Huge Increase in Spam November 30, 2006
Posted by Rachel in In The News, Spam & Viruses.add a comment
I have gotten many complaints from you all about the number of spam you are getting despite the fact that you have your spam filters set up correctly. And I am sure Vanderbilt ITS and Owen IT are doing what they can to limit the amount of spam that gets through. But spam is on the rise big time.
In a recent Reuters article on CNN.com entitled “9 out of 10 e-mails now spam,” things aren’t looking very good on the horizon.
The number of “spam” messages has tripled since June [2006] and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 emails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini.
Here are some other interesting but disturbing tidbits about spam from the article:
- There were 7 billion spam emails detected worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June.
- The United States, China and Poland are the top sources of spam.
- About 200 illegal gangs are behind 80 percent of unwanted emails.
- They disguise words to try to outfox filters searching for telltale words. So, Viagra would become V1úgra.
- They send millions of emails, so they only need a fraction of people to reply to make a profit.
- They develop programs that mutate to avoid detection and send fewer emails from each machine.
- Experts blame the rise in spam on computer programs that hijack millions of home computers to send emails, often without the oweners’ knowledge.
- Spam costs firms up to $1,000 a year per employee in lost productivity and higher computing bills.
- It is difficult to fight spam because the problem crosses international borders.
WorkFlows Java Client Update November 29, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Workflows/Acorn.add a comment
Support for the WorkFlows C-Client will end this Friday, December 1st, as approved by the Library Directors Council. This will allow the Acorn group to better resolve problems since they will then only be working with one client. In preparation of the removal of the WorkFlows C-client, the Acorn group installed Patch Cluster 3 on production Tuesday evening, November 28th. This required a short period of down time Tuesday evening and everyone will be prompted to upgrade the WorkFlows Java client on Wednesday morning, November 29th.
If you have any questions about this, please contact Dale Poulter.
Ex Libris and Endeavor merge November 28, 2006
Posted by Rachel in ExLibris, In The News.add a comment
I just recently read something interesting on Andrew Pace’s blog, creatively called the Hectic Pace. Andrew is the head of information technology for North Carolina State University Libraries, writes the monthly Technically Speaking column for American Libraries magazine, is the person behind NCSU’s move to Endecca, and is well-known in library automation field. He is one of those people that you stop and listen to when he has something to say.
Anyway, he said that Francisco Partners, the company that bought Ex Libris Corporation earlier this year, is planning on buying Endeavor Information Systems from Reed Elsevier. The two companies will be merged and run under the Ex Libris name. With a combined install base of over 2,200 libraries, the merged company will still be second in size to SirsiDynix. Innovative Interfaces now takes a more distant third position in the academic, public, and special library automation sector.
According to the announcement posted on Ex Libris’s website, “Together, the Ex Libris and Endeavor customer communities include nine of the top ten universities in the world and 39 of the top 50, according to Newsweek International Edition (“The Top 100 Global Universities”); 25 national libraries; and five of the six largest libraries in the world.”
Francisco Partners is one of the world’s largest technology-focused private equity funds.
Financial details of the merger have not been made public yet.
Again, I bring all this up because we are closely working with Ex Libris on Primo, MetaLib, and SFX.
Google’s Customized Search Engine tool November 27, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Search Engines, WML Website.add a comment
The Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) is using Google Co-op, which is a tool that you can use to create a customized search engine (often refered to as a CSE) for your site. The search engine at OPLIN searches all 251 Ohio public library websites. It’s blended in with their Find a library search tool, where you can either find a library, or search through all the library websites.
The reason I mention this is because I decided to use this very same technology for our new website. Google CSE will search our website at the directory level. This means we can set it to only search /walker rather than at the root level, which is www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu, which is also the entire Owen website. We obviously are just interested in people finding information on our library website. It does not search through databases or through Acorn – just the pages of our site.
Our very own Hilary Rudsenske has a background in search engine optimization, and because she’s really interested in this stuff, I put her in charge of improving the WML search engine. She can do a lot more customization to it, improve rankings of various pages, include or exclude certain pages or other directories (such as removing our Staffweb from the search results), and other cool things. After things go live in January, and all our high priority needs are met, she can start improving the search features.
From the small amount of testing we have done so far, the search engine seems to far more impressive than the Heard Library Search Engine.
Acorn Reindexing over Thanksgiving November 20, 2006
Posted by Rachel in LITS, Workflows/Acorn.add a comment
Acorn will be reindexed beginning Wednesday, November 22nd at 9:00pm. The indexing will be finished by Friday, November 24th at 10:00pm and we will be back on the production server by 11:00pm.
