November 3 Agenda

Blacklight Committers meeting Nov 3

Please add/refine/elaborate as you see fit. It would be AWESOME if we could actually code some of this stuff while we’re there. (heads down folks: → folks who will actually make it happen, perhaps pair programming on a second day)

Who is interested in staying another day to actually work on some of these things? Put your names on the "heads down folks" lines for the topics below.

People:

• Chris Beer, WGBH. arriving Wed 11/2 5:40pm, leaving Fri 11/4 7:55pm

• Jessie Keck, Stanford. Arriving Sunday evening, Leaving Thursday 4pm.

• Sean Hannan, Johns Hopkins. Arriving ∞, Leaving ∞. I live here.

• Rick Johnson, Notre Dame. Arriving Monday morning, leaving Fri 11/4 6:00am

• Molly Pickral, University of Virginia. Thursday only.

• Bob Haschart, University of Virginia. Thursday only.

• Joe Gilbert, University of Virginia. Thursday only.

• Xiaoming Wang, University of Virginia. Thursday only.

• Julie Meloni, University of Virginia. DLF on Monday, Blacklight on Thursday.

• Erik Hatcher, Lucid Imagination. Thursday for sure. Possibly Wednesday also.

• Christopher Ball, meta Heuristica. Thursday only.

• Chris Awre, University of Hull. Thursday only, but also around for DLF beforehand

Developer Topics

Discussion Topics

• Documentation & getting organized about it (Hudson & test suite as well)

  • heads down folks: ndushay

• profile blacklight & optimization (jkeck) / probably will lead into a discussion of rails3 slowdowns

  • heads down folks: jkeck

• Version releases, scheduling, and impact on wider usage (e.g., Hydra)

Development planning

• cleaner search URLs (CODEBASE-59)

Can we get cleaner search urls?
Is there a cleaner way to express a selected facet than f[format_facet][]=Book ?

• heads down folks:

  • statistics, gathering, & reporting (CODEBASE-164)

Would be great to have usage data for searches, etc.

Maybe something basic like http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5668/stats/ ?

• heads down folks: cbeer

  • Folders vs Bookmarks

What's the difference? What should the UX be? Can the codebase be unified?

• Bug fix/refactor: The "search context" stuff, and how buggy and complicated it is (a top priority for jrochkind)

Refactoring this feature (so it doesn't rely on session context?):
Showing item 2 of 9,874 from your search.
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Heads-down work on bugs and features

• Solr 3.x upgrade (cbeer)

  • heads down folks: cbeer, ndushay, …​

• Blacklight config refactor

• OpenSearch & autocomplete (jkeck wants to knock this one out at the meeting and has volunteered to organize this discussion)

  • heads down folks: jkeck

• Bug fix: exporting entire Folder, not just current page

• HTML validity tests (HTML5 vs. HTML4.1)

• spelling suggestions

  • heads down folks:

• right to left languages, CJK support

  • heads down folks: ndushay

UI/UX planning, design, and implementation

• Different views/skinning/CSS/local customizations

  • heads down folks: Joe G (interested in theming architecture)

• "more like this"

  • heads down folks:

• Range searching in core?

• Branding Blacklight as a more general purpose solr interface.

New features/extensions planning and development

• Book Cover fetching

  • heads down folks: jkeck

• some kind of browse/headings search or browse search substitute (jrochkind has ideas for various approaches, a top priority for JHU. UW’s work in progress is one model)

• call number virtual shelf browse. Not quite the same thing as headings browse above. desired by JHU & UVa.

• Exhibits in Blacklight

  • Rick J (Notre Dame)

  • Notre Dame has done some work w/ in this space for Hydra. They have called this functionality Atrium. Rick would like to make this work w/ Blacklight alone and will try to attend the meetings to discuss how this Blacklight can be improved to facilitate this kind of extension.

Other

• Installation - can this be more streamlined? (based on feedback from other UK users - see http://bruceatbrunel.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/switching-off-the-blacklight/)

• Comment from Boon Low (Edinburgh) on how Blacklight could develop:

  • First, extending Blacklight to provide domain specific services. Out of box, Blacklight is rudimentary. Work is often necessary to make it applicable in particular domains, e.g. as a library management system and RoR alternative to systems such as Koha and Evergreen. The extension could be subject based too, e.g. music, JISC subject portals especially these entail specific use case/integration. Second, enhancing the usability/usefulness of Blacklight for users and developers alike, e.g. making it even easier for developer to adopt the product, providing abstract layers for AJAX UI library, modernising the UI with HTML5 and meta-markups. Training and tutorial will help too.