My place of work, OhioLINK, is part of a larger group called the Educational Technology Division of the University System of Ohio. In that capacity, we’re seeking two senior repository software developers to work in our downtown Columbus, OH, office.

The position description can be a little tricky to get to — the Ohio State University jobs website does not allow deep linking into job descriptions — so I’m reproducing the entire description here:

Position Information

Number of Positions Available 1     Both current Ohio State employees and the general public may apply for this unclassified professional position.       University Title Senior Systems Manager-Not Sap   Working Title Sr. Repository Developer   Department Office of Research-OARnet   Department Location Columbus   Requisition Number 347544 [Also requisition number 347545]  Summary of Duties Supports software development operations for Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet), in collaboration with the Chancellor for the Ohio Board of Regents (OBR) and the University System of Ohio (Education Technology Division), in accordance with university policies, goals, and objectives; participates in regular operation of SCRUM-based software development team; identifies project development requirements in conjunction with stakeholders, including Product Owner, community representatives and SCRUM team lead; develops technical solutions to meet the business objectives of product requirements in accordance with established OARnet/OBR software development standards; divides technical solutions into component-level features; assigns, monitors, and reviews component-level feature development, testing and integration tasks performed by team members; serves as technical SME for application development environment; performs investigation and tracking of industry trends and exploration of advanced technologies; serves as an expert consultant within and outside OARnet, and significant participation in advising and planning committees and task forces; designs, plans, and coordinates development/construction of systems; serves as a mentor to other development associates.   Additional Information Successful completion of a background check required.   Required Qualifications Bachelor’s Degree in computer & information science or an equivalent combination of education and experience; extensive (5 years) Java development experience involving DSpace/Manakin, Cocoon, XML/XSLT and HTML/CSS site creation; considerable experience (3 years) with JBoss Application Server; considerable experience (3 years) with Linux/Unix, Perl, shell scripting; experience (1 year) with Log4j, JUnit, Maven and Apache Commons.   Desired Qualifications Master’s of Library Science degree; experience with digital archive projects including metadata schema creation.   Target Salary $76,000 – $84,000 Annually   Job Category Information Technology (IT)   Job Appointment (FTE%) 100%   Full/Part Time Full Time   Temporary or Regular Regular   Posting Start Date 10-09-2009   Posting End Date 10-25-2009   Does this position accept online applications? Yes   Faculty Application Instructions

OARnet is a constituent of the University System of Ohio Educational Technology Division, and OARnet’s administrative agent is Ohio State University. To apply for the position, go to Ohio State University’s Job Site, select “Search Postings” and use either requisition number 347544 or 347545.

I had the pleasure of presenting on a panel at the Ohio Student Success Assessment Summit this morning on the topic of textbooks and open educational resources. Specifically, I was talking about the plans and desires of the University System of Ohio to help faculty help students with the escalating of costs of learning materials. My talk (below and on SlideShare) gives a background of the problem in the context of the State of Ohio, principles upon which a working plan for statewide support is forming, and strategic themes

Some Things, In Retrospect, I Wish I Had Mentioned

I didn’t have time to talk about the various sources of open educational resources — that would be an entire presentation by itself. Some places to start are:

• Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources and the Community College Open Textbook project: These complimentary initiatives are undertaken by interested community colleges and faculty with an interest toward expanding the development and use of open educational resources, including textbooks. A variety of textbooks are available through these efforts (http://oerconsortium.org/ and http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/).
• Wikibooks: This site allows for the joint creation and customization of textbooks and other educational resources (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page).
• Flat World Knowledge: This commercial site offers online access to free textbooks as well as the ability for students to download black and white, color, or audio versions of texts at reduced prices. Flatworld Knowledge supports editing procedures that allow faculty to add and delete materials to the textbooks (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/).
• Connexions: This site allows for the creation and dissemination of modularized educational resources including textbooks following the Open Educational Resources Model (http://cnx.org/).
• BookBoon: Texts available on this site are financed by in-book advertisements (http://bookboon.com/us/student).
• Global Text Project: This site offers a variety of free text materials (http://globaltext.terry.uga.edu/).
• Textbook Revolution: This site offers a variety of free text materials and is open for contributions by faculty and others (http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Main_Page).

This is just a short list; you’ll find many more places where open educational resources are featured by going through these sites.

The text was modified to update a link from http://bookboon.com/us/student to http://bookboon.com/us/textbooks on January 28th, 2011.

