Project Management

The article Standard Methodology in Digital Library Project Management stressed the importance of implementing a project management process. When reading "How Not to Run a Digital Library Project,” I was reminded of when I didn’t place much importance in project management details. The project managers at one of my previous jobs were always stressed out and sometimes yelled at by the principal of the company and I certainly did not want that. I also remember when project managers would add more personnel to a project if it was falling behind schedule. The project was finished but for the most part the quality was poor due to lack of communication and employees wanting to do things their way. The Project Risk Management article was helpful in identifying that there are risks in the majority of projects. This article teaches the reader the importance to identify the risks and addressing possible solutions beforehand in order to be prepared if such risks would occur so damages and costs can be minimized. I have always been interested in business, maybe not initially project management, but the more I read about it the more I am interested so it’s a treat to have project management information in the DigIn courses.

More Confident and Comfortable...

Taking technology courses which are geared toward information centers has interested me as I believe this is crucial in the LIS profession. At the beginning of this course I knew this course would focus on hands-on experience in terms of technology. My expectations would be that I would feel more confident and comfortable with working in digital collections. I definitely feel more comfortable in working with servers and software although I know I am not an expert. I am also more comfortable with technology terms so I can better communicate with IT personnel. There is a lot of information to digest from this course. I feel that I have somewhat of a good understanding of all we have completed; nonetheless, I may not appreciate its importance until I am actually confronted with a technology situation whether it is at work or at home. This course has reinforced my perspective in regards to the importance being exposed to and knowing the basics of digital information as it plays a major role in the library science environment. In addition, this course builds confidence to learn more about digital information and technology and to build on hands-on experience.

SQL

At a first glance, learning SQL seemed very complex. The idea of creating different tables that are related to each other seemed tedious at first but later made more sense when trying to extract certain information from the tables. This idea became more obvious when experimenting with the queries. It has become clearer why learning about Entity Relationship Diagrams is critical before learning about SQL. The hardest part about SQL is to understand the concepts just mentioned. Thereafter, it is a matter of knowing where to find and/or trying to memorize the commands on how to create, open and insert information. During the assignment, we had the opportunity to create tables in MySQL with the command line, Webmin and phpMyAdmin. Webmin and phpMyAdmin are graphical interfaces and therefore easier to navigate and create tables. Overall, learning SQL is on the same level if difficulty with other topics explored; once one understands the idea and concept of the topic, the rest is still challenging yet less complex.

Data Modeling and ERD

Learning about data modeling and how to create an Entity Relationship Diagram was very appealing to me. As one of the readings mentioned, my initial thought is to use an excel spreadsheet but in the examples and readings I see the benefits of using a relational database management system (RDBMS) such as Microsoft Access when wanting to extract complicated information from a collection of data. However, in order to understand RDBMS, one must understand how ERD’s work. I found the blog regarding ERD’s on the Rapid Application Development website to be helpful in explaining the notations (crow’s feet, dash and 0) and the relationships between the entities. My understanding is that many-to-many relationship are not possible in databases and the solution is to do a link/bridge. The linking concept is still unclear but I’m sure I will grasp this concept after I see more examples. The Three Normal Forms tutorial was also helpful as it provided an example with step-by-step instructions on the process. However, more examples with explanations on the process would definitely be helpful.

Technology Plan

The Standish Group Report was a helpful article. The comparison made between bridge building and software development provided a clear understanding and greater appreciation for software development. Per the article, there is less flexibility with bridge building versus software development and for the most part one would assume flexibility is purely advantageous but per the article, flexibility could be harmful. The articles continues by stating that if a bridge fails a report is prepared outlining why it failed; however this is not the case with software development. The article also stressed on the low success rate for software projects. This fact alone indicates the importance of proper research and detailed preparation of a software project. It was disappointing to read in the article that many invest in a project that would eventually be cancelled. On the other hand, it was also enlightening to hear the success stories. The What Went Wrong article was useful in identifying what elements must be considered to avoid to failure such as proper project planning, strong business case, support from top management and setting realistic goals. I was also glad I had the opportunity to read more about LSTA in the New Funding and From Construction to Technology articles. The Gates Foundation has been greatly significant in libraries and technology; yet the New Funding article poses an interesting question “Who will be the next Gates?” when it is time for upgrading. The Technoplans vs. Technolust article suggest that a technology plan is a living document. With the constant change in technology, the plan must be able to accept changes if necessary and therefore must be a living document. The readings for this lecture made me realize that we always need to be cautious. Reading about the importance of a technology plan will prepare me for when I am confronted with technology planning activities.

XML

My first step in learning XML was through the XML training at w3schools.com. I had been exposed to XML prior but I never had to write an XML document. I went through the XML Basic tutorials on the mentioned website. I also watched the “Just Enough XML to Survive” video on YouTube but the image was not clear and the voice was a bit hard to follow. The majority of the information in the video was information I had already reviewed in the w3schools.com tutorial so I did not find the video very helpful. The link to the example that was provided in the assignments was also very useful in completing the XML document. I also found the XML Validator on the w3schools.com website to be a valuable tool to verify that the XML document I had created was well-formed.

HTML

My previous exposure to learning HTML was in the IRLS 504 class in which I created my first website. The first website was quite plain but it included the necessary components. I skimmed through the PowerPoint to reacquaint myself with the declaration and the process of how to post the page to the U-System website. I had always wondered how to add another website to the system without disturbing the previous one and the assignment notes were helpful in explaining that a subdirectory should be added. For this website I wanted to make it more visually pleasing so I decided to add a little color. I used the HTML tutorials at w3schools.com to refresh my memory on the standard elements and attributes. The tutorials proved to be helpful. I then did a Google search for “html tags” to find out more about other tags that I could include. I decided to experiment with indenting the text on the sides and adding a horizontal rule. When experimenting with HTML tags, I found that websites with a table providing the tag, explanation and an image of what the tag does were the most helpful.

