The VuFind project is guided by a group of Core Developers who help prioritize development goals and make design decisions through a regular Developers Call.

Prior to the institution of this regular call, the project experimented with an elected administrative group. This page provides information on that group for historical purposes.

The first elected admin group consisted of these people:

• Chris Delis, Software Developer, Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI)
• Bill Dueber, Systems Librarian, University Library, University of Michigan
• Demian Katz, Library Technology Development Specialist, Villanova University
• Till Kinstler, Digital Libraries Systems Architect and Developer, GBV Common Library Network
• Andrew Nagy, Senior Discovery Services Engineer, Serials Solutions
• Tuan Nguyen, Manager Library Information Systems, York University Libraries
• Eoghan Ó Carragáin, Digital Systems Officer, National Library of Ireland

The elected administration group has been superceded by the Core Developers / Developers Call approach discussed during the VuFind 2.0 Conference.

These people expressed interest in serving as VuFind administrators but were not part of the elected admin group.

• Mike Friscia, Yale University
• Clay Hill, Web Sites Manager, Mississippi State University Libraries
• Tim McGeary, Team Leader, Library Technology, Lehigh University
• Mark Sandford, Special Formats Cataloger, David and Lorraine Cheng Library, William Paterson University

The following biographical information was collected for the first admin election. It is retained here since it may be useful in the future. Feel free to update your details as needed.

Institution: Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI)

Role Profile:

Software Developer and System Administrator

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

We are running an older version (ca. 0.8) of VuFind for our consortium of 76 libraries.  I had to take special care and consideration in tailoring it to suit the needs of a consortium.  I am responsible for all local development, administration, indexing, etc.

Current/short-term availability:

I have plans to put together a pilot of the current trunk soon and plan to contribute 20 - 40% of time during my day-job.

Longer term availability

This will depend a lot on the success of piloting the latest version of VuFind.  We have concurrent commitments to the XC project as well, and as time goes on we will need to decide which features of VuFind and/or the XC project will benefit our consortium members.

 Development Skills

PHP, Java, Javascript, C/C++, Perl, SQL, XSLT, CSS

How would you rate your development skills/experience?

(0 = novice; 5 = expert)

5

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

I have some experience applying new features to the VuFind repository (e.g., I added the php sessions functionality to the trunk) as well as patches / bug fixes.

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

I am an XC partner and have experience working with XC's toolkits (e.g., OAIToolkit, NCIP driver).

Anything else you'd like to add?

Institution: University of Michigan

Role Profile:

I've been a Systems Librarian for the past three years

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

I did the majority of the programming and architecture (but not UI design)  taking RC1 and turning it into the system we're running today at http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/ and http://catalog.hathitrust.org/. This means, ironically, that I'm intimately familiar with the code that I'm running and almost completely unaware of anything that's gone on in Vufind trunk for the last six months or more.

Current/short-term availability:

I'll continue to be in charge of our Vufind installation and will likely spend a solid third of my time doing so. Any contributions to trunk above and beyond pulling out bits and pieces of what we've done at Michigan for contribution back will have to come out of my freetime.

Longer term availability

I would like to see Vufind move forward, and am especially interested in working on the architecture for next-generation Vufind (VuFind 2.0?).

Development Skills

PHP, Java, Javascript, Perl, Ruby, SQL, CSS

How would you rate your development skills/experience?

(0 = novice; 5 = expert)

5

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

Anything else you'd like to add?

While the community's first goal needs to be a stable 1.0, I think a starting-from-scratch look at how to take the collective experience we all have and starting to turn it into a re-imagining of the application is equally important. I also would like to see VuFind admins be aware of, and perhaps involved in, the Blacklight community; there is much we could learn from them at pretty much all levels (from code to administration) and could help crystallize how VuFind wants to distinguish itself from other next-gen OPACs (other than being “The PHP one”).

Institution: Yale University Library

Role Profile:

Sr. Systems Programmer. I primarily work with digitized content with my main focus on developing search interfaces. I run servers and software for digital asset management, GIS, and web applications. I act as the DBA for our database applications and also handle server security. I am also in charge of our Microsoft SharePoint implementation.

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

I was brought into Vufind last spring when I was asked to connect our CAS authentication to the system so we could activate the MyResearch components. I had a very small amount of time allowed to perform the work and spent most of it learning the web application side of the system. My involvement has grown and as we settle into new roles I expect that I will increase my participation beyond just working with the PHP files.

Current/short-term availability:

Currently I commit 10% of my time (2 days a month) to the project for programming and administrative tasks at yale. I'm willing to commit an additional 10% of my time to work in a Vufind administrative role. Vufind is part of my day job but I'm also of the type that doesn't stop writing code because a weekend or break pops up.

