A weavolution "Library" database listing that would allow everyone to add books and make comments or reviews would be useful. A lot of people post references, but to find them now would take sifting every post of every group. I would like to see it contain Author(s), Title, Date, Publisher or ISBN, and comments/reviews with names of the posters.
Laurie Autio
Laurie, do a search here in Weavolution for librarything...this has come up before, in summary most of our suggestions to save database resources and programming costs was for folks to use librarything. Most folks use librarything.com for their personal libraries. Not sure how to integrate it but that seems the most reasonable thing to do, it is free on a small scale which is the format I use...regards Deb Mc
I've been using LT for years and long ago passed into paid format. I've got about 700 weaving/art/math books there and someday will get all of those in. It has plusses and minuses, but generally I like it and use it often. However, most of the weavers are not connected there and a general search on weaving (or some weaving related term) is rather hit or miss unless the book is owned by a number of people (upping the odds that one will have tagged it in a way you can find). I'd like a quick way to see what people are recommending here in all the various groups and forums.
Laurie Autio
We now have a group landing page which allows you to see all the threads in the group. Here is the link for the Weaving literature group: http://weavolution.com/group/weaving-literature
Perhaps we can revive this group and develop a suggestion for how to include books in your profile.
Claudia
There's bound to be some sort of drupal bookshelf module, but as Deb says, it will take time and attention away from other things we really want to do.
We could add a field in the profiles specifically for librarything links, in addition to the existing "website or blog" field. If there's nothing there, it won't display.
Another option would be to contact librarything and ask to be added to the "Also On" list in the librarything profiles so that people could self-identify as being weavolutionaries. Ravelry is already there.I added Ravelry to my librarything profile as an example. You can see it here.
Let me know if you want to pursue this, and I can make the contact.
OK, I'm going to talk shop for a minute, because sometimes more precise terminology is useful. It seems the available "library" modules for Drupal are designed to pull the output (e.g., xml) of external bibliographic databases into Drupal nodes. I think what Laurie is talking about would require building a bibliographic database within weavolution.
There is a biblio module for Drupal. You can read more about it Here. This would give us a pre-built input form for entering citations and provide both keyword search and automatic faceting. We could link to the fuller records on librarything (but probably not pull in the LT record/tags - that's a licensing issue). User reviews could go in as comments, but I'm less sure biblio would support community tagging. A custom solution, which would involve developing a "feature" with its custom content types and views, would be more expensive and take more time.
Implementing biblio would be faster and cheaper, but that does not mean fast and cheap. We'd have to check with the site administrators about whether this module is stable and compatible with the existing structure of weavolution. They'll have to do the installation onto our "sandbox", where we can start to play with configuration. When we have a model, the site administrators install it on their testing server, check again for compatibility, then move it to weavolution proper and hope nothing else breaks. Their time is money. Unlike Ravelry, weavolution.com neither has inhouse development staff nor administers its own servers.
I agree a biblio module would be nice. But implementing a way for users to "favorite" group and forum posts the way they now favorite projects and users gets my vote for top priority. The Favorite Nodes module and the Favorites module are possibilities. Each works somewhat differently. The path to implementation would be the same as for Biblio.
In case you were wondering, this is the sort of improvement that donations to weavolution help pay for.
The more I hear about Drupal and the difficulties involved in everything, the more I wonder about whether it is the way to go. It is a very simple matter in a yahoogroup to set up a database. I can do one for books in less than 5 minutes, and anyone in the group can set up such a list and add to it without any special knowledge. It is also free. Why is Weavolution attached to Drupal when it is so cumbersome and expensive to deal with?
Laurie Autio
I don't know enough about 'computerese' to comment on how to create a library on Weavolution but I did run across this blog. Dawn is currently writing short reviews of books in her weaving library. Maybe this will help in the short term.
