Review Library Technology Reports: Drupal in Libraries

As some of you know, I’ve been working with Drupal (opensource website content management system) for a while. I’ve built several websites in it, from an arts website to my portfolio.
I’ve also become part of the Drupal group on campus, just a group of like minded folks interested in Drupal.

At the first meeting I was asked (volunteered?) to demo the admin interface of Drupal and talk a little bit about Drupal. Using my brief Drupal overview which I put together for a few interested folks in the Libraries, I started fleshing out my documentation to encompass a wider audience.

As I was working on my presentation documentation, I was fortunate enough to receive the May/June 2008 issue of Library Technology Reports (ISSN 0024-2586), Drupal in Libraries by Andy Austin and Christopher Harris. Surprisingly enough, we covered a few of the same library sites as drupal examples, but the real value of Drupal in Libraries is that for each example site, there is an interesting interview from the library, which covers questions such as favorite features, challenges, and more of the new Drupal driven website.

Drupal in Libraries also provides a basic overview of terminology, which is easy to follow, even for a newbie to Drupal. Modules featured are discussed in more extensive detail than my list of most useful Drupal modules.

For those of you who are interested in Drupal and how it can be used in libraries, I definitely recommend Drupal in Libraries and of course, in a shameless bit of self promotion, you can read my Drupal writings, too.

Most useful Drupal modules

I thought I would crosspost some of what I consider my most useful Drupal handout information from my demo and presentation for the UGADG. Of course, this doesn’t include the demo part at the moment! Maybe I will screencapture that part and add it in later. Another thing for the todo list! Anyhow, you can see the handouts here

..and now to the top ten (plus):

• Book: Built in (core) functionality to create a book-like structure with table of contents and linking pages. Pages can be hierarchical, too.
• BUEditor: HTML editor. Available at http://drupal.org/project/bueditor
• CCK (Construction Kit): Create new content types and more with non-standard fields. Available at http://drupal.org/project/cck
• Clone: Easily clone (could be useful if manually migrating a website). Available at http://drupal.org/project/node_clone
• Front: Create a splah page, flash based intro page, or create a front page which has a distinct and different feel from the rest of the website. Available at http://drupal.org/project/front
• Image: Useful in creating an image gallery; note content from third party applications (flickr, youtube, etc.) can be crosswalked via rss or modules. Available at http://drupal.org/project/image
• Metatags (aka Nodewords): Add meta information to a page. Available at http://drupal.org/project/nodewords
• Nodeteaser: Create a teaser for a node that’s different from the standard “first paragraph” Drupal teaser.Available at http://drupal.org/project/nodeteaser
• Panels: Preformatted templates for the content areas in Drupal.Available at http://drupal.org/project/panels
• Pathauto: Specify URLs that aren’t just node/xxx — say, /2008/blog/title-here. Another option is using mod_rewrite in apache. Available at http://drupal.org/project/pathauto
• Sidecontent: Adds a sidebar to pages. Available at http://drupal.org/project/sidecontent
• Upload: Built in (core) functionality to control the type of uploading allowed.
• Webform: Create webforms to solicit feedback from users. Available at http://drupal.org/project/webform
• Views: Build lists of content and present them in whatever format and order you want. Create custom lists, tables and teaser lists. Available at http://drupal.org/project/views

Import HTML: import html from existing website. Information available at http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/contributions/modules/import_html/import_html_help.htm?view=text&revision=HEAD

Access control & users:

• Captcha (or Recaptcha) - Antispam. User types in the text of a word. Available at http://drupal.org/project/captcha
• Diff: allows a wiki-like comparison of revisions (Drupal does have a built in ‘track’ feature for each user). Available at http://drupal.org/project/diff
• LDAP Integration for authenticating using a LDAP directory. Available at http://drupal.org/project/ldap_integration
• Organic Groups: granularity of user privileges (access levels; restrict content) which could be useful in hosted blogging or a large scale website with multiple content contributors. Available at http://drupal.org/project/og
• Secure pages: Adds https to login, admin pages. Available at http://drupal.org/project/securepages
• TinyMCE: wysiwyg editor for creating content. Need TinyMCE editor (third party, opensource) loaded first; then module. Available at http://drupal.org/project/tinymce

Extras:

