have to do a lot of manual work to create the digital file. In some cases, that means almost page-by-page customization, ensuring that drop caps appear correctly and that text flows around illustrations properly.”

So I guess the apparent high price of e-books isn’t entirely about profit — it actually takes more work, even for text with no hyperlinks.

Given the formatting that needs to be done to allow viewing on different screens (your Kindle 1/2/DX, Sony, iPod Touch or iPhone, netbooks, etc.), it looks like a standard that allows the flexibility of something like CSS (and then boilerplate the CSS loaded for each screen format) is going to be important.

Learned something new!

ILLiad and Canons

I spelled that correctly.  Really.

It’s “Canon” as in the manufacturer, and OCLC’s ILLiad interlibrary loan service.

After long consideration and talking to Innovative Interfaces people, we’re moving away from the Innovative Interfaces ILL module, such as it is, and setting up ILLiad.

I’d gotten a Canon MX-700 all-in-one to replace our old fax machine earlier.  It seemed to be doing well, so when we needed a color printer to handle the occasion ILL that we need to print, I just got another — on sale, of course! — since it could double as a scanner with an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder).   Inkjets are expensive for cartridges, but we don’t print that much color from it, and send black&white to a laser printer instead.  They could both use the same cartridges.

When it came time to train on ILLiad’s “Odyssey” function, which scans in documents to lend, the Odyssey software crashed.  It wouldn’t even open — just crashed the ILLiad software completely.  Apparently it didn’t like the Canon MX700 driver at all.

Hmmm.  So, I installed the driver for our older, less reliable Epson 4490 (they’ve been dying on us at an accelerating pace).  Then tried it without the Epson attached, but kept the Canon MX-700 attached.

Now, Odyssey came up, said it couldn’t find the Epson (we told it never mind) and Odyssey opened.  Then I chose the Canon from the list of available scanners.  And we were in business.  The trainer couldn’t explain it.  Did the same thing on another computer.  Install the Epson driver to find first, and it came up.  Canon only, it crashes.

Now we needed a scanner (just a scanner, no ADF, no printing) for another ILL workstation.  I had just gotten in a Canon 8800F so I put that on with the 8800F driver.  Try to load Odyssey and — Crash.  Try something else.  Crash.  Crash.  OCLC claims it works with any TWAIN scanner.  Crash.  Consult, check all the suggestions off.  Crash.  Crash.  Install the Epson driver.  Crash.  Install the MX700 driver.  Crash.

The librarian in charge of ILL finally worked it out.  Turn the Canon 8800F off first, then load Odyssey, then turn the Canon back on.  Then Odyssey seems to be happy with it and lets you change to the Canon.

Scanners are notoriously wonky creatures, and OCLC software is very particular, but at least we have a workaround.  If anybody else has an explanation or better way to do it, I’m open to discussion.

BTW: Dell PCs using Windows XP Pro, USB interfaces.  I love USB interfaces because they allow you to switch equipment so easily.

Ebooks and other bib types

What seems logical to librarians (ebooks from publisher A have one bibliographic record, ebooks from publisher B have another record, another type of format has a different bibliographic record, etc.) doesn’t necessarily make it easy for the average user.  Most people just want all the options in one place to consider, without having to switch records.  I don’t blame them — it’s easier.  On the far end, that is.  For catalogers, it’s more work up front, but that’s our job — to provide convenient access, not get sticky about the purity of records.

So, when I took a poll of our librarians, the result I expected was the result I got.  Put the ebooks on the same bibliographic records as the paper editions they represent, so they display in the catalog with all the options together.

However, nothing is as easy as it looks.

First, we just got 300+ ebooks from Credo.  That’s a manageable number that I can deal with, and convert.  Going back over thousands of netLibrary ebooks, on the other hand….

Plus, the group of Credo titles we just bought are (mostly) newer ones that are more likely to  be used and therefore should be made convenient.  We’ve had the netLibrary titles for longer.

When doing inventory, we count paper (or whatever hard physical format) by counting the item records attached to a bibliographic record, using a code in that.  Item records, after all, have the barcode in them for the specific physical item.

Ebooks don’t need a barcode, so they normally don’t have item records (unless they need to go on electronic reserves, which works with item records…).  So, we count them by what we call the BType (in Innovative terms, the  BCode2) which for ebooks = @.   So, just count all the bibliographic records with “@” in the BType field as ebooks.

Then I can just convert the paper bibliographic records to ebooks BType=@, and we’re all set.  Count items for physical materials, and bib records for ebooks.