Carie
Adding a link to LT in the profiles would not be terribly helpful. There are too many people to search through one at a time to pick up these links. Encouraging people who are here to join the "Weavers" group on LT might be helpful, as one can search group holdings. Starting another LT group just spreads it around more.
Re the blog approach, it is nice that Dawn is doing this, but again searching gazillions of blogs for a few nuggets of reviewed books which may or may not include the esoteric things I am looking for is not really an efficient exercise.
Then there is the same problem with general links, no central place to post them...
Laurie Autio
And then there is the eternal problem with "keywords" - if there isn't a fixed list to choose from, there is bound to be a number of "almost"-entries. - see (for instance) the project tags - there are both "towel" and "towels", perhaps there is one "twoel" too. Thus Collingwood's books might be tagged rug, rugs, shaft switching, shaftswitching... and one search would not turn out them all.
Kerstin, who used to be a db administrator in an earlier life...
Kerstin, with your background, you'll recognize the importance of a well-designed input form to creating consistent data. Drupal provides a host of options for creating thesauri, drop-down lists, embedded help, required fields, etc. So far, we have not exploited these capabilities in, say, the looms or drafts databases and we are now paying the price. I believe addressing that lack (and involving people with your sort of experience to do it) is one of the priorities Deb spoke of.
Laurie, why not start that yahoo groups books database and show us what you have in mind? Maybe we can leverage it into weavolution. More directly, why not either repurpose the weaving literature group or start a group specifically for book reviews (one book or video per post with additional reviews added as comments). Maybe it could be promoted to forum.
Although it does not meet Laurie's specifications, I would like to see weavolution added to the list of social networks linked to by LT, and also see more LT links appear in weavolution profiles. That way, once I identify an expert on a particular topic here on weavolution, I might get to peek at their bookshelf.
Ok, I set up a new yahoogroup called Weaving Books. Within it I set up a database for books. Total time, about 10 min. Cost, free. Cost to join, free. Hairpulling, none. Go here to join:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WeavingBooks/
Register (free) if you have not registered with yahoo before. That will allow you to access the webfeatures including the database below.
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WeavingBooks/database?method=reportRows&tbl=1>
Laurie Autio
Hi Laurie,
For the end user, creating a database in Yahoo Groups is easy. But developing the ability to create databases on the fly, in a secure and easy-to-use manner, is not! Yahoo! actually has an entire software team dedicated to building and maintaining Yahoo Groups. Similarly, creating a loom or project may appear easy, but is the result of much behind-the-scenes work.
Drupal is extremely powerful, in that you can "plug in" free, pre-written modules to get functionality that you would otherwise have to pay lots of money to develop. For example, the Groups and Forums modules come "for free" with Drupal, as does all the user login, security, etc. These would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to develop independently. We get all this free with the platform.
That said, considerable work needs to be done any time we add a module. I work in software development, and it's estimated that development time only accounts for about 1/6 the time/cost of a software project. Even with a prewritten module, you need to design all the pages it will be displayed on, figure out how to fit it into the existing user interface, code up the HTML for the page templates, configure the module, write the documentation, and (most importantly!) test everything to make sure it works and doesn't break something somewhere else. This all takes time, and since we work with a contract development house, time = money. So even with most of the development done for us, we still have to spend considerable amounts to implement a new module.
I hope that helps explain why things appear so complicated and expensive to implement. Writing software can be tricky!
Tien
Um, how secure does a list of weaving books (or looms) really need to be?
Second, why rely on a program which does not have the basic ability to plug in a simple build your own database without massive money and time?
I have watched Weavolution struggle with these issues without resolution for too long. Everything is a hassle. The lack of functionality in the databases and inability to move forward with changes in a timely fashion ultimately hamper the social interaction aspects. Perhaps it is time to investigate other base programs which are plug and play to a higher degree.
Laurie Autio
Security is not always about keeping your account number secret - in this case it can perhaps be called "reliability" instead.
One idea with a (shared) database is that all should be able to add to it, and that all should be able to retrieve information from it.