A recent issue of Nature published an article by Declan Butler called “Technology: The textbook of the future” included a paragraph about OhioLINK’s exploration of digital textbooks:

Ongoing tests of CourseSmart e-textbooks by the University System of Ohio show that they reduce costs — the average US student forks out some $900 annually on print textbooks — and students using them perform just as well as when using paper versions, says Peter Murray, deputy head of new service development at the Ohio Library and Information Network in Columbus, Ohio, which assists the University System of Ohio on the project.

I’m afraid I didn’t clarify the particulars of our efforts in the phone call with the reporter. Our test for effectiveness of electronic course materials was with a category of materials we call “enhanced textbooks”. They are the platforms that offer not only the text but also links to videos, glossary terms, pre- and post-texts, supplementary reading materials, and simulations. Examples of these are Wiley Plus from Wiley Publishing and the Campbell/Reece biology offerings from Pearson. Another program of the University System of Ohio is the e-Textbook portal featuring page-for-page replication e-books from CourseSmart. We have not tested the CourseSmart material for effectiveness compared to the identical material in printed form.

Butler, D. (2009). Technology: The textbook of the future Nature, 458 (7238), 568-570 DOI: 10.1038/458568a

Dr. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, will give the keynote address “Mediated Culture: Tales from New Guinea, New Media and New Experiments in Learning” on Monday, March 2, at the University System of Ohio’s Learning, Libraries & Technology Conference 2009.

Using examples from fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, YouTube and “the future,” this presentation will demonstrate the profound ways in which media are pervasive in our lives, mediating our relationships in ways we often do not recognize. Dr. Wesch will showcase and discuss his own attempts to leverage new media to create new forms of community and conversation to enhance learning and create a rich virtual learning environment. Visit the conference web site for more information about Dr. Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University, and his presentation.

Learning, Libraries & Technology 2009 will be the tenth anniversary of Ohio’s premier higher education conference, previously known as the Ohio Digital Commons for Education Conference. This year’s conference will deliver all the same great professional development and networking opportunities you’ve come to expect from past conferences, including 45 general sessions, five pre-conference workshops that cost just $100 each, keynote presentations, poster sessions, vendor exhibits, a reception and more.

Add this event to your desktop calendar program.

The Learning, Libraries and Technology conference will be held March 1-3, 2009, at the Columbus Hilton at Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio. View the preliminary program [PDF] and register online now at http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009. Registration fees for LLT 2009 have been slashed to just $195 ($95 for students) for the full two days, and $95 ($55 for students) for one day.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/pdf/LLT09draftprogram.pdf on December 31st, 2010.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://secure.oln.org/LLT2009/LLT2009registration.php on July 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/ on July 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/ on July 13th, 2011.

Add this event to your desktop calendar program.

Learning, Libraries & Technology 2009 Conference will be the tenth anniversary of Ohio’s premier higher education conference, previously known as the Ohio Digital Commons for Education Conference. Although the name might have changed, this year’s conference will deliver all the same great professional development and networking opportunities from past conferences, including keynote sessions, vendor exhibits and technology demonstrations. In order to attract as many people as possible to attend this special 10th anniversary conference, organizers are reducing conference fees to just $195 ($95 for students) for two-day registrations, and $95 ($55 for students) for one-day registrations.

Five pre-conference workshops will be presented on Sunday, March 1:

• Distance Learning and Copyright by Steven Armatos
• ePortfolios: Their Construction, Use and Assessment by Stephen Acker
• Ohio’s Second Life: Boot Camp and Field Trip by Chris Collins
• Podcasting Implications: The Path to Active Engagement in Higher Education Classrooms or How to Enrich Your Distance Education by James McKean
• Producing Video Clips for Specific Instructional Needs by Chris Collins

Workshops cost just $100 each. Attendance is limited and early registration is recommended. Exhibitors are also welcome to register and sponsor activities at the event. The Learning, Libraries and Technology conference is coordinated by Ohio Learning Network, OhioLINK, and the Ohio Supercomputer Center/OARnet.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/pdf/LLT09precons.pdf on December 31st, 2010.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/pdf/LLT09draftprogram.pdf on December 31st, 2010.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/LLT2009fees.php on December 31st, 2010.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/LLT2009boothinfo.php on December 31st, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.osc.edu/networking/ to http://www.oar.net/ on January 28th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://secure.oln.org/LLT2009/LLT2009registration.php on July 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oln.org/conferences/LLT2009/ on July 13th, 2011.

