I buy a lot of really bad books on Amazon. They’re minor books, on fringe topics, and they’re usually well out of date. They’re also usually incredibly cheap, like two or three dollars, or some such. And while they’re generally pretty uninteresting, they can often offer a citation to support a minor point in a […]
So I set up Copilot last night. Copilot is GitHub’s AI that helps with writing code. I don’t think I’d pay the list price of $10/month for this type of service, but it is free to anyone with a GitHub educator account, which was enough to prompt me to try it. Needless to say I […]
While I was very optimistic about Vue Single File Components (SFCs) a few posts ago, I’ve been having some trouble implementing them in LibGuides. While you can upload whatever JavaScript you want to a LibGuides group (as “Customization Files”), I’m beginning to realize that the LibGuides interface really wasn’t meant to accommodate a SFC workflow. […]
In my last post I talked about pushing back on the complexity of JavaScript frameworks. Now I’m thinking about taking this further. In the name of maintainability, I think I am going to make an alternate version of our library page: a “minimum viable website”. I’ll strip out as much of the JavaScript as absolutely […]
Lately, I’ve been trying to push forward with best practices for our library webpage. This has meant moving toward Vue and moving away from jQuery. The result is a more modern site. While a lot of the changes that I’ve made recently have been invisible to the end user, there has been a lot of […]
One of the recommended ways to organize Vue code is to use Single File Components, and I have to say, they are wonderful. Instead of the traditional separation of concerns into HTML, CSS and JS, Single File Components allow you to separate your project into chunks that are intuitive to you. You get to decide […]
There is more than one way to simplify code. You could, for example, adopt new abstractions that make things that were previously difficult, easier to implement. Of course this requires learning new things, and it requires pushing yourself a bit to adapt. Or you could stay simple by not adapting. By using the same tools […]
In advance of a very busy summer, I have some free time right now to focus on the library website. So I decided that May is Library Infrastructure Month, and I have been going about on Mastodon pretending like this is actually a thing. It’s not entirely a joke. Academic libraries are very infrastructural projects. […]
For a long time, I’ve been intimidated by JavaScript builds. They have a reputation for being complicated, difficult to understand, and unforgiving. This tracks with my past experiences. I have been burned before, so my approach has been to avoid builds, and just use script tags like it is 2005. Yes, it is possible to […]
Being a subject selector in an academic library is pretty repetitive. I’m basically applying the same selection criteria to different materials over and over again. In my specific role, I’m almost always looking for books (and ebooks) that are for lower-division undergraduates/general readers; that are from reputable academic presses; and that fall within the subject […]
