Code4lib Mid-Atlantic

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

This is our next big project. Please join us in our planning efforts! Planning events will be announced on the email list.

Current action items:

• secure a host institution / facility
  • finalize host solicitation document
  • finalize rough budget for host
• Contact center city venues to find a likely space and price quote.
• Please note a shared google docs folder has been created as a workspace. If you haven't been added, please contact Anna or inquire on-list.

Our next planning meeting will be at 10am on Wednesday 7 Jan, 2015. We'll meet via google hangouts. Please join us using this link:

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/gzsx2gu7iazevjakorhovcfwuia

Background reading:

• How To Plan A Code4LibCon
• 2014 Lessons Learned
• Useful information from 2012

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.

Governance & Contact Info

Because we're an informal group who share a common interest, there's no real Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic governance per-say. Decisions about meet-ups and activities generally work with someone pitching an idea on the mailing list. Therein, if you have an idea for a project, improvement or activity for the group, just send off a quick email to the Google Group, and before you know it, you'll most likely be "head" of said idea or activity. We're a good place to be an Experimentational Clearinghouse(tm), so don't hold back with ideas...

With this in mind, 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 or jump onto the mailing list and send a post with your ideas.

Call for Volunteers

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, and a social functions organizer. 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, sign up for the Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic Google Group and post what you'd be interested in. We're a friendly bunch so don't be afraid to jump right in.

Host a Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic Meetup

As well as volunteers, we're definitely looking for future hosts for our Last Wednesday of the Month meet-ups. May, June and October 2013 are currently earmarked, but we're open after that. Typically, we meet in a conference room for one to two hours (having a projector and laptop/computer on hand recommended) and adjourn to a local restaurant or bar for a social hour. If you're interested in hosting, contact David Uspal and he'll get you on the calendar.

To keep us "regionally diverse", we're trying to keep on a 3:1 (previously 2:1, since updated) host schedule -- i.e for every three events hosted in Philadelphia (the gravitational center of this region), we'd like to get one outside the city as well. As such, we're especially looking for hosts outside the Center City Philadelphia area.

So far, our informal meet-ups have been "Quaker Style", aka anyone who has something to say gets up and presents (no formal time limits, but keeping it 10-15 minutes to be polite.) Feel free to plan your future meetup in this fashion or feel free to experiment with the formula. We're an easy-going bunch, so feel free to has as you'd like.

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", held at Falvey Library over the week of October 15th, 2012. Video, slide presentations, and abstract pages from this event coming soon(tm).

Our first informal meetup was held at the end of November at the Landmark Americana in University City.

January 20th, 2013 saw us meeting at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

April 24th, 2013 saw us meeting at Samuel L. Paley Library, Temple University.

May 29th, 2013 saw us meeting at the Jenkins Law Library in Philadelphia.

June 26th, 2013 saw us meeting for a tour of Hive4A, a coworking/makerspace in Allentown, PA.

August 28th, 2013 saw us meeting at Samuel L. Paley Library, Temple University.

October 16, 2013 will see us meeting at Falvey Library at Villanova as part of the "Tech Superfecta" series of tech conferences.

Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic 2013 Schedule of Events

The following is the current schedule for the events on October 16, 2013:

 9:30 – 10:00   Registration and Coffee Time (Coffee and Pastries available)
 10:00 – 10:15  Introduction
 10:15 – 10:45  Chad Nelson, Modern Development Best Practices : Testing, Continuous Integration & Automated Builds
 10:45 – 11:15  David Uspal and Chris Hallberg, Bootcamp – A Primer on Responsive Design
 11:15 – 11:30  Break
 11:30 – 12:00  Katherine Lynch, Omeka_a11y: Developing for Digital Exhibits with Accessibility in Mind
 12:00 – 1:00   Lunch (Provided)
 1:00 – 1:30    Beverly D. Charlot, Gaming: Engaging Students through Library Research
 1:30 – 2:00    Denise Mangold, Monitoring Systems for Maximum Efficiency and Quick Response to Issues
 2:00 – 2:15    Breakout Planning
 2:15 – 3:30    Breakout
 3:30 – 3:45    Breakout Reporting
 3:45 – 4:15    Lightning Talks
 4:15 – 4:30    Closing Remarks
 5:00           Dinner at Gullifty’s (on your own)

Modern Development Best Practices : Testing, Continuous Integration & Automated Builds Chad Nelson, Jenkins Law Library

This presentation will provide overview of some benefits and drawbacks of some current best practice trends in modern software development. Specifically, I'll be talking about methods for testing your code to prevent bugs, the what and why of continuous integration, and about automating deployments across your environments to increase uniformity and reduce "works on my machine" type problems.

