#glamworkbench — Public Fediverse posts

New #intro post! I'm a historian who who builds digital things to help people explore and use #GLAM collections (galleries, libraries, archives & museums). For some examples from the past 30 years see: https://wraggelabs.com

Most recently I was Creative Technologist-in-Residence at the State Library of Victoria. Here's a summary of what I got up to: https://slv.wraggelabs.com

I'm semi-retired, but still working away at passion projects like the #GLAMWorkbench and always on the lookout for interesting opportunities that can help pay the bills. You can find me at: https://timsherratt.au

Pushed a fix to my custom Datasette-Lite repo so that the full-text indexing handles multiple columns properly. If you want to use it to share your CSVs as searchable databases, you can construct the necessary url with this form in the #GLAMWorkbench: https://glam-workbench.net/glam-tools/datasette/

Wrote up a short post about the new Jupyter Lite version of the #GLAMWorkbench's getting started notebook – includes a live version of the notebook embedded in the post! https://updates.timsherratt.org/2025/04/28/the-glam-workbench-introduction-to.html

The #GLAMWorkbench has a brand new section for the Public Record Office Victoria! The first notebook shows you how to use PROV's collection API. You can run it live on Jupyter Lite as well as Binder. https://glam-workbench.net/prov/ #GLAM #archives #histodons #digitalHumanities

I've created a Jupyter Lite version of the #GLAMWorkbench's 'getting started' notebook. It shows you how Jupyter notebooks work, with live examples that download data from the NMA collection API. https://glam-workbench.net/getting-started-jlite/lab/index.html?path=using_jupyter_notebooks.ipynb

Jupyter Lite runs in your browser, so there's no waiting for Binder or any cloud service to start up. #GLAM #jupyter

This has taken me far too long (tired, distracted brain), but I think it's just about ready for the #GLAMWorkbench...

I'm still fiddling with the Public Record Office Victoria API, so to help me and others get their heads around the data the API provides, I created a dashboard that gives a basic overview. It should update every Sunday. https://wragge.github.io/prov-dashboard/

Still working on a PROV API section for the #GLAMWorkbench that'll have all the code. #GLAM #archives #histodons #digitalhumanities

I've added another 15 entries to my list of publications that mention the #GLAMWorkbench or one of its related tools (such as the #Trove Newspaper Harvester). That makes an even 100 references from around the world. https://glam-workbench.net/citations/ #GLAM #collectionsAsData #researchImpact

Added a new banner to the #GLAMWorkbench... 😞

I was asked recently for help searching a community newsletter that had been uploaded to #Trove through the National eDeposit service (NED). That led me down a bit of a rabbit hole... I've now added a notebook to the #GLAMWorkbench that walks through the process of extracting metadata and text from a NED periodical and building a custom search interface using Datasette. This could be useful both to researchers and communities. Details here: https://updates.timsherratt.org/2025/02/19/search-the-content-of-periodicals.html

I've also added a new Trove NED section to the GLAM Workbench, created a new Datasette template, & updated my harvest of NED periodicals.

Trove & the NLA refuse to share links to the GW, so there’s a good chance that the people who might benefit most directly from this work will never know that it exists. Please help by sharing amongst your networks! #GLAM #digitalHumanities #histodons @histodons

I've also created a new #GLAMWorkbench section for #Trove NED stuff. It's pretty much done, but neither MyBinder or ARDC Binder are working at the moment, so I can't fully test things...

I'd sort of like to nominate the #GLAMWorkbench in the Eureka Prize's research software category. It wouldn't win against all the science-y, institutionally-supported things, and it's a lot of work to submit, so not sure it's worth the effort just to fly the flag for #GLAM, HASS, and the work of lone developers...

I think this is working now... a custom search interface to a periodical uploaded to #Trove through the National eDeposit scheme. In Trove it's a collection of PDFs that can only be searched individually using the PDF viewer. I've pulled out all the text, created a full-text index in a SQLite db, and published it using Datasette-Lite with a customised template that adds facets, highlighting etc. https://glam-workbench.net/datasette-lite-search/?url=https://github.com/GLAM-Workbench/trove-ned-periodicals/blob/main/dbs/the-triangle/the-triangle.db&metadata=https://github.com/GLAM-Workbench/trove-ned-periodicals/blob/main/dbs/the-triangle/metadata.json The method is pretty straightforward and can be repeated for similar periodicals. I'll be adding a notebook to the #GLAMWorkbench shortly. #GLAM

#jobAlert! The National Library of Australia is after a Project Officer, Social Media and Digital Marketing (non-ongoing until 25 December): https://nla.nga.net.au/cp/index.cfm?event=jobs.checkJobDetailsNewApplication&returnToEvent=jobs.listJobs&jobid=3D85C3A6-C9D3-7D1C-A9E1-E37C55883595&CurATC=EXT&CurBID=E6E9502C%2D62E4%2D4E46%2DA88B%2D9DB401350598&JobListID=48554938%2D31EA%2D46A3%2D8B14%2D9BC90126F92B&jobsListKey=3ef16260%2D20ed%2D4a8b%2D8b0a%2D4091c717eaba&persistVariables=CurATC,CurBID,JobListID,jobsListKey,JobID&lid=95532640048&rmuh=61E28B99AB68B15B9C2270C8B678C7CE17824012 Maybe you could get them to actually share information about useful resources like the #GLAMWorkbench...