Except…

What if you have an ebook in both a netLibrary and a Credo version on the same record?  If you count just the record, you only count 1 ebook, and you have 2.  So, instead of deleting the ebook record in such cases, I just hide it from the public catalog but leave it in the system and set my search for ebooks (which is a Saved search for the library tech’s use) so it also picks up those hidden records.

So, now I’m working my way through the Credo books.  I checked each title, used CTRL-G in Millennium Cataloging to see if the same title turned up, and found over 80 titles that need to be handled.  Some are newer than what we have, so I just arrange to withdraw the older editions.  Some are the same as existing paper copies in the collection, so I move the ebook data and link to the paper bibliographic record, and delete the ebook record.  And for the netLibrary ones that are the same, I handle that as noted above.

The location in the bibliographic record can handle multiple locations, so if I have a paper location and the location “ebook” that shows up as “multi”.  The BType becomes @ for ebook, even if there is a paper copy, so it “counts” in the inventory as an ebook, but in the item count as paper.

If I need to create an item for putting an ebook on reserve, that is in a category that we don’t inventory, so it’s never counted.

How long I can do this remains to be seen, but it looks like it will be easier on patrons, and that’s what counts.

Yet another blog begun

[updated 2009.3.20]

George Fowler at U. Ark. has started the ball rolling on creating a group and an “unconference” for library technology sharing in Arkansas.  All credit to his initiative on that!

George and I will be handling a blog on the Collaboration UnConference.

We’ll be covering the developing “UnConference” in Summer of 2009 as it evolves, so keep track of it there.

Updating the Programs page

This is not about “programming” (either computer or events) but the “programs” we have for degrees, and I’m using the term loosely.

History

Shortly after I arrived at the University, I was asked to list all the mathematics materials for an accreditation team study.  Simple enough, right?

Not really.  For one thing, a bibliographic record about a mathematical subject such as “algebra” may not have the word “mathematics” anywhere in it.  That meant that I had to think of every possible variation on that subject and hunt them down in order to make up the list: algebra, calculus, trignometry, arithmetic….  and that obviously wasn’t going to be the last time I had this kind of request for this and other subject areas.

And some records fit in multiple places, which was part of the problem, since I needed to be able to pull up something regardless of other connections, or where it was in the regular call number classification (for those who wondered why I didn’t just use call number ranges).  Example: some psychology books are also in literature, some mythology books are in literature and anthropology, materials can be about politics and history, and so on … the call number may be one place but the materials are not so limited.

I needed a way to tie all the possible bibliographic records together for a given subject under some kind of searchable heading, and be able to assign multiple headings for any bibliographic record.

I started out with the organization of what was then Westark Community College and grouped everything by Department and Division.   That meant I could search Division: Humanities and even Dept.: Art and get what was needed.  It had to do it very exactly and rigidly, but it worked with what I had at the time.

And the Fates smiled, and whispered, Oh no you don’t.

We entered a period of successive reorganizations that carried all the way up to the name of the institution, and continues to the present day.

Every time things got revised, I had to redo the entire list to try to conform to the new arrangements.  Divisions and Departments evolved into Programs, and then I had to make exceptions since some subjects had specific classes but did not lead, in themselves, to a degree.

I had to split subjects down (nursing had to be split into certain specialties such as Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) and Technical Certificate Nursing (LPN for Licenced Practical Nursing — right, the letters don’t even match up but I’m asked for LPN more than TCN)).

English was split into Literature and writing, which became Rhetoric (which actually covers writing and speech, but Speech was yet another program).  Then Literature grew so large that I needed to split it down into a general category, English literature (oops, confusing, better make that British literature, but not including Welsh, Irish or Scottish), American lit, and everything else in World lit.

I arranged with our first automation vendor to use the 690 field in the bibliographic record for this purpose specifically, and to be able to index and search it alone for the exact phrases (example: PROGRAM: AUTO (TECHNOLOGY) for the Automotive programs in the Technology Division).

When we changed vendors to Innovative Interfaces, we moved the 690s over into the new catalog as well, and indexed them both in a special index (coded letter ‘e’) as well as the regular subjects index (coded letter ‘d’).

Finally, once we got web pages, I created a Programs page with live links that ran my pre-set searches in the 690s fields in the catalog.  Immediate, up-to-date listings of everything in a program area.  Perfect.

Until I realized that any search over 1,000 records stopped there, and some of our Programs had several thousand records.

And the next reorganization.

Current coding

By now, nobody was asking for materials grouped by divisions or colleges or whatever.  They just wanted specific programs/subjects.  So, I could eliminate the larger groupings except on the page itself (just in case I or anyone else needed a reference point for them).

