2013 preconference proposals
Proposals now closed.
Spaces available: 4+ Rooms
Please follow the formatting guidelines:
=== Talk Title === * Presenter/Leader, affiliation (optional), and email address (mandatory!) * Second Presenter/Leader, affiliation, email address, if applicable Description.
Full Day
Drupal4lib Sub-con Barcamp
- Contact Cary Gordon, cgordon@chillco.com or
- Charlie Morris, NCSU Libraries, cdmorris@ncsu.edu
This will be a full day of self-selected barcamp style sessions. Anyone who wants to present can write down the topic on an index card and, after the keynote, we will vote to choose what we want to see. Attendees can also pick a topic and attempt to talk someone else into presenting on it.
If we run out of topics, we will pay homage to the project by testing patches for Drupal 8. It is easy, and we will show you how to do this invaluable task.
Local Drupal uber-ninja Larry Garfield will stop by to answer questions and give us some guidance.
Half Day Morning
Open space session
- Dan Chudnov, dchud at gwu edu
The rest of code4libcon is pretty well structured these days; come in the morning for a few hours of old-school open space technology unconference. Bring a rough talk or idea you want to share or questions you have or something you want to learn about or discuss with other people, and be ready to tell us about it. Use it as extra prep time for your upcoming prepared or lightning talk if you want. We'll plan the morning out a little bit at the beginning, but not too much. What we do will be up to the people there in the room.
If there's interest, we could start with a "welcome to code4lib" introductory session for newcomers.
Delivery services
- Ted Lawless, Brown University Library, tlawless at brown edu.
Are you interested in making it easier for users to obtain copies of known items? Do you feel your OpenURL and Interlibrary Loan software could be streamlined? This pre-conference workshop will focus on providing services that deliver content to users. Discovery systems are doing a better job of exposing library holdings but there's still a lot of work to do actually get the content in the users hands.
Possible topics/activities include:
- panel discussion of what some libraries have done in this area
- comparisons of different approaches to addressing delivery
- overview of tools available
- sharing of strategies and experiences
- time to work with and review open source code in this area. Some possible tools to install and test out Umlaut, Py360 Link.
Resources and background information:
- What-is-Umlaut-anyway
- Hacking 360 Link: A hybrid approach
- Auto-Populating an ILL form with the Serial Solutions Link Resolver API
- Focusing on Delivery
Intro to Blacklight
- Bess Sadler, Stanford University Library (bess at stanford.edu)
- Justin Coyne, MediaShelf (justin.coyne at yourmediashelf.com)
Blacklight (http://projectblacklight.org) is a free and open source discovery interface built on solr and ruby on rails. It is used by institutions such as Stanford University, University of Virginia, WGBH, Johns Hopkins University, the Rock and Roll hall of fame, and an ever expanding community of adopters and contributors. Blacklight can be used as a front-end discovery solution for an ILS, or the contents of a digital repository, or to provide a unified discovery solution for many siloed collections. In this workshop we will cover the basics of solr indexing and searching, setting up and customizing Blacklight, and leave time for Q&A around local issues people might encounter.
- Note: this workshop can be a standalone intro, or attendees can follow up with the intro to hydra workshop in the afternoon.
- Duration: half-day, morning
RailsBridge Intro to Ruby on Rails
- Jason Ronallo, North Carolina State University Libraries, jnronall@ncsu.edu
- Mark Bussey, Data Curation Experts (mark at curationexperts.com)
- Shaun Ellis, Princeton University Library, shaune@princeton.edu
- Ross Singer, Talis, rossfsinger@gmail.com
- Anyone else want to come and help folks? Contact Jason.
RailsBridge comes to code4lib! We'll follow the RailsBridge curriculum (http://railsbridge.org) to provide a gentle introduction to Ruby on Rails. Topics covered include an introduction to the Ruby language, the Rails framework, and version control with git. Participants will build a working Rails application.
There will be some pre-preconference preparation needed so that we can effectively use our time. Details to come.
- Note: Attendees can follow up with the Intro to Blacklight afternoon session, which will be tailored for folks new to Ruby
Intro to NoSQL Databases
- Joshua Gomez, George Washington University, jngomez at gwu edu
Since Google published its paper on BigTable in 2006, alternatives to the traditional relational database model have been growing in both variety and popularity. These new databases (often referred to as NoSQL databases) excel at handling problems faced by modern information systems that the traditional relational model cannot. They are particularly popular among organizations tackling the so-called "Big Data" problems. However, there are always tradeoffs involved when making such dramatic changes. Understanding how these different kinds of databases are designed and what they can offer is essential to the decision making process. In this precon I will discuss some of the various types of new databases (key-value, columnar, document, graph) and walk through examples or exercises using some of their open source implementations like Riak, HBase, CouchDB, and Neo4j.
