Babel

Babel is an enhanced crosswalk mapping data from a vendor spreadsheet to brief order records in MARC21 format. Produced records follow NYPL and BPL Sierra ILS schemas.

Babel provides an interface for selectors to ingest data from a spreadsheet that includes a list of offered by a vendor titles with any accompanying information (authors, publishers, ISBNs, prices, etc.). Selectors can enhance then this data with order information such as language, audience, vendor codes, fund codes, and finally distribution - an encoded for Sierra ILS data that specifies library branches where each copy is destined for. The vendor data and selectors enrichment produces MARC21 records that can be imported to Sierra and which will create brief record with attached order records for each title. This detailed order data allows to use process within Sierra called "rapid receive" to automatically create item records when materials are received. Detailed order information also allows more granular tracking of spending by the Selection Department.

In addition to its core functionality of creation of brief order records, Babel provides means to automatically detect duplicate titles in each BPL and NYPL catalogs potentially providing time and cost savings. Finally, the application produces detailed, on demand reports tracking placed orders.

Please note, Babel is a custom tool for BookOps which supposed to work with the particular systems and workflows used by BookOps (Sierra ILS, etc.). At the moment we do not plan to create a universal application that could be used by other libraries. It would not be too difficult to adapt our source code for your needs though, especially if you are Sierra or Millennium library.

Database Localhost Installation

Babel is configured to work with MySQL database. Follow MySQL Installer instruction to install server on a localhost. Using MySQL Workbench create schema named as your db_name. Then use create_datastore method to setup database with all required tables.

localhost example:

from babel.data.datastore import create_datastore
create_datastore(
    db_name='datastoredev'
    user='john',
    password='johns_password',
    host='127.0.0.1',
    port='3306')

Stand-alone executable under Windows (initial & updates)

1. Update version (babel/babel.py and win_info.txt)
2. Change logging from development to production (babel.py) - make sure loggly token is added to logging_settings.py
3. Activate virtual environment
4. Make sure to change working directory to newly created main Babel directory
5. Encrypt credentials (creds.json) using babel.credentials.enctrypt_file_data() and copy to the distr directory as creds.bin. Note the encryption key, which will need to be provided to users to unlock the app
6. Package Babel by running freeze-babel-debug.sh shell script
7. Troubleshoot any import error or other issues. Test if the app launches
8. Rename generated babel.exe to babel-debug.exe and archive created distribution folder
9. Package app again using freeze-babel.sh shell script and copy to the archived directory the babel.exe file (actual executable file used by users).
10. Test if babel.exe launches correctly.
11. Zip the entire app folder (top level babel) and name it using version (example babel-4.0.0.zip)
12. Send the zipped app to ITG for packaging and distribution
13. Test ITG distribution
14. Remove loggly token from logging_settings and change logging back to DEV_LOGGING
15. Assist users with unlocking Babel (if creds changed)

New Feature Requests

In addition to GitHub Issues users can utilize this google document to suggest new features or report bugs.

Icon Credits

Icons by

• Babel2 icon by our colleague Kimberly H. (thanks!)
• Everaldo / Yellowicon used under GNU Lesser General Public License.
• Daniele De Santis used under CC Attribution 4.0
• Icon Archive used under CC Attribution 4.0
• Christopher Downer used under CC0 - Public Domain
• Simiographics used under CC0 - Public Domain

Changelog

4.0.1 (2024-10-09)

Fixed

• escaped system table name to comply with the new MySQL 8 server and this word being reserved in its SQL syntax

  4.0.0 (2022-07-27)

  Added

• ability to query NYPL Platform and BPL Solr to retrieve matches in the catalog
• functionality to mark branches as temporarily closed which prompts warnings when distribution with such branch is applied to a cart
• functionality to filter the cart for orders with temp branch locations, for orders identified as duplicates in the catalog, or duplicates in Babel
• functionality to globally remove temp branch locations from orders
• functionality to globally delete orders from cart that were identified as duplicates
• new selector's reports and ability to download them as csv files
• 910 tags with BL or RL for NYPL records
• adds Poetry as dependencies management tool

Changed

• alters Branch and Resource database tables to include data about temporarily closed location, branch-research identifiers for NYPL and catalog duplicates.
• migrates database to a new server (v5.6)
• improves process of saving to MARC and spreadsheet
• button label "load" changed to "open" in the spreadsheet ingest module
• cart name lenght extended to 120 characters

Fixed

• Errors when importing BPL Sierra IDs with changed headers after Sierra update

Security

• Dependencies updates (Pillow, urllib3, numpy, cryptography)

Deprecated

• functionality to web scrape BPL and NYPL Webpacs in search for duplicates
• updating from a shared drive

3.0.0 (2020-12-10)

Added

• new installation splash window that provides means to unlock the credentials

Security

• dependencies update (altgraph, attrs, beautifulsoup4, cryptography, loggly-python-handler, openpyxl, Pillow, psutils, py, pycryptodome, pywin, requests, urllib3)

2.3.2 (2020-10-14)

Security

• dependencies update (Pillow, pytest, psutil)

2.3.1 (2020-01-28)

Fixed

• report layouts
• removed obsolete keyring.backends hook

2.3.0 (2020-01-27)

Added

• report module
• ability to add manually a new resource to a cart
• functionality to add selectively grids to orders in a list
• functionality to search order within a cart
• total quantity tally in the cart
• Matplotlib 3.1.2 dependency added

Fixed

• disabled accidental switching between libraries when in the cart window
• blocked application of funds when NYPL library is not specified
• navigating resources in the cart with buttons
• catalog duplicate web scraper timeout extended to 15 seconds
• logging messages fixes

Security

• Pyinstaller bump to 3.6

2.2.1 (2019-11-14)

Changed

• removed hyphens from blanketPO, new format: {vendor code}{YYYYMMDD}{sequence}, example: chbks201911130 (BPL), 3433201909060 (NYPL)
• list of carts sorted by default by date in descending order

Fixed

• display of correct grids when two users name the distribution exactly the same
• error when search retrieves results from carts without assigned library
• linking Sierra IDs updates the display immediately
• reseting of cart summary when another cart is selected

Security

• Pillow update to 6.2.0

2.2.0 (2019-09-24)

Added

• cart button in the CartView that tabulates orders by branch showing number of titles, copies and money per branch
• extra column comment added to spreadsheet mapping
• cart owner displayed in search results

Fixed

• slow traversing between cart pages, saves and validation (optimization)
• forces values in a spreadsheet to strings
• anchors Babel window to the top left corner of the screen

2.1.0 (2019-09-12)

Changed

• 30 resources per page displayed in a cart
• cart name extended to 75 characters
• speed up of FundView (optimization)

Fixed

• a bug in the search functionality
• deletion of user deletes related data
• typo in order id range in CartsView summary
• corrected display of linked carts
• corrected display of cart's assigned library

Presentations

BookOps Babel : Filling Order Metadata Gaps in the ILS (ALA 2019, Washington, D.C.)