Elias Tzoc blog!

It’s now Monday, January 6, and I was supposed to be back on campus … but the extremely cold weather conditions forced/convinced me to stay home and here I’m starting a new year with some early notes for 2014.  Last year was quite successful and busy, the debut of the Center for Digital Scholarship allowed us to start working on more intentional collaborative work with faculty … among our first examples are: a new website for the Digital Literacy Partnership project with V. Ubbes, a digital archive for the CAWC lecture Series with MJ Berman, an e-book project on Digital Composition with H MacKee, and an NEH grant proposal with AE Armstrong and B de Schutter … as with most projects, what we’ve accomplished so far is a good start and it exemplifies what can be done, but if we want to do more … then time and resources will be part of what we’ll need … and this is where writing some grant proposals seems to be part of my to-do list for the first semester of this year.

Writing grant proposals and articles for publication can be fun, engaging and very rewarding  –but I have to say that from time to time, I do wonder what if I can spend more time writing “pure code” … oh well, this is one of the ongoing dilemmas I have whenever I try to plan for a new year.  On one hand, finding the right balance between writing code and the other type of writing can be a bit tricky; on the other hand, my 2013 dossier definitely looked better when I had some decent entries in each type of writing.

Bottom line -and at least for now- my current plan for this new year will include: writing 2-3 articles, the first one is currently in progress and due in about two months; 1-2 grant proposals, one of which is also due in late February; help deploy a DSpace 4.0 instance and decipher/customize the JSPUI new interface; get back to some Drupal development and help with the library website redesign; get a better understanding of the bootstrap framework; work and maybe publish a plugin for Omeka or WordPress; and also wait about some very important paperwork decisions later this year

For now, this is it, stay warm and felicidades!

.

It seems a bit hard to believe but this is already the 1st week of November and -before we know it- this semester will be over.  For me, the IMS 201 class I’m teaching is definitely my best excuse of say “YES, time flies and I’ve been super busy” … but perhaps the most exciting thing about this class is what will happen in the next 2-3 weeks as we’ll be creating several e-books in ePUB format. The e-book idea is a result of one of our own demo projects at Open House back in April … back then, Heidi McKee from English came to us and asked if you could help her in creating an e-book version for an open access book she was co-editing. Of course we said “yes” and with the help of Jason Michel we prototyped an e-book with three chapters using ePUB 3 standards and she liked it. In August, they published the book online and this semester, we’re finalizing the complete e-book version with its 14 chapters and multimedia files … anyway, this past weekend and as part of a documentation of the workflow and in preparation for some video/lecture classes, I created a video tutorial on how to create ePUBs using word and HTML files … if someone happens to be interested in this URL: http://vimeo.com/78566436

Speaking of videos and switching the conversation to some real work last month we also managed to complete the first set videos for the CAWC Lecture Series Digital Archive. This is one of our recently established collaboration initiatives with a center on campus, our role is to help in providing access to scholarly talks and at the same time we make a first step toward preserving these types of materials. We also used this project to test and evaluate a couple of video features (e.g. captions) using HTML5 … in late August, we also learned about a new video streaming service available on campus and after some initial tests, we’re definitely happy to have this integrated with our now locally hosted DSpace 3.0 instance. The topic of video streaming and HTML5 got our attention and interest that we even wrote a short article about -which was published in the latest issue of the Code4Lib Journal.

Another fun part of my work in the last 2-3 months has to do with another open source tool -that’s Omeka. Just in the last month, we’ve created 4 new instances of Omeka 2.0 for 3 different clients. A key feature we’ve found in using Omeka is the ability to install and customize plugins, so far my favorites are: Simple Pages, Embed Codes, CSV Import, Docs Viewer, and Exhibit Builder; plugins in my to-do list include: NeatlineSimile, Geolocation, HTML5 Media, OAI-PMH Repository, and SolrSearch. We plan to go live with 2-3 of these projects sometime in December, for one, we may even have the privilege to write/customize a plugin

Ok, that’s probably it for today … now back to some CONTENTdm and multimedia embed code … hasta el otro mes!

.

As of today, we can probably say that “summer is officially gone” and for me -and maybe for others- a valid question is: what happened to those summer projects? Well, part of the answer is: we definitely made some good progress on several projects such as the migration/upgrade to DSpace 3.0 for the University Institutional Repository and to CONTENTdm 6.x for the cultural heritage collections.

In July, I also worked on several Omeka (1.5 and 2.0) instances; perhaps the most exciting one was the “unplanned” Omeka & CONTENTdm Integration that Marcus Ladd and I worked on.  My contributions included two set of lines of code: a) PHP lines in Omeka (show.php) to retrieve the DC.Identifier value and generate a link back to CONTENTdm record and to embed an iframe with the CONTENTdm viewer; and b) JavaScript lines in CONTENTdm (fullbrowser.php) to check if the image viewer is being loaded in a regular window browser or an iframe; if it’s an iframe, then we added an extra CSS file to customize the viewer toolbar.

Speaking of CONTENTdm, the official launch for the new instance is almost there … here is a preview of the new site:

In late June, we learned that the Miami was using Kaltura to manage a portion of its videos, we looked at this service and our systems team scheduled a visit with our on-campus rep, we looked at the service and thought this would meet “all” the requirements we were looking for in our new video solution … now, we’re in the process of uploading 100+ videos; we also began a prototype of adding captions to these videos, we’re using Movie Captioner and we look forward to completing a set of videos in the next couple of months.