Webcat will be unavailable to the public between 9:00pm Wednesday
(11/22) through 3:00am Thursday morning (11/23) and 10:00pm-11:00pm on Friday (11/24). Should anyone attempt to access Webcat during these times a maintenance notification with a contact email address will be presented.
This reindexing will NOT require an upgrade to the Workflows client and will NOT upgrade the Unicorn software.
From 3:00am Thursday morning through 10:00pm Friday morning the following activities CAN be done:
* Circulation (check-in, check-out, reports, etc.)
* Cataloging (creating records, editing records, importing records through Smartport but not Passport, CatME, or Connexion–no bibloads will run)
* Authorities (deleting, and editing)
* Acquisitions (editing and creating records manually –no scripts will run.
Records from Gobi, BNA, and OCLC will not be loaded during this period. We will obtain these records once we are back on Acorn production.
We thank you for your cooperation as we work to improve Acorn services.
Jason J. Battles
Systems Librarian
Library Information Technology Services
Vanderbilt University
Blogs and how they are being used November 19, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Blogs, In The News.add a comment
I just read an article on Business Week about blogs: Blogs Will Change Your Business. The tagline is: “Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later.”
No, I typically don’t read this magazine, although it would probably help with working in a business library and all. But I was working on the new website Sunday morning, and was linking to a few popular business sites that have news feeds from them, and I saw this great article on blogs and how businesses are embracing blogs.
You see, blogs are traditionally seen as diaries or journals, and for the most part, you can subscribe to them. This means that they have a feed (in XML format called RSS) that you can plop into a feed reader (called an aggregator). Subscribe to several feeds, and now you can read all your info in one happy place without having to visit all those blogs.
Many businesses, universities, and libraries, have been using blogs in different ways. Why post commentary when you can push news, articles, events, and helpful information to your users? This is great, and more people are hopping on the wagon.
But interestingly enough, I see this trend almost going back to the social commentary. People don’t just like information – they also like other people’s thoughts and views on the world.
For example, Google is a mysterious place. Wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on there? So maybe an insider’s blog on the Googleplex is just as important to you as learning about all the cool tools that Google develops.
So I wonder. I am creating a blog that we in WML will be using to push info out to our users. Changes in hours, announcements, new resources, workshops, events, new staff, etc. will be posted to this thing. But what about our opinions? Should we include our thoughts on certain things such as our view on certain business practices, our comments on articles we read, or other non-factual, opinioned things? Or should we stick to the facts?
Frankly, I think our blog would be more interesting if we occassionally gave our readers something to think about. What harm is there in explaining how we do something, like select resoucres for example? But what if someone has comments on what we do? What then? Well, I would hope that we would improve that process. We learn and grow. Personally, I love honest feedback. (Maybe that’s a characteristic of an ENFJ – who knows!) But I would guess that getting feedback from users such as faculty where they question our procedures or traditional ways of doing things might scare the bejesus out of some people, or insult others.
Should we take into consideration that maybe our users want to know what we think? If they see us as authorities on information, should we give them our thoughts, or just rely on them to form their opinions. And, are we ready to hear what they might want to comment on?
I would love feedback on this one…
TSC Meeting November 14, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Browsers, Computers, ExLibris, LITS, TTSC Meetings, Workflows/Acorn.add a comment
Today was my monthly Technology Support Coordinators (TSC) meeting. This group has a representative from each of the libraries, departments, units, etc. within the Heard Library System. Also, most of LITS is represented. Jody Combs leads the team.
Agenda and minutes:
1) Acorn will be reindexed over the Thanksgiving break. This is not an upgrade, which takes a long time, but rather just a reindex. Jason Battles will be doing this as Dale Poulter is on vacation, relaxing on a very big ship on an ocean somewhere. The reindex will start the night before Thanksgiving, at 10 pm Wednesday night and is anticipated to finish Friday morning around 5 am. So unless there are a lot of heavy library users on Thanksgiving, service shouldn’t be interrupted.
2) LITS plans on making several hardware replacements within the Heard library system within the coming months. They plan on removing all Dell GX 240 computers within the system. (I need to talk to Flo about this, as we have a few GX 240s left in our library, including the one I am using for Deep Freeze and for working with the SFX Admininstrative Interface!) Anyway, LITS is ordering 50 workstations, 3 servers, and 20 laptops. The laptops will go on a large cart with a projector and can be used as a portable classroom. They aren’t sure yet where this will be stored. And more than likely, we won’t be using this since our students all have laptops. But I think it’s great that the other libraries will have this. As for connectivity, it will not have a portable AP (wireless access point), but LITS hopes to work with ITS on the security issues so that it can have wireless. You may be asking yourself, aren’t all the libraries wireless? Well, not all spots within the libraries are wireless, so having a wireless access point with the portable classroom would guarantee access.
