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).

THINK

Originally uploaded by mstephens7.

I’ve seen this before, but I felt like sharing it with my colleagues this time. I think we have to be careful with word choice when we say what users can and can’t do in the library. Banning is a poor word choice. We should encourage them to turn their ringers to vibrate and answer their phones with consideration of their peers in the library. We know they are trying to get jobs, schedule meetings, and are important people just like you or me. So why not respect that?

Outside the box …

Originally uploaded by hblowers.

I’ve been remiss in writing on this blog for a while. Why? I was in Houston for a cousin’s wedding, and then I went to DC for the Annual ALA Conference. It was amazing this year. I’ll blog more about it later this weekend. But this pic that Helene Blowers uploaded to Flickr is just awesome. When Paul Gherman talks about the concept of a new library here at Vanderbilt, this is what I think of. We can’t continue to stay comfortable with the legacy issues and traditional ways of doing things in libraryland. I know we don’t want a new building to be just a warehouse for books. It really needs to be for the users, and in order for us to really understand our users, we have to step outside our comfort zone and think outside the box. We have to be familiar with where social software, web 2.0 technologies, and new methods of communication, such as the iPhone, are taking our users. We have to be aware and willing to take the leap into the unknown. It’s up to us, the library staff, to make the library more than just a box with services.

A message from Jason Reusch, Associate Director of Owen ITS:

For several months, with the support of the dean’s office, we have been collaborating with Vanderbilt University Central Information Technology Services to enhance the reliability, availability, performance, and disaster recovery readiness of Owen’s IT services.

As part of this effort, we will be relocating the twenty-eight servers that provide all Owen IT services, including email, blackboard, admissions, external web presence, and OCNS.

We are planning to complete the majority of the move during the week following graduation, May 13-19, 2007. Although we will try to minimize the inconvenience, there will be service interruptions during this time. As we nail down specific dates and times we will publish them to the community and provide as much advance notice as possible.

We will be moving our systems to the recently expanded and renovated data center at the Hill Center on the Peabody Campus. This data center offers facilities and services to the University that are unattainable at our scale.

The move to brings several immediate and future benefits.

• 24×7x365 on site monitoring by a university employee
• Redundant power, networking, and climate control systems
• A more robust backup infrastructure including weekly full backup of all systems taken off-site to a secure location
• A three-year hardware life cycle replacement plan to ensure consistent, reliable performance and manufacturer warranty and support
• Storage Area Network (SAN) data storage to improve backup and recovery time
• A shared-storage VMWare environment, which provides high availability for individual server level failure. All but four of our systems will live as virtual machines in the VMWare environment.

If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please send them to Jason.

Today I attended our monthly Technology & Training Support Coordinators meeting over in the Baker Building. Jody had a full agenda as usual. Well, I did send him several additional questions ahead of time. ;-)

