Catholic Portal Coding

So I've been coding like mad for the Catholic Research Resources Alliance lately, and hence neglected the blog.

It's been a blast.

I've learned so much.

My two basic projects have been as follows:

1. Take a batch of MARC library records and find out if the full text of the item they refer to can be found on the Internet Archive. If so, mirror the full text locally and update the MARC record with the URLs of the local copy and the online original.
2. Parse EAD library records and convert them to Villanova University's VuFind format ("schema"). (EAD is a kind of XML.) VuFind currently only works with MARC records, though it has the capacity to be upgraded to work with other kinds of records. After conversion, I had to send them to a Solr server that uses the VuFind schema.

All of the hyperlinked terms were more or less new to me. Not any more! My plan here is to relate my experience on the various projects, including the code I used.