Code4lib Mid-Atlantic

Welcome to Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic, a Philadelphia Area/Tri-State chapter of the Code4Lib organization.

The official kick off of the chapter occurred on October 17th, 2012 at the Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic conference. As with the main code4lib organization, the goal of the Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic is to connect librarians, hackers, designers, architects, curators, catalogers, artists and instigators in the Philadelphia and greater Tri-State area (and if you're further out, that's cool too).

Sign up for the Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic Google Group as we work out the details there for future meetings and activities.

We're looking for volunteers, both for general long-term organizational duties and to help plan future events. Positions that we know we need include a social media expert, an IRC guy/gal, a social functions organizer, and a kind soul to host/run our listserv. We also need volunteers to help us with needs we as yet don't know we need (and feel free to identify them). If you're interested in helping the chapter, list your name, email address, affiliation and area of interest here and I'll pull together a Skype chat in the near future:

• David K Uspal, davidDOTuspalATvillanovaDOTedu, Villanova University, Guy who put the initial wiki entry together and official contact point for the 2012 conference

• Tim Clarke, tclarkeATmuhlenbergDOTedu, Muhlenberg College, willing to help with anything

• Scott Williams, scottwiATupennDOTedu, Penn Museum, willing to help with anything

• Matt Zimmerman, mzimmermanATbrynmawrDOTedu, Bryn Mawr College, soft skills stuff (communications, organizing, cat herding, getting people to play nicely together)

• Mark Wilhelm, markDOTwilhelmATthomsonreutersDOTcom, Thomson Reuters, willing to help with anything

• Nico Carver, nicoATudelDOTedu, University of Delaware, Multimedia, A/V nerd, willing to help with anything

• Leanne Finnigan, lfinnigaATmc3DOTedu, Montgomery County Community College, Can help with anything.

Also, a good channel to get information currently is the newly formed Google Group (information on this is in the about section above).

Thanks to all who made the Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic kickoff conference a success! For the October 17th kickoff meeting, the conference was located at Falvey Memorial Library, Villanova University, and was held as part of the series of tech conferences, nicknamed the "Tech Trifecta", being held at Falvey Library over the week of October 15th, 2012. Conferences held included the VuFind Summit 2012 (October 15th and 16th), Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic (October 17th), and VuStuff III (October 18th).

Schedule:

   * 8:00a - 9:00a    Coffee Hour (Light Refreshments provided)
   * 9:00a - 9:15a    Opening Remarks
   * 9:15a – 9:45a    GOKb, the Global Open Knowledge Base:  What it Builds On, and What It Can Help Build - John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania
   * 9:45a - 10:15a   Learning to Be Accessible: Programming for Web Accessibility through a Teaching and Learning Environment – Katherine Lynch, Drexel University
   * 10:15a - 10:30a  Break
   * 10:30a - 11:00a  Preparing Live CD/DVD for Integrating Koha ILS, GSDL/DSpace with Features of a Mail Server - Mohan Raj Pradhan, HealthNet
   * 11:00a – 11:30a  Inside the Kuali OLE Project – Michelle Suranofsky, Lehigh University
   * 11:30p - 12:00p  Complementary Flavors: REST Web Services and Object Oriented Programming - Karen Coombs, OCLC
   * 12:00p - 1:00p   Lunch (Provided)
   * 1:00p - 1:30p    Breakout Planning
   * 1:30p - 3:00p    Breakout Session
   * 3:00p - 3:30p    Breakout Session Discussion
   * 3:30p - 4:15p    Lightning Talks
   * 4:15p - 4:30p    Closing Remarks

UPDATE: A big thank you to Karen Coombs for stepping in on short notice to fill our final open presentation slot. Her talk title and abstract will be up shortly.

GOKb, the Global Open Knowledge Base: What It Builds On, and What It Can Help Build

John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania

The Global Open Knowledge Base (GOKb) is a project funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation to build an open, community-maintained knowledge source concerning electronic resources available to libraries. It aims to unify information provided by vendors and other sources to facilitate the acquisition and use of digital content for education and research.

The success of GOKB inherently depends on a rich network of collaboration, data, and standards. For example, the implementation of GOKB draws on JISC's architectural and editorial work in its KB+ project, the data models and formats of DLF's ERMI and UKSG and NISO's KBART, and the repository and rules infrastructure provided by Kuali OLE. The usefulness of GOKb, in turn, depends greatly on the openness and reusability of its data. For example, the use of linked data for GOKb enables its information to not only be consumed by a variety of RDF-aware applications, but also potentially combined with related data that promotes use of electronic resources, such as link resolution, rights, open access, and contents data. We welcome ideas and discussion on ways to help build up, and build on, the work of GOKb.

