2014 preconference proposals
PROPOSALS ARE CLOSED : PLEASE DO NOT ADD NEW PRECONFERENCES TO THIS PAGE
Proposals were accepted through December 6th, 2013.
It would be really, super duper helpful if folks who think they might want to attend a pre-conference could indicate interest by adding your name to a session below.
Note
Attendance at a pre-conference will require a small fee due at the time of conference registration".
Although this was specified in the email announcements relating to pre-conferences, it was not added to this page until December 2nd. I (Adam C.) apologize for the omission and I hope this will not cause any "sticker shock." Putting your name on this list does not incur any obligation on your part, but we'll be using it to gauge interest and work out room assignments.
Please put your pre-conference on the list in the following format:
Code4Lib 2014 Pre-Conference Proposals
Drupal4lib Sub-con Barcamp
Full Day
- Contact Cary Gordon, cgordon@chillco.com
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.
This event is open to the library community. There will be a nominal fee (t/b/d) for non-Code4LibCon attendees (subject to organizer approval).
resources to help you learn drupal
Interested in Attending:
All Day
- Renna Tuten
Morning
- Kevin Reiss
- Charlie Morris (NCSU) - glad to see this again this year!
Afternoon
Open Refine Hackfest
"Half-Day"
- Contact Chad Nelson, chadbnelson@gmail.com
Open Refine is a powerful open source tool for wrangling messy data that can also be used to help in the creation of Linked Data via the Reconciliation API. It is possible to write reconciliation services against API's, like the VIAF service or, even just against local authority files for helping maintain authority control
The session would first introduce Open Refine, then walk through building a reconciliation service, and the rest of the session would be a hackfest where we build new reconciliation services for public consumption or local use.
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Adam Constabaris
- Ray Schwartz
- Jason Stirnaman
- Joshua Gomez
- Sam Kome
Responsive Design Hackfest
"Half-Day [Afternoon]"
- Contact Jim Hahn, University of Illinois, jimfhahn@gmail.com
- Contact David Ward, University of Illinois, dh-ward@illinois.edu
This structured hackfest will give attendees an opportunity to explore methods to create responsive mobile apps using the Bootstrap framework [1]and a set of APIs for accessing library data. We will start with an API template for creating space-based mobile tools that draw from work coming out of the IMLS funded Student/Library Collaborative grant [2]. Available APIs will include a room reservation template and codebase for implementing at any campus and the set of Minrva catalog APIs generating JSONP [3].
Hosts will give a brief report of a study on student hacking projects and interests in mobile library apps that are the basis for the templates utilized in this Hackathon. By the end of the pre-conference attendees will have a sample responsive mobile web app in Bootstrap 3 to bring back to their campus which can plug into their site-based content.
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
Intro to Blacklight
"Half-Day [Morning]"
- Contact: Chris Beer, Stanford University, cabeer@stanford.edu
- TA: Bess Sadler, Stanford University, bess@stanford.edu
This session will be walk-through of the architecture of Blacklight, the community, and an introduction to building a Blacklight-based application. Each participant will have the opportunity to build a simple Blacklight application, and make basic customizations, while using a test-driven approach.
For more information about Blacklight see our wiki ( http://projectblacklight.org/ ) and our GitHub repo ( https://github.com/projectblacklight/blacklight ). We will also send out some brief instructions beforehand for those that would like to setup their environments to follow along and get Blacklight up and running on their local machines.
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Megan Kudzia
- Bret Davidson
- Coral Sheldon-Hess
- Cory Lown
Blacklight Hackfest
"Half-Day [Afternoon]"
- Contact Chris Beer, Stanford University, cabeer@stanford.edu
This afternoon hackfest is both a follow-on to the Intro to Blacklight morning session to continue building Blacklight-based applications, and also an opportunity for existing Blacklight contributors and members of the Blacklight community to exchange common patterns and approaches into reusable gems or incorporate customizations into Blacklight itself.
For more information about Blacklight see our wiki ( http://projectblacklight.org/ ) and our GitHub repo ( https://github.com/projectblacklight/blacklight ).
