Table of Contents
VuFind® Summit 2023
Dates and Location
This year's VuFind® Summit was held as part of WOLFcon 2023 from August 22-24, 2023.
Video Recordings
Video recordings of all sessions can be viewed through the VuFind® Summit 2023 YouTube playlist.
Conference Planning Document
The 2023 Summit Planning Document was used to collect information during the event.
Schedule
See the WOLFcon schedule for full details; the schedule can be filtered to show only VuFind®-related talks.
Detailed Talk Descriptions
Demian Katz, Villanova University - Open Source Fundraising: Brainstorming and Collaboration
This session is designed to encourage discussion and collaboration about Open Source fundraising: what has worked, what hasn't, and how might we collaborate and pool our resources to improve future results? What are the most effective uses for the funds that we raise? In what ways might the Open Library Foundation support the fundraising needs of its members? What untapped funding sources might be worth exploring in future? Please join us prepared to share your own experiences and ideas.
Demian Katz, Villanova University - VuFind®: State of the Project 2023
This talk will discuss developments within the project (both technical and organizational) over the year since the previous VuFind Summit while also highlighting some possible future developments for the next major release.
Mohan Raj Pradhan, HealthNet Nepal / Mariyapillai Jayakananthan, International Water Management Institute (IWMI) - SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for library software with reference to Let’s Encrypt certificates
Most of the library software, username and password is required to access data. In most of the developing countries, the protocol, invented 30 years back, being used is http for accessing databases online and uses the technology: client-server model. When HTTP is combined with TLS, it is called HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) and TLS certificate to be installed on the server. HTTPS appears in the URL, symbolically it is shown through a padlock icon or lock icon. In this article discussion is limited to free SSL certificate: Let’s encrypt. It is due to its availability free of cost and suitable to library software. Free SSL certificates fit into two categories. ‘Self-Signed Certificates’ and ‘Certificate Authorities (CA)’. A self-signed certificate may be appropriate if domain name associated with the server is not available and has only an IP address. If domain name is available, in many cases it is better to use Certificate Authority (CA)-signed certificate. This article is based on the procedure for creating a self –signed certificate for Apache and Tomcat and Certificate Authority (CA)-signed certificate for Koha ILS, DSpace, VuFind, Subjects Plus, WordPress and Moodle. All the procedures were tested in HealthNet Nepal server so these procedures help to create SSL free of cost which may be helpful for library professionals in developing countries as well as developed countries.
Thomas Wagener, HEBIS - Broadcast Messages and Custom Pages
When libraries want to promote some additional content via their VuFind® installations, it is usually not possible without the assistance of an IT staff member. This can be quite tedious if such requests come regularly.
In this talk, we would like to introduce two new features that we developed in cooperation with effective WEBWORK. The first one allows the creation of broadcast messages that are embedded as flash messages in the normal VuFind® views. It could be used, for example, to inform users about scheduled maintenance. The second allows the creation of custom pages that are linked in the navigation bar. Those pages can either be included as static pages that support markdown in VuFind® itself or external pages. For example, they could inform the users about an upcoming event.
Both features can be used by admin users in the website's admin module itself and do not require any technical knowledge.
Dennis Schrittenlocher, HEBIS - Please explain the rank of the title. Why is it found at all?
Even if you don't tweak the search in your VuFind® implementation, you know the relevance ranking question. “Why should this hit be more relevant than that one?
The numerical relevance score is a tricky beast and usually anything but obvious.
In this talk, we would like to introduce our 'Explain' extension, which is able to present cryptic debug data from the search index as easy-to-understand graphs.
The idea is not new. When we optimised our VuFind® implementation, we made extensive use of Rafał Kuć's service 'explain.solr.pl'. Unfortunately, this service was discontinued years ago, but we hope you will find our Explain just as helpful.
Thomas Wagener, HEBIS - Managing user information via an API
Data protection has become more and more relevant in recent years. At least in Germany, website operators are obligated to inform users about all the data that is stored about them and even to delete all of it upon request. It is cumbersome to do this by logging into VuFind®'s database itself and manually performing all necessary tasks.
We have developed an API that allows to perform those tasks through simple requests. It can be used by the maintainers of VuFind® or even other departments of a library. Currently, there are three functions it provides. 1. It can return all stored data about a user in a readable format. 2. It can delete all of that data. 3. Sometimes, users get new or second accounts from their libraries. They are registered as new users in VuFind®. The API can then move their favorite lists from the old to the new account.
Stephanie Leary and Andrea Buntz Neiman, Equinox Open Library Initiative - Layers of Accessibility in Open Source: Creating an Accessible Theme for VuFind®
In early 2023, Equinox Open Library Initiative produced a fully reworked theme for VuFind® . The theme passes WCAG 2.1 AA standard and is freely available for download from Equinox's GitHub page. This talk will discuss the development process related to the theme including challenges encountered as well as future suggestions for front-end accessibility practices in VuFind®.
André Lahmann, University of Leipzig - Security insights from analysing VuFind® code
In this session we will discuss the results of the code analysis done by a contractor on the VuFind® code base (release 9.0.2).
David Maus, State and University Library Hamburg (SUB HH) - Analyzing, understanding and (hopefully) fixing degraded search performance
Katalogplus is the VuFind®-based discovery system of the State and University Library Hamburg (SUB HH), the largest academic library in Hamburg and central lending library for the University of Hamburg and the city's other higher education institutions. In summer 2022 our main search index provider clarified a usage policy and limited the number of requests a client could make without being throttled. Being a high volume discovery system, this caused serious performance degradation for our end users.
We developed SolrProbe, a composer-installable component, to gather empirical information about our discovery system's use of the search index and subsequently measure the impact of modifications to our setup.
In this presentation, I will give a short introduction to SolrProbe and discuss some of our findings regarding possible ways to improve our search performance.
Lightning Talks
Demian Katz, Villanova University - FOLIO reporting with help from VuFind®
Ere Maijala, National Library of Finland - Hierarchical facets - Improving accessibility and everything by reconsidering old choices
Kate Deibel, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine - Accessibility Testing for All
Josef Moravec, Moravian Library in Brno - Link data from local index to Wikidata
This presentation did not have slides.