Learning Styles

The lecture for this week was a bit hard to follow as there were so many terms in the lecture notes that were linked to the Wikipedia or Webopedia. The lecture was interesting but I am not sure how many of those terms actually stayed in my memory. I was interested in that the “Learning Styles and Strategies” website was part of the reading assignment and as the site stated, most people are visual learners. I am a visual learner and feel that the videos and podcasts are very helpful. The "Warriors of the Net" video was interesting, easy to understand and a nice addition to the lecture. Nonetheless, the combination of both visual and verbal learning seems to be the most effective. I appreciated it when the lecture provides a video after the reading to provide a better understanding of the material. I feel that I understand the concept more after watching a video or podcast and reading improves my vocabulary and reading skills.

Users, Groups, Commands and More

For the first assignment, I mistakenly began to input the commands in the remote desktop versus VNWare when I came to an issue and posted it in the discussion forum. Luckily a classmate pointed this out. I don’t know what I was thinking and became very frustrated. I started up the VNWare software, remembering that the VPN Client should be disconnected; however, I was frustrated once again because nothing would show up on the screen. I would load it again then I realized that my connection was slow and so I had to be patient. Once logged into VNWare, I began to input the commands and I successfully downloaded the Webmin commands. I was so relieved with I confirmed the IP address of the server VM and got to the Webmin screen. Installing the components required me to look very carefully at the screen and keyboard. We are so used to typing and letting Word catch our errors, but that is no longer the case. Switching back to the remote desktop for Assignment 3 made me a bit uneasy as I was unsure if the commands I downloaded at the beginning would affect anything and luckily it didn’t. Assignment 4 required us to return to VNWare and I started to feel more comfortable. Hopefully I completed the assignments correctly.

Hands-On Assignments and Configurations

Connecting to the UA VPN Client and Ubuntu Server was successful on the first try. When I tried to test for connectivity I was unsuccessful the first time because I did a typo so I then realized I have to be very careful. Luckily I was able to have connectivity between the host browser and the server VM without any issues. Switching from mouse to keyboard mode inside the virtual machine would catch me off guard since I am so used to just being able to see my mouse cursor at all times. Having the opportunity to work through the hands-on tutorial (vim tutor) was an extreme help. For the most part I had no issues with the commands, some of which included deleting a line (dd), changing characters until the end of a word (ce), moving to the bottom of file (G), searching for a “phrase” (/phrase), substituting text, and deleting characters (x). I did experience an issue with saving a file and then exiting. I attempted to do “:wq” which exited the file but when I returned to the file the changes I had made did not save. I think I may have to look into this a bit further. During the tutorial I would use “o” a lot to get to the beginning of the line and CTRL-G to show me my location in the file. I am so accustomed to having a scroll bar on the right side to see where I am in the file but this is definitely not the case with Linux.

The configuration process in Linux files involves commands (sometimes several) which may require searching for the proper command. Configuring something on my primary computer such as changing the parameters on when my computer sleeps on battery or plugged in also involves some searching. It involves going to the control panel and trying to remember which category I must choose to find where to change the parameters. The configuration process in both the Linux and primary computer may involve searching but the difference seems to be that the process can be done on one screen in Linux versus the PC which takes the user to several screens.

Accessing the Remote Desktop

At first connecting to the Linux desktop on the Sandbox server was a bit troublesome. For some reason the VPN Client was not connecting. I realized that I had to login with my UA username and password then I was able to successfully connect to the desktop.

In the first tutorial, it was interesting to learn that AT&T gave UNIX to universities for free. I also learned most of the computing world in based on UNIX. The Introduction to Linux video lessons were useful as it exposed me to many commands. I am very intrigued by having the control of making changes or obtaining information by simply typing in commands. Obviously I shouldn’t try to learn it all as stated by the author but I should be aware of what the capabilities are. The Learning the Shell tutorials were important in getting hands-on experience. The remote desktop was a bit sluggish as I worked through the commands as was mentioned would be the case by the professor. The video lessons were easy to understand and were a prefect introduction to the Learning the Shell tutorials. The Learning the Shell tutorials began to get more complex as the commands started to involve more numbers and the use of wildcards. More exposure to such commands will hopefully clear up any confusion.

Ubuntu Forum - Grub

I was skimming over the different topics posted on the Ubuntu forum when I came across an interesting thread concerning "grub." The title of the thread was "Grub being funky with windows xp." I had no idea what the meaning of grub was after reading the thread so I decided to look it up in Wikipedia. Wikipedia was helpful in identifying that there are different definitions of grub and of course this term was associated with computing. However, there were two computing definitions which were briefly described as:

1. A boot loader package from the GNU Project which enables users to have multiple operating systems on their computer.

2. An open source distributed search crawler platform.

Both definitions seemed relevant to the thread and the more open-depth definitions in Wikipedia referred to terms in this week's readings such as kernel, client and operating systems. Although this gave me a better understanding, I do admit I am still a bit puzzled but hope that thing become clear as the course progresses. What I did find interesting about the forum is how informal the setup is, for example, the thread title stated "funky." Overall, the forum setup was straight forward and I did appreciate the pop-up window stating the content of the post when I placed the cursor on the title in the forum page.

Welcome

This blog was created for the Introduction to Applied Technology (IRLS 672) course within the Digital Information Management graduate certificate program at the University of Arizona's School of Information Resources and Library Science.