At the end of last month, the Ohio Board of Regents announced the University System of Ohio Textbook Portal. The service has been talked about in the media, in trade publications, and in numerous blog postings. Enough time has passed now that word has gotten out, and I won’t be taking any of the chancellor’s thunder about the project. I did the back-end development work for the portal and wrote this document as an introduction to the project for our development team and anyone else interested about the project.

The textbook portal is based on the Drupal (version 6) content management system. In particular, the portal makes heavy use of the search module to execute and format search results. If you are familiar with Drupal, it is going to be different enough, however, that you’re going to want to read this to see why some decisions were made. If you are not familiar with Drupal, this document will give you a head start into understanding the Drupal way of the world.

A couple of points before we start. First, before starting this project I had only a passing familiarity with PHP as a programming language and no experience with code development for Drupal. ¹ Read the code with that frame of mind; if you have more experience in either of these areas and know of a better way to do something, please let me know and I will gratefully incorporate your suggestions into the code. Second, you can find the code in OhioLINK’s public Subversion repository and reference to it in OhioLINK’s public Trac project server, should you want to take a look at it yourself.

This code in the Subversion repository corresponds to everything under the /sites directory of a Drupal installation. In the basic Drupal installation, there are two subdirectories in this directory: all and default. In a multi-site Drupal installation, the “all” directory is supposed to correspond to modules/themes that are made available to all sites within an installation while the “default” directory is intended for modules/themes for the “default site“. I’m using the distinction somewhat differently. Everything in the “all” directory is third-party modules and everything in the “default” directory is stuff I’ve created. It is an arbitrary, unnecessary distinction, but I think it will help with maintenance.

At a very high level, you can look at the Installation Documentation for the ETextbook Portal. This document was written from the perspective of a bare metal restore of the service. (Well, not quite — it assumes Ubuntu is installed on the server.) It has the various applications and modules that need to be installed to get the site up and running. This should make a good checklist should you wish to reproduce the portal. Knowing how to install Drupal comes in handy, but the installation process itself it pretty easy.

If you follow the documentation up to the point of restoring the database, you’ll have a good foundation. But doing so will mean that there are several configuration options you’ll need to set that would otherwise be in the database backup. You’ll need to activate these modules:

eTextbook Metasearch

Integrates the results from the various textbook search modules. This corresponds to the Drupal node type “all”.

CourseSmart Search

Searches the CourseSmart eTextbook Database. This corresponds to the Drupal node type “csmart”.

OhioLINK E-Books Search

Searches the OhioLINK E-book Center. This corresponds to the Drupal node type “ebooks”.

OhioLINK Library Catalog Search

Searches the OhioLINK Central Catalog. This corresponds to the Drupal node type “libcat”.

Safari Search

Searches Safari Books Online. This corresponds to the Drupal node type “safari”.

Each of them has minor, but important, configuration parameters that you’ll need to set up in the Drupal installation’s /admin/settings directory. In particular, the CourseSmart Search module will have parameters for the discount coupon code plus the username/password for the private API (the private API is discussed in the module-specific section below).

Structure of the Search Modules

function module_menu() {
  ...
}
 
 
function module_perm() {
  ...
}
 
 
function module_search($op = 'search', $keys = NULL) {
  ...
}
 
 
function module_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
  ...
}
 
 
function module_search_process($keys) {
  ...
}
 
 
function module_format_result($item) {
  ...
}
 
 
function module_search_box_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
  ...
}
 
 
function module_search_query($keys = '', $query = array(), $search = 'web', $version = 'v1') {
  ...
}

Some explanation for each of these:

• module_menu() is a Drupal hook that defines the menu options for the setting screen. The code to generate the menus themselves will be in a file in the module called “module.admin.inc”.
• module_perm() is a Drupal hook for defining the user permissions appropriate for this module. It isn’t really used in the portal. (The settings screens look for the “administer site configuration” user permission value.)
• module_search() is a Drupal hook that defines a custom search routine for nodes of this type. The code pattern in other Drupal modules seems to be to use this as a level of indirection to a non-hook function, such as module_search_process().
• module_form_alter() is a Drupal hook for changing the behavior of a form before it is rendered in the HTML back to the user. In conjunction with module_search_box_form_submit(), the code in this hook will turn FORM POST requests into pretty URLs.
• module_search_process() is the function called by the module_search() function. This function prepares the query, including the pagination-of-results calculation, and calls another function — module_search_query() — to do the actual searching. We’re adding this level of indirection because the “metasearch” module will also call module_search_query() to get results, but the code in that module does do all of the things module_search_process() does.
• module_format_result() is called with information about the search hit, and formats it in a way that can be fed back into the Drupal search.module output engine. The issue here is that we’ve got fielded data (author, copyright year, publisher, and ISBN) that we want to display as fielded, but Drupal doesn’t give us a way to do that. Rather, Drupal’s standard search module is looking for an array with keys for ‘title’ of the hit, ‘link’ of the hit, and a ‘snippet’ to display to give the user context for the result. (See the “Return Value” heading of the hook_search API documentation.) So this module will create a snippet of HTML that builds a nice display of the fielded data.
• module_search_box_form_submit(), in conjunction with module_form_alter(), forms the callback to turn FORM POST requests into pretty URLs.
• module_search_query() performs whatever functions are required to get hits from the remote service. This, of course, is the real heart of what we’re doing. Rather than searching text of nodes internal to Drupal, this function will return an array of results that comes from a query of a remote service. The array returned has two elements: ‘total’ — an integer representing the total number of hits for the query, and ‘items’ — an array of individual hits from this search.