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Shaun Ellis
- Kevin Reiss
- Megan Kudzia
- Erik Hatcher
RailsBridge: Intro to programming in Ruby on Rails
"Half-Day" [morning]
- Contact Justin Coyne, Data Curation Experts, justin@curationexperts.com
Interested in learning how to program? Want to build your own web application? Never written a line of code before and are a little intimidated? There's no need to be! RailsBridge is a friendly place to get together and learn how to write some code.
RailsBridge is a great workshop that opens the doors to projects like Blacklight and Hydra.
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
1. Ayla Stein
2. Heidi Dowding
Managing Projects: Or I'm in charge, now what? (aka PM4Lib)
Full-Day
Contact:
- Rosalyn Metz, rosalynmetz@gmail.com
- Becky Yoose, yoosebec@grinnell.edu
This will be a full day session on project management. We'll cover
- Kicking off the Project -- project lifecycle, project constraints, scoping/goals, stakeholders, assessment
- Planning the Project -- project charters, work breakdown structures, responsibilities, estimating time, creating budgets
- Executing the Project -- status meeting, status reports, issue management
- Finishing the Project -- achieving the goal, post mortems, project v. product
This is a revival of rosy1280's LITA Forum Pre-Conference, but better (because iteration is good) and adapted to c4lib types.
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Robin Dean
- Erin White
- Andrew Darby
- Sam Kome
- Ryan Scherle
Fail4Lib 2014
Half Day [TBD, probably afternoon]
Contacts:
- Andreas Orphanides, akorphan (at) ncsu.edu
- Jason Casden, jmcasden (at) ncsu.edu
The task of design (and the work that we do as library coders) is intimately tied to failure. Failures, both big and small, motivate us to create and improve. Failures are also occasionally the result of our work. Understanding and embracing failure, encouraging enlightened risk-taking, and seeking out opportunities to fail and learn are essential to success in our field. At Fail4Lib, we'll talk about our own experiences with projects gone wrong, explore some famous design failures in the real world, and talk about how we can come to terms with the reality of failure, to make it part of our creative process -- rather than something to be feared.
The schedule may include the following:
- Case studies. We'll look at some classic failures from the literature: What can we learn from the mistakes of others?
- Confessionals, for those willing to share. Talk about your own experiences with rough starts, labor pains, and doomed projects in your own work: What can we learn from our own (and each others') failures?
- Group therapy. Let's talk about how to deal with risk management, failed projects, experimental endeavors, and more: How can we make ourselves, our colleagues, and our organizations more fault tolerant? How do we make sure we fail as productively as possible?
Interested in attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Bret Davidson
- Mike Graves
- Ray Schwartz
- Jason Stirnaman
- Julia Bauder
CLLAM @ code4lib
(Computational Linguistics for Libraries, Archives and Museums)
Full Day
Contacts:
- Douglas W. Oard (primary), oard (at) umd.edu
- Corey Harper, corey (dot) harper (at) nyu.edu
- Robert Sanderson, azaroth42 (at) gmail.com
- Robert Warren, rwarren (at) math.carleton.ca
We will hack at the intersection of diverse content from Libraries, Archives and Museums and bleeding edge tools from computational linguistics for slicing and dicing that content. Did you just acquire the email archives of a startup company? Maybe you can automatically build an org chart. Have you got metadata in a slew of languages? Perhaps you can search it all using one query. Is name authority control for e-resources getting too costly? Let’s see if entity linking techniques can help. These are just a few teasers.
There’ll be plenty of content and tools supplied, but please bring your own [data] too -- you’ll hack with it in new ways throughout the day. We’ll get started with some lightning talks on what we’ve brought,then we’ll break up into groups to experiment and work on the ideas that appeal. Three guaranteed outcomes: you’ll walk away with new ideas, new tools, and new people you’ll have met.
Interested in attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Devon Smith
- Kevin S. Clarke
- Jason Stirnaman
- Joshua Gomez
GeoHydra: Managing geospatial content
Half-day [Afternoon]
- Contact: Darren Hardy, Stanford University, drh@stanford.edu
- Moderator: Bess Sadler, Stanford University, bess@stanford.edu
Do you have digitized maps, GIS datasets like Shapefiles, aerial photography, etc., all of which you want to integrate into your digital repository? In this workshop, we will discuss how Hydra can provide discovery, delivery, and management services for geospatial assets, as well as solicit questions about your own GIS projects. We aim to help answer the following questions you might have about putting geospatial data into your Hydra-based digital library:
- What are the types of geospatial data?
