CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City (day 2, update 2:30pm GMT)

It’s now 8:30am on day 2 of CODI 2006 in Salt Lake City and I guess most delegates will be breakfasting at the moment.
Let’s catch up with the action…
Over at The Gordian Knot, Susan “suzyq” Johns-Smith has posted her analysis of the opening keynote speeches:
» A Cautious Beginning
Ben has confirmed that those librarians were doing the internationally recognisable “YMCA” dance:
» CODI 2006 photos (first set) are now on Flickr
And at www.thezbar.net, the anonymous blogger/bloggerette/bloggerino is indeed venting their spleen:
» VISIONS OF CODI: DAY ONE
…I remember being amazed at the number of people who sat knitting during presentations at CODI last year. I now have nightmares that one day I’ll do a presentation and the entire room will be filled with people knitting away (clackerty-clackerty-clackerty-clackerty-clackerty…) 😀

CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City (day 1, update 6:00am GMT)

It’s now midnight in Salt Lake City, so the first day of CODI has come to an end. However, I’m pretty sure that there’ll still be a hardcore of delegates hovering around the bar!
Let’s catch up with the activity in the last 12 hours…
Kevin “Fiddling Librarian 3.0” Smith has posted his summary of day one:
» Codi 2006 Day One
Ben Ostrowsky has posted another two articles:
» CODI 2006: SQL tips from John Craig at alpha-G
» A reflection on conferences
…and Ben’s also posted 82 photographs of the first day to his flickr account!


Garry Collum has also uploaded some more photos to his flickr account:

That brings the total number of photographs tagged with codi2006 at flickr to 121!
Phyllis (who is the Support Services Team Manager at Marathon County Public Library in Central Wisconsin) has also started blogging:
» Codi 2006 — Opening Comments by Patrick Sommers
And last, but no means by least, there’s a veritable plethora of pertinent posts over at the CODI 2006 / Salt Lake City Blogger blog!
» Robin’s Wednesday
» CODI 2006 / Salt Lake City
» Melissa’s Panel
» Amy’s Panel
» Melissa’s Disaster Recovery Program

CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City (day 1, update 1pm GMT)

It’s 7am in Utah, and I guess the delegates will be stirring from their Horizon filled dreams …or nightmares!
Weather wise, it looks like it’s going to be partly sunny with thunderstorms in Salt Lake City today, with a fair chance of rain.
Here’s an update on what’s hit the web in the last few hours…
Luke the Librarian has posted a request over at The Gordian Knot for any podcasts and audio feeds to be passed on to him.
Garry Collum (of Collum’s Column) has uploaded some photographs tagged with codi2006 to flickr, including these:

Garry is joined by redsquirrell57 who’s also posted some photos to flickr, including:

CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City

As the crow flies, I’m about 4,720 miles away from the CODI 2006 Conference, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to keep up with all the gossip from the conferences bloggers and flickr snappers.
So, for the next few days I’m going to try and bring everything CODI 2006 related I can find together into one place. Please feel free to post comments if I’ve missed anything!
Wednesday is the first day of the main conference, but I guess all but the most serious party animals will be tucked up in bed at the moment. However, lets see what’s out there already…
Kevin Smith (aka “The Fiddling Librarian 3.0”) has already posted a couple of entries on his blog:
» CODI Conference 2006 (01/Oct/2006)
» A Grand Day Out (01/Oct/2006)
Kevin’s also posted 62 photographs tagged with “codi2006” on flickr:

“betdjibouti” has also started a flickr set:

I had the great pleasure of meeting Ben Ostrowsky (aka “sylvar”) at CODI 2005, and I know from his blog that he’s jetting his way towards Salt Lake City. Ben was a prolific snapper last year, so hopefully we’ll start seeing some photos soon! Just looking at this photo from last year gets me drooling all over the keyboard — seriously folks, you cannot buy white chocolate covered pretzel sticks in the UK for love nor money!

It looks like a bunch of librarians (Mary, Carol, Robin, Melissa, and Amy) have got together to contribute to the CODI 2006 / Salt Lake City Blogger weblog.
Maxine has also started blogging about her trip to CODI 2006 on Maxine’s Place:
» Salt Lake City, here I come!