Longer term availability

I expect to be involved in Vufind at Yale as long as the library here is committed to using the product. I am also hiring a new programmer as the junior programmer in my department under my supervision. This new programmer will also be applying 10% of their time to the product.

Development Skills

PHP, Java, Javascript, C/C++, C#, Perl, Visual Basic, SQL, XSLT, CSS, PL/SQL

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

5

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

I've done a lot with project management and also have experience with microsoft project and similar open office flavor. I have experience in hosting events, training sessions and have presented on numerous occassions in venues such as NERCOMP.

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

I worked on Connecticut College's student electronic portfolio project. During this time I spent a lot of time working with the open source portfolio initiative. We did not use the product at Connecticut College but I stayed on the project as a developer and worked out a lot of the integration problems between SCT Banner/PeopleSoft and third party products.

Anything else you'd like to add?

The Yale University Library has a large number of staff committeed to this project. For me, it was an easy sell. Once an opportunity came up, I was quick to jump onboard to begin participating in the development.

My primary development environment is .Net but I've been a PHP programmer since 1998. I worked primary on unix systems from 1985 to 1999 when I switched over to Windows/ColdFusion/.Net. The onyl reason I gave my performance tuning skills a 4 and not a 5 is that I have not done much on unix systems at all in a number of years. But on my desk I run a Fedora 10 machine, windows xp and an iMac. I consider myself to be “platform neutral” and don't bother with the anti mac, anti java, anti .net arguments and all the other politics in computing. I just like to write code and don't care what system it is on.

Institution: Villanova University

Role Profile:

My title is “Library Technology Development Specialist.”  My primary responsibility is VuFind development, though I am also involved in other library technology projects, and I do a little bit of public service to stay involved with the broader library community.  My professional background is mixed – I have an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and a master's degree in Library/Information Science.  I have worked in both library (a large public library) and pure-computer (web development consulting) environments in the past.

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

I first heard of VuFind when applying for my current position at Villanova.  This was my first encounter with faceted searching in a library catalog, and I was immediately impressed by the way this mixes Google-like simplicity with some of the power of the traditional structure inherent in catalogs.  In getting this job, I have inherited the original VuFind implementation.  I've only been here a few months, but I've spent the majority of my time diving into VuFind, so I'm already fairly familiar and comfortable with its code.  I can't take credit for what is already here, but I certainly look forward to helping to polish it in the future.

Current/short-term availability:

VuFind is the primary responsibility of my day job, so my long-term availability is not in question.  The exact amount of time I have available for VuFind coding may sometimes fluctuate as other projects come up, but I expect to be devoting at least a couple of hours (and usually more than that) to VuFind on every work day.

Longer term availability

My long-term availability is more or less the same as my short-term availability.  Villanova is very proud of its institutional role in the development of VuFind, and I don't expect its commitment to fade any time soon.

Area of expertise/experience	Rating
Coding	5
Interface implementation	4
Interface planning	2
Solr configuration	1
ILS integration	3
Metadata crosswalking	3
Metadata & cataloguing issues	3
Performance tuning & deployment	4
Other relevant areas of experience	I have four years of experience working as a single programmer doing relatively small-scale projects in a library environment.  I also have four years of experience as part of a team doing large-scale web development work in a multi-server environment.  I'm comfortable with MARC.  I've got a lot of troubleshooting experience (and a healthy degree of paranoia about security and other potential problems).  I'm fairly good at reading a book and getting up to speed on a new technology – currently waiting for my copy of the new Solr book so I can improve my score in that area! I also normally show more modesty – but this is a skills survey, after all!

Development Skills

PHP, Java, Javascript, C/C++, Perl, Visual Basic, SQL, CSS

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

5

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

I enjoy providing troubleshooting support – I try to respond to every question on the mailing lists that I can reasonably answer.  My work at Villanova puts me in a good position for advocacy.  I dislike unnecessary politics and don't tend to take development-related debates personally, so I can be helpful in conflict resolution (though that hardly seems necessary in the current friendly and collaborative environment I've seen on the VuFind lists!).

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

At my first job, I wrote a simple OPAC (a clone of the III system) for use as a backup in case of emergency.  It just ingested MARC records into a simple MySQL database and displayed via PHP.  We never had need for it, so it was never put to the test, but it was a good learning experience.

I've already mentioned my previous experience with large-scale web development.

I also have a personal project at www.gamebooks.org – this demonstrates my ability to completely design and implement an application from scratch.  Please don't judge my CSS/HTML based on this, though – I would do a lot differently if I had time to change it all!

Anything else you'd like to add?