Half Day Afternoon
Data Visualization Hackfest
- Chris Beer, cabeer at stanford.edu
- Dan Chudnov, dchud at gwu edu
- Description: Want to hack/design/plan/document on a team of people who enjoy learning by creating? Interested in data visualization? Well, this hackfest is for you. Not familiar with the concept of a hackfest? See Roy Tennant's "Where Librarians Go To Hack" and the page for the Access 2010 Hackfest. We propose a half-day hackfest with a focus on visualization library data -- think stuff like library catalog data, access/circulation statistics, etc. Here's how it works, roughly:
- we'll (you'll!) do lightning tutorials for some data visualization tools, toolkits (R? d3js? ?), datasets. - we'll separate into groups and hack on stuff. - at the end of the day, we'll present our progress.
Not a code hacker? No worries; all skill sets and backgrounds are valuable!
- Duration: half-day
Intro to Hydra
- Adam Wead, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (amsterdamos at gmail.com)
- Mike Giarlo, Penn State Information Technology Services (michael at psu.edu)
- Mark Bussey, Data Curation Experts (mark at curationexperts.com)
Hydra (http://projecthydra.org) is a free and open source repository solution that is being used by institutions on both sides of the North Atlantic to provide access to their digital content. Hydra provides a versatile and feature rich environment for end-users and repository administrators alike. Leveraging Blacklight as its front end discovery interface, the hydra project provides a suite of software components, data models, and design patterns for building a robust and sustainable digital repository, as well as a community of support for ongoing development. This workshop will provide an introduction to the hydra project and its software components. Attendees will leave with enough knowledge to get started building their own local repository solutions. This workshop will be led by Adam Wead of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
- Duration: half-day, afternoon
Intro to Blacklight
- Bess Sadler, Stanford University Library (bess at stanford.edu)
- Justin Coyne, MediaShelf (justin.coyne at yourmediashelf.com)
- Jason Ronallo, NC State (jronallo at gmail.com)
- Shaun Ellis, Princeton University Library, (shaune@princeton.edu)
Blacklight (http://projectblacklight.org) is a free and open source discovery interface built on solr and ruby on rails. It is used by institutions such as Stanford University, NC State, WGBH, Johns Hopkins University, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and an ever expanding community of adopters and contributors. Blacklight can be used as a front-end discovery solution for an ILS, or the contents of a digital repository, or to provide a unified discovery solution for many siloed collections. In this workshop we will cover the basics of solr indexing and searching, setting up and customizing Blacklight, and leave time for Q&A around local issues people might encounter.
- Note: this workshop will be tailored as a follow-on to the morning's RailsBridge Intro to Ruby on Rails workshop, but everyone is welcome
- Duration: half-day, afternoon
DPLA Intro/Hacking
- Presenter(s)/Leader(s): TBD
- Guy Who'd Be Interested in Helping: Jay Luker, Smithsonian Astrophysics Data System (jluker at cfa.harvard.edu)
This is a stub proposal entered solely to beat the submission deadline. I think there's be sufficient interest in this session, but only thought of it yesterday and haven't had time to coordinate with actual DPLA'ers and confirm that any of them are definitely coming.
Fail4lib
- Jason Casden, NCSU Libraries (jmcasden at ncsu.edu)
The Code4lib community is full of driven people who embrace the risks that are often associated with new projects. While these traits lead to the incredible projects that are presented at Code4lib, creative technical work also often leads to unexpected, vexing, or disappointing results even from eventually successful projects (however you define the term). Learning more about how our colleagues deal with failure in various contexts could lead to the development of better methods for communicating the value of productive failure, modifying project plans ("The Pivot"), and failing more cheaply.
Hopefully we can define the format as a group, but a fairly high level of participation is crucial if this is to be a worthwhile preconference. Some possible agenda items that could be mixed and matched to fill the afternoon:
- Given willing presenters, a series of 10-20 minute presentations that go into some depth about specific failures.
- Depending on the number of participants, either a multi- or single-track series of unconference-like themed discussions on various aspects of failure, possibly including themes like:
- Technical failure
- Failure to effectively address a real user need
- Overinvestment
- Outreach/Promotion failure
- Design/UX failure
- Project team communication failure
- Missed opportunities (risk-averse failure)
- Successes gleaned from failures
- A panel of participants who have prepared in advance to answer moderator and audience questions about their experience with failure.
- A prepared reading assignment that we could all forget to read, creating a shared fail in order to start the preconference on the right foot.
I'll serve as a moderator (if needed) and participant and would welcome more organizers. I am happy to be outvoted by participants on any of these points--I just want to get us talking about our screw-ups, blind spots, and anvils dropping from the sky.
Half Day Evening
Solr 4 In Depth
- Contact: Erik Hatcher (erik.hatcher at lucidworks.com)
The long awaited and much anticipated Solr 4 has been released! It's a really big deal. There are so many improvements, it makes the head spin. This session will cover the major feature improvements from Lucene's flexible indexing and scoring API up through SolrCloud in a digestable half-day format.
- Duration: half-day
- Note: I put this under "Half Day Evening" only because I didn't want to conflict with the other great half day sessions already proposed here. However it makes the most sense to arrange the sessions is fine with me though.