Chad Nelson is a Librarian, Developer, and Oft-do-well at Jenkins Law Library.

Bootcamp – A Primer on Responsive Design David Uspal and Chris Hallberg, Villanova University

Expanding on the short talk from our last Code4Lib Mid-Atlantic Meet-up, David Uspal and Chris Hallberg will discuss the integration of Bootstrap into the various programs and content management systems (specifically, Concrete5, WordPress, and VuFind) at Falvey Library over the summer of 2013. This discussion will focus on responsive design principles, tips and tricks to get your current content ready for responsive design, some pitfalls we encountered along the way, and things to consider when beginning a responsive design project.

David Uspal is a member of the Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library Technology Development Team, which works to create and implement research technology that make research easier for faculty, students and staff. Chris Hallberg is the graduated Villanova grad assistant and resident front-end engineer to VuFind and VuDL.

Omeka_a11y: Developing for Digital Exhibits with Accessibility in Mind Katherine Lynch, Temple University Libraries

In recent years, many institutions have become interested in building online exhibits to spotlight digital preservation efforts and special collections materials. Additionally, web accessibility, or design and coding measures taken to ensure that websites, tools, and interfaces are understandable and operable by disabled users, is also a growing concern in Higher Education, and the Libraries community specifically. For online exhibits, there is Omeka, an Open Source content management system designed to act as a user-friendly solution for compiling items into a digital archive with recognized metadata standards, and making them available in highly customizable exhibit websites, no coding required. This year, Temple University Libraries has begun experimenting with Omeka for possible use with online exhibits and other needs. However, in terms of web accessibility, Omeka lacks critical features in its core to be considered truly accessible. In order to use Omeka’s easy-to-adopt software without sacrificing the user experience for disabled students, Temple University Libraries has developed “Omeka_a11y,” an accessible forked version of Omeka. Omeka_a11y features front-end interface improvements that make it easier for disabled users to perceive, understand, and navigate across Omeka sites. This presentation will cover the following points of the project, and of web accessibility as it relates to libraries and the digital humanities: - What is web accessibility? - What are the responsibilities of nonprofit organizations and Higher Education institutions? - Understanding Web Accessibility Policies - Using Omeka for Online Exhibits - Accessibility testing practices - Creating an enhancement path for inaccessible software - Developing “Omeka_a11y” - Impact on the Omeka user community.

Katherine Lynch is the Senior Digital Library Applications Developer at Temple University Libraries in Philadelphia. She works in the Digital Library Initiatives Department, developing and maintaining software solutions that aid in the creation, storage, and preservation of digitally-archived materials. Over the course of her career, she has also earned a national reputation for her research and presentation efforts related to educating software and web developers on how to design and program for web accessibility for disabled users.

Gaming: Engaging Students through Library Research Beverly D. Charlot, Delaware State University - William C. Jason Library

This talk will present and demonstrate an interactive library research (ILR) game designed for incoming freshmen students. The ILR game was developed to engage student participation and measure learning outcomes at the conclusion of each information literacy session provided during the school year. First-Year University Seminar and English Composition I students are taught basic research and critical thinking skills utilizing the established guidelines from the Association of College and Research Libraries. The structure is very similar to interactive games used by students today. Accessible online, the game also provides an additional opportunity to review library information at their leisure, reinforcing the goals and objectives covered during the IL session. In today’s global environment, these skills are imperative as technology continues to evolve and information increasingly overwhelms society via the Internet, print, electronic and digital formats.

Beverly D. Charlot is the Coordinator of Technical Services at Delaware State University, William C. Jason Library. This Department includes Acquisitions, Cataloging, Digitization, Circulation Access, Serials and Resource Sharing. Prior to my current position Beverly was the Systems and Resource Sharing Librarian with a Master’s Degrees in Library and Information Science (MLIS) and Management Science (MSM).

Monitoring Systems for Maximum Efficiency and Quick Response to Issues Denise Mangold, Villanova University

This presentation will go over how we monitor our systems at Villanova University and how we respond to potential and actual problems to minimize impact to the user community.

Denise Mangold is a UNIX systems administrator at Villanova University, and before that was a Senior Engineer with Comcast supporting mission critical systems such as SAP, Billing and Human resource systems. Denise was lead engineer for high availability systems, the company SME on Clustering and site to site replication, and also worked as a disaster recovery specialist consultant for Sungard for a number of years.