Iıd argue that library hours are nothing but edge cases.
Staying open past midnight is actually a common one. But how do you deal
with multiple library locations? Multiple service points at multiple
library locations? Service points that are by appointment onlyı during
certain days/weeks/months of the year? Physical service points that are
under renovation (and therefore closed) but their service is being carried
out from another location?
When you have these edge cases sorted out, how do you display it to users
in a way that makes any kind of sense? How do you get beyond shoehorning
this massive amount of data into outmoded visual paradigms into something
that is easily scanned and processed by users? How do you make this data
visualization work on tablets and phones?
The data side of calendaring is one thing (and for as standard and
developed as the are, iCal and Google Calendarıs data formats donıt get it
100% correct as far as Iım concerned). Designing the interaction is wholly
another.
It took me a good two or three weeks to design the interaction for our new
hours page (http://www.library.jhu.edu/hours.html) over the summer. There
were lots of iterations, lots of feedback, lots of user testing. ³User
testing? Just for an hours page?² Yes. Itıs one of our most highly sought
pieces of information on our website (and yours too, probably). Getting it
right pays off dividends.
I donıt know if youıd find it useful (our use cases are not necessarily
your use cases), but I ended up writing up the whole process as a blog
post
(http://blogs.library.jhu.edu/wordpress/2013/07/anatomy-of-an-hours-page/).
-Sean
Sean Hannan
Senior Web Developer
Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
On 11/26/13, 6:41 PM, "Barnes, Hugh" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Great edge case, thanks for sharing that one!
>
>I think currently that could only be _encoded_ as a separate opening in
>the CSV file for loading into the database, which won't work because of
>my assumption. There simply isn't a way to express it. The relevant
>fields for the load file are startdate, enddate, opentime, and closetime,
>the last two being formatted as only "hh:mm", so it's assumed they relate
>to each single day in the range.
>
>However, I edited a "closes" field value directly in the test database,
>and to my surprise it rendered sensibly. I would have thought it would be
>rejected by a validity test I have which checks that the day portion of
>the start and closing datestamps are the same [1].
>
>I can't justify spending time on this in the near future, since it's a
>use case we are unlikely to need here. However, I'll log an issue, or you
>may. Thanks again.
>
>Cheers
>Hugh
>
>[1] https://github.com/LincolnUniLTL/calibr/blob/master/lib/app.php#L113
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>Bohyun Kim
>Sent: Wednesday, 27 November 2013 11:28 a.m.
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] calibr: a simple opening hours calendar
>
>Hugh,
>
>Thanks for sharing. A quick question. If a library opens past midnight,
>does that count more than one opening a day or no?
>
>~Bohyun
>
>
>On Nov 26, 2013, at 5:04 PM, "Barnes, Hugh" <[log in to unmask]>
>wrote:
>
>> Hi folks
>>
>> I took a calendar script posted to this list by Andrew Darby some time
>>ago and made some changes. I don't think there is any of Andrew's code
>>left, so I've rebranded it with an acknowledgement. (If I had my time
>>again, I might have coded it from scratch rather than built it over
>>Andrew's script, but that's somewhat academic.)
>>
>> The whole scoop is in the readme on Github:
>>http://github.com/LincolnUniLTL/calibr
>>
>> TLDR: With PHP, MySQL, some fiddling and data entry, you can publish a
>>library opening hours calendar on your website in more than one language
>>if you wish. It's a little quicker to enter common period patterns than
>>it used to be in Google Calendar. The output is more accessible,
>>customisable, multilingual, semantic, and hopefully more extensible
>>(iCal etc) than previously.
>>
>> Here's a branded reference implementation:
>>http://library2.lincoln.ac.nz/hours - it won't necessarily reflect the
>>latest version.
>>
>> Use it, improve it, feed back, or log issues right there on Github if
>>that works for you.
>>
>> Many thanks to Andrew for providing the foundation!
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Hugh Barnes
>> Digital Access Coordinator
>> Library, Teaching and Learning
>> Lincoln University
>> Christchurch
>> New Zealand
>> p +64 3 423 0357
>>
>>
>>
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