To retrieve data you normally use a "keyword" (or several). If every user ("adder") is allowed to create their own keywords, chance is high that many many entries will be missed in the searches. Like this: suppose you call it "rug", your neighbour calls it "rugs" - and I, being foreign, will call it "carpet". Our three different books will not be found by doing one search (unless the searcher is inventive enough to guess that s/he should try with rug AND rugs AND carpet).
If, instead, there was a thesaurus, the "adder" would be presented with a list of possible words, would choose one (or several) to describe the entry. The searcher would be presented with the same list - and all books would be found.
For a thing like this, there has to be ONE person (ok - "function", then) to be in charge of the thesaurus. Every other user would have to either put up with what is there, or apply for a new word to be added to the thesaurus.
One of the bigger lending-library-systems in Sweden does not have a thesaurus. This makes it virtually impossible to find a book that you do not know the title of... Searching for spinning books (that I already knew of...) turned up these keywords: spinning, spånad, spinna, spinnrock, ullspinning, linspinning. The only searchword that would turn up most (but not all!) of the books would be *spinn*, but it turned out that wildcards were not allowed at the beginning of the word...
This thinking is useful even if you are the only user - because it is easy to forget exactly which words you have already used, and because it is easy to mis-spell when entering. A book by (say) Coolingwood tagged bugs would then slowly die, forgotten in the cobwebs of the database. Granted, it would never be found if you searched for Collingwood, but at least it *would* if you choose rug from the thesaurus list!
Yes, multiple keywords are a problem. However, it is not enough of a problem not to have a bibliography database. An alphabetical listing, even without keywords would be helpful. Searching, even by hand, through a list of books is far easier than searching every message in Weavolution to try to find books people have mentioned, which is nearly impossible. Most of the databases I know allow wild card searches. Yahoogroups have a way to set up a database so anyone in the group can enter, and a moderator can edit as needed (as you mention, people tend to be sloppy). LibraryThing also has a way to check your tags and adjust them to get rid of the kinds of inconsistencies you mention.
Anyway, it is clearly too much for Weavolution. It is too bad for beginners, who many not realize what a wealth of information (and education!) is available beyond Handwoven, Handweaving.net, and whatever few weaving books Interweave chose to publish this year.
Laurie Autio
LibraryThing has export options (either tabbed or comma-separated values), which would help existing LT users import their weaving book lists into Laurie's Yahoo database, provided yahoo supports uploading a tabbed or csv file. Ravelry supports importing from LT in their "library" feature, however Ravelry's library doesn't meet Laurie's criteria - a user can only see their own bookshelf.
Because the yahoo group requires a yahoo logon to view/search the database, as well as to add items to it. It doesn't look like we can leverage the data in Yahoo to display results in weavolution, the way we did with Google calendar for the classes. LT does have various APIs that might help integrate its existing content into Weavolution searches, but weavolution's status as an LLC is a complication. This will take more reading.
As Tien indicated, Yahoo groups is an entirely custom software application developed by and for a commercial entity. So it LibraryThing. So are Facebook, mySpace, etc. Ravelry is based on Drupal. Gee, Laurie, what alternate software platform ("base program") do you know about that we don't?
And if we do tweak the existing functionality so that users can 1) favorite and 2) tag any group and forum posts, then we could begin to tag book reviews in weavolution so that they will be easier to capture when we eventually set up our bibliographic database. All of this is doable.
All things are possible, but it comes down to a matter of priorities and time (and to a lesser extent, money).
Hello everyone. Claudia has asked me to add my thoughts to this discussion. Please allow me to introduce myself first.
My name is John Johns. I have 15 years of experience in developing software, and several years of experience managing software projects. Since September, I've been providing free project consultation for Weavolution. There are many projects that members would like to see added to the site, but a limited amount of technical resources available. In the background of discussions like this one, we have been narrowing our focus on the improvements we think will have the greatest positive effect for the staff and community.