3) Ironically, every time the TSC meets, it also happens to be Patch Tuesday, which is the second Tuesday of every month when Microsoft releases security patches. There were some new security patches that came out today for the new Internet Explorer that came out a few weeks ago. If you use Internet Explorer, it doesn’t hurt to occasionally run Windows Update from the Tools Menu bar. Ask Rachel or Danny if you have questions about this.
4) There are finally plans underway for replacement of the HVAC system for the GLB server room. The HVAC is over 20 years old and on the roof of the GLB, and replacement will take place over the next 8 weeks or so. Two 6-ton units (with one being the backup) will replace the old unit. The transfer should be transparent to services and normal operations.
5) The Technology Support Coordinators website is being updated by a small group of people: Daisy Whitten, Angel Craddock, and Rachel Vacek. Rachel, as a member of the Staff Development Committee (SDC), has been working with other SDC members to update the Staff Development & Training Resources page on the Heard Library Staffweb. The Tech Support Coordinators are a vital part of this as they aid new and current employees with technology training and support. Jody Combs is working closely with the small team to provide accurate information. I’ll let you know when it’s updated.
6) Jody talked briefly about the ExLibris Primo meetings he and 20 other library staff members had last week on November 8th and 9th. The two days included a workshop and training on the “back office” tools that will be used to configure Primo. It also included overviews of Primo’s architecture, the availability and delivery options for resources located through Primo. On Friday November 10th, they met with Christina Meyer, a representative from the University of Minnesota, one of the other partners working with Vanderbilt on Primo, to talk about the usability studies they have been doing.
Things seem to be moving along. Did you know that there are almost 30 staff within the Heard Library system working on Primo?
When will we have a little bit more to look at with Primo? There will be preliminary beta testing early next year, and I am sure there will be plenty of announcements. Exciting times!
More information about the Primo development project is available to library staff members by logging into OAK and opening the OTH Primo Project course.
What is this Web 2.0 thing? November 9, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Blogs, In The News, RSS, Wikis.add a comment
Many of you have heard about blogs, wikis, rss feeds, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, etc. If you interact with me, you probably hear me throw these terms around quite often. And I bet most of you have been to Amazon.com before. All of these things are considered to be or influenced by “Web 2.0” technologies and are what younger generations (and some older generations too) are using on the web these days. Web 2.0 was coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, and refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services.
So what is Web 2.0 really?
“A core concept of Web 2.0 is that people are the content of sites. That is, a site is not populated with information for users to consume. Instead, services are provided to individual users for them to build networks of friends and other groups (professional,
recreational, etc.). The content of a site then, comprises user-provided information that attracts new members of an ever-expanding network.”- Tim O’Reilly, “What is Web 2.0″
Karen Schneider, a well-respected colleague in the library field, and founder of the Librarian’s Index to the Internet, has compiled a list of common terms associated with the 2.0 thing. I have added a few terms too.
Ajax: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML – and in English, it means that a few technologies are working together to help develop interactive web applications. Most Web 2.0 technologies use Ajax
Biblioblogosphere (jocular): The world of library blogging
Blog: from web + log: an easily-updated web diary/journal
Blogosphere: the larger world of blogging
Chat: IM (instant messaging): interactive, real-time, text-based conversation
Comment: A user contribution to an entity
Folksonomy: ad-hoc taxonomies generated for online content (it’s sort of like metadata!)
Podcast (from iPod + cast): an RSS-distributed audio file, usually MP3
Post: an entry on a blog
Mashup: two or more services combined into a third
Radical trust: allowing users to drive/define services and content
Rating: an assessment, usually online, such as four stars for a book
Remix: mixing two or more pots of content to get a third
RSS: Really Simple Syndication – enables rapid republication, or syndication, of web content (text, video, audio, etc.)
Screencast: a digital recording/video of what’s happening on your screen, typically with audio – useful for providing visual directions on how to do something. These can be podcasted, which are called videocasts.
Splogging: spamming within a blog
Tag: a keyword or phrase used in a folksonomy
Tag cloud: a visual representation of part of a folksonomy
Vlog: video blog
Karen also has a WONDERFUL presentation online that discusses this Web 2.0 further, like why you need to know about this, how it is affecting libraries, and what libraries should be doing about it. Her presentation is basically a cookbook – something you can digest fairly easily and can work toward developing an end product, whether that’s a staff that is more knowledgeable, or is the building of new tools. It’s called the Library 2.0 Cookbook: A commonsense guide to those perplexing but intriguing new technologies you keep hearing about.
I suggest that you take a look at it in your free time. It’s not a boring PowerPoint presentation, but rather a visually appealing document full of data and interesting information, and it will certainly help demystify what Web 2.0 really is. And it will definitely get you thinking!