I certainly hope to get enough votes to be part of the core admin team…  but even if I don't, you can't get rid of me that easily!  I look forward to working with everyone regardless of how things turn out.

Institution: Service Center of the Common Library Network (GBV)

Role Profile:

I am working in the digital libraries department. My main fields of action are “emerging technologies” in the digital libraries field and their application to our existing library consortium infrastructure. That includes systems analysis and design, systems integration and customization as well as coding (customization of existing code and implementation of interfaces). I deal with search technology, data interfaces (OAI-PMH, SRU, unAPI…) and some authentication stuff (Shibboleth).

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

In summer 2008 we gained a funded project (called “Suchkiste”) to develop a search engine for large integrated bibliographic and fulltext data sets fed from various sources. We decided to do that with Solr instead of our legacy search

technology. Shortly after project start we needed a prototype user frontend to

demonstrate the power of Solr to end users and librarians. We choose VuFind as an easily customizable, open user frontend for that Solr index. Because we had some requirements not in mainline VuFind (eg. rights management, fulltext indexing), we somewhat branched/forked(?) out of the mainline development first. But finally we understood, that it is important to participate as much as possible in the mainline development (for the success of both our “Suchkiste” as well as of VuFind). That's the essence of open source projects. I think, I have a good overall overview of the VuFind architecture (including Solr and solrmarc) and some in depth knowledge of the code.

Current/short-term availability:

VuFind is part of my day-job. Apart from some vacation in the next months, I'd say

I spend about 15 to 30 hours a week on VuFind and our VuFind based “Suchkiste” project (of course, not all time being spent on “Suchkiste” is contributing to mainline

VuFind directly, but there are more and more synergies). So count on me on a daily

basis. My time with VuFind isn't limited to office hours.

Longer term availability

The first phase of our VuFind based project will be finished in Summer 2010. Until that I will be available for VuFind as described above. After that, engagement in VuFind may increase (if our project is extended beyond the scope of “Suchkiste” into a general VuFind based discovery solution for our consortium we proposed) or decrease (but not to zero, because I will have to keep “Suchkiste” running anyway).

Development Skills

PHP, Java, Javascript, Perl, SQL, XSLT, CSS, shell scripting

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

4

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

I organized a workshop that brought together (potential) VuFind users in Germany in June 2009. I submitted an application for a speach on VuFind at the German “Bibliothekskongress 2010” (biggest library venue in Germany) in March 2010

and proposed a workshop on NGCs (including VuFind) for ELAG 2010 conference at Helsinki next June.

I am no (traditional) project management specialist, but pretty good at keeping an oversight over and working in dynamic project evolution in teams (hmmm, on “agile projects”?) and may contribute my experience there.

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

As part of my job I developed the (meta-)search modules of several virtual libraries (eg. ViFa Recht, Crossasia) and some library search portals in the last years. I had to use a commercial metasearch engine toolset for that. My job was customizing it (on source code level) to specific requirements and integrating it in heterogeneous infrastructures.

Before joining the library scene I did some contributions to the open source virtual learning system Moodle in its early days (around 2003).

Anything else you'd like to add?

Institution: Lehigh University

Role Profile:

Team Leader, Library Technology

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

Early tester, early evangelist of multiple presentations at national and regional conferences.  I co-founded the VuFind-Unicorn (SirsiDynix) development team to build a connector, and host the VuFind-Unicorn listserv.

Our implementation is waiting for the Dewey classification scheme to be incorporated in the Call Number Browse / Subject Heading search.  Upon that completion, we would put this in production.

Current/short-term availability:

This is very much outside my day job, but I am a core member of the OLE Project, and it is important for me to stay connected with VuFind for OLE as well as Lehigh.  I can supply information for configurations and test case results.  And I can always offer advice.  :)

Longer term availability

My programming days are mostly behind me, so I would like to offer myself as a technology and functionality advisor, as well as assisting my team at Lehigh in implementing VuFind in conjunction with SirsiDynix Symphony or hopefully OLE in the future.

Development Skills

PHP, Perl, Visual Basic, SQL, XSLT

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

3

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

some Project Management, Publicity, Advocacy, Advisory

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

I was a core participant in the OLE Project design phase and will be taking a lead role in the OLE Project build phase

Anything else you'd like to add?

Institution: Serials Solutions

Role Profile:

Software Engineer, Market Expert, Product Manager.

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

Founder and Lead Developer

Current/short-term availability:

10% of my day job.  Plus random nights and weekends.

Longer term availability

Full commitment.

Development Skills

PHP, Java, Javascript, SQL, XSLT, CSS

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

5

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

Administration, Outreach, Marketing, Event Organization

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

PEAR::Structures_DataGrid

SolrMarc

Anything else you'd like to add?