It's always fun when the #GLAMWorkbench is listed alongside organisations like the British Library and the Library of Congress...

Tonight I'm having a chat about data labs & my work on the #GLAMWorkbench with folks from the impressive Impresso project: https://www.impresso-project.ch/

The work of #maintenance is never done – some details of last week's updates to the #Trove newspapers section of the #GLAMWorkbench: https://updates.timsherratt.org/2024/09/23/major-update-for.html The Trove newspapers section includes 23 Jupyter notebooks and 6 datasets. #GLAM #histodons #digitalHumanities

I thought I'd pull together a little list of all the datasets I've created over the years that capture data about the history of online GLAM collections (specifically Trove and RecordSearch). They're scattered a bit between the #GLAMWorkbench, GitHub, and Zenodo, so I thought it's be useful to have the details in one place.

But it's turning into a very long list...

#GLAMWorkbench update! Saving #Trove's digitised periodicals as PDFs: https://updates.timsherratt.org/2024/09/19/saving-troves-digitised.html #GLAM #histodons #digitalHumanities

It took a week, but the #Trove newspapers section of the #GLAMWorkbench is now fully updated. That's 25 notebooks and 6 datasets. https://glam-workbench.net/trove-newspapers/

For those who are interested (probably nobody), as well as updating the code to work with v3 of the Trove API, I pulled all the datasets out of the code repo and put them in their own dedicated repositories, added metadata to the notebooks, and created an RO-Crate metadata file for the repo. I also made some changes to the documentation site, adjusting the notebook previews, and moving things around. I still need to adjust some things relating to the datasets, but it's not major. #GLAM #maintenance #histodons, #digitalHumanities

Ok, so I've updated all the notebooks in the Trove newspapers section of the #GLAMWorkbench to make sure they work with v3 of the Trove API. They're not in the repository yet – still have to update all the metadata & generate RO-Crate files for nbs and data.

A researcher got in touch yesterday asking about saving digitised periodicals in #Trove as PDFs. All the various bits you need for this are in the #TroveDataGuide, but I hadn't actually pulled them together as a notebook. I thought it might be useful to others, so I've now created a #GLAMWorkbench notebook that helps you download all the issues of a digitised periodical as PDFs: https://glam-workbench.net/trove-journals/save-issues-as-pdfs/ Enjoy! #GLAM #histodons #digitalHumanities @histodons #researchInfrastructure

I've updated the #GLAMWorkbench section on v3 of the #Trove API to note that v2 was decommissioned last week, and to include a link to outstanding v3 bugs. If you need to update your code from v2 to v3, there's also a list of breaking changes and some migration hints. https://glam-workbench.net/trove-api-v3/ #GLAM #digitalHumanities

After the sudden (and unannounced 😡) demise of #Trove API v2, I've started working on updating the last of the #GLAMWorkbench notebooks that still use v2. First priority was QueryPic as @baibi is using it in her teaching -- it should be working ok again now: https://glam-workbench.net/trove-newspapers/querypic/ Many of the other newspaper notebooks will be broken, but I'm working through them as fast as I can.

Once that's done I can start working a new blog post, provisionally titled 'How not to manage a public API'. There may be swearing. #GLAM #maintenance

I've been gradually working through the #GLAMWorkbench trying to update all the Trove stuff to v3, but of course I've foolishly left the biggest section (newspapers) to last, so I'm going to have to get to work on that quickly. @TroveNewsBot and possibly other apps might also need some changes.

Some good news – the PMs Transcripts query API is now working again! Security changes on the PMs site had meant that you could only access the API in a browser, which sort of defeats the purpose of an API. But they've now fixed it. Thanks to the PM&C librarian for sorting it out. Now I suppose I should update the PMs Transcripts section of the #GLAMWorkbench: https://glam-workbench.net/pm-transcripts/

Added another 17 entries to my list of publications citing the #GLAMWorkbench (or one of its related tools). There's now 83 in total. https://glam-workbench.net/citations/ #researchInfrastructure

There's been a few cases now where people have given credit for the #GLAMWorkbench to #Trove itself. I suppose it's understandable, I mean who would be stupid enough to spend years of their life building resources to help people make use of a GLAM institution's collection when the institution itself can't even be bothered telling it's users about them...

For #familyHistoryMonth I've updated last year's post about #familyHistory resources in the #GLAMWorkbench – 10 million GLAM name records, #Trove articles as images, and more! https://updates.timsherratt.org/2023/08/18/family-history-resources.html #genealogy #histodons

ooops I've already fallen behind in my #FamilyHistoryMonth postings... Here's one for today. If your family comes from a non-English speaking background, check out this list of #Trove newspapers published in languages other than English. There's 55 different titles, in a range of languages including Chinese, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Polish, and Ukrainian. https://github.com/GLAM-Workbench/trove-newspapers-non-english/blob/main/non-english-newspapers.md #GLAMWorkbench #familyHistory #genealogy