At this time (December of ought-eight) the catalog and the web site disagree – the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics is on the web site but not in the catalog (which went to press months ago for spring 2008 publication).  I had to be sure to resolve things like that.

I found that keeping words separate in the 690s meant that they were treated as regular words, so “history” might turn up every form of history and “art history” in the same search.  I needed to find a way to keep the headings unique so they would only be searchable if the user meant to search just for that.  Since I had the Programs page now in the more visible yellow Quick Links menu in the catalog, I felt that most people — including staff — would tend to just go to the Programs page and click on the pre-set search links there rather than try to remember how to construct a Programs search anyway.

Now, I needed to create a keywords search (since those don’t have the 1,000 record limit) since those would also give a result that users could limit using the Modify Search function to just, say, ebooks or DVDs, or by date range to the materials in the last 5 years, or whatever was needed.

That meant I needed unique words that would not turn up in a routine keywords search.  Readability would be sacrified to some extent.

I combined all the PROGRAM words with the following term.  PROGRAM: AUTO (TECHNOLOGY) became just PROGRAMAUTO, which the computer treats as a unique word of 11 characters.  That’s not something that is normally going to be searched and turn up by accident.  It’s harder to read and predict, but I had everything listed on the Programs page and by the more readable phrases.

Naturally, it still isn’t perfect.  I have compromises such as Art, which gets:

• PROGRAMARTGENERAL Art in general
• PROGRAMARTARCH Art in Architecture and Decor
• PROGRAMARTDRAWING Art in Drawing
• PROGRAMARTGRAPHIC Art, Graphic (other than drawing/painting)
• PROGRAMARTHISTORY Art History including national artwork
• PROGRAMARTPAINTING Art in Painting
• PROGRAMARTPERFORM Art, Performing (theater, dance, screen)
• PROGRAMARTPHOTO Art in Photography, including digital
• PROGRAMARTSOLID Art in Solid Forms (sculpture, fabric, etc.)
• PROGRAMARTTHEORY Art Theory and Design

Well, I didn’t want to have to type PROGRAMARTARCHITECTURALANDDECOR all the time, so it’s abbreviated, as are some of the others.

The same thing happens for our programs for teachers:

• PROGRAMEDUCATION Education in general
• PROGRAMEDART Education for Art
• PROGRAMEDBIOLOGY Education for Biology
• PROGRAMEDCHEMISTRY Education for Chemistry
• PROGRAMEDEARLY Education, Early: Pre-School through Elementary

and so on.  The ED after PROGRAM stands for EDucation, followed by a specific type of teaching such as teaching Chemistry.

Literature is a general heading but also a regionally specific one, as mentioned above, and gets abbreviated:

• PROGRAMLITERATURE Literature in general
• PROGRAMLITAMERICAN American Literature
• PROGRAMLITBRITISH British Literature
• PROGRAMLITWORLD World Literature

History was the same, but I stayed with US instead of American, since that same distinction is made in LC subject headings: PROGRAMHISTUS (from Program HISTory United States).

We don’t have a Geology program specifically, but we do have classes in Geology and a course code for them, so I have a listing for that.

I cheated a little on a few items.  For example, I didn’t want a PROGRAMCRIME in any form (we don’t need any jokes about that!), so I used the second words: Justice, Investigation, and so on.  This was also more exact as we expanded the courses.

In a few cases, we needed to divide out specifics: specific diseases and conditions for HEalth (PROGRAMHESPECIFIC), and specific businesses and industries for BUsiness (PROGRAMBUSPECIFIC).  Also, HEalth has materials which are not really for professionals, so those became PROGRAMHEPOPULAR.

We have some odd items, such as the career/employment/testing/scholarships stuff, which go into PROGRAMCAREER.

The two ROTC programs are Air Force PROGRAMAIRFORCE (which also gets anything on flight and flying) and Army, and since some general military works tend show up, Army became PROGRAMMILITARY instead and handles the Army plus catch-all.

Everything that covers multiple disciplines across colleges (general search engines, for example) is interdisciplinary and PROGRAMINTER (well, you type “Interdisciplinary” umpteen times and see how many times you need to retype it…).

Anything left is PROGRAMOTHERS, which covers nonfiction not specifically related to our programs.

GRANTS is not a program, so the prefix is omitted but the 690 tracing is present to group those.

Fiction, juvenile fiction and juvenile nonfiction are not given 690s at this time.  We have the juvenile material for teachers in training to read, but I didn’t want to mix that with the adult nonfiction for their area.

Next, I need to redo the staff wiki a bit to cover the revisions in doing Create Lists.

Now, if nobody reorganizes anything before January 2009, I should be set.

And the Fates smiled….