Andornot - Blog

Providing BC Educators with Alternate Format Materials for their Students with Perceptual Disabilities

jjacobsen — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:57:00 -0700

The Accessible Resource Centre – British Columbia (ARC-BC) is a collection of alternate format materials of recommended resources for the British Columbia K-12 curriculum that serves every school district in the province.

ARC-BC is managed by the Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired (PRCVI) and works in consultation and partnership with BC school districts, other alternate format producers, and publishers to provide recommended and requested materials in a timely manner.

ARC-BC collects, produces and distributes high quality digital and alternate format materials for use by students with perceptual disabilities as a service to BC school districts. Educators in all school districts are able to search this online repository or "digital library" to find and download alternate format resources related to the BC curriculum.

By providing alternate format versions of the standard print materials used in the BC curriculum in a centralized, coordinated and secure manner, BC educators are able to quickly locate and acquire the alternate versions needed, without having to scan and edit the materials while ensuring they adhere to copyright law.

Andornot worked with ARC-BC staff to specify, design and develop the first version in 2008. Numerous changes and enhancements have been made every year since, to improve workflow and resource access for users and ARC-BC staff.

The public face of the site gives participants a fast and flexible search, a shopping cart for downloads, and a personal area to manage their account profile, search alerts, and download history. Digital resources can be downloaded in a variety of formats for students with perceptual disabilities, and participants have the opportunity to improve the collection through the submission of new or improved material.

On the admin side, the site features online data entry with advanced file upload, user account administration, and site activity reporting.

From a technical perspective, the system consists of a .NET web application and MS SQL back-end, as well as full text searching using Apache Lucene.

Contact Andornot to discuss development of custom applications such as this.

New Inmagic Product Roadmap Webinar on May 21st

jjacobsen — Fri, 10 May 2013 08:51:00 -0700

Want the latest on new and upcoming releases for the Inmagic product line? Register below for an interactive session, where Phil Green and Dave Golan of Inmagic will give you a sneak peek at Presto v4.2 (which includes new faceted search and permissive dates capabilities), answer questions about DB/TextWorks v14 and WebPublisher PRO v14, and give you an idea of what's on the company and product horizon.

There will be two sessions: one at 11 a.m. Eastern and one at 5 p.m. Eastern. Each will last approximately 45 minutes and will include ample time for questions, feedback and input on future releases.

A New Website for McGill Universities Health Centre Libraries

jjacobsen — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:58:00 -0700

Check out the new McGill Universities Health Centre Libraries website! A fresh new design launched earlier this year.

http://www.muhclibraries.ca and http://www.bibliothequescusm.ca

The image below shows the earlier site on the left and the newer one on the right, with a more modern, clean look (click to enlarge).

Andornot has hosted MUHC Libraries' books and journals catalogues for many years, as part of our managed hosting service. Both catalogues are stored within an Inmagic Genie system, with a search interface built from the Andornot Starter Kit. Google book covers appear for many records, and the interface is available in both English and French.

In the new site template, the option to search the books and journals catalogues is provided on every page in a band across the middle, along with searches for PubMed, the McGill University Library catalogue, and MUHC's e-journal subscriptions.

For this project, Andornot updated the layout and design of the hosted books and journals catalogues to match the new MUHC Libraries website and co-ordinated with MUHC Library staff so both their new site and the updated catalogue launched at the same time.

SmarterStats and how to batch add IP address filters

tjardine — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:25:00 -0700

If you're using SmarterStats as one means of tracking site traffic (if site stats mean anything to you you should be using at least two means of tracking) that is also monitored by Pingdom (or any other monitoring service, but we highly recommend Pingdom), you'll find your stats are *slightly* increased by Pingdom's bots (which come from around 30 monitoring locations around the world with unique IP addresses for each). For example, if you're pinging your site once per minute that adds up to somewhere around 43,000 visits per month - a not so lovely way to pad your stats.

Fortunately, SmarterStats provides a means to filter out these requests. Unfortunately, SmarterStats naively only allows for one-by-one entry via a relatively clunky interface and can only filter on IP address, IP address range, host header inclusion/exclusion, file, and directory. We have contacted SmarterStats multiple times in the past for a means to batch import IP addresses or better yet, filter requests based on a specific user-agent request header (which you can set in Pingdom), but no solution has been forthcoming. We've added Pingdom-specific host headers where feasible, but for the most part we've had to make do with a very manual (and time consuming) process.

This state of affairs is so wrong on so many levels so here I am to say "no more!" Bring out some scripting and enough already.

