WML Tech Updates

Today we met for our regular Technology & Training Support Coordinators meeting. Jody led the meeting as usual, and we talked about:

1) Two new people on the LITS team: Jodie Gambill and Jim Pleace

2) There are new computers in the Science Library, and mini keyboards in the Music Library

3) Primo development project. They are still working on several bugs (show-stoppers). Jody is happy with how well the ExLibris Primo team is working with him and his team. Julie Loder has been the “problem manager” for Vanderbilt through it all, and deserves special recognition. She joins in on the conference call every Monday.

4) Reports from the ELUNA conference (Ex Libris Users North America). It was in Spearfish, South Dakota. According to attendees, the conference was very enlightening.  Vanderbilt presented 3 sessions on the Primo development project. All sessions were well-attended.

Janice Adlington reported on what she heard about Verde (ExLibris’ electronic resources management system) and Jody reported on what he learned abou Digitool (ExLibris’ digital asset management tool).  This is comparable to ContentDM.

5) Jody mentioned that LITS plans to hold a Primo G.R. 1.0 celebration event on June 20 @ 2:30-4:00 pm (ish) at the Bishop Johnson Cultural Center. (It’s behind Rand, and on the side of the post office.) They will be celebrating all the work the staff has done to get the first general release out. Primo been openly released by ExLibris. There are over 40 Vandy Library staff members that have been involved directly with the project, and almost everyone in the library system has been involved indirectly.  People from ExLibris, Gordon Gee, Paul Gherman, the Digital Library Steering Committee, key faculty, and all the library will be invited. Food and beverages will be served. :-)

6) Patch Tuesday. George Anglin is on vacation, so the patches will come out when he returns. This of course, doesn’t affect us in the Walker Library since we are on a different network.

7) End of fiscal year activities. If you’ve got money to spend, spend it.

8) VUcal (the campus calendaring system) will be terminated at the end of this year. The university is also committed to moving towards using exchange servers (for Outlook). Plus, Mulberry isn’t supported anymore (which is the email service everyone else on campus uses).  But if they are serious about going forward with Outlook, then that will solve both the calendaring and email problem simultaneously.

9) Migrating Unicorn over to Oracle. This might happen later this calendar year, and there would be about 5 days of working on the backup server. If this happens, then there will be a chance to utilize Unicode. No one has been totally successful in doing this, but Stanford is trying to do this. LITS will have to work with SirsiDynix’s schedule for this.

10) John Ozborne - He’s the new contact for the ITS Delivery Manager with LITS. He’s replacing Michael Martin who’s moved on to be the Technology Manager of the Peabody Freshman Commons.

11) Chris Benda will be moving from the Peabody to Divinity Library soon. Also, Jason Battles’ last day is Friday, July 13th and will soon be at the University of Alabama.