New Tool for Archivists

I mentioned earlier that the Archivist’s Toolkit had been released. Tomorrow, the Archon Project is scheduled to release version 1.10 of Archon. I played with version 1. It was easy to install and a very powerful tool. The digital library function was particularly promising. I noticed a couple of bugs in version 1 while testing it, so I didn’t put it into production. I am fairly certain that these bugs will be remedied in this latest release, and I cannot wait until I get the time to install and test it. All the folks at UIUC who were involved in this project need to be congratulated for their vision and vigor because they brought such a project into being. What an interesting and exciting time it is to be an archivist!

PHP, CSS, and Random Pictures

I found this script at Steven Davies’s website. It was designed to insert a random picture into a page. I tweaked it so that it would output a random background image into an embedded CSS. To use it, copy the code below and save it into your directory as rotate_script.php. Make sure to change the $dir variable to the display the directory in which you keep your images. Then include include a line like background-image: <?php include("rotate_script.php"); ?>; in the midst of the embedded style in the header where you want it to appear.