Unix Commands and Batch Processing for the Reluctant Librarian or Archivist

Cocciolo, Anthony. "Unix Commands and Batch Processing for the Reluctant Librarian or Archivist"  Code4Lib Journal  (23)(17 January 2014)(http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/9158). - For those who have grown up in the tender embrace of a computer's graphical user interface, it may come as a bit of a shock that the Unix command line holds untold power. From simple utilities to very sophisticated software packages that one can control with one-line commands, there are a wide variety of tasks that one can accomplish sans icons, windows, and pointing devices. This article seeks to unveil this world for librarians and archivists since it contains some extremely powerful and very useful abilities for mass file manipulation. High on the list is the amazing ImageMagick, which Cocciolo shows can perform batch transformations on images that would take hours, if not days, using Photoshop or a similar image editing program. While the author identifies a number of specific abilities, it is to be hoped that this article sparks a desire to learn more. And those of you on Macs should know that you have the Unix command line interface at your beck and call simply by starting the "Terminal" application. - RT