Hi, Kyle,

I did almost this exact thing several years ago (created an offline library
catalog for a prison education program) and wrote it up for the Code4Lib
Journal:  https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/6225 . The code, based on
an old version of VuFind, is incredibly outdated by now, but the principles
should still hold, and it would work for #2 if you indexed article metadata
rather than book metadata. I've indexed JSTOR metadata into VuFind (not for
the prison catalog, for a different thing), so I know that works. Somewhere
(I think) I still have the mapping I used to do that, and I'm happy to
share it, if you want it.  You would just need to sign a rider with JSTOR
to get them to give you the files of metadata for JSTOR articles.

Julia

........................................................................................

Julia Bauder

Social Studies and Data Services Librarian

Consulting librarian for anthropology, economics,

education, political science, sociology,

global development studies, and policy studies



On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 1:07 PM Kyle Banerjee <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 10:06 AM Kyle Breneman <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > My university has a program that offers classes at a nearby prison, and
> > this program is about to get a bunch of new laptops.  As many of  you
> know,
> > prisons are pretty restrictive and inflexible regarding technology...
> >
>
> My gut reaction would be to schedule a meeting with people who decide
> what's acceptable.
>
> Many things presented as security measures are really compliance issues.
> This means engaging people can help you avoid problems outright, negotiate
> paths through gray areas in ways that pass muster, and make people who'd
> otherwise shoot you down part of the solution.
>
> Many environments subscribe to "checkbox" security model. Failure to meet
> required checkboxes or triggering undesirable ones gets you rejected. This
> means your goal -- and the goal you present -- is to get all the right
> boxes checked. Don't get too hung up on common sense or actual technical
> merit.
>
> You might want to have a couple approaches in your back pocket to propose
> if the meeting goes really well. I suspect a more realistic expectation
> would be to sent back to the drawing board. I'd avoid anything people might
> have trouble processing like the plague. People always say no when they
> don't know what's going on, and that can color future interactions with
> you. Good luck on your project
>
> kyle
>