Tools To Know About: FOSS4LIB

Last week LYRASIS announce the launch of FOSS4LIB (Free/Open Source Software for Libraries), a website dedicated to providing guidance about Open Source software for the library community.

FOSS4LIB offers a list of Free or Open Source software and provides descriptions of the product as well as comments from users. In addition, the site includes 'Decision Support Tools,' worksheets that help you determine if Open Source is the right choice for you.

While very new, the list of software on this site is growing. FOSS4LIB can be an useful tool for determining if Open Source is right for you and what Open Source software is available.

Tools To Know About: Open Access Map

TakingITGlobal recently released an Open Access Map. This resource provides a searchable map and list that lets users locate Open Access Resources including repositories, policies, and journals.

If you look under Policies you'll see Oberlin's Open Access Policy listed and users can submit links so we can add our future Institutional Repositories to the list soon.

Tools To Know About: Video Converters

We have a couple NGL projects that include videos, and this week's tools are aimed at them. Currently the only player we have for the DRC requires flash files to stream them, and these tools are a few options to help convert video files into flash.

Adapter Mac & PC
This popular download is easy to use and has an impressive list of formats it opens and saves to, probably the best bet for simply converting your movie to the file type you want.

MediaCoder Mac & PC
For anyone who wants additional settings with converting, MediaCoder provides more control over transcoding parameters than the other freeware

iMove Mac Only
This popular and easy video editor that comes pre-installed on all new macs, can also be used to convert files. Just select Export using QuickTime from the Share menu and you'll be given a list of formats to save as.

Free Video Convertor- PC Only
If you need to edit your video on a PC, this tool combines basic editing function with a video converter

Tools To Know About: Folderizer

This short programs automates the organization of digital objects into folders. The DRC batch loader, and other load programs, require digital objects to be hierarchically arranged, with this program you can skip the annoying task of creating folders and move items into them. The program takes a directory of files and moves each one into its own folder, giving the folder the same name as the file.

On a windows machine, paste the code below into a text file and save as folderizer.bat in the folder with all the files. Then run it in the directory (right click it and hit "open").

@echo off
for %%a in (*.*) do (
md "%%~na" 2>nul
move "%%a" "%%~na"
)

Thanks to Kristen at Denison for the Folderizer. If you have any tools you'd like to share on this blog just let me know.

Edit: Here's a second folder program, this one just creates folders (nothing is put in them) and the folders are named with sequential numbers. Follow the directions for executing this the same way as the Folderizer.

@Echo off
set /a Name=1
md %Name%
:loop
set /a Name=%Name+1
md %Name%
IF %Name%==100 goto done
goto loop
:done

Tools To Know About: Brief Guidelines on Authority Control

A recent resource from North Carolina State University, Brief Guidelines on Authority Control Decision-Making answers your questions about the why, what and when of controlled vocabulary. This resource also goes over the basic architecture for setting up your own controlled vocabulary and provides a fairly complete list of authority control sources. If you're contemplating authority control for any of your digital collections, this page is a great place to start.

Tools To Know About: ReNamer

ReNamer is a tool that does exactly what its name implies, quickly and easily changes the name of files.

While the best digital workflows involve a consistent naming scheme when files are created, we can't always be perfect. When your workflow fails, ReNamer is there to efficiently standardize your file names and save you the tedious task of renaming them one at a time. A few NGL projects are using ReNamer now when batch loading objects that weren't saved with correct names. Currently ReNamer is only available for Windows, but there are similar (if not quite as good) options for macs.

Tools To Know About: Firebug

Firebug is an open source add-on to Firefox for live editing of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Firebug integrates with Firefox so you can easily access the code behind a webpage, navigate to the section you are interested in, and see the results of changes to the HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. We've been using Firebug a lot recently while creating the new DRC interfaces, and it makes tweaking displays much simpler. Firebug allows for easy testing and saves time by skipping right to the sections we want to edit and instantly showing changes.

If you're doing any web editing check out Firebug or, if you're a Chrome user, Chromebug.

Tools To Know About: Rapid Capture

The recent OCLC Rapid Capture: Faster Throughput in Digitization of Special Collections uses nine case studies as examples of how to simplify and streamline digital capture of non-book collections.

While The Ohio 5 already have processes and expertise in digital imaging, the examples in this report are useful on how to make processes more streamlined and handle larger volumes. The brief overviews address specific equipment choices, expected output, when and why outsourcing was used, and process bottlenecks. For anyone looking at digitizing a large, non-book collection this report can provide a great introduction.

Tools To Know About: 23 Things

23 Things programs are interactive trainings designed to take library staff through a course that introduces them to web 2.0 tools and ideas.

Over 500 different libraries have created 23 Things programs in the last 5 years and this post just points to a couple of them. The original 23 things program was designed by Helene Blowers at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in 2006. The PLCMC 23 Things is still up, but is a little outdated now. A more recent program is the 23 Things from The University of Saskatchewan. In addition, if you're interested in the 23 Things movement you can read 10 Tips About 23 Things by Helen Blowers.