Module-specific details

CourseSmart is probably the simplest module of the bunch and a good place to start when looking at the code. Note that we are using the private API (appending md=1 to the end of the URL) in order to get the ISBNs as listed on the CourseSmart website. Calls to the private API is restricted to particular IP addresses, so in order to use it you’ll need to contact CourseSmart. CourseSmart is also a little funky in that they will return items in their inventory that they won’t sell. This is designated with an esubscription price of $0, and are filtered out in the module_search_process() function.

OhioLINK EBook Center uses the SRU interface to the underlying XTF installation in order to get search results out. The search results come back in an XML document returned with multiple namespaces, which complicates somewhat the DOM parsing of that document. Basically, it means one has to register the namespaces with the XPath processor and take them into account when using XPath to pull out elements for formatting the result record.

OhioLINK Library Catalog uses the Shrew PHP class created by David Walker at California State University. Shrew hacks through the MARC display of records for an Innovative Interfaces WebPAC and returns a MARCXML document. Without this, I’d really be stuck as to how to efficiently get the library catalog search results into the portal. I’m grateful to him for releasing the code at exactly the right time and to Rob Casson at Miami who pointed me in David’s direction when I was considering having to write the Shrew-equivalent myself.

Safari Books Online is using the same underlying engine as CourseSmart to deliver materials, so the search module is very similar.

Structure of the Metasearch Module

• When the Drupal all_search hook is called with the ‘search’ operation parameter, a results array with explicitly 1 “result” and the search keys as the item returned. What we’re really doing is faking out the Drupal Search module into thinking that there are actually results so we can get to the all_search_page() hook. If we didn’t set the number of results to a value greater than zero, Drupal would display the “no hits found” message for us (which we don’t want it to do).
• The undocumented hook_search_page(), when defined for a module, is called by Drupal rather than using the built-in internal search results page. (The other modules use the built-in results page rendering.) We override the hook using all_search_page(), and that function calls each of the module_search_query() functions for the four remote sources in sequence. The results are then put into output block and the block is returned to the calling core code.
• “all” also contains several utility functions used by the other modules. all_parse_keys() will look at the user’s search string for ISBN values and return the user’s search string as an array of an ISBN and everything else. all_proxyify_url() will determine whether a user is outside of a campus network and prepend the OhioLINK proxy server string to the URL.

Plans for Enhancements

• We want to include bookstores in the search results. In particular, where possible, we’d like to search the bookstore’s inventory control system and display results right in the metasearch results.
• For the metasearch results, each of the target remote services are called in sequence. Ideally, the four services would be called in parallel. Even better, perhaps, would be to render the base page, then inject search results from the remote services via AJAX as they become available.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/etextbook-installation.html?rev=1042 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/ on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/all/all.module?rev=1042#L173 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/all/all.module?rev=1042#L61 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/ebooks/ebooks.module?rev=1042#L137 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/ebooks/ebooks.module?rev=1042#L130 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/csmart/csmart.module?rev=1042#L101 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/libcat?rev=1042 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/ebooks?rev=1042 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/csmart?rev=1042 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/all?rev=1042 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/all/all.module?rev=1042#L206 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/browser/eTextbookPortal/default/modules/safari?rev=1042 on January 13th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://drupal.org/getting-started/6 to http://drupal.org/getting-started on January 28th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. These made seem like odd choices to make for a project that had a short conception-to-production timeline, but a) there were already some helpful pieces written in PHP that sped development of some aspects of the portal, and b) I thought drinking the cool-aid of Drupal would be a good way to see what it was all about.