- How to dive into Hydra?
- How to model geospatial holdings with Hydra?
- How to discover and view geospatial data?
- How to build a geospatial data infrastructure?
- What are common approaches and problems?
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Esmé Cowles
Technology, Librarianship, and Gender: Moving the conversation forward
Full Day
Contact: Lisa Rabey lisa @ biblyotheke dot net | @pnkrcklibrarian
Description
Librarianship is largely made up of women, yet women are significantly underrepresented in tech positions, on any level, within libraries themselves. Why? What are we doing to encourage women to become more involved in STEM within librarianship? What kind of message are we sending when library technology keynotes remain almost resolutely male? How are we changing the face of technology, not only within libraries, but with the field itself? How are we training our staff and colleagues in the areas of fairness and removal of bias? Our vendors?
Lots of tough questions.
While the conversation has been going on via various blogs and articles within the last few years, it was given a public face at Internet Librarian 2013 where a panel of 7 (four women, three men) gave personal experiences on the above and then opened up the conversation to the audience. As eye opening and enriching the conversation was, a 45 minute panel was not enough. One thing remains clear: We need to keep the conversation moving forward and start making some radical changes in the way we think, act, and how we need to harness this to start making real changes within librarianship itself.
Topics to include: Fairness, bias, impostor syndrome, code of conducts, sexual harassment, training opportunities, support systems, mentoring, ally support, and more
Those attending should expect: Begin with opening up the conversation of experiences and talking about what is most needed, spending remaining time putting together live, usable solutions to start implementing as well as pushing the conversation forward at local levels
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
All Day
1. Kate Kosturski
2. Valerie Aurora
3. Declan Fleming (I'd be good with a half day too)
Morning
1. Shaun Ellis
2. Jason Casden
Afternoon
1. Ayla Stein
2. Heidi Dowding
3. Coral Sheldon-Hess
4. Cory Lown
FileAnalyzer: Rapid Development of File Manipulation Tasks
"Half-Day" [morning]
- Contact Terry Brady, twb27@georgetown.edu
The FileAnalyzer (https://github.com/Georgetown-University-Libraries/File-Analyzer) is an application designed to solve a number of library automation challenges:
- validating digitized and reformatted files
- validating vendor statistics for counter compliance
- preparing collections of digital files for archiving and ingest
- manipulating ILS import and export files
The File Analyzer application was used by the US National Archives to validate 3.5 million digitized images from the 1940 Census. After implementing a customized ingest workflow within the File Analyzer, the Georgetown University Libraries was able to process an ingest backlog of over a thousand files of digital resources into DigitalGeorgetown, the Libraries’ Digital Collections and Institutional Repository platform. Georgetown is currently developing customized workflows that integrate Apache Tika, BagIt, and Marc conversion utilities.
The File Analyzer is a desktop application with a powerful framework for implementing customized file validation and transformation rules. As new rules are deployed, they are presented to users within a user interface that is easy (and powerful) to use.
The first half of this session will be targeted to potential users and developers. The second half of the session will be targeted towards developers who are interested in developing custom rules for the application.
Session Overview
- Overview of the application
- Running sample file tests/transformations through the application
- Compiling and building the application
- Coding a custom file processing task
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Ray Schwartz
Collecting social media data with Social Feed Manager
Half-Day [Morning]
Contacts:
- Dan Chudnov, GW Libraries, dchud (at) gwu.edu
- Dan Kerchner, GW Libraries, kerchner (at) gwu.edu
- Laura Wrubel, GW Libraries, lwrubel (at) gwu.edu
Social media data is a popular material for research and a new format for building collections. What does it take to collect meaningfully from Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Weibo, Facebook, and other sites? We will:
- Introduce options for collections, including both high- and low-end commercial offerings. Discuss what it means to collect these resources, covering boundaries, policies, and workflows required to develop a social media collection program in your institution.