• Ad module: Rotating javascript ad banner. Available at http://drupal.org/project/ad
• Blog: Built in (core) blog functionality.
• Bibliography: Create and publish scholarly works. Available at http://drupal.org/project/biblio
• Community Tags: Allows users to create and assign their own tags to content. Available at http://drupal.org/project/community_tags
• Gmap: Build a googlemap for a single institution, library branch or a combined map with all of your locations. Available at http://drupal.org/project/gmap
• FAQ + fivestar: FAQ gives you a content type specifically for FAQs with the option to format how those questions are shown. Fivestar adds a a “rate this” block of stars underneath any content type you specify. It’s an instant FAQ section, and if you always categorize your questions, you’ll quickly put together a large FAQ section organized by topic. Available at http://drupal.org/project/faq and http://drupal.org/project/fivestar.
• Forum: Built-in (core) functionality for user forums.
• MARC: Import MARC formatted records (e.g., library catalog) into a node. Available at http://drupal.org/project/marc
• Nodequeue: Easily create lists of nodes, e.g., a list of book reviews which can incorporated into a block on the site. Available at http://drupal.org/project/nodequeue
• Poll: Built in (core) polling functionality. Easily create polls, surveys, quizzes, etc.
• Profile: Built in (core) fuctionality to create customizable profiles.
• ImageCache: Make as many copies of an image you want at any size depending on location or anything else you specify. Available at http://drupal.org/project/imagecache
• Scheduler: Publish and unpublish articles at a set time. Available at http://drupal.org/project/scheduler
• Tagadelic: Tag Cloud module. Available at http://drupal.org/project/tagadelic
• Thickbox: A jQuery plugin that gives you very sleek photo popup/slideshow functionality. Available at http://drupal.org/project/thickbox
• Workflow: Provides an alternate means of controlling information placed on the site, e.g., must be reviewed before published. Available at http://drupal.org/project/workflow

Drupal Modules Finder http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder

Thanks to:

Top 10 Drupal Modules http://webpodge.com/2007/02/22/top-10-drupal-modules/;
Drupal4Libraries Listserv, Amy Qualls-McClure (Huntsville - Madison County Public Library); Cary Gordon Cary Gordon (The Cherry Hill Company, http://www.chillco.com); Ken Newquist, (Lafayette College, https://ww2.lafayette.edu/~soapbox/blog/newquisk) and Leo Klein (The Chicago Librarian, http://www.leoklein.com)

See resources for more links.

New online resource — Civil Rights Digital Library

The recently unveiled Civil Rights Digital Library, contains text, image and video archives with annotated bibliographies, learning modules, study guides, etc.
Not only of interest to educators and students, the Civil Rights Digital Library is a treasure trove of real life stories — talk about reality tv!
This collection also serves in providing access and digitally archiving a huge collection of material. It’s really an amazing collection and coincides nicely with the High Museums of Art in Atlanta’s, History Remixed.

I am also honored that I got to be a small (tiny!) part of this project.

Tables + CSS (and captioning an image)

For those of you who use CSS in web design (or have been following its evolution), you may remember the battle cry of “tables are dead” from a few years ago, which was soon followed by rallying cry “Long live tables!”

According to the thinking (and gurus) at the time, EVERYTHING that could be done with a table could be done with div layout and a little creativity. In spite of the fact that tables can easily resolve some very tricky problems and can be styled with CSS, tables are still kind of a dirty word in web design.

I’ve had a few attempts to go tableless; some very successful, some not so successful. My least successful tableless adventure, happened in 2005. As part of a class project, I decided to create a tableless and very graphics heavy website. The tableless part was easy until I decided to embed flash. Without a table to control the size output, there was no way to force IE and firefox to render the flash movie the same. Believe me, I searched high and low. Nope, not doable. Because the “lesson” or project challenge that I was supposed to be learning was tableless layout, I was stuck with a website that doesn’t render perfectly in IE and firefox (although to be honest, most people couldn’t see the problem).

A table would have been the easy answer. Although I shy away from tables, I do find they still have value in web design, as I re-discovered just recently.
For the magazine (and the pacercms dev group), I’ve been working on the rss feed output. The original feed outputted the summary (the first feed image), but my goal is to output the whole magazine in a readable format, including images, links, and proper line breaks.

The easiest way to fold the images into a rss feed is through an embedded image (as in my new version of the feed). However, with an embedded image, there is no easy way to caption it. Sure, alt tags and names can provide popup and additional info, but I need to be able to easily and visibly include copyright info, author info, etc. AND have it show up in the feed in context, not at the bottom or top of each item.

Tables to the rescue! Using the caption tag, I am able to add both a caption and locate it below the text (actually, in my case, an image). I am also able to style the table so that it renders the same in each article: the placement will be the same, the padding will be the same, etc.

I can’t believe how easy this is and I also can’t believe that I had forgotten how useful tables are.

http://www.aurora-il.org/table_test.htm

the always wonderful, alistapart.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/practicalcss/

new art, new writings, latest issue of moonshine is available!

