Report of the Director for Innovative Technologies and Research
September 2007

Vanderbilt Television News Archive

A statistical summary of the activities of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive is available here: September 2007.

A cumulative statistical summary of the Archive's activities for 2007 calendar year is available here.

TV News Institutional Subscribers

As a result of the marketing campaign that Ron has been working on to identify and solicit new subscribers, we have received interest from the following institutions and have set up trial subscriptions:

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Columbia College Chicago Library
Long Island University
McMaster University
Minnesota State University Mankato
North Georgia College and State University
Onondaga Community College
Tennessee State University
University of Manchester
Tidewater Community College
University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Kansas
University of Nebraksa at Omaha
University of Richmond
University of Rochester
Washington and Lee University
West Virginia University

Global Music Archive

In order to meet the expected due date of a late October roll-out, Marshall worked on a number of programming tasks related to the Global Music Archive. One component of this phase of the Digital Collection of East African Recordings involves converting the resource from DB/TextWorks, the database in which it was originally developed into MySQL. It also makes sense to deploy this resource using the latest version of the perl-based database framework. The DCEAR resides on Library11, the main database server for the existing DB/TextWorks-based applications. This will be the first of the Lib11 resources implemented with the new framework.

For the last few months, Marshall has been working on developing a new version of the framework, primarily for the TV News applications that includes more advanced security, many more database features, more interface tools, and a more organized approach to the program files that comprise the application.

The implementation of DCEAR on Lib11 therefore involved the installation of the new framework on Lib11. This process involved:

Establising a new domain name for the server through DNS: diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu
Creating a new virtual servier (diglib) that will serve this application completelely independently of the existing DB/TextWorks applications served out under lib11.library.vanderbilt.edu/diglib
Creating all the supporting MySQL tables needed for the basic framework:
- staff (table for staff operators)
- groups (table for groups associated with staff operators
- members (table for registered customers for any e-commerce apps)
- dbcontrol (table for configuration parameters for each application)
- notifications (table to support event notifications to staff operators)
- messages (table to support integrated messaging)
- sitecomponents (table for the HTML components associated with each application)
- sitepages (table for HTML associated with integrated content management system)
Placing a copy of all the perl scripts associated with the generalied framework
Making server-specific configurations in the diglib-server.pl script which specify the domain name of the server, and the working directory for the framework and its support files.
Creating of a directory for temp files, logs, and images (E:\WebApps) and making the corrrect file security adjustments.

Once the new framework was installed and tested, Marshall moved over the existing database files for DCEAR and made the modifications necessary to operate under the new framework. The initial conversion to MySQL had been accomplished earlier, but was done under the older version of the framework.

The next step of development will include implementing the list of changes that the Bliar Library staff had requested be accomplished before its rollout. Jodie Gambill will participate in customizing the DCEAR database to the specifications given us by the Music library staff.

Meetings

Marshall participated in the regular meetings of OUL Staff, Strategy and Planning, Digital Library Steering Committee, and the Metadata Committee.

Professional Activities

Marshall was an invited speaker for the NISO Electronic Resource Management Forum held on September 24 in Denver Colorado. His presentation, titled "Electronic Resource Management: a review" gave a broad overview of the commercial products currently available and how the ERM genre fits into the broader trends in library automation.

Marshall was also invited to speak at the International Group of Ex Libris Users Annual Conference held in Brno, Czech Republic on September 4th. He gave a presentation on Primo in the context of next-generation library interfaces in the morning session and paricipated in a panel in the afternoon on "Examining the ILS." Marshall also spoke with library groups in Vienna, Austria and Zurich, Switzerland on trends related to next-generation library interfaces and Vanderbilt's experiences with Primo.

On September 9th, Marshall delivered the lead-off presentation for the Symposium on the Future of Integrated Library Systems organized and sponsored by the Lincoln Trails Library System held in Champaign, IL.

Marshall wrote several short articles for the June issues of ALA TechSource Smart Libraries Newsletter. Marshall's regular column in Computers in Libraries was titled "Librarians face online social networks".