Next up, an anonymous delegate is posting at thezbar.net:
» VISIONS OF CODI: arrival
Finally, keep an eye on The Gordian Knot blog, as there’s bound to be some action on there soon!
Tonight is also the ’70s Party event, so I can’t wait to see some of the photos!!!

Converting Between ISBN-10 and ISBN-13

There’s been a lot of chatter on the web4lib list about converting from 10 digit to 13 digit ISBNs.
Casey Bisson has contributed an API to do the job which makes use of John Blyberg’s PHP script.
Here’s my contribution, which is deliberately different from Casey’s:

Rather than being an API, the idea is that you can either paste a list of ISBNs into the box or upload a file of ISBNs, and then receive a file which has the ISBN-10s converted to ISBN-13s.
By default, only valid ISBN-10s (i.e. ones with valid checksums) will be converted and the rest will be untouched. If you want to convert anything that remotely resembles a 10 digit ISBN (regardless of checksum), then you’ll need to tick the “don’t validate” checkbox before you submit.
If all goes well, then whatever formatting you’ve used will be retained in the output.
The file upload will attempt to process whatever you upload (inc. binary files), but you’re probably better off uploading plain text files. If you really really want to, you can try converting your favourite images to ISBN-13!
The script uses the following modules, so you can blame them if anything gets misconverted:

If you spot any problems or have any suggestions, please leave a comment!

Hitchcock update (w/c 2nd Oct)

The desktop wallpaper this week is a poster from “Family Plot“:

(click to view different resolutions)
On the wiki, I’ve started adding Hitchcock soundtrack albums.
Over at the BBFC site, they’ve just classified “Number Seventeen” from Optimum Releasing.  Also spotted that they’ve classified “Downhill” from Sound & Media — the running time matches the transfer used in the excellent German Concorde box set, so fingers crossed that we’re going to get a decent transfer in the UK!
Finally, Amazon France have posted my copy of “Bon Voyage / Aventure Malgache“, so I’ll post images as soon as it arrives.

logging yer 856’s!

A few people have emailed me for more information about how to log clicks on the external 856 links in HIP, so here’s how to do it!
Requirements:

  • a web server on which you can run a script (e.g. Perl or PHP)
  • HIP 2 or 3

The 856 links in HIP are built from the MARC map in Horizon, so the first step is tweak it so that it prepends the URL of a logging script in front of the actual 856 URL.  Here’s what our 856 MARC $u map looks like (split across several lines for readability):

<a class="smallAnchor"
    href="https://library.hud.ac.uk/cgi-bin/cataloguelink.pl?$_">
    {<img src="$9"{ alt="$y"}>|$z|$y|$_}
    </a>

To view the MARC map without line breaks (i.e. as you’d enter it into Horizon), click here.
Please remember to make a note of the original 856 MARC map value – you might need it!
The https://library.hud.ac.uk/cgi-bin/cataloguelink.pl bit will need to be changed to the location and name of your logging script.
My first version of the logging script simply logged the URL and the time, as I couldn’t figure out a way of capturing more useful info (such as the bib number or book title).
So, I brewed myself an extra strong coffee and sneaked up on the problem from a different angle!
Continue reading “logging yer 856’s!”

Hitchcock update (w/c 25th Sep)

I’ve stated adding a weekly Hitchcock desktop wallpaper to the new wiki, so I’m going to try and get back into the habit of regular Hitch related blogging at the same time.
The wallpaper this week is a poster from the 1936 film “Secret Agent“, starring John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, and Madeleine Carroll:

(click to view different resolutions)
October 1st sees the French release of Bon Voyage & Aventure Malgache by Éditions Montparnasse.

I spotted last week that Optimum Releasing had submitted a couple of early Hitchcock films to the British Board of Film Classification, so I emailed them and Emilie Barra was kind enough to reply and let me know that they’re planning a Hitchcock box set for UK release in early 2007. What’s exciting is that Optimum were recently acquired by Studio Canal, so they should have access to high quality transfers used in “Les Premières Oeuvres” box sets (vol 1/vol 2/vol 3). The planned Optimum box set will include:

Finally, recent additions & updates to the site include screengrabs for: