David Gaia Kano's Dartmouth Projects
April 2003 - April 2004

Last updated on 4/16/2004

Here are some of the things I have helped to create and are either released to the general community, in development or planned to be started from July 2003 through June 2004. More general goals are included in the last section as well.

Released:

In the following descriptions, only feature highlights are listed to give an idea of the scope of each project. Note that all of the systems use configurable HTML templates that can be easily maintained by anyone familiar with HTML. Thus when we need to change the look and feel of the Digital Library, this code will not normally need to change.

• The eResources system was partly rewritten and enhanced. The daily browse page generation went from being implemented in the WebObjects based application to a PHP script. The new page cache files do not contain any HTML, so the look and feel of the pages can be modified in real time via an HTML template, which is used to generate the HTML for the pages when they are requested. Searching titles now returns hits on folder names. The biggest enhancement to eResources was the addition of Best Bets ratings. The bibliographers responsible for each subject category set these ratings which are then used to flag the eResources they feel are most important. I created a "one click" rating system that made this process quick and easy for the bibliographers. The browse pages now have best bets stars next to those items and a link to take you to a page that displays Best Bets only.



• I wrote the Library News system. The home page displays designated news item headlines in a random rotation and also links to the page with a complete listing of all items. Any Library Staff member may submit a news item, which is then vetted by Mary LaMarca or Melissa Young for inclusion in the patron pages. There is also a Library Staff Only area of the news system, which works similarly but does not require the new items to be vetted. When a news item is submitted to the system, it can be set to automatically send a notification message to library-group@Mac via email and/or the Library Announcements Blitz Bulletin, on its publication date.



• The Class Sign-up system was significantly enhanced to allow for any number of Categories (eg: departments) of classes, each with their own set of customizable HTML templates and calendars. The webmasters in each department have the ability to create their own templates. Two departments have already taken advantage of this feature. The most striking example are the templates created for the Academic Computing & Library Workshops calendar and sign-up pages. In the original STDC version a different URL was required for non-kerberos and kerberos class participants. One class sign-up Url now supports both kerberos and non-kerberos users, made possible by a new mod_sidecar feature provided by Eric Bivona. In addition, the system now supports anonymous class attendee feedback to the teachers. With the adoption of the system by the Biomedical Libraries, we also enhanced the system to support hitchcock.org participants as well (again with the help of Eric to enhance mod_sidecar). With this version, the Research Computing installation of the old STDC version could be eliminated, simplifying maintenance.



• I wrote the application that displays the Library Trials Search / Browse page. Trials are eResources to which Dartmouth community has temporary access for evaluation purposes. This system was originally implemented to a specification written by Mary LaMarca, followed by some requests for modifications and enhancements by the Content Group. Trials may be entered ahead of time and they will automatically appear in the listings when they become available and are removed when the trial ends. It is possible to have a "Staff Only" Trial that is not displayed on the patron page. A staff only trials page displays all trials for which a decision is still to be made, even if the trial has ended. It displays additional information about each trial, such as vender contact information. Feedback on the trials is collected in the system so everyone involved in the decision making process has easy access in one place. Seven days before a trial is due to end, a notification reminder is sent to a list of acquisitions staff.



• I wrote a Group Feedback system to allow for anonymous feedback to be submitted to a management group or committee. While the feedback submission pages (for example to the Library Search Committee) are not authenticated, the pages that display the feedback (for example for the Library Management Group) allow only members of that group access. These group lists are managed by the previously implemented Application Authentication system. One or more members of each group can use that system to maintain their own user access list. By default, the read feedback page automatically displays only messages that have not been previously displayed for the current reader. There is a small form on that page to control automatic notification email messages when a specified number of new feedback messages have been submitted.



• I implemented the Digital Library for Alumni Access Request system. This form allows the alumni to enter their name, school and year information which is used to look them up in the alumni DND. If they are found an email is automatically sent (to the address they provided on the form) with the access name and password information. In the 4 month period ending on 4/15, 488 people were sent the access information and recorded in the system. Only 68 of those required manual intervention (via another page in the system, because they did not enter their DND name, school and year information that uniquely matched the DND). This saves Mary time, increases the quality of service to our alumni users and automatically maintains a list of everyone that has been sent the information. Thus if we ever want to contact all our Alumni users we could. This project was initiated by me when talking to Mary about the problem of providing access over the holiday break this year.



• I implemented automatic generation of the A to Z index page, as specified by Mary LaMarca. A PHP script "spiders" the digital library web pages (diglib.dartmouth.edu and selected www.dartmouth.edu sub directories) once a day, looking for a special meta tag. This tag contains the heading(s) to use in the index, along with any relative link tags to add to the url for that page for the specified heading. Mary is sent an email notification detailing the additions and deletions to the index, if any. If any of the main "starting" web pages is not available, the spider aborts, sends an email notification to DLTG and leave the previously generated index in place. This addresses the possibility of a webserver being down temporarily. The A to Z php script reads the data files generated by the spider to display the page. In addition, there is a data file that Mary maintains to manually add to the index, for cases where the target page can not contain the meta tag. To ease the process of converting to this system, a script was written to automatically add the meta tags to pages that had been in the old A to Z index.

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Under Development:

• I currently have a number of lower priority bug fixes and enhancements to implement in existing systems.

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Plans and goals:

• PHP 5 is soon to be released. It contains many new enhancements: full support of object oriented programming, exception handling, run-time type checking for function arguments, improved XML support and more. I am excited to rewrite some of my OO classes to take advantage of these features and enhance their interfaces for future use.



• I would like the opportunity to teach PHP programming workshops. One possibility is at the monthly Dartmouth Webmasters brown bag lunch. There may also be staff in the library that would be interested in a one or two session introduction. If there are Library webmasters that have the time to do some PHP programming, I could help them on an ongoing basis. Given some of the work I see already taking place, I think there are people that would appreciate and benefit from this kind of help.



• I've been thinking about systems we could create to help the Library increase the speed of its various decision making processes. Discussion systems, on-line polls / surveys might be examples. I think our ability to make rapid decisions in the face of rapid (largely technologically driven) changes will be very important in the years to come.