iNODE

We’ve just posted an announcement of our Digital Repository Services Librarian. You can read the full posting (and make an application) on the http://jobs.gmu.edu site. Here’s the announcement:

Digital Repository Services Librarian

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, a Carnegie Research University (High Research Activity), is an innovative, entrepreneurial institution with national distinction in a range of academic fields. Enrollment is 30,000, with students in over 150 degree programs. The Libraries are experiencing a period of significant growth in funding, staffing and facilities, and were identified in the University’s long-range planning process as critical to the University’s expanding role as a research institution.

This position serves as head of the MARS (Mason Archival Repository Service) project at Mason. Duties include managing the service, coordinating administrative workflows, and leading audience-building efforts of University Libraries in support of the service. MARS employs DSpace to satisfy digital archiving needs as well as more traditional IR services. The successful candidate will have a strong understanding of current metadata schemas, standards, and protocols (such as Dublin Core, MODS, METS, and OAI-PMH); experience with one or more digital content management systems; academic library experience working directly with faculty; experience managing projects and meeting deadlines; an awareness of current trends in open access and digital archiving and excellent communication skills. Position reports to the Associate University Librarian/Systems and is based in the Digital Programs and Systems Office.

Required qualifications: an ALA-accredited MLS or ALA-recognized foreign equivalent. Knowledge of current metadata standards and strong interest in digital content management systems. Experience working with faculty in an academic library setting. Demonstrable technology skills and excellent communication skills. Ability to meet requirements for reappointment and promotion.

Preferred qualifications: Experience with one or more digital content management system; DSpace experience preferred; second Master’s Degree or post MLS coursework.

Salary: Appointment at Librarian II, $ 50,000 minimum

Benefits: 12-month professional faculty appointment. Health plan options and paid life insurance; several retirement plans, including TIAA-CREF; 24 vacation days and 11 paid holidays; tuition waiver for self.

Special Instructions to Applicants All applications for position # FA463z must be submitted online at https://jobs.gmu.edu. Applicants must submit letter of application, resume, and names, addresses (including e-mail) and phone numbers of three current references. To apply, go to George Mason’s Employment page. Questions should be directed to Debra Hogan, Assistant to the University Librarian, at dhogan1@gmu.edu.

Review of applications will begin May 1, 2007 and will continue until position is filled.

George Mason University is an equal opportunity employer encouraging diversity.

The other day I mentioned loading 498 PBS videos on our QuickTime streaming server—work that’s part of a VIVA (Virtual Library of Virginia) project focused on delivering streaming video to students, faculty and staff. A follow up post today focuses on the challenges of restricting access to authorized users.

At some point in the not-too-distant-future, metadata about these videos will begin showing up in our online catalog. Each record will offer a clickable link to a real-time stream of the video. As you might guess, the most significant technological challenges surround keeping the content away from unauthorized users.

QTSS

QuickTime (H.264) encoding makes a really great looking video. Apple’s QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS) is a mature and capable product, easy to administer, and free with every copy of OS X Server. You don’t even need Apple hardware—check out the open-source version called Darwin Streaming Server (DSS) which runs on Linux and Windows as well as Macs. Is there a downside? Oh yeah. With QTSS you can restrict content to particular users but they must have an account on the server running QTSS. We’re looking at a potential user population around 30,000 so obviously this sort of “toy” authentication won’t work. Regrettably (and in 2007, inexplicably), QTSS is oblivious to LDAP.

An aside: There is reason to believe/hope this will improve during Fall 2007 when the next release of the QTSS software introduces Open Directory support.

I finally realized sometime last Friday that for now I should just implement a firewall on a QTSS server—restricting its interaction to machines on Mason’s network. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about who the user might be. If they’re on our network, they’re OK.

ipfw 

A bit of reading lead me straight to ipfw (a utility that along with ipchains I’ve managed to avoid understanding for years).

A couple of hours into it, I was beginning to get the hang of that special reverse logic that seems to govern firewall configuration when I found a post referring to the easy-to-use GUI that Apple provides to ipfw in the ServerAdmin utility. Doh! Ten minutes later I was ready to start testing.

Basically I defined a group (mason) and said all machines in this group have an IP address that begins 129.174.xxx.xxx. Built on free-BSD, OS X expects that to be written as: 129.174.0.0/16

Then under services I blocked access to all QTSS/RTSP ports for “any” network users and then enabled them for users belonging to my “mason” group.

We now have a server which can provide these PBS videos to any computer on campus. For off campus users, we’re still working on a Shibboleth-based authentication scheme that will be hosted by UVa. That is going to have a longer implementation schedule so perhaps we’ll find that the Leopard release of QTSS with LDAP support will obviate the need for this more complex infrastructure.

If you’re on Mason’s network, you should be able to view these sample PBS videos (American Experience – Douglas McArthur, parts 1 and 2). If you’re not on Mason’s network, your browser or QuickTime will time out waiting to establish a connection.

