WOLFcon 2024

Pre-conference workshops are in-person only and require a separate registration fee ($100). You may register for workshops on the regular WOLFcon registration page.

Objective: The half-day workshop aims to provide participants with practical knowledge and skills to effectively utilize the VuFind® open source discovery software for research, teaching, and learning purposes.

Prerequisites: Participants should bring computers with network capabilities and an SSH client (e.g. PuTTY) for connecting to servers during exercises. Some exercises will involve editing files and running simple commands on the Unix command line; familiarity with basic Unix/Linux commands is recommended but not required.

Workshop Outline:
00:00-00:30 – Lecture: Introduction to VuFind® (what is it, why is it useful, and what are its key features?)
00:30-00:45 – Lecture: How can you obtain data? (OAI-PMH, MARC, XML and CSV will be explained)
00:45-01:00 – Hands-on exercise: harvesting data (using pre-configured virtual servers)
• MARC data from Koha ILS via OAI-PMH.
• XML data from DSpace via OAI-PMH.
01:00-01:30 – Lecture: How can you import data?
Discussion will cover multiple format-specific import tools:
• MARC obtained from the ILS (e.g. FOLIO, Koha, etc.)
• XML from repository systems (e.g. DSpace, SubjectsPlus, etc.)
• Comma delimited CSV for data entered in Excel or Libre Office Calc
01:30-01:45 – Exercise: Import the harvested MARC records and XML data from the prior exercise, including custom settings to support alert and notifications (SDI) functionality.
01:45-02:00 – Break/Q&A time
02:00-02:30 – Lecture: sitemaps, web crawling and combined search
02:30-03:00 – Final exercise: set up web crawling, crawl an example Wordpress site, configure combined search to display side-by-side with MARC and XML results indexed in previous exercise.
03:00-03:30 – Final Q&A; discussion of possible next steps including books released by VuFind® for Koha ILS, WordPress, DSpace and SubjectsPlus integrated with VuFind®, API and Plugins.

Benefits:
• Participants will gain know-how and skills to navigate and utilize VuFind® software effectively.
• Enhanced research capabilities and access to a wider range of scholarly materials.
• Improved teaching and learning outcomes through the integration of VuFind® with Koha ILS, DSpace, WordPress and SubjectsPlus.
• Networking opportunities with peers and experts in the field.
Evaluation:
• Participant feedback surveys will be done to assess the workshop's effectiveness and areas for improvement.
• Post-workshop follow-up support for further assistance and guidance will be provided for 5 days through Zoom.

Conclusion:
By integrating these strategies and best practices, researchers, library professionals and educators can effectively leverage VuFind® software to enhance the quality and impact of their research projects and teaching materials, while also promoting responsible use of digital content.

Abstract
One of FOLIO’s strengths is that many special cases of lending such as ‘bound journal volumes’, ‘acquisition records’, ‘omnibus records’, etc. and local rules can be easily modeled.
However, it is often difficult to present the nuances to readers in an intuitive way.
The "Discovery" group’s 2023 survey shows that the FOLIO’s API for availability information provides far too little information for this task. Therefore, every advanced patron GUI (such as VuFind®) has to query multiple low-level FOLIO APIs to meet the needs, a task which requires an unreasonably deep knowledge of FOLIO internals.
 
Even though VuFind® provides a configurable driver for integration with FOLIO, this solution was not sufficiently flexible for the needs of our libraries. So we decided to develop our own Edge API. We invented a universal (not only for VuFind®) and highly configurable (XSLT) solution. We are proud of it and confident that it can be used as a prototype for the much needed redesign of RTAC. 
 
In this presentation, I will show you how we use our solution to extract the most complete information from FOLIO, prepare it and finally display it in our VuFind® installations. I will also demonstrate how to customize the output of the API using XSLT.
 
Every library is different, and it may not be obvious from the demonstration exactly how this tool might meet your needs. Time will be set aside for Q&A so we can discuss your use cases and demonstrate the flexibility of this solution.

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. Time will be included for general Q&A about the project and its future plans.

