Welcome to a new issue of Code4Lib Journal! We hope you like the new articles.

We are happy with Issue 59, although putting it together was a challenge for the Editorial Board. This was in no small part because Issue 58 was so tumultuous, including a crisis over our unintentional publication of personally identifiable information, a subsequent internal review by the Editorial Board, an Extra Editorial, and much self-reflection. All of this (quite rightly) slowed down our work. Several Editorial Board members resigned, which left us with a much smaller team to handle a larger workload. As a volunteer-run organization without a revenue stream, Code4Lib Journal is a labor of love that we all complete off the side of our overfilled desks. It was demoralizing to feel that we had lost the support of many in our community. A lot of us were tempted to quit rather than try to pick up and carry on. So, although we have published Issue 59 later than planned, and with a different coordinating editor, we made it. This issue is testament to the perseverance of my colleagues on the Editorial Board, and to the wonderful articles contributed by our community.

The PREMIS Editorial Committee (EC) read Ross Spencer’s recent article “PREMIS Events Through an Event-sourced Lens” with interest. The article was a useful primer to the idea of event sourcing and in particular was an interesting introduction to a conversation about whether and how such a model could be applied to Digital Preservation systems.

However, the article makes a number of specific assertions and suggestions about PREMIS, with which we on the PREMIS EC disagree. We believe these are founded on an incorrect or incomplete understanding of what PREMIS actually is, and as significantly, what it is not.

The aim of this article is to address those specific points.

After 15 years of providing access to our digital collections through CONTENTdm, the University of Louisville Libraries changed direction, and migrated to Hyku, a self-hosted open-source digital repository. This article details the complexities of customizing an open-source repository, offering lessons on balancing sustainability via standardization with the costs of developing new code to accommodate desired features. The authors explore factors in deciding to create a Hyku instance and what we learned in the implementation process. Emphasizing the customizations applied, the article illustrates our unexpected detours and necessary considerations to get to “done.” This narrative serves as a resource for institutions considering similar transitions.

A trio of personnel at University of Oregon Libraries explored options for automating a pathway to ingest, store, and visualize cost per use data for continuing resources. This paper presents a pipeline for using Alma, SUSHI, COUNTER5, Python, and Power BI to create a tool for data-driven decision making. By establishing this pipeline, we shift the time investment from manually harvesting usage statistics to interpreting the data and sharing it with stakeholders. The resulting visualizations and collected data will assist in making informed, collaborative decisions.

During the 2021-22 academic year, the Georgia Southern University Libraries launched an intranet within the LibGuides CMS (LibGuides) platform. While LibGuides had been in use at Georgia Southern for more than 10 years, it was used most heavily by the reference librarians. Library staff in other roles tended not to have accounts, nor to have used LibGuides. Meanwhile, the Libraries had a need for a structured intranet, and the larger university did not provide enterprise level software intended for intranet use. This paper describes launching an intranet, including determining what software features are necessary and reworking software and user permissions to provide these features, change management by restructuring permissions within an established and heavily used software platform, and training to introduce libraries employees to the intranet. Now, more than a year later, the intranet is used within the libraries for important functions, like training, sharing information about resources available to employees, for coordinating events and programming, and to provide structure to a document repository in Google Shared Drive. Employees across the libraries use the intranet to more efficiently complete necessary work. This article steps through desired features and software settings in LibGuides to support use as an intranet.

Making Python applications is hard, but not always in the way you expect. In an effort to simplify our archival workflows, I set out to discover how to make standalone desktop applications for our archivists and processors to make frequently used workflows easier and more intuitive. Coming from an archivists’ background with some Python knowledge, I learned how to code things like Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), to create executable (binary) files, and to generate software installers for Windows. Navigating anti-virus software flagging your files as malware, Microsoft Windows throwing warning messages about downloading software from unknown publishers (rightly so), and disentangling licensing changes to a previously freely-available Python library all posed unexpected hurdles that I’m still grappling with. In this article, I will share my journey of creating, distributing, and dealing with the aftereffects of making Python-based applications for our users and provide advice on what to look out for if you’re looking to do something similar.

This article discusses the project undertaken by the library of Queens’ College, Cambridge, to migrate its classification system to RDF applying the SKOS data model using Python. Queens’ uses the Bliss Bibliographic Classification alongside 18 other UK libraries, most of which are small libraries of the colleges at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Though a flexible and universal faceted classification system, Bliss faces challenges due to its unfinished state, leading to the evolution in many Bliss libraries of divergent, in-house adaptations of the system to fill in its gaps. For most of the official, published parts of Bliss, a uniquely formatted source code used to generate a typeset version is available online. This project focused on converting this source code into a SKOS RDF linked-data format using Python: first by parsing the source code, then using RDFLib to write the concepts, notation, relationships, and notes in RDF. This article suggests that the RDF version has the potential to prevent further divergence and unify the various Bliss adaptations and reflects on the limitations of SKOS when applied to complex, faceted systems.

This paper details the National Library of Belgium’s (KBR) exploration of automating the subject indexing process for their extensive collection using Python scripts. The initial exploration involved creating a reference dataset and automating the classification process using MARCXML files. The focus is on demonstrating the practicality, adaptability, and user-friendliness of the Python-based solution. The authors introduce their unique approach, emphasizing the semantically significant words in subject determination. The paper outlines the Python workflow, from creating the reference dataset to generating enriched bibliographic records. Criteria for an optimal workflow, including ease of creation and maintenance of the dataset, transparency, and correctness of suggestions, are discussed. The paper highlights the promising results of the Python-powered approach, showcasing two specific scripts that create a reference dataset and automate subject indexing. The flexibility and user-friendliness of the Python solution are emphasized, making it a compelling choice for libraries seeking efficient and maintainable solutions for subject indexing projects.