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Josiah

Josiah is a discovery tool that searches most of the journal, magazine, and newspaper resources available through Brown’s library databases, as well as our Classic Josiah Catalog (which includes most of the library’s books and other physical holdings), the Brown University Library Digital Collections, and the Brown Digital Repository. Other types of materials such as dissertations, theses, and library research guides are also included. Josiah also searches the full-text content of the Brown University Library’s ebook collections.

 

What is ORCID?

ORCID is an open, non-profit initiative founded by academic institutions, professional bodies, funding agencies, and publishers to resolve authorship confusion in scholarly work.  The ORCID repository of unique scholar identification numbers will reliably identify and link scholars in all disciplines with their work, analogous to the way ISBN and DOI identify books and articles.

Brown is a member of ORCID which allows the University, among other things, to create ORCID records on behalf of faculty, students, and affiliated individuals; integrate authenticated ORCID identifiers into grant application processes; ingest ORCID data to maintain internal systems such as institutional repositories; and link ORCID identifiers to other IDs and registry systems.  ORCID identifiers will facilitate the gathering of publication, grant, and other data for use in Reseachers@Brown profiles.  The library, with long experience in authority control, is coordinating this effort.

What is OCRA?

Note:

OCRA has been phased out as the library’s course reserves system. The Brown University Library has migrated to a new course reserves platform that integrates directly with Canvas and the Library’s BruKnow catalog. This document is for the purpose of historical information. The library’s new course reserves system can be found here.

The following is the archive of ORCA development information.

OCRA is a platform for faculty to request digital course reserves in all formats.  Students access digital course reserves via Canvas or at the standalone OCRA site.  Students access physical reserves in library buildings via Josiah.

Announcing a Researchers @ Brown data service

Campus developers might want to use data from Researchers@Brown (R@B) in other websites. The R@B team has developed a JSON web service that allows for this.  We think it will satisfy many uses on campus. Please give it a try and send feedback to researchers@brown.edu.

Main types/resources

  • faculty
  • organizational units (departments, centers, programs, institutes, etc)
  • research topics

Requesting data

To request data, begin with an identifier.  Let’s use Prof. Diane Lipscombe as an example:

/services/data/v1/faculty/dlipscom

Looking through the response you will notice affiliations and topics from Prof. Lipscombe’s profile.  You can make additional requests for information about those types by following the “more” link in the response.

/services/data/v1/ou/org-brown-univ-dept56/

Following the affiliations links from a faculty data profile will return information about the Department of Neuroscience, which Prof. Lipscombe is a member.

/services/data/v1/topic/n49615/

Looking up this topic will return more information about the research topic “molecular biology”, including other faculty who have identified this as a research interest.

Responses

Faculty

  • first name
  • last name
  • middle
  • title
  • Brown email
  • url (R@B)
  • thumbnail
  • image – original image uploaded
  • affiliations – list with lookups
  • overview – this is HTML and may contain links or other formatting
  • topics – list with lookups

Organizations

  • name
  • image (if available)
  • url (to R@B)
  • affiliations – list with lookups

Topics

  • name
  • url (to R@B)
  • faculty – list with lookups

Technical Details

  • Requests are cached for 18 hours.
  • CORS support for embedding in other sites with JavaScript
  • JSONP for use in browsers that don’t support CORs.

Example implementation

As an example, we have prepared an example of using the R@B data service with JavaScript using the React framework.

WordPress for Exhibits

The Exhibits committee assembled a subcommittee to explore tools and processes to publish online exhibits, whether analogs to physical exhibits, or exhibits that only exist online.

The group considered many tools, including more display-focused packages such as Creativist and Google Open Gallery, and more metadata-driven tools such as Omeka, Collective Access, Collection Space, and more interactive tools such as Open Exhibit and Viewshare.

Ultimately the group decided that our needs were more display-focused, as metadata would generally be handled by the BDR, but the tools we’d examined didn’t meet our needs for dynamic and varied display. Instead, we decided to work on developing a WordPress theme that would be flexible enough for the project’s requirements. The first example is the exhibit The Unicorn Found.

Brown Library Web

The Library’s web site is a constantly evolving tool, with a goal of developing and maintaining accurate, informative, and interesting content for library patrons. Library Web Services work to develop the content and infrastructure that power the Library’s main site.