November 20, 2012 at UCJEPS

In attendance:

Rick, Andrew, Kim, Clare, Margriet, Ana, Gary (at times)

Topics covered

 (NOTE: Three *'s to the right of category signals urgency)

Rotating images

- Clean up ingest process

Best resolution is to have images uploaded in the proper orientation. Rotating images is not a service that the CSpace deploy team (or a hosted CSpace service) can sustain. PAHMA uses a photographic workflow similar to that of UCJEPS, but includes Adobe Bridge to rotate and otherwise optimize the image during upload. Rick will seek UCJEPS' ok to arrange a meeting between PAHMA photographer Elizabeth and UCJEPS.

- Create rotate button/batch job locally? Have design/scope discussions in Dec/Jan

>> Rotate either super-fast or asynchronously. UCJEPS doesn't want to have to wait around for image to rotate in the middle of the photograph/upload process.

• Two strategies:
  • 1) Rotate on upload
  • 2) Rotate after media is in CSpace.
    • The first is less complicated. However, to fix existing images, users would have to delete the media (and the relation?) and re-upload, rotating as needed on upload.
    • The second would entail updating a number of tables (media_common, blobs_common, view, content, picture, hierarchy?....).
      • Note that the files on disk are named by their MD5 sum; the name that users know the file by exists only in the database. Because rotating the images changes their MD5 sum, all of the db fields that are involved in linking the name to the file itself must be updated.
    • In addition, EXIF metadata would be incorrect, and probably should be erased or edited -- which would bloat the file size.
    • Also, blobs are orphaned, rathered than being truly deleted, so this method would eat up storage over time.
    • In his rotation jobs, Glen has changed only three derivates (originalJpeg, Medium and Thumbnail), not the uploaded image (which CSpace points to both as "Filename.ext" and as "Original_Filename.ext").
      • CSpace doesn't always seem to create both pointers, i.e., Filename.ext AND Original_Filename.ext.

- Create button in CSpace core Media Handling service?

This is probably the best solution, rather than messing with the database directly. Rick will raise issue as a feature request.

- Clear caches?

Be sure that the "doubly rotated" images aren't simply cached versions of the pre-rotated images.

>> Have UCJEPS report CSIDs of mis-oriented images as they come upon them.

Moving fields around ("real estate issues")

On Cataloging record, in Locality Information group, switch the lateral order of the Verbatim coordinates, Verbatim longitude and Verbatim latitude fields so that V. longitude and V. latitude line up just above the respective (calculated) Decimal longitude and Decimal latitude fields.

UCJEPS needs self-service reports

Reports must be self-generated rather than CSpace deploy team running reports for UCJEPS. UCJEPS feels too much in the dark about the state of their collection. They want to be able to answer their own questions/do problem solving on the spot, as the questions/issues arise.

• 1 necessary report detailed (expanded Loan Item report). Also: eLoan report.
• Are there other reports?
• Loan item report needs: Accession number, Scientific name, Collector, Collection #, Collection date and Locality
  • Chris has followed up seeking details about Loan Items report.
• Have Dick show Andrew and Rick how ELoan report works (Asparagopsis taxiformis)

Public Interface ***

Andrew's impatience is growing. Creating a public interface is a big project that will take a while and push other UCJEPS priorities.

• Necessary for self-directed use (by herbaria partners and the public? - rick)
• Fields such as phrenology, that are not included in reports, should be exposed

Migrate Images from Darwin to CSpace

Necessary for security, accessibility of images

• CSpace deploy team will get on this task.
• Questions:
  • Where are images on Darwin?
  • Specific directories?
  • File name convention?

Duplicate accession #'s on the specimens themselves.

This is worrisome to Kim. Can tech help?

• Warn of dupe on save?
  • Chris says all we can easily do is present an error message at bottom of screen. Dialog box is the better way to go, but will have to wait for later.
• Flag in record on save?
  • Ray feels that this should be do-able.
• (Title Yuteh's duplicate reports to be clear that these are media records, as opposed to Cataloging records.)
• Create Media Handling report by dupe filename.
  • Did Rick misunderstand this? Need to clarify.
• Yuteh ran report -- approx 40 dupes as of now.
  • Chris proposed that we handle this by weekly report for now.

Confusion over related procedures (media) vis-a-vis media snapshots - inconsistent?

• Sometimes Cataloging records display media snapshots even though no related media records are shown in the right hand sidebar.
• Kim and Margriet should monitor this, report when inconsistencies occur.

Add specimens directly in Cataloging, rather than in Media Handling  ***

• Add Upload media button that displays upload dialog within/over Cataloging record.
• Copies accession #, Scientific name to newly-created Media Handling record.
• Ideally, user could select multiple images.
  • Selecting one image at a time (i.e., creating a single media record at a time) would be ok, though.
    

"Major taxonomic categories" (order/family/other category names for bryophytes, seaweeds, lichen) ***

• UCJEPS *needs* this
• Similar to bgbase (Bot Garden system)
• Displayed on cataloging screen, searchable (To answer the question, for example: "How many images of bryophytes do we have?")
• Chris has started this discussion with UCJEPS. Look for email thread
  

Search results improvements

• Open search result immediately when only one found (rather than displaying find/edit result page)
• Search results: Keyboard shortcut for right-click (Ctl+Click) + down arrow (i.e., open in new tab, which is first option in menu)
  • Rick following up with CSpace UI team. This may have been implemented in later version.
• Search results vis-a-vis CCH (thousands on page, quickly navigable)