I've been using Omeka for about a year now in my information
organisation and metadata classes. I have the students enter metadata
using the normal entry form, but also installed the GenericXMLImport
plugin and have them upload hand-created XML files to Omeka through
this plugin. I think it depends on what sort of XML work you want to
do in the class.
Omeka also has plugins for OAI-PMH (harvesting and acting as a
harvestable repository). I usually have students create OAI-PMH query
URLs by hand as well as through the provided form. I have also had
them run this through Yahoo Pipes since it has a simple XML parser.
I'm currently trying out a copy of a Koha Virtual Appliance
(http://kylehall.info/index.php/projects/koha/koha-virtual-appliance/)
to see if this will give students a chance to work with MARC records,
but I've only just started looking at this so I can't comment on its
usability for class yet. Blacklight sounds like an interesting
alternative though.
Margaret
--
Margaret E.I. Kipp, PhD
Assistant Professor
Information Organization Research Group
School of Information Studies
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
[log in to unmask]
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kipp/public/
http://www4.uwm.edu/sois/research/iorg/
On 4 August 2012 10:30, john passmore <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What about something from the archives/museums world? Something like
> CollectiveAccess or even Omeka?
> John
>
> On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Owen Stephens <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On 3 Aug 2012, at 15:56, Joseph Montibello <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> > search, you could probably do worse than to install Blacklight. It
>> > probably doesn't really meet the "simple" criteria - there's a lot more
>> to
>> > it than I could talk about. But getting it out of the box, turned on,
>> and
>> > searching against a few records is something that you and students could
>> > probably manage. I've got a year of unix/ssh/command line experience and
>> > with a bit of mucking about, googling, and asking for help I was able to
>> > get a local (non-production) instance up and running, so it's definitely
>> > easy enough.
>>
>> I'd agree - either Blacklight http://projectblacklight.org or VuFind
>> http://vufind.org are straightforward to get running. I've found
>> Blacklight setup using the Ruby Gem very easy both on Windows and OS X.
>> Since they are both powered by Solr and use SolrMARC there are a lot of
>> similarities on the indexing/searching side. However on the interface side
>> they differ in terms of setup - so it might be this that would sway you one
>> way of the other (or a preference for PHP (VuFind) or Ruby (Blacklight)).
>>
>>
>>
>> >>
>> >> Lesson: Interfaces, usability, accessibility
>> >> Exercise: Use the OPAC, populate it with some data, assess its usability
>>
>> Once you've got VuFind/Blacklight setup populating with data is a matter
>> of uploading some MARC21 records - Blacklight comes with some test records
>> bundled, I suspect VuFind does to but can't remember
>>
>> >>
>> >> Lesson: HTML/CSS
>> >> Exercise: Use CSS to skin the OPAC, customize the HTML for your "site"
>>
>> This is slightly more complex I guess - both systems can be highly
>> customised, but in either case it isn't necessarily just a matter of
>> editing CSS or HTML. Both use templating systems and both have
>> configuration files that control certain aspects of the interface (e.g.
>> what is searched, how facets display). CSS is probably more straightforward
>> - VuFind you can just drop in CSS to override the default - not sure about
>> Blacklight
>>
>> >>
>> >> Lesson: Data management, search, IR
>> >> Exercise: See if we can peak under the hood about how the OPAC's search
>> >> works
>> >>
>>
>> I think this would be the real strength of using Blacklight/VuFind -
>> Solr/Lucene is a powerful combination, and used widely outside the library
>> sector. You can also configure the indexing to a high degree - lots of
>> options, the most basic of which I explore in
>> http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2012/07/marc-and-solrmarc/
>>
>> The thing I really like about this is students would see some of the
>> complexity of MARC as well as some of it's utility - and where it doesn't
>> work well
>>
>> >> Lesson: Interfaces to data: databases, XML, SQL
>> >> Exercise: Use the OPAC as an living example to work with those
>> interfaces
>>
>> This is less well served by Blacklight/VuFind - no database, no SQL.
>>
>> >>
>> >> This idea primarily came from trying to get some simple XML/SQL
>> >> exercises that didn't suck (the setup for these environments is almost
>> >> as involved as any exercises itself), and the fact the previous classes
>> >> really liked dissecting the nextgen catalogs we've explored from a
>> >> software selection and 2.0 integration perspective.
>>
>> Unfortunately it may be that Blacklight/VuFind don't work for your
>> scenario because they don't provide an environment for SQL. You could do
>> some XML stuff (there is configuration files, and Solr can be updated via
>> XML messages) - but I'm not clear whether this is the kind of XML work you
>> want. However, I do think they open up some other avenues that are well
>> worth exploring, and use technologies that are going to become more
>> relevant in the future.
>>
>> Another option might be BibServer, which uses elastic search rather than
>> Solr - but I've never tried installing it
>> http://bibserver.readthedocs.org/en/latest/install.html
>>
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