WML Tech Updates

The Technology & Training Support Coordinators met again today. We had a full room – 20 people! And there was a full agenda! So this post is rather long, but bear with me!

1) Update on AlphaSearch plan for year 2 (Primo) -It’s now being reviewed by the library. Please let them know just how rapidly evolving the product is. It’s constantly being updated and problems are being addressed and resolved as quickly as possible. The Digital Library Steering Committee is doing formal acceptance testing for the licensing in the Spring. There will be a “soft launch” (and possibly a version 2) for the public and other libraries to play with, also in Spring. Anticipated full roll-out of the production version is Fall 2008.

2) Discussion of replacement for VUcal and Mulberry – VUcal is going away, and a replacement for shared private calendaring, etc. A direction has been recommended from ITS – move to the Exchange Servers (which means Microsoft Outlook). There are other clients that work with exchange servers, but ITS recommends the Outlook platform. LITS will be figuring out how and when to do the migration. It may happen by December.

People’s folders will be copied over, and people will be able to still send mail from Mulberry, but once the switchover happens, people will be strongly encouraged to use Outlook. Jody talked for a bit about distribution lists and the difficulty they are having recreating and moving certain structures over to

Jody is eliciting volunteers to help with training (people who are familiar with or currently use Outlook), and the Staff Development Committee will manage the training.

LITS’s goal: Be VUcal-free by January 1, 2008, and to have Outlook going and training underway, and still have Mulberry available (to have access to group mailboxes and distribution lists that will still work).

3) Discussion of plan to upgrade Unicorn to Oracle – There are many other ILS’s that use Oracle, and it’s just a good thing if we move to that platform. We’ll be able to better integrate services with Unicorn if we are using Oracle. There was a discussion about downtime, and the timing of doing the migration. There will be no percieved downtime except those regularly scheduled downtimes.

GL3.2 = Symphony, formerly Rome. (It’s basically just the fancy name for the next version of Unicorn.) Any questions about the Oracle migration or about the next version of Unicorn can be directed to Dale Poulter.

4) Walker library desktop support changes – Over the course of the year, LITS will be supporting us more with desktop support.

5) RSS for the Divinity Library Lectionary – Jody has been working with Anne Womack and Bill Hook to create an RSS feed for the lectionaries. They created the XML themselves for the RSS feed. They are also using SiteMason to help with the ease of use and maintenance of the feed. This will be going live soon.

6) Workstation replacement plans – They are targeting to remove the Dell 270’s and get new Dell 745’s. There are approximately 100 computers to replace over the course of the year.

7) Patch Tuesday – 49 patches were released today from Microsoft. They will be released to Heard networked staff the next day.

8) Update on search for systems librarian (Jason Battles’ former position) – They have several applicants so far, and the deadline for the position is tomorrow.

9) MS Vista and Office 2007 – Jody would like to come up with a mini boot camp for Vista and MS Office 2007 to help those who work with the public who are already dealing with Vista and Office 2007.

10) They are trying to consolidate idendidty management on the campus – it’s a huge project. They are also trying to work with those who aren’t current Vanderbilt entities, such as alumni, community users, etc. Basically, it will be a huge improvement.

11) ContactVU – a new system that will contain all our personal information used by the Vanderbilt Operators. The Sun Identity Manager and this new ContactVU system will be linked together and be much more secure than it currently is now. Multi-factor authentication will also be used eventually (a thumb as well as a password, for example).