Google Apps
I decided to spend the $10 to sign up for Google Apps.
May 05, 2008
October 10, 2007
UMCal - displaying work day hours
To shade out your non work hours in the calendar you can set an option from the Tools, Options menu. See the image below:
October 05, 2007
del.icio.us - Linkroll
Let's see how the linkroll works.
del.icio.us Network badge
This is the code. Let's see what it does. :)
July 02, 2007
Scrap the WebOrder page?
I just had a brainstorm while working on the Reserve wiki. I am using embedded searches to pull up all topics related to a specific subject. Do I need to continue to use the WebOrder page or can I just replace it with a series of embedded searches? That way pages (topics) will show up in mulitple places - for example the page AlephTipLoanPeriods will display in the search for Aleph and for Tip. So I would double the chance of anyone scanning the home page finding the information they needed. I'm going to do some more playing and see.
June 01, 2007
Embedded search
I was very excited to figure out how to do this yesterday. I'd read in the wiki documentation that an embedded search was possible and finally had the time to try to do it. It is great, the page will update automatically each time I add another page about processing. Of course I need to follow the topic naming convention I've created.
I wanted a way to break down the four main areas of the reserve manual and create a contents page for each area. The embedded search does that for me because of the consistent topic naming convention I came up with. All topics relating to actual processing steps start with "Proc".
I included an embedded search command on the "Processing Procedures" page. Notice the topic name isn't a WikiWord. There is a way around having to display all the topic titles in wiki word. I enclosed the WikiWord and the text I wanted displayed in brackets like this" [[ProcessingProcedures][Processing Procedures]]. I think it makes it a lot easier for people to find the page they are looking for.
Anyway, back to the embedded search I am so excited about. All the processing topics have Proc at the beginning of the name like this: [[ProcProfsCopy][Creating a record for a professors personal item]]. I used the unique part of the name "Proc" for my search string.
With much trial and error and pouring over documentation I came up with this command -
%SEARCH{type="keyword" "Proc -Processing" scope="topic" casesensitive="on" nosummary="on" nosearch="on"}%
The command produces these results - a nice clean page that is automatically updated anytime I add another page - as long as I follow the naming convention. I can't seem to say enough about the importance of the naming convention. :))
WebOrder page
The WebOrder page is used to create a table of contents for the site.
First I created a topic page WebOrder and then linked to the topics in the order I wanted them to appear in the table of contents. I then edited the page where I wanted the table of contents to go and put the Contents command on the page. %CONTENTS%
The percent sign encloses the command. The result is a very nice listing of the topics (pages). I didn't put in the numbers, the wiki software does that for me. Very nice.
Wiki setup
After creating the wiki's and reading the documentation I needed to decide how to organize the pages - called "topics" in UMWiki.
There are 4 main areas of focus for the Reserve wiki; General information, Processing, Position information, Aleph information. There also are all the working "cheat sheets".
After much trial and error I came up with a topic naming convention that grouped the topic pages together.
Info, Proc, Res, Aleph and Tips.
None of this happened overnight, more like over months and with much error and restart. The naming convention pays off though as I'm finding out with some of the features of the wiki.
Creating my wiki
After much poking around the UM wiki website I took the plunge and registered. The next step was to play with my registration page. I then created a wiki for the Circ Department and Reserve Processing and a personal wiki.
I gave the wiki's consistent names so I would be able to find them again. The names are UMDLibCirc and UMDLibCircRes - access to the content is restricted to Circulation staff. My personal wiki is open and can be viewed at https://wiki.umn.edu/twiki/bin/view/MaryCarlson
I've spent most of my wiki play time on the UMDLibCircRes wiki. I did a lot of "playing to figure out how everything works. The biggest hurdle was to wade through the documentation. It got easier once I realized that only a small portion of the documentation is intended for the user. It appears that the documentation for the user and all levels of technical administrators is lumped together. The documentation was a lot easier to understand once I could separate out just the sections I needed.
May 23, 2007
International Children's Digital Library
This is a great site on Children's literature that I discovered today on the MyU site.