- Explore the Twitter API in depth, with hands-on opportunities for those w/laptops and others who want to team up w/them
- Help you get started using the free Social Feed Manager (SFM) app we're developing at GW to create your first collections. We’ll demo its use and demo a clean install (those w/environments can follow along)
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Declan Fleming
- Esmé Cowles
- Jason Stirnaman
- Ray Schwartz
Intro to Git
"Half-Day [tbd - probably afternoon]"
- Contact: Erin Fahy, Stanford University, efahy at stanford.edu
- TA: Michael Klein, Northwestern University, michael.klein at northwestern.edu
This session will cover the fundamentals of git by discussing/going through (time allowing):
- what is a distributed version control system
- what is git and github
- initializing a repo on a remote server/github
- cloning an existing repo
- creating a branch
- contributing code to a repo
- how to handle merge conflicts
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
- Ray Schwartz
- Sam Kome
Archival discovery and use
Full Day
Contacts:
- Tim Shearer, UNC Chapel Hill, tshearer at email.unc.edu,
- Will Sexton, Duke, will.sexton at duke.edu
This is a full day pre-conference about archival collections and will cover the intersections of archives, workflows, technologies, discovery, and use.
Morning agenda: focused talks around (but not limited to) issues such as:
- Crowd-sourcing description to enhance collecitons
- Linked data and authority
- Mass digitization and sustainable workflows
- Digitized objects in context (images and other objects in finding aids)
- Too many cooks in the kitchen: versioning
- Global-, intra-, and inter- discovery of archival materials via finding aids
- and more...
Afternoon agenda: Focused talks around specific tools followed by general discussion, connections, opportunities, aspirations, and planning.
Tool examples:
- Archivespace
- STEADy
- "RAMP" (Remixing Archival Metadata Project)
- OpenRefine
- Aeon
Interested in Attending
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here
Morning:
- your name
Afternoon:
- your name
All day:
- Josh Wilson
- Sam Kome
AV Content Slam
Half-Day [morning] Contacts:
- Kara Van Malssen, kara (at) avpreserve.com
- Lauren Sorenson, laurens (at) bavc.org
- Steven Villereal , villereal (at) gmail.com
A morning BarCamp/unconference for practitioners and coders who work with audiovisual content. The agenda will be attendee-driven, with a focus on sharing, synthesizing, and improving workflow strategies and documentation for software-based approaches to wrangling and providing access to audio and video content. Possible topics of discussion might include:
- Use of format id and characterization/metadata extraction tools for AV
- Creating and using time-based metadata
- Managing (moving, fixity checking, etc) massive files (like uncompressed video)
For a better idea of the topics and concerns that have informed some past AV-themed events, check out the event wikis for CURATEcamp AVpres 2013 as well as the AMIA/DLF 2013 Hack Day .
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here:
OCLC Web Services Hackfest
"Half-Day" [afternoon]
Contact: Shelley Hostetler, Community Manager, Developer Network hostetls[at]oclc.org
This half-day hackfest will explore some of the OCLC Developer Network web services. We will provide an overview of some of the common topics such as the general REST-based architecture for most services and how to use some new authentication clients. The group can then decide to take a deep dive into a particular API and/or write a client library for the community.
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here:
Obey the Testing Goat!: Test Driven Web Development From The Ground Up
Half-Day [tbd - probably afternoon]
- Contact Mark Redar, mredar[at]gmail.com
Test driven development is a proven method for producing better quality code. But I've found it hard to follow a strict TDD methodology when starting new web projects. How do you write that first test when there is no code or web pages created yet.
In this session, we will follow the excellent book "Test-Driven Web Development with Python" to create a simple web site in Django following TDD from the first character typed. Come ready to code and test. No prior knowledge of python or Django required.
By the end of this session, you should be able to "Obey the Testing Goat" from the start to finish for your next project.
If you would be interested in attending, please indicate by adding your name (but not email address, etc.) here:
- Charlie Morris (NCSU)
- Jason Stirnaman
- Joshua Gomez
Summon Camp
Placeholder by Tim McGeary for Gillian Cain (Serials Solutions) Description to be provided by Gillian after account issues resolved.