ALEG

What I've done

• (Forgotten task from last week: loaded the old AUSTLIT "CD" field, which was used by indexers to put little notes and link the work back to the ancient card index. Thanks to Fran for extracting this data from the old AUSTLIT database)

• Dataloading!

  1. AMLC bib - 837 new records
  2. Lu Rees bib - 2920 new works
  3. WA Bib - 729 new agents, whittled down to about 530 after a fun-filled day of merging, 1563 new works

  Nothing about data loads seems to get much easier - there is always a lot of fun trying to resolve near-name matches, pseuds and alts! Each of these loads has left a litter of material which requires manual intervention. Typical issues are:

  • interesting manifestation info and comments not being loaded when the work is a duplicate
  • subject indexing
  • series statements

• Added a basic text search facility.

• Some more minor changes to formatting, templates, edit checks, bug fixes.

• The tape drive on the loan machine from Sun refused to accept tapes, so we had no tape backups for two days. I rebooted the machine thismorning and the tape drive appears to be operational. Meanwhile, I've manually performed backups to another machine.

• The DVD for the new machine has arrived (so now we can load the system!) Some basic work configuring the machine was done by Fran this week - more next week.

• Load the Drama bibliography...

• Configuring and loading the new machine. We are still awaiting a hard drive, but hopefully we'll swap to the new machine before the end of May.

• To Do list. Work through the (mostly) minor issues on the to-do list provided by Annette/Kerry/Marie-Louise.

• First known dates. Our strategy of calculating first-known-date (fkd) at the work level has proven inadequate. For a simple example of its failure, consider an anthology which is revised into another expression and includes a new work: currently the fkd of that new work is calculated based on the fkd of the anthology, not the new expression, so the new work *may* have a fkd of before the birth date of the author! I think we have to record fkd of expressions as well as works.

• The new thesaurus is expected to be available for loading soon.

Links of the week

• UTLKIN2ME? Can U speak cell phone?

  I wonder when this will spawn a new poetry genre?

• The Brain of the Future - From the ABC's Alfred Deakin Lecture series

  Professor Susan Greenfield holds the Chair of Pharmacology at Oxford University, and is the Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the first woman appointed to the post. Britain's best-known neuro-scientist, Professor Greenfield's molecular study of the brain has been driven by her desire to find effective treatments for degenerative diseases, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. She also talks about human cloning and consciousness.