Coding for Librarians – Learning by Example By Yelton, Andromeda Book – 2015
What a strange book. Very thin, large format. It will be useful to Librarians who have not done much computer programming, and leads you through a few simple programming projects which could be useful in a library. Armed with this knowledge, and now having some programming skills, you are ready to attack larger challenges. There are many open source projects out there, take your pick!
The big problem with this book is that it does not list the code it is discussing. Its line-level comments “Lines 68-78 remove outdated files from ..” are not meaningful unless you are at your PC with the code on your screen. Worse, the Github project could have changed since the book was printed, so you would have to look back in old versions of the code. But the companion web site helps a bit with that (http://thatandromeda.github.io/ltr/).
Here are projects discussed in the book:
- in-browser text editor compose tweets with character counter: Javascript embedded in html
- ILS reporting10 Python scripts that do sql queries with sierra
- digital signage content queuePython that processes CSV’s
-
staff communicationAn app for reading room monitors to keep helpful notes for each other.
Built with AngularJS using angular-seed. - simplified FTP workflow Perl script get_vendor_edi.pl gets something from an Oracle DB.
- microdata prototypeRuby: searches ElasticSearch for ‘resources’.
- preparing files for repository ingestJava: File Analyzer and Metadata Harvester – Ingest dspace
- automatically georeferencing imagesPython: A tool for ArcGIS 10.1 and up that georeferences large quantities of scanned maps and airphotos using an Excel Workbook index.
This tool is designed to work out-of-the-box, and requires and ArcGIS Desktop Advanced License to work. - faster institutional repositoryRuby: UC San Diego Library Digital Collections Public Access System.
A Hydra repository backed by DAMS Repository.
damspas/blob/develop/app/controllers/file_controller.rb shows how to access Solr from Ruby. - organizing LibGuidesJavaScript: Page organizing script for http://libguides.princeton.edu/politics
- checking file metadata fasterPython: Miscellaneous scripts for file management and digital preservation. Solr.
- converting MARC21 to BIBFRAME RDF graphPython: This small socket server wraps the Library of Congress’ marc2bibframe.
- more ..
Topics:
- Libraries Data processing.
- Electronic data processing.
- Libraries Automation.
- Computer programming Study and teaching.
- Scripting languages (Computer science) Programming languages
- (Electronic computers) Microcomputers Programming.
- Open source software Library applications.
