Looking Back

On the technical side of things I suppose some of my technical chops have been improved.  I especially liked the lessons on VIM and Nano as I still use those programs on a regular basis but I never took the time before this class to investigate many of the commands.  While I don’t use all of them, it has given me more tools to work with when using those programs.  The MySQL lesson served as a good refresher and the command line tutorials were fun as well.

As far as having my persepective changed on any aspect of digital information I think the only part that may have changed comes more from the project management aspect.  I had never given project management much thought before so many of the readings and perspectives were new to me.  It does seem that in order to be a team leader in any project good planning is essential and digital projects (especially those within libraries) do require some special considerations especially in regards to adoption of new technology and sustainability.

Unit 12 – Project Management

Out of the many readings for this week the one that really struck a chord with me was the “How Not to Run a Digital Library Project”.  Two other librarians and I had prepared a presentation for the Bucknell Digital Libraries Conference entitled “How Not to Build a Digital Archive.”  While none of us were the head of that project, it was interesting to read the article and see some of the similarities to our project and some of the things that went wrong.  I won’t attempt to hit all of the similar points (there were many) just a couple of the highlights.

“When it’s late add more people” — We were using student aides to scan and enter metadata for our images.  We used students from the library staff as well as hiring students specifically for this project.  When we began to feel the crunch at the end of the life of the project, not being anywhere close to the promised 5,000 images that were proposed at the beginning of the project, we took on more student aides and pushed them to contribute more images to the pool.  While in theory this was a good idea, in practice it has been anything but.  We don’t allow images to go straight from the students to the repository.  All images must be reviewed for image scan quality and metadata quality before being given a final review for inclusion in the archive.  While we did add more people and images to the ingestion of the images, we failed to add people to the end of the review stage.  As a consequence, we’ve ended the project with more images in the queue than actually in the repository.

“Forget planning – it’s too time consuming” — One of the biggest issues with the project from the start was the lack of a home.  There was talk of servers and storage but nothing about where these servers were to be located and who would do the “care and feeding”.  As Cervone points out “an important aspect of planning is that it generates buy-in.”  While there was definitely planning going on this omission caused a major problem in the later third of the project, due to lack of buy-in.  The group had been planning on using freely available open source software and as such hadn’t budgeted anything for software.  So after trying out different OSS for a year the committee approached the library about hosting the project.  Administration came back with the answer “Sure.  If it’s a funded soultion from our ILS provider.”  To make a long story short the University came through with the money for the software.  If this problem would have been approached from the beginning then maybe we wouldn’t have been spinning our wheels for an entire year looking at software solutions that we didn’t end up using.

MySQL

I’ve been familiar with MySQL for a few years but going back over it again in this unit has been very helpful.  Much like the Linux shell commands, I learned some very basic commands and only used what I needed to for the task at hand.  If I hit a situation where I needed to do something I didn’t know how to do, I’d research, find what I needed and implement it and troubleshoot afterwords.  Going back and picking up some more concepts and commands in MySQL gives me more tools in my box and a better core understanding of the base concepts in relational databases.  I’ve never had to use a right or left join in a database before, but now that I know about them, I’m sure there will be situations where I find them useful.  In addition, it’s always good to have refreshers on these things as well.  I don’t work directly with MySQL queries every day so getting in there and playing with the code is always a good way to brush up on neglected skills.

MySQL and Database Design

Database design was one of the few technical classes offered in my LIS program so this weeks lesson was like visiting with an old friend.  Ok, more like an old friend of a friend that you never really knew that well to start with.

Database design is hard.  Understanding normalization is even harder.  I spent most of my time referring to my notes and my old text book Concepts of Database Management.  (My notes were crammed into and on most of the book.)  It’s a very comprehensive text on database design.  Heavy on theory and light on technical know-how.  The class lasted one full semester and we didn’t actually touch a database until there were just three weeks left.  It was the hardest class I took in my 1.5 years in library school and it was the most amount of work I can remember putting into a class outside of a few art studios in undergrad.

All of that said, I’m not even sure if my tables were normalized correctly or not.  Normalization is a very foreign and difficult to grasp concept when you’re taking a database class.  Quite frankly I don’t know how other people in this class can deal with it or even begin to comprehend the necessary elements in a one week period.  I think it’s a too much to chew in a very short period.

Technology Planning: Tech Binders

E-rate and the associated processes with such things are completely new to me so I thought of writing about that but I think I’ll cover enough ground in the dropbox assignment on that topic.  In looking over some of the other readings, the tech binder article on Tech Soup resonated with me in particular because of a recent incident at our library.

To briefly summize the article: Tech Binders are written documents (or collections of documents) that contain the essential tech information and documentation for the organization.  They go on to list examples of what can (or should) be contained in these binders.  They make a special note about having passwords in binders saying that writing them down constitutes a security risk.

Here at my library we have possibly too many tech binders.  Each server has its own and in some cases two, one for the hardware and another for the software.  Of great value is our catalog server software binder.  The server and software were setup before the other sys admin and I were working at the library and it’s a very reliable system so we don’t have to do too much to it.  So when something does go wrong, the binder comes in very handy.

About a month ago we had someone from the IT department set up a new server in our server room.  Apparently while he was setting up our server he came across one of our tech binders and flipped out.  How could we leave such sensitive information just laying around?  If someone got a hold of this they could take down our server!  Well yeah.  The instructions were for taking down and restarting the server in the event of a power loss.  It also included some basic instructions for common tasks on the server and NO PASSWORDS.  It was there because it was right next to the server.  The other documentation was on shelves right above.  My boss ended up putting the guide in a “safe place” in his office.  About two weeks after that what do you think happened?  The power went out, my boss was on vacation and I didn’t know where the manual was.

