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Added your code does not exist in a vacuum
DePaul University Library recently took over monitoring and maintaining of the library EZproxy servers this past year and using Splunk, a machine data analysis tool, we are able to gather information and statistics on our electronic resource usage in addition to monitoring the servers. Splunk is a tool that can collect, analyze, and visualize log files and other machine data in real time and this has allowed for gathering realtime usage statistics for our electronic resources allowing us to filter by multiple facets including IP Range, Group Membership (student, faculty), so that we can see who is accessing our resources and from where. Splunk allows our library to query our data and create rich custom dashboards as well as create alerts that can be triggered when certain conditions are met, such as error codes, which can send an email alert to a group of users. We will be leveraging Splunk to monitor all library web applications going forward.
== Your code does not exist in a vacuum ==
* Becky Yoose, yoosebec at grinnell dot edu, Grinnell College
“If you have something to say, then say it in code…” - Sebastian Hammer, code4lib 2009
In its 10 year run, code4lib has covered the spectrum of libtech development, from search to repositories to interfaces. However, during this time there has been little discussion about this one little fact about development - code does not exist in a vacuum.
Like the comment above, code has something to say. A person’s or organization’s culture and beliefs influences code in all steps of the development cycle. What development method you use, tools, programming languages, licenses - everything is interconnected with and influenced by the philosophies, economics, social structures, and cultural beliefs of the developer and their organization/community.
This talk will discuss these interconnections and influences when one develops code for libraries, focusing on several development practices (such as “Fail Fast, Fail Often” and Agile) and licensing choices (such as open source) that libtech has either tried to model or incorporate into mainstream libtech practices. It’ll only scratch the surface of the many influences present in libtech development, but it will give folks a starting point to further investigate these connections at their own organizations and as a community as a whole.
tl;dr - this will be a messy theoretical talk about technology and libraries. No shiny code slides, no live demos. You might come out of this talk feeling uncomfortable. Your code does not exist in a vacuum. Then again, you don’t exist in a vacuum either.