Four caveats:

Tested only with SmarterStats v6. Future or past versions may not operate similarily.
You'll need direct access to your server's SmarterStats config files.
The script is for *nix-based systems and is only tested on a Mac. Therefore, Linux (whatever flavour as long as it's got uuidgen available) should work fine. Windows will be a no go. Sorry. Feel free to write a Powershell equivalent.
If this busts something or kills your hamster, we're not responsible.

As the Lorax would say, "You have been warned!"

The old way

For fun and jollies, review the usual, and until now only way, to manually add an IP address filter in SmarterStats:

Log in as a site admin in SmarterStats.
Go to "Settings".
Go to "General Settings".
Go to "Import Filtering".
Click "Add > Import Filter".
Select your import filter type, add your IP address, check "Make exclusions permanent" and click "Okay".
Look at your list of remaining IP addresses.
Look at the SmarterStats interface.
Add another IP address.
Forget to click save before navigating somewhere else. Lose all your entries.
Look at your list of remaining IP addresses.
Squint and try to determine which IP addresses you added and which ones you missed.
Count them again.
Cry.

And now for enlightenment

The first step is getting the goodies in the script. Relatively simple, but it does the trick:

# DESCRIPTION: Script to generate a list of all the latest
# Pingdom monitoring servers and export into an XML format 
# recognized by SmarterStats in a site's configuration file 
# (typically located in C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\SmarterStats\MRS\App_Data\Config\Sites\Site##.xml)
#
# USAGE: ./pingdom.sh | pbcopy to copy to clipboard
# or ./pingdom.sh to simply output to console.

ips=`wget --quiet -O- https://my.pingdom.com/probes/feed | \
        grep "pingdom:ip" | \
        sed -e 's|</.*||' -e 's|.*>||'`

for ip in $ips
do
        guid=$(uuidgen | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -d '-')

        echo "<ImportFilter>
        <Guid>"$guid"</Guid>
        <FilterValue>$ip</FilterValue>
        <MatchBehavior>Exclude</MatchBehavior>
        <Type>Ip</Type>
        <Permanent>True</Permanent>
</ImportFilter>"
done

All the above does is get the current list of Pingdom's monitoring servers, parses out the IP addresses, and loops through each while generating a unique UUID (GUID for Windows speakers) for each along with the surrounding necessary bits and pieces. Once you've got the above script located somewhere nice on your local machine, do the following:

Contact SmarterStats and ask them why they don't have a filter based on a request header user agent already.
Make the above script file executable. For example, assuming the script file is at ~/pingdom.sh, simply:

chmod +x ~/pingdom.sh
Generate the necessary XML and stick it in your clipboard by running the following (adjusting file name and location as necessary):

./pingdom.sh | pbcopy
Determine the applicable site ID/s. The easiest way is in SmarterStats site listing.
Make sure the site in question is not currently running an import. You may wish to stop your SmarterStats service. YMMV.
Locate the site's respective config file on the site's host server. This file is typically in C:\Program Files (x86)\SmarterTools\SmarterStats\MRS\App_Data\Config\Sites\Site##.xml where the ## is the site ID determined in the previous steps.
If it will be a lot of work to recreate the site from scratch, make a backup of the config file before proceeding any further.
Open the config file in your text editor and right after the <TimeZoneIndex> entry, add in your multiple <ImportFilter> entries which should be in your clipboard. If you can't find this, make a dummy filter request entry via the Web GUI and then located it in the config file afterwards.
Save after making sure you didn't muff anything up.
Reload your filter settings for the site and see all 30+ entries. Rejoice. Re-index if you need to filter out bad data from before. Rejoice again.
Repeat for all sites that use SmarterStats and are monitored by Pingdom. Note that you'll want to regenerate the XML in order to have unique UUID's for each entry across all sites.

Andornot Newsletter–March 2013

kbryce — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:23:00 -0700

Please check out the latest issue of our newsletter.

Andornot News

VuFind 1.4 Released with Features for Archives
Visit with us in 2013

Inmagic News

DB/TextWorks Version 14 Released

Recent Projects

Embedding Audio and Video Playback in Search Results

Tips and Tricks

Generating Additional Statistics from Inmagic Genie

Tweets of Interest

Please contact us for further information or to be added to our newsletter list.

Embedding Audio and Video Playback In Search Results

jjacobsen — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:20:00 -0700

Over the past year or so, we’ve helped several clients add digitized audio and video to their databases (mostly archival or historical databases). This content exists as both the digitized audio and video files, as well as the metadata to describe them. We've then helped publish the combined information in search results, embedding an audio/video player on the same page as the metadata.