As for DSpace, we’re just days away to officially turn on the switch from the current hosted site to our local instance; the new interface is 80% based on the Mirage theme and perhaps the only modification (so far) was the integration of the Kaltura player using a few jQuery tricks.

  // hide default mp4 player in DSpace
  $("#aspect_artifactbrowser_ItemViewer_div_item-view #video").hide();
  // hide metadata field with Kaltura video ID
  $(".simple-item-view-other-kaltura").hide();
  // get Kaltura video ID
  var htmlStr = $(".simple-item-view-other-kaltura a:eq(0)").html();
  // alert(htmlStr);
  // replace video DIV with Kaltura code
  var htmlStr = $("#aspect_artifactbrowser_ItemViewer_div_item-view
      #video").replaceWith("<kaltura-video-player>")

For service activities, in late July the recently established Library Staff Appreciation Committee hosted a picnic and thanks to the great leadership of our coordinator -Tricia- everything went super. For the fall semester, we’ll be launching a monthly newsletter and we’ll also finalize the details for the Annual Award of the employee/s of the year. Outside of the library, I’m also coordinating the website team for the 2014 Freedom Summer Conference -this time, we’re very fortunate to have a student volunteer with some excellent graphic design skills.

And for Scholarship, in early August I -virtually- co-presented with Marcus at the 2013 CONTENTdm Users Group Meeting; our talk was on the Migration & Update to CONTENTdm 6.1, I joined them via WebEx and Marcus did an excellent job in demonstrating the Omeka/CONTENTdm integration project.  I mid August, I also co-authored a manuscript on Videos & HTML5, it’s still in review but it left us with an interesting new project on video captioning … OK, that’s probably it for today, this weekend will be a good time to finalize/publish my Niihka site for the IMS 201 class -which starts on Monday!

.

This month, as I worked on the final edits of my Dossier for Continuing Contract and Promotion, I was reminded that it’s been almost six years since I joined Miami University.  Of course, another reminder took place in early June when ESGO finished 6th grade -anyway, the final edits of a dossier can be tricky, on one hand, there is a page limit so one must be careful in what to include and how to describe each entry; on the other hand, every piece of information must be self-explanatory (and answer the so-what factor) –which would be helpful to the personnel committee and external reviewers.  As for how good I did with my own document … mmmmm … I guess we’ll find out in the next few months.  Another piece that I also enjoyed working on was the supplemental materials’ site.

Now, in preparation for the next academic year -or maybe for the next six years- the rest of this summer is a mix of several exciting activities such as:

• Digital Collections, in June I spent a good amount of time trying to “decipher” the back-end files for CONTENTdm 6.1; for instance, replacing the homepage section was a bit of a challenge.  But on the positive side, I definitely like the new image viewer and the web customization option.  The next/last major challenge for me/us will be getting the videos for two collections with proper HTML5 standards.
• Scholarly Commons migration, in July we’ll complete a migration from a hosted to a local DSpace 3.0 instance; four new modules in our list are: discovery for search/browse, statistics, controlled vocabulary, and an enhanced mobile theme -this last one is also a candidate for a new contribution to DSpace 4.0; also, a new community in SC will be the CAWC Lecture Series digital archive.
• Digital Literacy Partnership, after an unexpected admin error with this site, it seems like most of the web design work has been re-covered … the meeting with Valerie last week was a good confirmation that we’re -once again- almost there.  Now I just wish Omeka had a better way to export selected metadata fields.
• Freedom Summer, besides the work with the website committee for the 2014 Conference, I’m also helping with 1-2 FS grants -one is a for NEH and one for OHS.  Grant writing is also fun -but it can be very time-consuming.
• IMS 201, as part of the new adventure in the Fall semester, in July I also plan to finalize my syllabus for this class –which will most likely include an e-book project.  It also seems like Online Security & Privacy can be a good topic for some further discussion in class -it may even qualify for a paper!

Ok, that’s it for now … ahora mejor un poco más de la Copa Confederaciones!

.

This week was quite special for us … on Tuesday 4/23 our new facility was officially launched.  We had a good mix of faculty, administrators and librarians attending the event, the short program included remarks by Jerome Conley, Interim Dean & University Librarian, Bobby Gempesaw, University Provost, John Millard, Head of the CDS and demonstrations of existing projects -including three with faculty.

The latest project I presented was/is developing an ebook for an upcoming book “Digital Writing: Assessment & Evaluation” edited by Heidi A McKee and Danielle N DeVoss.  For this project, Jason Michel & I converted word files into HTML, created a basic CSS file and followed a set of steps for creating zip/epub files.  We also used Calibre to create a mobi file –which worked just fine on a Kindle app.  We look forward to completing this project later this summer.

Again, we’re now open and everyone is welcome to come/visit us … a working list of the type of services that the center offers is available on our website.

Earlier this month and as part of the idea of learning from others, I attended the Second Colloquium on Digital Scholarship at Case Western Reserve University.  The purpose and focus of the presentations were to highlight that producing and supporting digital scholarship is a necessarily collaborative process.  They had seven invited presentations from consultants, faculty, and librarians.  All sessions were video recorded and will be -soon- available on their website.  Overall, this program was a good opportunity to learn about the successes and challenges that others have dealt with when working on digital scholarship projects.   For us, the just announced Office of Research for Undergraduates may bring some new/exciting collaborative opportunities.

Last but not least, last week it was also good to learn that an article on Digital Diversity that I co-authored with Jacky Johnson will be published in a double issue of the Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.  Finally and on a different but related topic, the new book THE NEW DIGITAL AGE sounds like a ‘must’ reading for many of us

.