I use shortening in my pies, and they are reckoned to be very good, if I do say so myself. Here is my flaky pastry recipe.

3 cups all-purpose flour (400g, 14.4 oz)
0.5 cups unsalted butter (114g, 4 oz)
0.5 cups shortening (114g, 4 oz)
1 tbsp granulated sugar (15mg)
1 tsp salt (5mg)
1 cup water

1 beaten egg
1-2 tbsp sugar

Mix the dry ingredients. Cut the butter and shortening into acorn sized lumps. Using a mixer, pastry knife or a pair of table knives, mix in the fat until the butter lumps are the size of small peas. You can hand-fondle any remaining lumps to size. Don’t overmix, as can occur when you use a mixer. If the dough has the consistency of breadcrumbs, you’ve gone too far. In fact, when using a mixer, I turn if off early and do the rest by hand. Just to be sure. Those little lumps of fat are going to create pockets in the pastry while in the oven, which is where the pastry’s flake comes from. If the butter and shortening are mixed too thoroughly into the flour, you’ll wind up with a dense, heavy pastry.

Add the water bit by bit while mixing. (A mixer is invaluable here.) Watch the dough carefully, because you may not need all the water. You want the dough moist enough to clump together, but not wet. How much water the pastry will want depends on the humidity, temperature, and probably the phase of the moon. Temperamental stuff, pastry. When I make pies at our summer cabin, I always need to add the full amount of water, but at home, never. And again, do not overmix.

Dump out the dough onto a floured surface and knead it gently by folding it over 5 or 6 times, just enough so it is holding together. Overmixing or too much kneading at this stage will lead to tough and chewy pastry, because you will have over-activated the gluten in the flour.

Divide the dough into two halves, wrap with cling film plastic, and put in the refrigerator for at least an hour. If you’re in a hurry and don’t have that much time, you probably shouldn’t have tried to make pies today.

Make your filling, and put that in the refrigerator too. Side note: whatever your filling, be sure to mitigate its moisture content with enough flour, cornstarch, chia seeds or what have you, and avoid adding excess liquid when ladling your filling into the pie. Too much liquid and your pie will come out of the oven with a soggy bottom.

When your dough has chilled long enough, haul out one half and roll it out on a floured surface to fit your pie pan. Ceramic pie pans are best because they conduct and evenly distribute heat super well. However, glass pans are fine, plus they allow you to check the bottom of the pie as it bakes, which is arguably more important when you are still getting used to a recipe. The dough should hang over the edge of the pie pan.

Add filling. As above, the less liquid the better. Put the uncovered pie in the fridge.

Roll out the second half of the dough on a floured surface and cover the filling, so that the dough hangs over the edge of the pie pan. You want enough so that you can pinch and roll the bottom and top dough together to create a seal, and that raised crust around the edge. Cut off any excess before your pinchrolling activity or you’ll end up with an uneven or overly thick crust.

I press my thumb into the crust to create a sort of scallop pattern. Do whatever you must, just make sure the crust seals the top and bottom together.

Beat an egg and brush it lightly onto the pie surface to create a lovely browning effect in the oven. Sprinkle sugar on the top also if you’re into that.

Cut some blowholes into the pie with a sharp knife so it can breathe while baking. Don’t do this and you can expect exploded pie guts all over your oven. I used to put fancy scrollwork into my pies for vents but now just stab them with XXXs.

Bake at 375 F (190 C) for about an hour. Check the pie after 50 minutes. When ready to come out, the pie should have brown highlights, and the bottom—if you can check through a glass pan—should be a golden brown. The filling will probably bubble out of the vents a bit. Don’t be afraid to keep baking for 10 or even 15 minutes past the hour if that’s what it needs. You’re more likely to underbake than overbake, in my experience.

Let cool, then serve it forth.

General Tip: Keep the ingredients cold, even going so far as to put them in the refrigerator or freezer before you begin. While you’re working, everything you don’t need immediately should go back in the refrigerator until you do. Even put ice cubes in your water. Really.

Shortening is a wonderful thing: in baking it makes pies and cakes light and fluffy, and on the web, it makes long, unwieldy URLs short and manageable. This blog post is all about the second usage, but we can think about the first as we read it.

You might wonder why you should care about short URLs. After all, isn't a long one like 

http://www.cjhn.ca/en/experience/image-galleries/gallery.aspx?q=dolls&name=&topic=&setName=&year_tis=&numbers=MA+15&onlineMediaType_facet=Image

a perfectly good URL?

Sure, your web browser will have no trouble with that and will access the web site and cause it to run the search specified by all those parameters.

But what if you want to share this URL via email or on Twitter, or post it to a blog or Facebook. That URL is 144 characters, so it's not going to fit in a tweet.

