February 2009 Archives

The Libraries are pleased to announce the next major release of ISIS, our visual/spatial map search application that stands for Interactive Spatial Image Search. This is a "2.0" release featuring an improved control panel, redesigned back-end code, and a new persistence layer that allows you to choose between MySQL, PostgreSQL, or XML file data stores.

What's more, our own deployment of ISIS is now capable of searching across the entire digitized map collection of the Henderson Public Library - nine whole maps! (They are catching up to us!)

ISIS currently works only with CONTENTdm map collections, but it is not limited to CONTENTdm customers. Anybody with a PHP web server can install it and hook it up to any publicly accessible CONTENTdm map collection - or multiple collections.

Other projects involving ISIS and our map collections are in the pipeline, and news will be posted here first.

If you are a staff member at the Libraries, you may have recently noticed several "banned patron alert" emails. These are part of the Trespassed Patron Database - a new way of automatically notifying you of some of our more problematic patrons whom we would like keep off our premises. Hopefully, this will help to maintain a safe and positive environment for our library patrons and you.

This application is actually about a year old, but has not been used until recently. It is accessible only from staff PCs in Lied, Law, and the branch libraries, and over the VPN, but is otherwise restricted from public access.

Security has instructed me to tell you that if you see any of these people in the library, you should scream and run from the building as fast as you can. No, wait, that's only if you see Kee wearing his cheesehead. Actually, you're supposed to notify Security at 5-2228.

Welcome to the second post on our blog! I'm the Web & Digitization Application Developer (a.k.a. junior programmer), which means that my posts will be the most important. Before I begin, a shout-out to all my dead homies. Now that that's out of the way, I can proceed.

If you work with metadata in a digital repository, the time may come when you need to export it for other purposes. Your repository software may or may not make that easy for you; but as long as it supports OAI-PMH, it's both possible and simple to do in a standards-compliant way. To do the job, we will use PHP's DOM core; this is one of several ways to work with XML in PHP. It can, of course, also be done in any other common scripting language.

<?php

$qs = array(
   'verb' => 'ListRecords',
   'metadataPrefix' => 'oai_dc',
   'set' => 'hughes'
);

$url = 'http://digital.library.unlv.edu/cgi-bin/oai.exe?'
   . http_build_query($qs);
$xml = file_get_contents(utf8_encode($url));
if (!$doc = DOMDocument::loadXML($xml)) {
   // abort
}

$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
$xpath->registerNamespace("dc",
   "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/");

?>


<dl>
   <!-- The query() method returns a DOMNodeList object
   (an array-like list of DOMNodes). The first parameter is
   an XPath query. -->
   <? foreach ($xpath->query('//dc:*', $doc) as $node): ?>
      <dt><?= $node->nodeName ?></dt>
      <dd><?= $node->nodeValue ?></dd>
   <? endforeach ?>
</dl>

From here, you can do anything with it - print it to the screen, save it to a database, export it to a spreadsheet, etc. Handy. You can also fetch just a single record, using GetRecord in place of ListRecords:

$qs = array( 
   'verb' => 'GetRecords', 
   'metadataPrefix' => 'oai_dc', 
   'identifier' => 'oai:digital.library.unlv.edu:hughes/87' 
);

A mobot - who wouldn't want one?

There is more information in the OAI record than just the DC fields; to access it, just register the necessary namespace(s) and modify the XPath query. You can always take a look at the contents of $xml to see the raw XML string.

Welcome to our blog, Webbin’ Rebels. A goofy name, but one that we hopes embodies the spirit of relaxed conversation we’d like to have on this blog. There are a number of ways we can improve our library services on the web, from improved search to introducing mobile applications (a topic about which I plan on blogging shortly). In addition, there are several little projects we work on which rarely get discussed. Examples include a form for proposing digital collections to implementing a podcast for Dave Schwartz at the Center for Gaming Research. Furthermore, we’d like this blog to be a resource outside of our institution as well by promoting open source projects we’ve developed, or giving tips on working with various products, such as the WebOPAC software. We hope to discuss these topics in a light-hearted, creative, and humorous manner with a focus on how we can improve services for our patrons while making librarian life a little easier.

And if you thought “Webel Yell,” and “Webbin’ Rebels” were the only tacky jokes we’ve got, well then you’d better subscribe to the RSS feed. Alex is brewing more of them in his lab.