The mood really changes at Kingsborough in the summertime. It really quiets down, especially in August. The librarians are a bit different from the most of the faculty, in that we keep our regular work hours. But still, the change in atmosphere is palpable for us too. This leads to two things: (1) more time… Continue reading Summer
Nanogenmo 2021
Okay, okay. I know it’s way too early in the year to talk about Nanogenmo[1], but I’ve already been surreptitiously working on my project. In my defense, I’m always way too busy to work on this in November, which is the official month for Nanogenmo. Anyhow, my project is an abécédaire of nonsensical prose poems.… Continue reading Nanogenmo 2021
After the storm
For a number of years, all I wanted to spend my time on was code. This is apparently a common occurrence among new programmers. It is easy to get obsessed, over-focused and maniacal about learning programming. This can be very productive; it is also often a little bit unhealthy. Anyhow, I think I am recovering… Continue reading After the storm
One year of Open Journal Matcher
Today marks one year since I first launched the Open Journal Matcher. Since that time, it has averaged about 5.9K hits per month (although of course some of those are bots). It has also been included on various LibGuides here and there. It is nice that librarians out there value this work. One thing that… Continue reading One year of Open Journal Matcher
What’s next
My next programming project, which I’ve already started working on, is a tool that would help authors make indexes for their books. If this sounds rather niche, well, it really is. While I don’t want to give away my plans too much, I do want to say that I’ve been deeply dissatisfied with existing indexing… Continue reading What’s next
Jquery, bootstrap, vue
When I started at Kingsborough, I built a library homepage that I’ll call “the jquery site”. I was a bit behind the curve on web technologies, and the site very quickly seemed rather dated. The jquery site lingered on far too long, becoming increasingly problematic with each revision, until it was clear that it should… Continue reading Jquery, bootstrap, vue
A return to Twarc
Our library started archiving tweets about our college in 2015. At first, our archive ran an archiving tool called Twarc, on SDF. SDF is a hobbyist programming community; it’s a dynamic place, full of enthusiastic tinkerers and notoriously unreliable infrastructure. The archive trundled along that way until 2017, when I switched it over to TCAT,… Continue reading A return to Twarc
The impostor and the RC
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on an application to participate in a programming retreat at the Recurse Center. Yet I haven’t been able to bring myself submit the application. It provokes too much anxiety. So today I sat myself down and thought it through. When I’m being most honest about it, I… Continue reading The impostor and the RC
The latest abstracts
Right now, as I type, I’m downloading the latest English-language abstracts from the Directory of Open Access Journals API. This is something I do periodically, to refresh the data used by the Open Journal Matcher. I do this regularly in part because new journal articles are published all the time, and it’s obviously valuable to… Continue reading The latest abstracts
Open Journal Matcher gets further funding
I just found out that I was awarded a PSC-CUNY Research Grant to fund the Open Journal Matcher! The grant will pay the bills for the OJM for a while, and will also allow me to develop it further. Previously, the project had been funded by Google. I have two specific goals for this grant.… Continue reading Open Journal Matcher gets further funding