I’m as security minded as the next sysadmin but there is such a thing as taking it too far.

XML and Apache Assignment

Let’s see, where to begin. I already had a pretty good grasp on XML due to my work with our archive on campus. I had to help construct XML documents that were compliant with Dublin Core and our own metadata format Cedar. Of course, I didn’t learn everything there is to know about XML (I still don’t know it all I started back at the basics. I looked at the W3 school’s website and some of the XML tutorials as well as the DTD tutorials. I had no experience with DTDs and the site wasn’t really a good place to start. I understand parsing documents but it still was confusing and not explained well at all.

Next I looked at resources from our university’s library. We just got access to O’Reilly’s Safari online book database so I looked up what I could find on DTDs there.  In the book XML in a Nutshell it was interesting to find out that many different organizations keep their own standards for DTDs.  It makes sense that these sorts of things should become standards within their respective organizations.

Everything on the Apache assignment went as detailed.  No problems at all.

Lesson in HTML

I learned some basic HTML in undergraduate school for my Graphic Design major about seven years ago.  I didn’t really become fluent in HTML and CSS until I went to graduate school in 2005.  I used some of the resources listed in the lecture (especially the W3C school site) and several books including Stylin’ With CSS and the CSS: The Definitive Guide to learn it.  I still refer to both of those books when I’m working on a project.  I prefer writing my code in applications like Bluefish or HTML-Kit-  something to help with closing tags or header information, but not as restrictive or complicated to use as Dreamweaver (although I do use Dreamweaver at work for things that require it).  Whenever I hit a problem with basic HTML (like forgetting what tag I need to use or simpler tasks) I either end up using the W3C site or just Googling it.  For something using layout tricks with CSS I find lots of good information at the A List Apart site.

Maybe I misunderstood exactly what we were supposed to do last week but it appears that I already did the assignment for this week in regards to the server.  I already edited the ifconfig file and restarted with no problems.  Adding the entry to the hosts file went without incident too.

Mah Netwerk … Let me show it you

Since we’re discussing networking this week I thought I’d post some pics of my home network and some of the devices on it.

Here we have my basic setup in the “office” (really a large sunroom at the back of the house).  Two desktop computers and the media server on top.  I’m trying to expand the disk storage and update the OS on the media server so that’s why the lid is off.  All three are hooked into 2 kvm switches to share the two monitors.  There’s an 8 port gigabit switch that these systems are hooked up to.  The router and cable modem are off screen to the left.

Next is the server I set up for school.  Notice the futuristic wall mounted LCD monitor.  It’s like living in the future!  For now the server is on my work bench.  In the lower right you can see a 4 port switch.

In the same room, I’ve got my softmodded Xbox plugged into the network.

In the den, I’ve got my hardmodded Xbox plugged into a modded router.  Since the Xbox can’t do wireless I set the router up as a wireless bridge to put the Xbox on the network.  Our main router is actually the same model.

In the same room I have my turntables hooked up to an older laptop.  I could never get the laptop to work on a wireless network (it’s that old) even with a PCMCIA card or USB adapter so it’s plugged into the wireless bridge as well.

Finally are my everyday use laptop and my Nokia N810 internet tablet.  Both see daily use on my wireless network.

Networking Setup

I was really hoping to take advantage of the assignment this week and get my home network setup the way I want it.  Unfortunately circumstances are preventing that.

I’ve got the demo server set with a static IP outside of the range assigned by the router’s DHCP.  Piece of cake.  I’ve done it before with several systems on my network already.  I was really hoping to run some cable under my house to my PS3 and hacked Xbox running Xbox Media Center.  I can’t seem to find the cable I had used at our previous house so I may need to order a new one.  It’s a pity because this really was the ideal weekend to do it.  I did get both my hacked Xboxes as well as my PS3 setup with static IPs so that is something.  If I have time, I’m going to tie down and secure my wireless network a little more stringently this weekend.

For the presentation aspects of learning with this class I’m somewhat torn.  I learn best with audio/visula feedback so you would think the videos would be best but when it comes down to it, if it’s something computer related, especially command line, I’m much better off just learning with text.  To be honest, I feel like if I’m going to find something intersting it’s going to be interesting no matter what medium it takes but if something is boring, having to watch a video of someone go through process and steps I could much more easily do on my own by reading it is much more painful that having to read a technical manual.

Just my opinion. 

Users and Groups Discussion

I don’t really know what to say here except “piece of cake”.  I didn’t have any problems with either the server or the desktop end of the assignment.  I’ve had limited experience creating both from the command line.  I’ve generally used webmin or gnome.  It’s a pretty straight forward task.

It was interesting to find out the difference between apt-get and aptitude.  I was wondering from the beginning of the course why we were using aptitude.  After a little online research I found that aptitude actually uninstalls orphaned packages while apt-get doesn’t.  This means that after uninstalling a package that you no longer need, aptitude automatically removes the dependencies that the program used that aren’t used by any other program.  Apt-get leaves those packages, taking up space on your hard drive.  I’ll be using aptitude much more from now on.  It’ll take a little getting used to since I use apt-cache to search for packages etc. but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run to learn a few more commands.