Tools To Know About: Library Success

This week's tool is Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. This wiki gathers and organizes information about successful library programs and promotes knowledge and best practices that are often only distributed locally.

The information in the wiki comes from all types of libraries around the world and covers every topic that a librarian might encounter. Library Success has some content but also serves as a directory to available resources. Many pages point to institutional best practices, local experiences, and relevant blogs. While some pages have more information than others, Library Success is a fast and easy way to find resources on a topic. And it can be a way to share your local success stories too.

Tools To Know About: NGL 12 Steps to a Digital Collection

This week's tool is an internal Five Colleges tool, 12 Steps to a Digital Collection.

For a while now, our local project page has had a visual tool to track the progress of collections. This guide adds an in-depth explanation and how to guide for each of those steps. Each collection is unique and some have more steps than others, but in general, these 12 steps layout how an NGL project should progress.

(The links above go to the internal site, for public versions of the same thing see the public 12 step guide and public local projects page.)

Tools To Know About: Digital Oral History Tools

This week's tool is the Oral History Association's collection of resources for recording digital oral histories.

These resources are designed to help answer the many questions that come up when creating recordings for a library or archive. It goes over recording devices, cables, storage medium, how to adjust levels, and general tips for good recording. The Oral History Association also has a glossary for digital audio recording.

Two NGL projects are currently capturing oral histories, Writing Our Story: An Analysis of Black Student Protests at Denison University and Collecting and Digitizing Farmer Interviews in Wayne County, Ohio from The College of Wooster. When purchasing recorders for the Wooster project, we created a list of recommendations from Five Colleges staff and links to external reviews. If you need to purchase audio recording equipment it's a great place to start.

Tools To Know About: Seeing Standards

Seeing Standards: A Visualization of the Metadata Universe is an illustration of various standards and schema used in the cultural heritage sector created by Jenn Riley and Devin Becker from Indiana University Libraries.

Seeing Standards provides a visual display of how metadata schema and concepts are related. In addition to the colorful poster, Seeing Standards has a list of 105 major cultural heritage standards with information about what each is used for. Next time you hear a metadata reference you don't know, check Seeing Standards for a quick explanation.

Tools To Know About: Audacity

This week's tool is Audacity, a great resource for collections with audio files.

Audacity is an open source program for recording, editing, and transforming audio. This easy to use software can copy, mix, splice and apply effects to recordings in a variety of formats. In addition to functionality, Audacity is a great tool because of its easy to follow tutorials, so even novices can use this software with ease.

The Ohio 5 have a number of collections underway that involve audio files, many of them oral histories. With Audacity, the Oberlin based project Hispanic And Latin American Studies In The United States: Conversation Pieces has been able to improve the quality of oral histories originally recorded on cassette tapes in the field by reducing background noise.

In addition to professional use, Audacity can be great for personal projects too. Check out the tutorial on creating your own ringtone.

Tools To Know About: Omeka

Omeka is a free tool designed for cultural institutions to create websites to share collections and tell narratives. Intended as a place to host digital collections it's structured like a repository with a hierarchical order and Dublin Core metadata, but it lets curators easily arrange objects into narrative collections with text and images.

The Five Colleges have used Omeka to showcase a few digital projects. At Oberlin the History of The Carnegie Library collection tells the story of the library building. While a Wooster student use Omeka to create a Costume Archive as part of a local NGL project. Ohio Wesleyan is also about to launch an Omeka site as the interface for the local NGL project Digital Resources for the Teaching of the History of the Book. Though it takes a bit of setup Omeka can be an easy way to create a graphical interface for your collections. Have you used Omeka or are you thinking about it? Let us know in the comments.

Tools To Know About: Macros

This is the first in a series of posts that will highlight tools The Five Colleges are using with digital collections. The tool to start this series off is the little-know but very powerful Macro.

Macros allow users to record a series of steps in a program, then automatically play back those step at any time. Frequently macros are used in Microsoft Office and Excel to reformat text or data, run repetitive find and replace searches, merge information, apply functions, or transform data into another format.

We're using a few macros now with digital collections. OhioLINK has a fantastic macro that takes an Excel spreadsheet and transforms the data into XML ready to be loaded into the DRC -so much easier than typing XML tags by hand! We also have a macro at Kenyon that builds on the one from OhioLINK but lets users start with a student worker safe document (lots of locked down fields and lengthy explanations). And I'm just finishing one for Oberlin that can take an listing in Refworks and pull out the metadata for inclusion in the DRC.

My favorite use of macros is to prevent retyping of data. I started working on the Oberlin macro after watching a staff member copy information she looked up in the EJC (Electronic Journal Center) into the Oberlin DRC input form one field at a time. Now she can just export the EJC entry and run the macro. She still has to check the information and a bad export results in bad data, but it can save a lot of time.

If you work with digital collections and find that you spend time retyping information or are constantly doing the same few steps in Word or Excel let me know, and we can see about building a macro for you.