Here are two examples of archival records for audio recordings, with a YouTube video embedded into the page:

The Canadian Jewish Heritage Network

The New Westminster Archives

With both of these records, only an audio recording was available. We recommended hosting the media with YouTube to give it more exposure (users searching through YouTube may come across it and then be led back to the originating website to search and discover more resources they might be interested in). However, YouTube doesn’t permit uploading of purely audio files, so to create a video, we suggested making a slide show. Almost every Windows and Mac computer now includes software for creating a video slideshow from one or more photos and an audio file, so this is easily accomplished. Ideally the photo(s) will be of the people or places in the audio recording.

With the slideshow created and saved as a video file, and uploaded to the organization’s YouTube channel, it was then a simple matter to add a VideoID field to the database and wrap some HTML around it in the web display to embed the YouTube video player right in the page. This method relies on You Tube to do all the work streaming the download which otherwise might incur significant bandwidth to the host site for large files.

Here’s another example, from the Heritage Burnaby website:

In this case, the record is part of an extensive database of digitized oral histories, where an interview is split into multiple audio "tracks" (select the "View all Interview Tracks" on the above page to view all the ones associated with this record).

Rather than rely on an external service for media hosting (and the need to make video files, and to avoid the advertising that appears over top of them in playback), Heritage Burnaby opted to use the Andornot Embedded Media Player, a jQuery-based application that plays back audio or video using HTML5 or Flash. This award-winning project was described in detail in an earlier blog post.

This technology works well when there is a large amount of media and more control is desired over its presentation than is available from YouTube and similar services. An in-house solution may also be required for access to the media from organizations which block social media sites.

The above methods are just a few of those available for connecting researchers and users with your audio and video content, and they apply equally to websites powered by Inmagic software as to other systems.

Please contact us any help we can provide with similar projects for your collections.

Inmagic Product Roadmap Video Available

jjacobsen — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:02:00 -0700

If you missed the Inmagic product roadmap webinar on January 15th, or the user group meeting in Toronto on January 30th, the webinar is now available as a video on the Inmagic website at http://www.inmagic.com/announcements-a-events

The one hour video covers features to expect in DB/Text v14, Genie v3.6, Presto v4.1, and Presto for DB/TextWorks, all due for release in 2013.

VuFind 1.4 Released with Features for Archives

jjacobsen — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:36:00 -0700

Version 1.4 of VuFind, a leading open-source discovery interface, has just been released. Andornot recommends VuFind as a great tool for integrating content from library catalogues and other databases and making it searchable with features and tools users expect from a web interface, such as:

spelling corrections and "did you mean?" suggestions of alternate terms and records;
facets, such as subject and author, to quickly refine a search;
options to save, email, bookmark and share searches and results; and
integrated content from external sources, such as book covers, reviews, and author biographies.

With version 1.4, a new "collections" feature makes VuFind an excellent choice for a discovery interface for archival and similar collections where information is arranged hierarchically (e.g. fonds, series, item, etc.).

These are two excellent examples of hierarchical collections within a VuFind system:

A more general VuFind demo is available at http://vufind.org/demo

More information about VuFind is available from this page and the VuFind website.

Contact Andornot to discuss how a discovery interface can provide the best search experience and features for your users, no matter what type of information it includes.

Inmagic and Andornot Joint Event–Toronto, January 30th

kbryce — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:36:00 -0700

Please join us for a special user group event featuring Phil Green, COO, Inmagic; and Kathy Bryce and Jonathan Jacobsen from Andornot.

Are you:

Interested in a peek at the Inmagic product development roadmap?
Looking for the latest information to maximize your investment in Inmagic products?
Curious to learn more about Inmagic's most recent product offering, Presto for DB/Text?
Eager to connect with your Inmagic peers to discuss best practices, tips and tricks?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, please join Phil Green and Inmagic Authorized Partner, Andornot, on Wednesday, January 30th from 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. for an Inmagic user group meeting in Toronto.

This educational, interactive session – open to all Inmagic users – will cover all these topics and more. Plus, beverages will be served.

See below for full event details. To register, please email Gina Napolitano. But sign up today – seating is limited!

Event Details: Toronto User Group Meeting

Date: Wednesday, January 30th
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EST

Location:
Intercontinental Hotel
Niagara Room (lower level)
225 Front Street West
Toronto, ON Canada
(800) 422-7969

Registration: Please send an e-mail to Gina Napolitano at gnapolitano@inmagic.com.

Special Note: Andornot will be exhibiting at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference at the Toronto Convention Centre, Booth 717, on January 31st and February 1st. Contact Andornot at info@andornot.com to request a login for a free pass to the exhibit area.

We look forward to seeing you on January 30th!

Andornot Newsletter–January 2013

kbryce — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:34:00 -0700