Learning to Be Accessible: Programming for Web Accessibility through a Teaching and Learning Environment

Katherine Lynch, Drexel University

This presentation details a recent internship led by Katherine Lynch at Drexel University Libraries, with a visually disabled undergraduate computer science major. This internship had two goals – for the student to learn how to program for the web using XHTML/HTML5, CSS, Javascript (including jQuery UI elements), and PHP, and to give the student experience in formal accessibility testing by conducting an accessibility audit of Drexel University Libraries' top-visited web pages, testing for accessibility errors, then devising and implementing solutions as needed. This presentation will detail the methods of learning employed for this internship, particulars on the web development environment created to work with the student's assistive technology, and the outcome of Drexel University Libraries' web accessibility audit. The conclusion will include suggested techniques for conducting an audit and solving common accessibility problems for one’s own library’s website.

Preparing Live CD/DVD for Integrating Koha ILS, GSDL/DSpace with Features of a Mail Server

Mohan Raj Pradhan, HealthNet

Abstract Coming Soon.

Inside the Kuali OLE Project

Michelle Suranofsky, Lehigh University

Kuali OLE is a grant and partner funded project that is developing a community source Library Management System. This project is a large undertaking and from the outside, the organization, development process, project management, and governance may be unclear.

This presentation will break down the inner workings of the project, it's history, organization, workflow, challenges and successes from the perspective of a developer working for one of the partner schools - Lehigh University.

We have room for six lightning talks at the 2012 conference. Sign-ups will be done on the whiteboard on the day of the conference, but if you want to sneak in early and reserve a spot, you can do so below.

Unfamiliar with lightning talk format? You can find good resources on them here and here.

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5. Greg Murray and Chris Schwartz -- Improving Metadata Quality: An Iterative Approach Using Scrum

6. David Uspal -- Philadelphia Digital Humanities Call for Volunteers

The Tech Trifecta is a series of three conferences to be held at Falvey Memorial Library, Villanova University over the week of October 15th, 2012. The three conferences making up the Tech Trifecta week include:

• VuFind Summit 2012 (Oct 15th and 16th) -- The follow-up to 2010's 2.0 planning meeting will include detailed discussion of the new release and opportunities to network with other VuFind users.

• Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic 2012 (Oct 17th) -- Code4Lib is a volunteer-driven collective of hackers, designers, architects, curators, catalogers, artists and instigators from around the world, who largely work for and with libraries, archives and museums on technology "stuff." The Mid-Atlantic conference is a kick-off for a Philadelphia Area/Tri-State chapter of the organization.

• VuStuff III (Oct 18th) -- VuStuff is an annual conference on the intersections between technology and scholarly communication. It takes place every Fall at Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library. This year's conference, VuStuff III, will seek presentations from regional librarians on technology and scholarly communication in their respective libraries. We hope to foster an ongoing conversation among regional libraries, in order to further the development of technology in service of scholarly communication.

So, why link three conferences together into one larger event week? Well, since all three conferences are technology related and since we've gotten a lot of cross-conference interest, the staff for all three events have decided to pool their resources and offer all three events in the same week. The idea is to make travel arrangements for visitors much more convenient (as well as cheaper), while pooling resources among all three conferences helps keep the cost down on all three.

Just interested in Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic? You can register for just Code4Lib, or a combination of any of the three.

The registration fees for these three conferences are as follows:

   * VuFind Summit 2012, October 15th and 16th, $50.00 Registration Fee
   * Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic 2012, October 17th, $25.00 Registration Fee
   * VuStuff III, October 18th, Free

For the upcoming 2012 conference, we're looking to mimic the national conference in format. After that, we want to structure the regional meetings to tailor to what the community wants -- be it more formal meetings with talks, roundtables, etc or just evening informal meetups at a downtown pub. To this end, we want to hear from YOU (you've read this far, so you must be interested). To be heard, just contact David Uspal (info below) or add your good ideas to the wiki below.

Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic Good Ideas List (name, email address, affiliation and idea):

• David K Uspal, davidDOTuspalATvillanovaDOTedu, Villanova University, Make a Good Ideas List under the Governance heading

Inquiries or general comments can be directed to David Uspal at davidDOTuspalATvillanovaDOTedu