This is going to be a bit long because I want to pull attention from a focus on a single thing - such as the Library database proposal - back to the bigger picture.
The main criticism in this discussion seems to be that features cannot be added as easily on Drupal as they might on other platforms. Yahoo! Groups was mentioned as a solution, because it already has a Database feature.
So, let's look at Yahoo! Groups.
A Yahoo Group provides the following areas: Messages, Files, Photos, Links, Databases, Members, and Calendar. It is a fine system for creating a mailing list and sharing information.
Theoretically, you could create something with most of Weavolution's functionality by creating multiple Yahoo! Groups. But you cannot customize the experience beyond a few color changes. The sections listed above are what you have. You can't add more. You can't add live chat. You can't add a weaving calculator. There is no way to aggregate and import blogs, or promote the project of the week, with picture, on the "landing page."
You cannot create separate message areas for different topics. Everything is lumped into one sum - the mailing list - and you either subscribe and receive it all in e-mail, or you have to pick through the threads looking for your relevant interests using the web interface.
And, you can't create groups within groups - instead, an interested party must create their own separate Yahoo! Group. If the administrator(s) of that group becomes inactive, the members of the group must appeal to Yahoo! if they want to regain control. And there's no clear way to indicate a strong relationship between two Yahoo! Groups.
Finally, let's look at the database support. It's very limited. Sure, you can create a listing of books, that's easy - that's nothing but a table. You could put that in an Excel spreadsheet and post it in the files on Weavolution, and it would be about the same. How do you make it so that someone looking over the book list can click and be taken to reviews for that book alone? (Remember, the messages in Yahoo! Groups aren't forums.) How do you perform an advanced filter on the database, listing only titles printed between 1971 and 1979 with the word "Yarn" in the title?
Some people like Yahoo! because it's large and has lots of money and has been around for years, and they're certain it will continue to be there. To that, I have one word for you: Geocities. According to Wired.com, there were over 38 million pages on Geocities when Yahoo! shut it down in 2009. The reality is that a small, dedicated community has a greater chance to last when they control their own assets, where if the owner of a loved and respected site wishes to step down, they are more likely - due to their own passion for the community - to pass the torch to another rather than shut down a useful service. Don't expect that sort of passion from Yahoo!.
Now, I want to be fair. There's no question that tasks that are easy on Yahoo! will be more difficult on Drupal. I recognize and sympathize with the frustration of Weavolution's members when something seems so simple elsewhere, and to be told that it just cannot be done at the moment on the Weavo site proper.
It may even be appropriate for now to make use of external resources such as Yahoo! for tasks like building a book library. While a login is required, Yahoo! supports exporting databases from their Groups, so it might be possible to start some projects there with the plan to later import the data into Weavolution, where it can be extended upon and more fully integrated with Weavolution's resources like the forums and commenting systems. (At that point, the Y! database would not be further maintained.) Is this an acceptable compromise? I can't promise when Weavolution will have a library module ready, and if Y! is good enough for present needs then I think that's a great place to begin.
There is a trade-off between the simplicity of a free commercial service, and the extendability and power of a customized website. Ultimately, I am confident that the decision to provide a tailored experience for Weavolution's users will prove to be the correct choice.
There are several different base systems available for providing this experience. Competitors in the field include Joomla, Plone, and Wordpress. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but all of them require that a site's staff have a certain amount of technical expertise, or money to hire that expertise, to integrate features desired by the site's community.
So where do we stand with Drupal? I think it is a good choice. Drupal's use is continually growing. You may be surprised to learn about some of the sites that have found Drupal to be appropriate for their needs. Garmin.com, Ebay.com, RestoreTheGulf.gov, BestBuyMobile.com ... all are using Drupal. Want to see more? Visit http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites to read about over 200 different sites using Drupal in some way. (Dries Buytaert is the original author of Drupal.)
