SirsiDynix has been bought! December 30, 2006
Posted by Rachel in In The News.add a comment
SirsiDynix announced it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners, a $1 billion private equity firm focused solely on investing in software and technology-enabled businesses.
Andrew Pace, who writes for American Libraries, has more to say about this on his blog, the Hectic Pace.
Protecting Personal Identity Information at Owen December 13, 2006
Posted by Rachel in In The News, Security.add a comment
Barry Dombro, Director of Information Systems in Owen, sent out this important message today in response to the recent news about a hacker gaining access to social security numbers and other personal identity information impacting 800,000 people at UCLA:
At Owen, we have been working hard over the past several years to prevent a similar incident from impacting our community. In addition to strengthening our security measures we have met with Owen’s CMC, Admissions, EMBA and Accounting offices to remove social security and credit card numbers from all Owen servers, laptop and desktops.
Stephan Wininger has worked with individual offices to develop necessary business processes to protect this data. In rare situations where we need to maintain social security numbers and credit card numbers in electronic format they are being moved onto encrypted and non-networked storage devices.
If you are aware of any social security numbers or credit card numbers remaining on Owen servers, laptops or desktops please contact Stephan Wininger and myself and we will work with you to protect this personal identity information.
Thanks,
Barry
December 12th TTSC Meeting December 12, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Computers, LITS, TTSC Meetings, Workflows/Acorn.1 comment so far
The Technology & Training Coordinators met once again today. Jody had a full agenda.
1) We talked about end-user authentication in ACORN. As you probably are well aware, there are some concerns with the way authentication is currently done, requiring folks to use their SSN. This is going to be changing soon! Users will be able to login into ACORN by using their VUnet ID and password. This is a huge improvement that LITS has been working on for quite some time. They will be announcing when the change actually takes place.
However, Jody estimates that it could be anywhere between 18 months to 5 years before a campus-wide unique ID is developed that isn’t based on Social Security Numbers. See, VUnet IDs are actually recycled, so they really aren’t unique to each person. For example, let’s say that Laura Norris leaves Vanderbilt, and in a year, a different person with the name Laura Norris starts work at Vanderbilt. She could get the same ID our Laura had, thus making things quite confusing when you start to see that not everything gets “flushed out.”
ITS would eventually like to go to a CAS, which stands for Central Authentication Service. CAS was first developed by Yale University. According to Wikipedia, a CAS “is a single sign-on protocol designed to allow untrusted web applications to authenticate users against a trusted central server. It also refers to a server package by the same name that provides the service.” Wouldn’t that be cool to only have to sign in ONCE?
2) If you ever experience problems using WorkFlows, remember that you can Netfix the problem! If you aren’t sure what this means, please ask someone!
3) Judy and George reported on their progress on workstation and server replacements throughout the VU library system. They are over half way done. (Since LITS still has an open position, it is taking them longer than usual for the deployment of all the computers.) They are replacing the old Dell GX 240s with GX 620s. Yes, we actually still have some GX 240 computers around here and there.
On a side but similar note, Flo has been talking with Jody about reassessment money to see if we can get some replacement computers for those here in the library that are unbearably slow (like the left-hand circ computer, or the stand-up station at the reference desk). Go Flo!
4) LITS now has a portable classroom. It’s a huge cart that will hold 20 laptops. Users will be relying on the wireless of wherever the “classroom” is used. It would be ideal for the cart to have it’s own wireless signal, but that’s not going to happen for a while. Plus, LITS is still working on the policies for use of the cart and logistics on where it is going to be kept when not in use. More than likely, it will be somewhere in the General Library Building (possibly in the Central Library or in the Divinity Library).
5) It’s Patch Tuesday. Actually, Jody didn’t plan this originally, but every TTSC meeting occurs on a Patch Tuesday. There are 21 critical updates and 6 non-critical updates. There is also a thing called a Zero-day exploit in Microsoft Word. As of today, there is no patch yet, so be careful opening word documents, even from your colleagues, especially if you aren’t expecting something. A patch should be out soon (hopefully).
Jody also wanted to remind everyone that if they have home computers, it is important to run Windows Updates there too.
6) The TTSC website is being updated by Rachel Vacek, Daisy Whitten, and Angel Craddock. They will be sending Jody some questions about the focus of the group since its merge with the Training Coordinators in early 2006.
If you have any questions about anything from this TTSC meeting, please get in contact with me and I would be more than happy to discuss your questions. Thanks.
Got Questions? December 9, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Humor.add a comment
This sign from Boise State University Library shows to the patrons that they have a sense of humor. Not sure how that would fly with our Owen students, but this sign really made me laugh, so I thought I would share.
The DMCA enacts new exemptions relevant to libraries December 9, 2006
Posted by Rachel in In The News.add a comment
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 requires the U.S. Copyright Office to periodically consider exemptions to its “anticircumvention” provisions. It is these provisions that effectively prevent instructors, researchers, and other consumers from “breaking” technological barriers to content, even for purposes that would be legitimate under fair use or other portions of copyright law. On November 27, the Copyright Office officially enacted six new exemptions, several of which are of direct relevance to colleges, universities, and libraries. Film professors, for example, may now bypass content locks to create compilations of audiovisual clips for classroom use. Other exemptions apply to the investigation of security flaws, archiving of content in obsolete formats, and content access for users with visual impairments. The full Copyright Office ruling is available at http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/2006_statement.html.
Terry Cavender, CISA, PMP
Security Service Delivery Manager
Information Technology Services
Vanderbilt University
Microsoft released Live Search Books December 8, 2006
Posted by Rachel in In The News, Search Engines.add a comment
Ealier this week, Microsoft released in beta Live Search Books, a competitor to Google Book Search.
Here’s a Washington Post editorial by Richard Ekman about why he thinks universities should support Google’s efforts. But I can’t help but wonder – what happens when we support all these digitizing efforts? What if others join in the race? Doesn’t this mean that the user still has tons of choices on where to look to find information – which is one of the problems we already have in libraries. We subscribe to just how many electronic resources? But maybe having access and not knowing how to get it is better than not having any access whatsoever.
From the Live Search WebLog, Cliff Guren, Director of Publisher Evangelism, says,
The U.S. beta launch of Live Search Books is a big step forward in advancing the way people discover information through the integration of content that has been “off-limits” to the traditional Search experience, until now. This release makes tens of thousands of out-of-copyright books available from our library scanning initiative, including books from the University of California, the University of Toronto, and the British Library. In addition, we are announcing new partnerships with the New York Public Library and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine.
Take a look at Live Search Books! How does it compare in your opinion to Google’s Book Search? What are your thoughts on these tools? Are they really helpful in the end?
Cybarian December 6, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Humor, In The News.add a comment
Laura suggested I post this from Merriam-Webster’s December 6, 2006 Word of the Day:
cybrarian \sye-BRAIR-ee-un\ noun : a person whose job is to find, collect, and manage information that is available on the World Wide Web
Example sentence
The library provided an e-mail address to submit inquiries to the cybrarian.
Did you know?
We’ve been using “librarian” for the people who manage libraries since at least the beginning of the 18th century, and the word was used for scribes and copyists even earlier than that. “Cybrarian,” on the other hand, is much newer; its earliest documented use is from 1992. “Librarian” combines “library” (itself from “liber,” the Latin word for book) and the noun suffix “-an,” meaning “one specializing in.” When people wanted a word for a person who performed duties similar to those of a librarian by using information from the Internet, they went a step further and combined “cyber-,” meaning “of, relating to, or involving computers or a computer network,” with “librarian” to produce the new “cybrarian.”
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