Long URLs are often wrapped to two or more lines in an email and sometimes this breaks the URL itself, resulting in a bad link.

And, as the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network discovered recently, posting long URLs with many parameters to Facebook is problematic. When posting the URL above, Facebook stripped out all the equals signs, leaving a non-functioning URL. Who knows why Facebook would do this, but happily, there’s an easy workaround for this, one that lends itself well to emailing and tweeting long URLs too: URL shortening services.

As Wikipedia tells us, "URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect, often on a domain name that is even shorter than the original one, which links to the web page that has a long URL."

In practice, this means that a long URL such as

http://www.cjhn.ca/en/experience/image-galleries/gallery.aspx?q=dolls&name=&topic=&setName=&year_tis=&numbers=MA+15&onlineMediaType_facet=Image

can be shortened to something like

• http://bit.ly/2cG08Ud
• http://ow.ly/a7ZJ304on7W 
• http://goo.gl/6VHglO

These fit handily in Tweets, blog posts, emails and are not edited by Facebook when posting there.

You might now ask, is this the same as a permalink? Well, it is a link, and a short one, so it’s close, but there's no guarantee of permanence, as you're reliant on a third-party service to keep the redirect in place indefinitely. Although that may happen, it's probably better to think of these as short but disposable URLs, like a post-it note you stick on a desk or document pointing at something.

Some of the most common URL shortening services are: 

• bit.ly (Bitly)
• goo.gl (Google)
• ow.ly (Hootsuite)
• t.co (Twitter)

So when you next need to send or post a long URL, especially one with lots of parameters and query strings, give one of these a try.

We’ve heard recently from several long time clients that they are retiring soon or considering a move to another job. Most are concerned about their “legacy” when they leave, and so we have been talking about succession planning with regard to their databases.  Many have been using Inmagic software for many years and know it well.  However for their replacement coming in fresh, it’d be helpful to provide some documentation and background information, especially if there is no overlap and the new person will be faced with learning the software on their own.

Sometimes it’s hard to look at a system from an outsiders perspective especially if “it works fine and has always been that way”. For example, we came across a client recently who used basic everything, i.e. basic query screens, basic reports and basic edit screen.  He regularly needed to work on writing abstracts which often exceeded the default 3 lines provided in a basic edit screen, so he would use the scroll bar up and down to view the contents as he typed.  

Basic edit screen	Edit screen from the Andornot Starter Kit with field groupings, boxes sized for contents, added help tips.

It was something he’d never thought about, but he had to admit that creating a new edit screen with the box height set as unlimited made life much, much easier. Basic screens also always list fields in the textbase structure order, but fields may have been added over the years resulting in no logical groupings.  Think how confusing working with basic screens will be to a newcomer to your system!

We therefore suggest you make it easier on your successor by doing a check of the usability of your databases and writing up notes on your infrastructure. This will also be helpful for new IT staff, and if you have to contact Inmagic for support.

• Which version of the software is installed and what are the serial numbers?  What is the operating system of the server? Where is the software installed and who has access set up to use it?  Are there any older versions of the software that should be uninstalled?
• Where are all your databases located on the server?  In multiple folders?  Are any restricted to certain staff or have other special permissions? Do they have passwords? Are there any older copies that may have been saved as backups or are the remnants of recover operations?  Search for *.tba or *.cba to check, then delete the duplicate copies now to avoid confusion later. Are there any obsolete or test databases that could be deleted or archived?
• Are all your database field names clear and unambiguous?  In older versions of DB/TextWorks there was a limit to their length so we’ve seen some pretty cryptic abbreviations!  Are all the fields in use still?
• Do you have unused report forms or edit screens.  Are they named clearly and consistently?
• If you have Genie or WebPublisher PRO, where are these installed and what is the web address and full UNC server path? Do you have access to these folders?  If you have DB/Text for SQL, do you have access to the Admin tool? Is the Importer set up for automated import of data?  If so, what is the source and the format?
• For WebPublisher PRO are there test or unused query screens? Is the data live immediately or is there some script that transfer databases nightly to a webserver? (This can cause much head scratching trying to figure out why changes don’t appear if this workflow is not documented.)
• If you haven’t upgraded to version 15 or 15.5 yet, note that this requires an upgrade to your textbases and thus the textbase and forms creation date will be updated too.  This was previously a handy way of checking on the vintage to help determine the history and retention value.

Check out our series of blog posts from last year on Spring Cleanup for your Databases which provide some detailed suggestions covering many of these points:

• Part 1: Spring cleanup for your Inmagic textbases
• Part 2: rationalizing textbase elements
• Part 3: Protecting and maintaining your textbases
• Part 4: Renaming fields

See also our post on Retirement Planning for Servers. Please contact us if you need any assistance.  We are available to analyze your databases and infrastructure and can write up a report and/or implement changes to your databases to make them easier for your successor to work with.