View in browser:

http://phobos.gmu.edu:7070/PBS/800/pbs_amx025-1_800k.mp4

http://phobos.gmu.edu:7070/PBS/800/pbs_amx025-2_800k.mp4

View with QuickTime Player:

rtsp://phobos.gmu.edu/PBS/800/pbs_amx025-1_800k.mp4

rtsp://phobos.gmu.edu/PBS/800/pbs_amx025-2_800k.mp4

I spent a bit of time today setting up a QuickTime Streaming Server–loading just under five hundred H.264-encoded PBS videos. The server piece of this went well but when I went to my desktop to preview one of the videos, I made a curious discovery.

No sound.

Fired up a laptop lying next to that machine and typed in the streaming URL. Sound played perfectly.

Back to the desktop, launched iTunes and picked a song. Sound played perfectly.

This will be a question on the FAQ I’m sure I’ll be developing…

Q. I get video but no sound on my Mac when I try to play a video from the streaming server. The system sounds (beeps) and other audio (e.g, iTunes) work fine. Why don’t I get sound from QT movies?

A. If you’re on Mac OS 10.3 or later, this could be caused by another application that has changed the default audio sampling rate from 44kHz to a different frequency. The system sounds will work, but QT audio will not. The solution is to open Audio MIDI Setup (/Applications/Utilities/), then check the Audio Output setting. Change the Audio Output to 44100.0 Hz, then quit Audio MIDI Setup. This sometimes occurs after recording audio.

I think the culprit in my case was WireTapPro.

I’d be happier with something like the Blog Advisory System (courtesy of Airbag)…but we’re going to take a pass on the Blogger Code of Conduct for now. Yes, they really have developed badges.

In other news…
Last week I did the final “before-you-actually-start-class college visit” with my daughter which got me thinking about various college ratings and rankings—there are so many and such variety. Of course, I focus on the tech ratings but even there it depends on who you’re talking to.

In the late 90’s to identify tech-savvy schools, you went with Yahoo’s annual “Most Wired Colleges” survey. Lists like that have become passé since everyone’s more or less “wired” yet the temptation to rank persists (see the “Top 20 Wired Colleges” courtesy of PC Magazine and The Princeton Review).

But lists that result from crunching numbers reported by the very sites being ranked have never seemed terribly accurate (e.g., I notice the recent PC Magazine list doesn’t credit Mason with a wireless network). Where to find ratings based on dispassionate, third-party reporting?

How about this?

A few weeks ago the RIAA released their list of the top 25 “violator” schools.

1. Ohio University – 1,287
2. Purdue University – 1,068
3. University of Nebraska at Lincoln – 1,002
4. University of Tennessee at Knoxville – 959
5. University of South Carolina – 914
6. University of Massachusetts at Amherst – 897
7. Michigan State University – 753
8. Howard University – 572
9. North Carolina State University – 550
10. University of Wisconsin at Madison – 513
11. University of South Florida – 490
12. Syracuse University – 488
13. Northern Illinois University – 487
14. University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire – 473
15. Boston University – 470
16. Northern Michigan University – 457
17. Kent State University – 424
18. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor – 400
19. University of Texas at Austin – 371
20. North Dakota State University – 360
21. Indiana University – 353
22. Western Kentucky University – 353
23. Seton Hall University – 338
24. Arizona State University – 336
25. Marshall University – 331

They do love to share music in the heartland, don’t they? What about movies? Fortunately for my research, the MPAA also tracks a top 25:

1,198 Columbia University
934 University of Pennsylvania
891 Boston University
889 University of California at Los Angeles
873 Purdue University
860 Vanderbilt University
813 Duke University
792 Rochester Institute of Technology
765 University of Massachusetts
740 University of Michigan
714 University of California at Santa Cruz
704 University of Southern California
637 University of Nebraska at Lincoln
636 North Carolina State University
586 Iowa State University
575 University of Chicago
562 University of Rochester
550 Ohio University
527 University of Tennessee
506 Michigan State University
457 Virginia Polytechnic Institute
455 Drexel University
447 University of South Florida
405 Stanford University
398 University of California at Berkeley

source: Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2007

Curious about why there’s so little overlap between the RIAA and the MPAA list? I was too but decided I could just assume the schools in the MPAA list had better networking—it takes a good connection to build a video collection of any depth. Not surprising, I found all members of the MPAA list are also members of Internet2. Can’t say the same for the RIAA top 25.

Oh, and that PC magazine list? I found only one school (University of Southern California) on either the RIAA or MPAA lists. Could it be that students at schools on the PC Magazine list are just too smart to get caught? I hope that’s not the case—my alma mater (University of Tennessee) is on both the RIAA and MPAA honor roll.

Digital Campus

My friend Dan Cohen is three episodes into Digital Campus, a podcast focusing on “how digital media and technology are affecting learning, teaching and scholarship at colleges, universities, libraries and museums.” I listened to the first two episodes on my way into work this morning and finished up the third on my way home (you now know I have no life and a long commute). I learned something from each of the episodes and look forward to the next one. As you might expect (given the provenance), there’s a historian’s focus to the discussions but plenty there to interest (and benefit) the e-librarian as well.

Internet Archive / Open Content Alliance

Brewster Kahle spoke via conference call to the attendees at the Spring meeting of ASERL, talking about the Open Content Alliance, the work of the project and what ASERL libraries can do to help. I’d love to hear from any iNode reader working in a library that’s putting texts (or pdfs) from the Open Content Alliance into their catalog/collection? Seems a no-brainer to me but perhaps I’m missing something.