For those interested, the latest issue of moonshine, a magazine of the southern arts is available
online (& free) at
http://www.moonshine.southerncreativity.com

(moonshine is run on pacercms opensource newspaper & journal software; for more info about that), drop me a line.

details:
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It’s not just the weather that is hot. Take a break and check out some smokin’ work from Southern writers & artists. It’s so hot, it’s cool. Read, see, and listen!

oRiGiNaL ArT
James McCallister goes to Ask the Ducks, while Jasmine Rizer’s serial, “Tough Love” concludes. Lisa Taylor comments on Barbecuing for Jesus and Mccabe Coolidge begins the first of The Seven Questions.What haven’t you done that you’ve always wanted to do?

Sandy Vanderbleek tests the headwinds of reality while Gilbert Head visits Five Flowers in Summer and The Alley of Dreams, Revisited. John S Moon is on Night Watch and Russell Lee Hale II gives us Gypsy Hearts.

sTuDiO ViEwS
Studio views features Hannah Leatherbury’s audio interview (podcast) with abstract painter Liisa Salosaari-Jasinsk (courtesy of the Southern Arts Federation). Plein air painter Sandra Babb braves the heat and is Eating Up the Profits.

cReAtiVitY
robin fay continues to explore creativity (pt. 5), with artist interviews focusing on the medium and its impact on artwork; Carmela Cattuti explains What is soul focus? and Dorothy Birch provides some tips for An Inspired Summer.

tEcHnOLoGy & aRT
Donna Rosser aka the Barefoot Photographer provides practical tips and advice for photographing artwork in Digital Images of Your Work.

cULtuRe oF aRT
What have you done with your vacation photos? Amber Moore is here to help with ideas in Vacation Memories Make Great Art. Diane Moran shares her story of her travel to New Orleans: creating artwork, fundraising and more in post-Katrina New Orleans in the The Heart of Art.

mUsIc maTtErS
Music matters features an audio interview with Jazz Vocalist/Composer and Educator, Nnenna Freelon (from Hannah Leatherbury, courtesy of the Southern Arts Federation).

bOoK rEViEwS
Need some quality reading for your summer reading list? Check out these offerings:
Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist by Nancy Goldenstein
reviewed by Jasmine Rizer; Little Things: A Memoir in Slices by Jeffrey Brown
reviewed by Andrew Shuping; and Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 by Robert Hass
reviewed by Heather Kline.

mOrE
Check in with a Short Girl comix, book reviews, work from the Southerncreativity gallery (@ Flickr), art announcements & calls for entries.

it’s all photoshop to me — on film and reality

Well, I thought about pre-posting (aka future posting) a few entries, but then I decided against it. So, you all got a break from me, while I got break from computers and some days, even technology, well, except for my camera. ;-D

I did finally fully migrate from film to digital. I’m still not sure I buy into the whole “death of film” idea, but at some point the cost of developing, the lack of good film developers, and the lack of film, in some cases, contributed to my feeling that it was time to migrate. I used to buy film at the film shop near work, which catered to a wide variety of customers, but somewhat catered to art students, which meant stocking pro quality films lacking in the discount spots around town. However, the shop went out of business, leaving a huge hole in my choices.

I’ve had a digital camera since 1999 (don’t ask how much it cost…), but I always preferred film for “real” photography. Sure, film can be altered. It can certainly be altered using Photoshop or some other digital imaging software after the fact, scratched, spliced, painted on, developed poorly, etc. However, the general ‘realness’ of film just seems better somehow.

The whole migration to digital photography has made me think about the “photoshop factor.” Just about anyone can take a good photo these days — and if they can’t TAKE a good photo, they can probably MAKE a good photo. It used to be that photos read as ‘real’. They were evidence of something — an event, a place, a person, etc. Now that photo manipulation is so common place, it seems that the ‘realness’ of photography has gone out the window. Images are so routinely manipulated, that a ‘real’ image — an actual photograph that is unique in some way is often read as photoshopped.

I wonder if one of the factors in the rise in video is partially due to the photoshop issue. If you see/do something UNBELIEVABLE, then would people be more likely to trust a photograph, which is just one instance in time and can be easily manipulated, or a video, which is a slice of time and not as easy to manipulate (at least, at this point in the game?)

True video offers other advantages: capturing more of the contextual as well as the audio.

Will photography be completely subsumed by video? It would seem like the answer is no, as I still know quite a few photographers who have polaroid cameras (and even use polaroid camera).

Oh, and here is a slideshow of my vacation photos. All shot with a canon xsi.