In most of the open source software the documentation is not sufficient and the open source software is prepared by the developer to solve a particular problem. To use the open source software, training is needed. The benefit of the training and its impact will be highlighed in the presentation

In the Fall of 2023 the Lehigh University Libraries FOLIO/VuFind Team began the process of planning and testing a new single search discovery option. VuFind combined search brings together the results from FOLIO, EDS, ReShare, LibGuides A-Z Databases, Islandora, and EBSCO Publication Finder onto a single results page with various options for presentation.

To achieve clean, coherent results, understanding how the data in our cataloging records was contributing positively and negatively to the outcome of the single search was a challenge for Lehigh’s metadata team. With FOLIO’s Bulk Edit app, the LDP, the Data Import app, and tools external to FOLIO we identified and cleaned our data so it is represented cleanly and accurately in the single search.

VuFind's combined search affords a variety of ways to organize and present search results. We determined that user testing would be a vital part of the development process. Although we lacked formal expertise in user testing, we set about creating a framework for evaluating and grading user experience with various VuFind features and configurations.

In this session we will show the work that was done to get to this single search functionality that our library uses today. The session will cover data cleaning, newly developed integrations and related UX improvements, many of which are contributed back to VuFind for other institutions to utilize. The testing, feedback, and updating that contributed to those improvements will be detailed as well.

Public libraries are increasingly in need of streamlined, affordable, and intuitive software that can be integrated with their existing user management system. The cost of an incident reporting software, as an example, can range greatly while what defines an MVP can vary by organization and finding a fits-all solution is nearly impossible.

Join Spokane Public Library for an exploration into two new FOLIO apps, both leveraging FOLIO’s open architecture: SIR, a novel Security Incident Reporting solution designed to fill the niche need for a nationally growing issue and NMR, a planned New Material Request app (with VuFind integration) for receiving and processing material acquisitions and ILLs requests from library patrons.

Index Data do VuFind solutions for libraries using FOLIO, KoHa, and also ReShare. At this session we will present you some of our latest projects, and talk about how we typical plan and complete a VuFind project and work with out customers; from the initial contact, the very early ideas, and how we work to capture requirements. At this session you will also hear more about how a project is organized, and the way we do iterative development, conduct user acceptance testing while we develop the solution, and best practice.

VuFind® FOLIO Driver Development
This session will include an introduction to VuFind®'s ILS driver mechanism, some details about how the existing FOLIO driver is implemented, tips for developers who wish to improve the FOLIO driver, and time for collaborative development work.

VuFind: One organisation, one system, many uses!
In 2023 the Auckland University of Technology
(AUT), in Aotearoa New Zealand, ran two very different technical
projects with VuFind. VuFind instances were integrated with both Koha to
deliver an academic library search platform, and with DSpace as
a world-first rainbow collection research portal.

This session will explore the experiences of two small, special library which exists as a shared tenant with larger university libraries in a FOLIO system. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of being the smaller and specialist library buddied with a larger library within the same FOLIO tenant. In one case, the larger library supplies much of the labor and a larger proportion of the funding for the system; however, the smaller library independently performs the same processes and has developed their own workflows to accommodate a significantly smaller workforce. In the second library, the tenant division is more equitable, but difficulties with transparency and maintenance responsibility make collaboration and smooth transition between updates difficult. The presenters will discuss how to optimize a shared tenant as a much smaller special library, what pitfalls can occur, and their recommendation for best practices for the special library’s administration and maintenance of the shared tenant.

We'll walk through the process of migrating to FOLIO and how to structure your project so that you address potential risks and will have prepared for the go-live day such that when it comes, there are no surprises, no drama, and things just work as planned.

In this session, the presenters will provide a holistic view of the impact of cataloging and authority management workflows on discovery at Michigan State University Libraries (MSUL). The presentation will describe various cataloging and authority management procedures within FOLIO and discuss how they impact the MSUL public catalog (VuFind). Time will also be spent discussing how MSUL coordinates collaboration between catalogers, authority managers, and system administrators to improve VuFind display and functionality. Examples of cataloging and authority management projects that demonstrate how these tools work together will also be provided, including work toward harmful language remediation. Finally, the presenters will show examples of FOLIO documentation and provide some tips for working within FOLIO. We hope that this session will encourage workflow sharing among FOLIO and VuFind institutions especially in discussions around how cataloging decisions impact discovery.