Hello, Library users and contributors! We hope you are all safe and healthy.
What’s new
A new release of Library (v1.3.0) is now available via GitHub and on Docker Hub. There are a number of new features and bug fixes we’re excited about in this release:
- A number of documentation updates, including better example usage of the .env file for local development
- Added support for syntax highlighting of code blocks, which is conditionally enabled by including the language after the opening backticks.
- A number of bugfixes, including supporting larger numbers of shared folders and guarding against Google Drive API timeouts
Thanks to everyone who contributed since our last update, including: @afischer, @douglasward, @evelynting610, @gregbarasch, @SMores and @tmotyl.
What’s next
Ceasing Node 8 support
It’s important to us that the app remains secure and up to date, so we’re including many dependency updates in this release. However, the next batch of updates is blocked by a requirement for Node 10. (Node 8 reached End-of-Life status in Jan.)
Accordingly, Library 1.3.0 will be the last version with official Node 8.x support. Going forward, we will transition to supporting the current long-term support releases (10, 12, 14).
We’re excited about several suggestions from the community, including:
- Better built in support for public Library sites
- Improved basic error cases (in progress)
- Making Library functionality available as an installable npm
- Support for alternate backends (or migration scripts) beyond Google Docs
- And more!
If you’re interested in working on these or any of the other issues on Github, leave a comment and let us know!
Library Community Showcase
In response to anxieties surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, a group of journalists developed The Newsroom Guide to COVID-19, a guide for helping “newsroom managers provide clear, useful guidance to their reporters and editors” during this difficult period.
Cordelia Yu, who worked on the editorial content for the site, told us:
“The most valuable thing for us was that instead of using a static site generator, we could just keep using Google Docs up to the end without having to switch to markdown or whatever for a static site generator—it meant that we could design with live content even while we were asking our subject matter experts do content reviews.” This was huge because it's hard to “ask a bunch of epidemiology and public health professionals to learn markdown when they’re donating their spare time to review our content, especially when we’re going through multiple rounds of review.”
Tina Ye, who configured most of the customization for the site, said:
“It was super easy to get up and running on Heroku. The documentation was great… It was pretty straightforward to customize the CSS, but we did have to hack around a bit to figure out how to customize content placement.”
Tina also highlighted an issue that we hope to address in a few Library release: “I would say where it gets challenging is around customization...to tweak the templates [we would’ve have had to] abandon the customization repo and fork the original” but that “despite all the CSS shenanigans we were really grateful to not have to write any code to do what we wanted to do.”
Check out the Nieman Lab’s coverage for more on the guide and its creators.
Do you know of an exciting use of Library out in the world? Let us know, and we may feature it in a future community update.
Getting in touch
Issues remain a great place to talk about how we hope to evolve the platform. We recently introduced a new issue template specifically for questions, and hope this facilitates more easily getting assistance in GitHub.
The #proj-library slack channel in News Nerdery is a great place for discussing and getting help with Library. If you’re not part of NN, sign up with your organization’s email.
Finally, be sure to join our Google Group to receive news and updates from the maintainers. The group is also a great place to start discussion about potential new features or squashing bugs.
How are you using Library? We’d love to hear from you.