Give Your Users a Tweet: Social Media for Libraries
August 20: SWON libraries – Blue Ash, Ohio

Give Your Users a Tweet: Social Media for Libraries
August 26: Wilmington Public Library – Wilmington, Ohio

Born Digital: How Kids Live in an Online World
September 3: International Paper – Cincinnati, Ohio

Tech News You Can Use
September 10: SWON Libraries online classroom

Websites Evolved: Content Management Systems in Libraries
September 17: SWON Libraries – Germantown, Ohio

Beyond Websites: Content Management Systems for Libraries
October 1: Kentucky Library Association – Louisville, KY

Integrating Web 2.0 Tools into Your Web Site
October 22: OELMA Annual Conference – Columbus, Ohio

My small contribution to the day was a lunchtime presentation on using Linux for back office stuff like web servers, mail servers, networking, etc. It’s a very general overview of the popular projects and tools out there for Linux. It’s mainly intended as a starting place for people looking to install a new service on a Linux platform. The slides from my talk are below.

Below are my slides from my talk on cloud storage services.

Send it to Cloud City: An Introduction to Online Storage Services
May 19
TechConnections 2.0.0.9 – Columbus, Ohio

Tech News You Can Use
June 16
SWON Libraries online classroom

Tech News You Can Use
July 9
SWON Libraries online classroom

Welcome to Cloud City: Online Software for Library Staff and Users
July 15
SWON libraries – Blue Ash, Ohio

Welcome to Cloud City: Online Software for Library Staff and Users
July 28
Clark County Public Library – Springfield, Ohio

Tech News You Can Use
August 11
SWON Libraries online classroom

Give Your Users a Tweet: Social Media for Libraries
August 20
SWON libraries – Blue Ash, Ohio

Give Your Users a Tweet: Social Media for Libraries
August 26
Wilmington Public Library – Wilmington, Ohio

Born Digital: How Kids Live in an Online World
September 3
International Paper – Cincinnati, Ohio

Tech News You Can Use
September 10
SWON Libraries online classroom

Websites Evolved: Content Management Systems in Libraries
September 17
Germantown Public Library – Germantown, Ohio

Beyond Websites: Content Management Systems for Libraries
October 1
Kentucky Library Association – Louisville, KY

Most of it is common sense, but common sense isn’t always common, right?

Most of the slides are screenshots and the URL for the tool or example site can be found at the top of each of those slides.

Technology Trends
October 13
Wright Memorial Public Library
Dayton, Ohio

Mashup to Keep Up
October 24
Ohio Educational Library Media Association (OELMA) Conference
Columbus, Ohio

Breakout Session
November 18
Web 2.0 Exposed
Athens, Ohio

I could tell that many in the room were seeing these tools for the first time. I’m always amused by people’s reactions when they first learn about sites like Twitter and Second Life. It’s not easy to explain the concepts and usefulness in a short amount of time. By focusing on collaboration, however, I was able to give some quick examples of how tools like micro-blogs, wikis, and IM can be used.

Vertical Partitioning

Partitioning vertically is a database optimizing technique where tables with many columns are split into multiple, smaller tables.  Without partitioning, even normalized tables may be a mix of frequently and infrequently accessed columns.  This makes it difficult to keep things loaded in memory and can affect overall performance.

By splitting the table in two, you can have a table of frequently accessed columns and a table of less frequently accessed columns.  The tables can be merged together dynamically when needed, but most of the time you will just need the table with the frequently accessed data.  This approach also gives you the option of using different table types (storage engines) for each of the tables.  Of course, it’s probably easiest to implement vertical partitioning at the beginning of your project instead of coming back and making changes to the database structure later.

Horizontal Partitioning

Partitioning horizontally is a similar concept except that the table is split by rows rather than columns.  This works well when certain rows are accessed more frequently than others.  Depending on the size of the database, having a table of more frequently accessed rows can really speed things up.

The events registration system I created at MPOW can potentially benefit from this.  We have over 10,000 registrations in the system, but most of those are for past events that we rarely need to access.  Having a table of 100-200 registrations for upcoming events and a separate table for the thousands of past event registrations would probably provide a noticeable performance increase.

Query Cache

MySQL has a query cache that it uses to increase performance.  If a particular query has already been run on the database, MySQL can return the cached result instead of having to parse it, optimize it, etc.  I was already familiar with the query cache and we use it MPOW.  However, I learned a couple of new tidbits from Jay:

• “Any modification to any table involved in the SELECT invalidates the stored result.”  I guess I already knew this.  What’s cool, however, is that partitioning your tables properly can reduce this.  Making a change to a table containing upcoming event registrations would not affect the cache for the table containing past event registrations.
• Don’t use InnoDB tables when there are more than 5000 rows and you’re doing full table scans.  It’s slooooow.  Use MyISAM table types instead.
• If you are doing a SELECT on tables that change frequently, there is no point in storing the result in cache because it will soon be invalid.  Use SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE to prevent MySQL from storing highly dynamic results and filling up the cache.
• MEMORY table types are fast and good for data that can be thrown away or re-computed again.

ANSI vs. Theta Coding Style

Jay put two different versions of a SELECT statement up on the screen and asked the group which style they used.  One style used INNER JOINs (ANSI style) and the other used WHERE and AND clauses (Theta style or comma style).  I think most of the room (including me) raised our hands for the latter.  Jay made some good points about ANSI being easier to read and more portable.  I need to force myself to try ANSI and get used to it.  Theta style, however, is very natural for me and I suspect it will be hard for me to change.

The slides from Jay’s talk (including part 2) are up on his website.

You can find the slides on Google Docs. Thanks to everyone for the great questions and discussion! I hope to make it back to Columbus for some more CO-ASIS&T programs.