1. Stephen Nordstrom from the Music Library is now going to be joining us as the new music liaison. He’s the Music Cataloger over there.
2. Unicorn Patch cluster to be applied -Nancy is working on this, and it will be coming soon. It will help with the custom reports.
3. MS patch Tuesday report - As always, the TTSC meets on Patch Tuesday. The latest Microsoft patch will be released to all Heard networked computers tonight. I assume Owen will follow their usual procedures for patches.
4. Replacement of older circulating laptops - Recently, there were 11 REALLY old laptops in one of the libraries that were still circulating. LITS is no longer able to purchase support for these laptops, so they have been sent to the Virtual School. New laptops (Dell 620’s) have been purchased with reassessment money. Since the laptops are so heavily used, they wanted to replace them as soon as possible.
5. VUnetID authentication for ILLiad - Dale is meeting with the ILLiad group, and so far, things are going well. They are interested in expanding VUnetID authentication to other services, besides the basic login to ACORN and ILLiad. They are using LDAP servers for authentication.
6. Status report on Primo project - The next site visit with ExLibris will be April 18th and 19th, next Wednesday and Thursday. Julie Loder has been managing all the reporting of problems via the Primo site in OAK (Blackboard). Currently, only people involved in Primo can log in to view the problems. There are 2 new Primo teams: the TestIt Team, and the Usability Team. The project team charges can be viewed on the Digital Library Steering Committee wiki page. From WML, Cynthia Kutka and Laura Norris are on the project teams. (Rachel and Brent are already on the two various delivery Primo GetIt! teams that have been meeting for some time now. The Primo General Release 1.0 will be out around the middle of May 2007. This version will only contain the basic features, not all of them. Jody joked in saying that there will be things that we are guaranteed to like about Primo, as well as things that we will most definitely hate. He also mentioned that the faceted browsing is working well and will certainly help users, although not all of the facets are working correctly. The system overall seems to be running very fast. He hopes at the end of April that all library staff will be able to have a look at the current version of Primo. And once general release 1.o is out, LITS will begin working with ExLibris toward general release 2.0.
7. Vanderbilt Information Technology Services is transitioning all Vanderbilt www.vanderbilt.edu and www3.vanderbilt.edu websites to new server hardware on June 1st. Sites with” vanity” URLs (e.g., its.vanderbilt.edu) are also affected. They have previously communicated this transition to various campus technology groups. We here in Owen are fine. For more info, see this announcement.
8. I asked Jody to talk about Blackboard becoming more compatible with Windows Vista, since I knew there were some problems and that freshmen and anyone who gets a new laptop will be encountering problems. Jody said that when using Blackboard in IE7 on Vista (or in Safari on Mac OSX) things don’t work quite right (for example, you cannot save your changes). Blackboard works just fine in Firefox on Vista, I must add. :-) LITS plans on doing a patch level upgrade in June. Blackboard anticipates that this problem will be fixed over the summer. They are holding off the rollout of Vista until summer of 2008 (based on the recommendations from Gartner and others). Also, Vista isn’t entirely compatible with WorkFlows, so Rachel will need to check with Owen IT about their rollout schedule of Vista.
9. My second question for Jody was about the email client ITS has chosen (or are getting closer to considering). The Email Task Force is still investigating things, but ITS will primarily be supporting Outlook, it seems. They are migrating incoming students to this environment, as well as small departments. Many individuals are migrating to Outlook as well. Jody reassured those at the meeting who were concerned about security and hackers who hate Microsoft. Jody explained that there are a lot of protections built in that have made it more secure than previous versions. Outlook allows for enriched communication (images, html, etc.) that are a big improvement over Mulberry, and those extras also have settings that can be adjusted for different levels of security. There was a concern in how group mailboxes currently established in Mulberry would be dealt with, and they are investigating imap mailbox issues. But as you know, we here in Owen aren’t really affected by this (not yet) because we are already using Outlook, have exchange servers, and use Active Directory.
10. LITS is getting ready to rollout a “lite” RMS for VUPrint and for other groups and services within the library system.
11. I also asked Jody if he has heard anything about the servers in Owen moving over to ITS and if it is a push from Matt Hall based on his vision for the campus’s networked architecture? Jody said, no, he hasn’t heard anything. But he did talk about servers hosted in LITS vs. the servers over on Peabody’s campus that are maintained locally by ITS (they can still be maintained remotely too). Jody emphasized that the cost of buying and maintaining the actual server hardware is now dwarfed by the cost of cooling them. The new HVAC system in the General Library Building is coming along okay. They now have plenty of cooling, but are looking to get more power.

That’s all!

What do the next few years hold for Network Computing Architecture? Matt Hall, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Information Technology Services and Associate Chief Information Architect, Infrastructure at Vanderbilt University, peers into his crystal ball for insight into that topic.

Click to view Hall’s presentation Network Computing Architecture 2007-2010 Vision. Allow approximately 30 minutes to watch the presentation.

In addition to discussing prognostication about network computing in the coming years, Hall outlines how Vanderbilt IT leaders will organize core and shared IT infrastructures to best leverage them.

At the Technology & Training Support Coordinators meeting today, we talked about many things. I was a few minutes late, so I missed the first part of meeting, but still heard some updates on the first item on the agenda.

1) As you know (hopefully), users can now use their VUnet ID and password for authentication into Acorn to renew books, set up Acorn notes, etc.. There has been some confusion among users in that some are using their VUnet ID and instead of using their VUnet password, they are still using their Acorn Pin as their password. This, of course, doesn’t work. There are also users that don’t have a VUnet ID. They can still use their Social Security Number and Acorn Pin to log in. But soon (a few weeks?) users that don’t have a VUnet ID can use the same login information that they use when they sign in to use VUprint.

This means that for a while, there will be 3 different ways users can log into Acorn (all options are not necessarily available to each individual user). I just thought that I should point this out. They are 1) VUnet ID/password, 2) SSN/Acorn PIN, and 3) VUprint login/password.

