2010/01/03-06 back to the grind!

It was a good first week back after winter break. I deployed an early beta version of a request tracker for circulation. J.P. likes what I showed him, and recommended that we extend the tool to also track missing-trace requests. I'll pickup work on that tool in a couple weeks.

I released a vufind patch to fix a bug in the link-resolver integration.

I wrote a javascript module that integrates the new webcat Voyager OPAC with the click tracker.

I normalized the advisor names in our ETD collection. Scanning through the spreadsheet of 7000 names was annoying, but it will be easier next time. I also want to add some pick-list support to the form that the graduate student fills in to encourage the student to pick the variation of an advisor's name that is already in the system, but that's a project for another day. The e-mail excerpt below has more details.

Jon is going to build us a clean 64-bit devcat virtual machine for us to build up a fresh vufind install. Clint and I will probably work on that next week.

Finally, we ended the week with an e-mail exchange with University of Alabama and UA Birmingham libraries - which was unusual, but cool. One of UA's digital projects librarians asked us about our ETD server, so I asked about how they managed their ETDs. It turns out that UA's setup is a little different than what I expected. I knew that UA had signed a deal with UMI Proquest to manage ETDs, but it turns out Proquest only manages the student submission and graduate school review processes. After the grad school approves a pdf, then Proquest adds the pdf to Proquest's ETD collection, and Proquest FTP's a copy to UA (or UAB) along with a metadata file. From there UA and UAB have processes to publish the pdf to their own digital collection servers.

Subject: Re: Thesis/Diss Repository - Spelling of my name
Hi Professor,

I just ran an update against the ETD server that standardizes the
advisor names for the theses already in the system:
  http://etd.auburn.edu/etd/browse?value=VAZSONYI,+ALEXANDER&type=author
Let me know if you spot any problems.

New incoming theses will introduce name variations depending
on what the students enter, so we'll go back and update the
data again every semester or so.
I also want to patch the server to allow a student to chose
his advisors from a list already in the database,
but it will take me a while to work that code up.

Cheers,
Reuben

--- Alexander Vazsonyi 12/13/2010 12:48 PM ---
Thanks Reuben - that sounds great.

Alex

____________________________________________


--- Reuben Pasquini 12/13/2010 10:15 AM ---
Hi Professor,

Thanks for reminding me about this problem.
I'll try to work out a solution over the next couple weeks -
have something in place before spring semester.

Cheers,
Reuben


--- "Alexander Vazsonyi"  12/12/2010 3:22 PM ---
Hi - 

I was wondering whether it would be possible to consolidate the 6
different variants of my name in the thesis/dissertation repository.

Here are the variants I readily found . . .  

Vaszonyi, Alex
Vazsonsy, Alexander
Vazsonyi, Alex T.
Vazsonyi, Alexander
Vazsonyi, Alexander T
Vazsonyi, Alexander T.

Thanks,

Alexander Vazsonyi