Institution: York University

Role Profile:

“I worked as a Unix System Administrator for about 3 years

Then took on the library programmer position for the past 8 years

Currently, I am head of Information Systems division of the library.”

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

“I started looking at VuFind in 2008 and saw the great potential in it.

We began working on our instance in May 2009 and have gone ”“beta”” this September.

I am the lead of the software development team.”

Current/short-term availability:

I can contribute about 2 hours during the work day but I do like to spend some times in the evening doing VuFind related work out of my own interests.

Longer term availability

Yes, we're continuing with VuFind for the forseeable future. There are a few areas that we'd like to improve on our instance of VuFind. We're very open to sharing our work with others.

Development Skills

PHP, Java, Javascript, C/C++, Perl, SQL, XSLT, CSS, unix shell programming

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

5

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

I do have some experience in project administration as we have a few in house application that my team and I have developed.

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

Anything else you'd like to add?

Institution: National Library of Ireland

Role Profile:

My duties are very varied (!) and range from web development and systems implemenations, to specing out and managing digital imaging projects, to metadata manipulation and enhancement. Most relevantly, I have been heavily involved in a catalogue conversion project which is to be delivered using VuFind. My academic background is in the Humanities (BA, MA), I am currently completing a masters in library studies

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

In Jan 2009, I recommended VuFind as the core product in a solution for delivering a newly converted bibliographic resource because it met the majority of the requirements expressed by staff, and fitted well with our wider systems infrastructure. We installed VuFind in April, and since June I have been responsible for delivering a beta release which is due to go public at the end of the month. As a result I am very familiar with how the product fits together, have a good knowledge of the code, and have done considerable modification and tweaking to suit our particular needs. I have tried to help on the lists as much as possible.

Current/short-term availability:

We are due to go live with a beta release at the end of the month, and about 2/3 of my time will be allocated to further development and stabilisation until at least mid-November.

Longer term availability

At the least, the NLI will use VuFind as a stand-alone delivery system for its Sources product for the next 18 months. We have agreed a system design in which further back-end integration will take place with the VITAL system from VTLS. It is not currently planned to use VuFind to expose ILS data (currently Horizon, Virtua on the way), or as the primary discovery portal for the NLI, however, this is certainly a possibility. Personally, I see myself being actively involved with Vufind for at least 12 months, and my involvement to date has definitely not been limited to 9 to 5.

Development Skills

PHP, Javascript, Visual Basic, SQL, XSLT, CSS

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

3

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

Admin, drafting documentation, Project Management, Advocacy/Events (Vufind will be highlighted in all material disseminated and talks given in relation to the NLI's Sources project. Also, I am particularly eager to get a few other Irish institutions involved, and would welcome the opportunity to organise an event with other European implementors)

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

I have planned and implemented a variety of small-scale developments for work, but this is my first experience of contributing to a sustainable, scalable development project, and I'm loving it!

Anything else you'd like to add?

I think it would be useful to have a/some Librarian(s) or Cataloguer(s) on the admin group to keep developments focused on our stakeholders and on the data. Also, I was interested by recent discussions on the list about funding/tax exemption schemes, and I think it would be good for someone with some experience of having managed that part of a large project to be on the admin list. I suppose, now that we have shared our skills, we should have a think about how to make the most out of them to progress the product on as many fronts as possible. Also, just to re-iterate my gratitude for all the work that has gone into the product so far, particularly from Andrew and Villanova. Cheers.

Institution: William Paterson University

Role Profile:

Special Formats Cataloger (Librarian)

Briefly outline your experience with Vufind to date.:

First installation was about a year ago.  We recently started testing VUFind in-house for usability as a replacement for Voyager OPAC.  I am in charge of the installation, customization, etc.

Current/short-term availability:

Longer term availability

The library is committed to implementing VUFind as soon as it is feasible.  This is a slow process because I am solely responsible for it right now, though that will change as we near production.  I can dedicated several hours per week to VUFind as a part of my job.

Development Skills

PHP, CSS

How would you rate your development skills/experience? (0 = novice; 5 = expert)

2

What skills can bring to the project, other than development skills and the areas of expertise mentioned above?

I am primarily a cataloger, though I perform a lot of duties that would normally fall to a Systems Librarian.  I have a very good understanding of how Voyager's database structure works and how that connects to the MARC record.

Briefly describe your experience on similar projects:

None

Anything else you'd like to add?

I would view my work in the admin group as primarily being a voice for catalogers (and uers) and to lend my expertise to the group in that respect.  However, I can handle basic coding well enough to understand the developer side of the conversation as well.