Also, the good news is that plans for the development for a more universal unique ID will be starting this fall. More info on this to come later.

2) Jim Webb is replacing Flo Wilson as the TTSC representative for the Office of the University Librarian.

3) Patch Cluster 5. It’s the highly descriptive name for Sirsi’s new enhancements. The upgrade starts Wednesday evening at midnight, and folks will be required to update Thursday morning. While you are more than likely sleeping, the system will be down anywhere between 15 -60 minutes (as Dale Poulter predicts). An email has already been sent about this.

4) Judy Carter was happy to announce that LITS’s workstation deployment project is almost done. (And then the fun starts all over again at the beginning of the next fiscal year!) LITS is also working on a life-cycle management and replacement policy for circulating laptops.

5) It’s patch Tuesday. Upgrades to your computers are out! Please remember to run your Windows updates on your home computers -for your own sanity.

6) Daylight Saving Time. Yes, it’s that topic again. LITS did all their patching, and Acorn and most things on the Heard Network seem fine. People’s PDA’s are probably still struggling with the time change thing, and Exchange servers, and the clients that connect to them (for Microsoft Outlook) are still unhappy (as we here in WML know quite well!) For tips on dealing with this murky stuff, please see my previous post.

7) Exodus, the internal IM client that LITS has been beta testing for what seems like forever now, was just upgraded. I haven’t played with it yet to see exactly what the new additions are, but from a quick glance, it doesn’t look like much. In WML, Laura and Rachel are the only ones using it. There are several other folks within the library system using it, too. If you are interested in trying it out, just let Rachel know! She can send you all the info you need to get it set up, and can stop by for a quick demo if needed.

8) Jody talked briefly about the 2 new Primo Project Teams currently being formed. He only has about 8 volunteers out of the entire library system, and they need more. If you are at all interested or know of someone who might be interested (and haven’t already volunteered or are already on a Primo development team), please contact Jody Combs as soon as possible. They want to get these teams started next week.

I have lots of good news to share. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the Daylight Saving Time problems we are experiencing in Outlook. Sorry to disappoint.

Public Workstations

Computers #1-8 have been reimaged! I have:

• installed the correct versions of Adobe Reader and the appropriate eBook reader which work with the Vault and WetFeet databases
• installed Internet Explorer 7, with all the same bookmarks
• installed Firefox 2.0, and the Firefox Search plugin for Acorn that LITS created
• updated SpySweeper
• added printers - they all now have Kilimanjaro (default), Matterhorn, Blanc, and Whitney_Color listed. Also, K2 and Rainier are listed (they are in the Owen print center in the lobby).
• replaced #8’s mouse. The left click part was broken (but not the scroll bar or the right click part).
• fixed #7’s CD-ROM drive

For those who want just a bit more information:

The reimagining for the most part seemed to be successful. We didn’t use Sysprep, and therefore had to rename each computer and rejoin it to the domain. Also, I noticed today that the CS Print Client mysteriously disappeared from the Startup menu, so for 2 days no one was able to print from the public workstations unless they knew to open the CS Print Client from the list of programs from the Start menu. I plan on fixing this on each individual computer tomorrow morning.

Computer #9 was having issues with the old webpage displaying when opening a browser. It has been fixed. Also, some pdf freeware was installed for an alumnus wanting to turn search results from ABI/Inform into pdf format.

VUprint

Please note that public workstations #1-9 are going through the VUprint service, including the color printer. (Bloomberg isn’t yet.) Black and white printing for current Owen students, faculty, and staff is still free, and color printing is still $.50/page. If Owen students are using the public workstations and are printing to the color printer, they will have to use the VUprint system which means that

1. When they select PRINT on the VUprint menu, they need money on their card and will get charged $.50/page; OR
2. When they select PRINT LATER on the VUprint menu, they need to see someone at the Service Desk to swipe a copy card and pay for their print job (cash, check, credit card, etc.)

Office 2007

I had a conversation with Danny about Office 2007. I decided not to upgrade the public workstations or the staff computers to Office 2007 at this time. My gut feeling was that we just shouldn’t upgrade yet.

Outlook Problems

Besides the funky calendaring problems that the change in DST is causing, our WML Circ, Reference, Conference Room, Instruction, and Blogging calendars mysteriously got deleted. Owen IT Detective Heather Mitchell is investigating and more than likely will be trying to restore them from backup tapes from early last week. All the departmental calendars are missing, not just those used in WML. I will keep you informed as soon as I hear something.