Many institutions have videos in their collections, but searching these videos for specific content can be challenging and time-consuming for staff and users alike. You can catalogue the contents of videos so that they are more searchable, but that can take a lot of staff time.

That’s why YouTube’s automated transcription feature is potentially helpful for institutions to have in their repertoire of tools. With a simple click of a button, a timecode synced transcript can be created for videos that you have uploaded to YouTube. While the transcript will definitely have errors, it gives you a great starting point. After editing the transcript can be added to the video’s database record giving your users a way to search the video’s actual contents.

When videos with speech are uploaded to YouTube, closed captions or subtitles are automatically generated. You can see if they are available by looking for the CC button in the bottom right. If the quality of the audio is reasonable, YouTube will also automatically make a text transcript which is accessible under the More hyperlink. This transcription can be copied and pasted into a field in your DB/TextWorks database and corrected while listening along to the video. This text can then be made fully searchable by your WebPublisher PRO or Andornot Discovery Interface software.

Even if you don’t want the videos to be permanently or publicly available on YouTube, you can still take advantage of YouTube’s transcript option. Videos can be uploaded privately, the transcripts generated and then copied and saved elsewhere, before the videos are then removed.

The accuracy of the transcript will depend on several factors, including the quality of the audio, the clarity of the speech and whether the subject matter contains many proper names. Apparently Scottish accents in particular can be problematic, but you can easily review the text first to check the quality.

As always, contact us for assistance to discuss possibilities for adding video transcriptions to your databases and search engines.

When we are working with clients to design new search interfaces, we always stress the importance of defining who will be using the system, and then trying to meet the specific needs and expectations of these end users.

It’s Not About You
We often have to remind clients that “It’s not about you!” Archivists and librarians in particular often ask us for search pages with lots of options as they personally are used to constructing complex queries. However the trend with most search interfaces is to keep these simple with a single Google style search box. 

We suggest that you think about other websites your end users search, whether that be a university or public library catalog, or Amazon or other shopping sites.  Nearly all of these now use a discovery style interface that is geared to letting users put words or terms into a search box, and then narrowing their searches down from the search results page through facets or filters.

Like most other search interfaces, we do usually include some Advanced Search options but the website usage statistics we’ve collected for our hosted client sites over the years indicate that most are rarely accessed.  Pre-selecting search limiters removes the possibility of serendipitous discovery of unexpected resources, and the expectation now is that the results will be displayed by relevance so that the closest matches appear first.  We therefore discourage clients from specifying a traditional title sort, as if the user is looking for a known item and searches on words in the title, it will appear at or near the top of a relevance ranked display.

Use Cases and Personas
One of the ways we suggest you try to relate to your end user needs is through the creation of personas or user profiles.   For each of these personas we then suggest you think about factors that might impact their searching behaviour.   First and foremost - what are they looking for and why?  What will they want to do next when they’ve found something of interest?   So for a publicly accessible archives site, you might create personas for the following types of users.

Carol is looking for pictures of her grandparents and the house where they lived	Lucy wants a picture of an old farm implement for a school project	George is compiling a history of a local church.
John works at City Hall & wants to find maps or plans of an area slated for redevelopment.	Kevin is interested in a local railway line that runs through the area.	Daphne is writing her thesis on a local political movement.

Make the process a fun exercise by incorporating graphical representations using images from a stock photo site such as billionphotos.com– search for avatar to find these examples, or contact us to help you. We find images make it easier to visualize how a person might behave, rather than just assigning an abstract name. The usability.govwebsite has an excellent overview article.

Avoid Jargon and Acronyms
You will also need to consider your personas familiarity with the subject area. Again “It’s not about you”, unless you are designing for a very limited audience, jargon and acronyms should be avoided.  Most government websites have guidelines on writing in “plain language” to convey information easily and unambiguously.  However we still see archival sites that include references to the GMD or to the General Material Designation.  Think about walking up to someone in the street and asking them if they understand what this term means! 

Spelling Matters
Spelling is a huge issue.  Too many times we’ve looked through search logs and seen searches that result in zero hits as the search terms were spelt incorrectly.  Think for example about medical terms and how to cater to the public that might be looking for Lou Gehrig’s disease.  Lots of potential to spell this wrong, but worse, you might have indexed relevant items under the medical term of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or the abbreviation ALS or A.L.S.!   Many modern search interfaces now feature Did You Mean spell checking, but maybe you also need to seed the indexes with lists of synonyms or common misspellings of proper names found in the collection. 

It’s all too easy to make assumptions about your end users abilities and their knowledge of web searching techniques. Let us guide you through the process of designing your new search interface based on our knowledge of best practices. We’ll try to tactfully remind you that “it’s not about you”! Contact us to discuss the possibilities today.