2018 Code4Lib Midwest Meeting
Call for proposals
To help us make sure we have a room for you to present in, we encourage you to submit a proposal by the end of March, 2018. Unless we get a tremendous amount of proposals we do not anticipate rejecting submissions.
Registration
Registration for this conference is free and does not require joining a national organization. Due to space limits, registration will be limited to 50 participants. Similar to the national Code4lib, we have a meal sign-up page for lunch on January 7th, which allows us to keep registration costs low for you.
Logistics
Getting Here/Parking
Getting to Oxford is easiest by car, but below is information about regional airports and other transportation options. Parking information coming soon .
Accommodations
We do not have block reservations arranged at any of these hotels. Check the site's mapping feature, at least four of those listed are within walking distance of the King Library conference site.
Meals
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be sponsored by Miami University Libraries on June 7th. For all other meals check our list of local dining options on and around campus.
Eat, Drink, Do Fun Things
Working on a Google Map with a few dining suggestions near campus.
Wireless internet
Miami University is a member of Eduroam, and public wireless is available on campus.
Other Questions?
Contact Craig Boman at bomanca@miamioh.edu
Schedule
Outline of June 7
Outline of June 7 Location: Advanced Inquiry Space (AIS), first floor King Library
8 am: Check-in and breakfast 9 am: Welcome and introductory remarks
9:30 am: Scott Williams - Recovering from a failing technology project: Williams will share experience at the Digital Public Library of America with confronting a troublesome project and how they were able move forward in a positive way for all staff members.
10 am: Break (Whiteboard breakout session ideas)
10:15 am: Peter Murray - Introducing FOLIO, A Platform of Services for Libraries: How nimble is your library automation system? What if your automation system resembled apps on a smartphone -- allowing you to choose apps that meet your needs with the expectation that they will sensibly communicate with each other? FOLIO is a library services platform -- infrastructure that allows cooperating library apps to share data. Librarians, developers, and user experience designers from all over the world are participating in designing and creating this open source effort. The FOLIO project is also an effort to build a sustainable, community-driven collaboration around the creation of a modern technology ecosystem that empowers libraries. Attendees will learn key aspects of the FOLIO project and how the FOLIO platform technology will impact library service offerings. Attendees will also learn how they can participate in the FOLIO community.
11:05 am: Announcements (Tally breakout session preference before lunch)
11:15 am-1 pm: Lunch in Oxford's uptown. (Lunch group sign up sheet).
1:00 am: Announcements
1:05 pm: Breakout sessions (various rooms in King Library)
2:15 am: Wesley Teal - Alma Enumerator: Experiments in Automating Tedium: What do you do when an ILS migration leaves a ton of your serials information behind? Well, you can fix thousands of item records by hand or you could use a little bit of Python and a lot of trial and error to automate your troubles away. This is the story of taking the second option and tribulations and triumphs involved. Alma Enumerator is a set of Python scripts that use the Alma API to parse free text item description fields and convert them enumeration and chronology data that can be uploaded back into Alma. The presentation will cover the problem that needed to be solved, the design considerations, complications encountered during development, and the highlights and shortcomings of the collection of scripts that became Alma Enumerator.
2:45 pm: Break
3 pm: Tammy Stitz - Making your PDFs universally accessible: One of the largest problems for students who use screen readers is reading PDFs. Even the intellectual content of their courses is easier to understand than trying to figure how to read the PDF. Sometimes PDFs cannot be read and other PDFs are read as blocks of text without an easy way to jump to different sections, which is problematic for long documents in particular. This presentation will discuss the features of an accessible PDFs based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It will show how to correct some issues using Adobe Acrobat DC when using a few different programs to generate the PDFs.
3:30 pm: Stephen Cassidy and Jason Michel - Building Discovery Layers: a Modern Approach: In this presentation we will discuss how the Ohio State University Libraries built a discovery layer utilizing existing vendor APIs like sierra and EDS, created custom APIs, and rendered results via the Vue javascript framework. We will discuss all layers of the project: Node.js, Elasticsearch, Vue.js, Lexicon (our custom built API environment), Drupal and more.
4 pm: Lightning talks and day closing announcements
5-7 pm: Dinner in Oxford's uptown
7-9 pm: Game night at King Library.
-join us for a game night at King library from 7-9p
Outline of June 8
Location: Advanced Inquiry Space (AIS), first floor King Library
8-9 am: Breakfast
9 am: Choose Your Own Adventure: Choose format based on informal survey (voting day before) Hackathon, hands on session, networking, breakout session, lightning talks.
10:30 am: Break
10:45 am: Samuel Hansen - PodcastRE Not Podcatcher: Archiving Podcasts for Research: While there are many solutions to the problem of downloading and storing podcasts, none of them take into account the needs of archivists or researchers. This is only fair as most people, including myself on most days, are just downloading them for entertainment, but as podcasts increase in importance in culture so does the need for preserving them for both posterity and research. This is the goal of PodcastRE, http://podcastre.org, created by Jeremy Morris and Eric Hoyt at UW-Madison. During the evolution of the project which I have been a part of for the past year, from iTunes collection to full blown archive, many unexpected and interesting obstacles have reared up. In this talk I will discuss some of them, particularly the ways podcasts, and their RSS feeds, create challenges to those of us trying to store their contents long term, the new data model we had to create to deal with these challenges, and how we try to deal with the many changes creators can make to the RSS feeds at any given time.
11:15 am: Glen Horton - Mindful Coding: How does writing or reviewing code make you feel? Stressed? Fatigued? Anxious? Things like deadlines, project overload, and work environments can have a big impact on how developers feel when they interact with code. How can developers focus their attention, create better products, and increase their overall well-being all at the same time? Mindful coding. Mindfulness has been used to reduce stress and increase the quality of people's lives and it can be used during development as well. Glen will share the mindful approach he takes to writing and reviewing code at the University of Cincinnati Libraries. Learn how being present in the moment, focusing, and empathizing with users can lead to a better product and actually be therapeutic for the developer.
11:45 am: Wrap-up announcements / survey link
Programming Sign-up
Code4Lib Midwest programming depends on the folks attending the conference. Please consider giving a presentation or lightning talk, or submitting your ideas for a hackfest/breakout session.
Share what you are working on! Add your name and a description below. Please also let us know how long you'll need (10 or 20 minutes), and whether you prefer Wednesday or Thursday (or if it doesn't matter). Contact Ryan Wick (ryanwick@gmail.com) with your preferred username to set up a Code4Lib wiki account. If you don't have a wiki account and don't want to sign up for one, please email bomanca@miamioh.edu.
Presentations
Title - Presenter, Affiliation
Lightning Talks
Have something cool to share but you don't want to be in front of the room for more than 5 minutes? Lightning talks are for you. 5 minute max. Sign up now or at the conference:
- Title - Presenter
Breakout Sessions
Actual breakout sessions presented and locations will be determined on June 7. Please propose an idea here if you are willing to facilitate a discussion on a topic.
Title
Code of Conduct
Code4Lib seeks to provide a welcoming, fun, and safe community and conference experience and ongoing community for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Discriminatory language and imagery (including sexual) is not appropriate for any event venue, including talks, or any community channel such as the chatroom or mailing list. Harassment is understood as any behavior that threatens another person or group, or produces an unsafe environment. It includes offensive verbal comments or non-verbal expressions related to gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religious beliefs, sexual or discriminatory images in public spaces (including online), deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.
CodeOfConduct4Lib
Read and contribute to our full Code of Conduct document on GitHub