Tag Archives: Solr

Creating an EBS Backed AMI in the Cloud

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I decided that I wanted to create an EBS backed AMI on Amazon’s Cloud Computing platform.  I thought this would be REALLY hard.  I was completely wrong.

The first thing I did was start with an already existing EBS AMI. Right now there aren’t too many available but they are growing.  I chose an Ubuntu 9.04 image since I’m going to install a stack on it, and I’ve already done *most* of it before on Ubuntu.

A quick note: it is possible to create an EBS AMI from an S3 AMI, but I wasn’t able to figure that out (quickly).  Although I did find a script that will do this for you: http://gist.github.com/249915.

Next, I wanted to get the Ubuntu server prepared.  I needed to:

  • install mysql — http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/install-mysql-server-5-on-ubuntu/
  • install ruby on rails — http://www.hackido.com/2009/04/install-ruby-rails-on-ubuntu-904-jaunty.html (up to and including step 6)
  • install zlib — http://www.techsww.com/tutorials/libraries/zlib/installation/installing_zlib_on_ubuntu_linux.php
  • install blacklight — http://projectblacklight.org (includes solr and a number of gem dependencies)

I did all of this.  One thing I noticed, Blacklight requires me to use non-standard ports (ie not 22 and 80).  While the server was running, I went into the AWS console and opened ports for its associated security group.  The changes took effect immediately.  I definitely liked that.

Finally, I went in to the AWS Management Console and chose “Create Image (EBS AMI)”.

Picture 1

Then I filled in the information including a description of my image:

EBS AMI Details

and voila! EBS backed AMI.  the one caveat is:

DON’T TERMINATE THE INSTANCE UNTIL THE NEW AMI HAS FINISHED BEING CREATED

because then you’ll loose all the work that you have just done.  doh!

NE Code4Lib

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Currently in some lightening talks at NECode4Lib

Tim Spalding (Library Thing)

Socail Cataloging…using users to tag books.  Added a section called Common Knowledge.  Essentially things that libraries don’t keep track of or don’t keep track of well.  Not just for books but also for Authors.  This section is a fielded wiki.

Jay “Hussein” Luker (Ex Libris Inc)

URL2Cite http://reallywow.com:5000/slideshow.html

CiteULike.  Bookmark URL and the Plugins scrape metadata from the webpages. Idea is that CiteULike scrapes the metadata and then URL2Cite would take that metadata and put it into a citation format.  Claims that he will blog about it…

Jean Rainwater said that Brown is doing something like this http://freecite.library.brown.edu (they are hoping to get more money from Mellon to expand it)

Also Jay has a cool RDF plugin called tabulator.

WGBH (Courtney Michael, Dov Frede, Chris Beer)

OpenVault — raw interviews, footage, etc from WGBH.  They are trying to tag the information and make it more searchable.  Scholars are concerned about tagging (think librarians and their scholars are the only ones that know anything).  So they allow you to choose LCSH based on the words that you type, however you don’t have to use LCSH.

Jodi Schneider (Amherst College)

Zotero — brief demo of it and how it works.  Zotero is being sued by Thomson http://dltj.org/?s=zotero&searchsubmit=Search

Cassey Bisson (Plymouth State)

Scriblio a way of representing catalogs elsewhere. (works with III without the XML Server!) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/scriblio/

He also has instructions for the III importer plugin

The documentation is lagging behind the code, but…

After installing Scriblio activate the Scriblio III Importer plugin. Go to Manage > Import > Scriblio III Importer. And follow the steps as they appear in these screenshots: http://flickr.com/photos/scriblio/sets/72157603031251442/

Additionally there is a public library http://collingswoodlib.org/library/60280/welcome/ that is also a consortium using it.  Hmmmmm….

You can also use it for archives.  Beyond Brown Paper (http://beyondbrownpaper.plymouth.edu) uses flickr for the original cataloging, but Haystack (http://archives.colby-sawyer.edu) is entirely self-contained.  Casey hacked it so that there is a data entry screen for the archives to enter data.  Its an interesting way for archives to display their collections.

Michael Klein (BPL)

Solr and Xforms.  Uses them as a way to populate the BPL’s digital library.  He uses Solr to pull information from LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (a subject heading system).  Pretty cool…he customized so that Solr doesn’t return a simple list but creates a dynamic list (broader, narrower subject terms).

Jay “Hussein” Luker (Ex Libris Inc)

unAPI.org — quick demo of it.  there is a wordpress plugin that essentially lets you pull xml data from your wordpress blog.  might be useful in conjunction with scriblio.

off to the next meeting (darn it!)