Radical Librarianship

http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/contents-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3543-2

Includes interesting essays such as Teaching the Radical Catalog, User-Centered Serials Cataloging, “Why Isn’t My Book on the Shelf?” and Other Mysteries of the Library (by yours truly), AACR2—Bendable but Not Flexible: Cataloging Zines at Barnard College, Dr. Strangecataloger: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tag, MARC: It’s Not Just for Cataloging Anymore, Control: A Case Study, Monographic Collections Structure and Layout Revisions: Or, How to Tweak LC Call Numbers for the Good of Your Users

new writings & art — moonshine arts magazine

April’s issue of moonshine arts magazine is live. Writings, videos and podcasts. Subscribe via the RSS feed, pageflakes, or the facebook application.

You can see the covers (my graphic design) here.

enjoy.

Internet archive and creative commons

An article I wrote for moonshine…
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Did you know that the Internet Archive not only archives the web but that it has much opensource, public domain or creative commons licensed material? For those of you who do digital work, the Internet Archive may be the best kept secret on the web!

If you do any kind of digital work (images, websites, videos, audio recordings, etc.) and you haven’t checked out the Internet Archive you really should. The IA has great stuff for digital collagists, movie makers, & other arty folks. It’s remarkable the diversity and variety of material available for use (and free!).

Although I’m not a legal expert by any means, I’ll attempt to explain my understanding of the different licensing under creative commons and how it applies to use. If you have any questions or to find the latest version of licensing agreements, please do check out the Creative Commons website.

Creative Commons is a form of licensing which easily allows users (such as musicians, artists, and just regular folks!) the ability to upload content and share or not share it, as they would like. Copyright ranges from All rights reserved (no use by others) to Public Domain (freely used for any purpose). Creative Commons attempts to define the grey area in the middle.

Internet Archives serves as a repository of content. Explore, enjoy, be inspired, and create!

————–

In the Internet Archive:

To Browse by license, pattern your search phrase this way> /metadata/licenseurl:http*abbreviation/*

To add a search keyword to this (add AND - in caps! - and the term
/metadata/licenseurl:http*abbreviation/* AND

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) : This license means that you can only use the material noncommercially EXACTLY as it is (no collage work, no mashups, etc.) , provided that you provide an attribution (credit).

In the search box: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-nd/*
Example:
/metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-nd/* AND pottery

Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) : This license means that you can ONLY use the material noncommercially IF any creation that stems from the work under this licensed is publicly shared (Share Alike) under the same license, PROVIDED that you provide an attribution (credit).

In the search box: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-sa/*

Example:
/metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-sa/* AND pottery

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) : This license means that you can ONLY use the material noncommercially, PROVIDED that you provide an attribution (credit).

In the search box: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc*

Example:
/metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc* AND pottery

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) : This license means that you can use the material commercially or noncommercially IF any creation that stems from the work under this licensed is publicly shared (Share Alike) under the same license, PROVIDED that you provide an attribution (credit).

In the search box: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-sa*

Example:
/metadata/licenseurl:http*by* AND pottery

Attribution (by) : This license means that you can use the material commercially or noncommercially, PROVIDED that you provide an attribution (credit).

In the search box: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by*

Example:
/metadata/licenseurl:http*by* AND pottery

More about creative commons licensing:

http://creativecommons.org/about/license/

The Internet Archive also includes items in the Public Domain. These are the most freely available materials in terms of licensing (i.e., there is none!) The majority of these materials are older materials for which copyright has long expired. However, users can choose to submit their works to the IA as public domain.

/metadata/licenseurl:http*publicdomain*
Example:
/metadata/licenseurl:http*publicdomain* AND pottery

Republished from moonshine arts magazine

Searching Internet Archive by CC Licensing

Because I can never remember where these is located on the webpage (FAQs, actually)
I’m snipping this out for myself with the search links, of course (i.e., just click the link to execute the search in IA). The IA has great stuff for digital collagists, movie makers, & other arty folks.
I used stuff from the Prelinger Collection to make my movie about cataloging and also for my digital collage on communication.

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Can I search by Creative Commons License?

Yes, you can. But it’s a little complicated.

Here’s how to break it down. See the license types at creative commons. When you want to find all of the items that have a certain license, you’ll plug their abbreviation for it into this search query:

/metadata/licenseurl:http*abbreviation/*

So if you’re looking for Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd), you’d put this in the search box: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-nd/* And you’d get about 33,000 items back.

If you want to use this in combination with other queries, like “I want by-nc-nd items about dogs” you’d do this: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-nd/* AND dog And you’d get 195 items. The AND tells the search engine all the items returned should have that license AND they should contain the word dog. AND has to be in all caps.

Just to make it easier, here are the basic searches:

Public Domain

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)

Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc)

Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)

Attribution (by)