Music Collection Website
Screenshot of LastFM API page from my website project
For a long time, I felt I knew the rudiments of web design but lacked confidence that I could execute something more complicated. I took classes in basic HTML but my only experience was WYSIWYG content editing and extremely basic exercises in HTML.
My experience in this area increased greatly during a course in information structures using XML. The instructor felt that focusing on XML was too limiting and refocused the course on implementation of APIs. This course gave me my first introduction to web APIs, PHP, and JavaScript. The final project for the course was a series of pages based on our own personal music libraries. The pages needed to implement two FusionCharts APIs, the LastFM API, and incorporate RSS feeds about artists in our library.
I began my site with the APIs and learned that including APIs in a website is fairly easy. I finished that portion of the assignment quickly and decided to use my spare time to make my site cohesive. I wanted all the pages to look and feel the same. I taught myself CSS to apply a consistent design to the entire site. The LastFM API came ready-made with a red and grey color scheme that did not fit the green of my site. I dug through the APIs code to identify the areas I needed to change to make the content generated by that API match my site. What I learned most from this process is that I am able to quickly understand new concepts in web design and put them to use. I also gained confidence in my ability to create a web site effectively and to read through existing code to make changes to a site. All of these skills will help me to maintain and improve the online public face of my library as a systems librarian. The site is no longer live since I no longer have access to the hosting space I used and I have not been able to obtain a new space that supports PHP. The button below will provide access to a PDF with stills of all the pages in the project site.
My experience in this area increased greatly during a course in information structures using XML. The instructor felt that focusing on XML was too limiting and refocused the course on implementation of APIs. This course gave me my first introduction to web APIs, PHP, and JavaScript. The final project for the course was a series of pages based on our own personal music libraries. The pages needed to implement two FusionCharts APIs, the LastFM API, and incorporate RSS feeds about artists in our library.
I began my site with the APIs and learned that including APIs in a website is fairly easy. I finished that portion of the assignment quickly and decided to use my spare time to make my site cohesive. I wanted all the pages to look and feel the same. I taught myself CSS to apply a consistent design to the entire site. The LastFM API came ready-made with a red and grey color scheme that did not fit the green of my site. I dug through the APIs code to identify the areas I needed to change to make the content generated by that API match my site. What I learned most from this process is that I am able to quickly understand new concepts in web design and put them to use. I also gained confidence in my ability to create a web site effectively and to read through existing code to make changes to a site. All of these skills will help me to maintain and improve the online public face of my library as a systems librarian. The site is no longer live since I no longer have access to the hosting space I used and I have not been able to obtain a new space that supports PHP. The button below will provide access to a PDF with stills of all the pages in the project site.
Relocation Authorization Form
An continuous project for me at Wells Fargo was designing the user experience for the online Relocation Authorization Form. This form began as a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper that was faxed to the relocation department. When it was put online, it was simply recreated as identically as possible. As the team's needs changed, I worked with a developer to redesign the form multiple times. Each time, I had to consider the best way to present the options to the user so that errors were reduced while users were presented with the smoothest and easiest interaction possible.
The biggest challenge with this form was the timeframe required for even minor changes. The form was complex and I did not have direct access to make changes. So, changing the form to respond to user needs or changes in our policies took time. The last major round of changes where I worked with IT to revise the form took place in 2012. For that round of changes, I worked in GitHub to develop a framework for the form that reflected how it should function. The developer worked from that framework in programming a new version of the form from the ground up. The end result was a functional form with a few bugs. Following that round of changed, IT removed their support for the type of web forms we had been using. In order to provide a more responsive revisioning process and allow for more integration with the active directory service, I developed authorization forms using InfoPath and integrated them into the team's SharePoint site.
Working on this project taught me about the recursive nature of systems work. Systems are developed based on current knowledge and then redesigned or refined as more is learned. Working on this form prepared me for further work with user interfaces and online forms, both of which are important in library systems work.
The biggest challenge with this form was the timeframe required for even minor changes. The form was complex and I did not have direct access to make changes. So, changing the form to respond to user needs or changes in our policies took time. The last major round of changes where I worked with IT to revise the form took place in 2012. For that round of changes, I worked in GitHub to develop a framework for the form that reflected how it should function. The developer worked from that framework in programming a new version of the form from the ground up. The end result was a functional form with a few bugs. Following that round of changed, IT removed their support for the type of web forms we had been using. In order to provide a more responsive revisioning process and allow for more integration with the active directory service, I developed authorization forms using InfoPath and integrated them into the team's SharePoint site.
Working on this project taught me about the recursive nature of systems work. Systems are developed based on current knowledge and then redesigned or refined as more is learned. Working on this form prepared me for further work with user interfaces and online forms, both of which are important in library systems work.
orcid.org/0000-0002-2569-6556