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.

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.

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.

The Primo development project includes a communication plan to help keep staff informed about the project. As part of this plan, we have created a course in OAK and have enrolled all full-time library staff. This course contains more detailed information than we can post on either an open web site or to the staff newsletter. To access the course, library staff should login to OAK using their VUnet ID/password. Once logged in, the course, titled “OTH Primo Project” should appear in the list of courses on the Main tab. Staff are encouraged to make suggestions for additional content. Send suggestions to Jody Combs.

I strongly encourage you to take a look at this at some point.  I think about a third of all library staff are involved in the development and implementation of Primo, and the more you know now, the better you’ll be prepared when it goes live.

1) The NEW Java Client version of Sirsi - There have been many concerns and questions about implementation, training, and wondering when all this is going to take place with our impending renovation here in WML. Earlier this week, Rachel talked with Julie Loder in LITS, and rest assured, everything will be okay. Take a deep breath. There is no need to panic. But please do read through the following information.

Installing the new client

LITS will be “installing” the new version of Sirsi through the Novell network for Heard Library networked libraries. As you know, this does not include us. LITS will be sending a disk with the prorgam on it to the Law, Management, and Eskind Libraries, and they can install it however way they choose. Since we have so few computers (at least compared to some of the other libraries), it would take longer to create new images, reimage every computer, and reinstall other additional software - than it would to simply install it on each person’s computer. I may enlist Danny to help with the process.

Also, I will not be uninstalling the current version of Sirsi that we are using. Everyone will have both the old version as well as the new version on his or her computer. There will be at least a several month period where you are encouraged to try using the new version for your everyday tasks, but you’ll still have to opportunity to use the old version if you can’t figure out how to do it in the new session.

When is it going to be installed?

I also talked with Julie about not entirely knowing where we physically will be this summer (since we may have to vacate our offices and set up shop elsewhere due to the renovation), and that getting the installation done in advance would be one less thing for us to worry about. So she will be sending me a disk within the week, and I’ll start installing it. My goal will be to have it installed on every computer by the end of April. You will be able to play with it as much as you like, but keep in mind that no one here in WML, including myself, have used it before. So if you have a questions about how to do something, please just be patient and wait to ask your questions at the training sessions in May, June, or July 2006.

Training on the new client

There have been a number of people throughout the library system who have been beta testing the new client for months now. More than likely, many of them will become the trainers on various parts of the new client. For example, if an individual only worked with the circulation-related part of the new Sirsi client, then that person might volunteer to become a trainer for just that part of the client. The same goes for those who deal with serials, collection development, cataloging, and other modules within Sirsi. So in short, there will be multiple training sessions, taught by multiple people throughout the library system, at multiple times throughout the summer.

Who is coordinating the training, and when is going to happen?

Currently, LITS is aware of the individuals who have been doing beta testing, so they might be able to come up with a list of possible trainers. But there are no set dates, times, or even confirmed trainers at this time. Julie said that as it gets closer to the summer (that is, when April is over), all this information will get communicated.

It is also unclear as to whether LITS, the Staff Development Committee, or a new project team will be coordinating the overall training. I trust that Celia Walker and Jody Combs and whomever else is involved in the procress will figure something out, and that whatever is decided will get communicated to us at the appropriate time. I am also confident that someone (or a group of people) are compiling documentation on how to do various tasks within the new Sirsi client.

Questions?

If you have questions, I would be more than happy to talk to you about what I know. I will also keep you updated (either through more Friday Tech Updates, email, or at staff meetings) as I learn more. Also, bookmark this page. It’s still under development, but they will be adding more to it as time goes by. Thank you for your patience throughout this process!

2) Kilimanjaro - Kilimanjaro is behaving more than usual. Rachel assumes the fix she made on the public workstations helped, and that the network port being fixed by VU ITS is the main reason for the improvement. Still, there are occasional weird things that happen with it, as Rachel is sure Circulation staff can attest to. But for the most part, it seems OK.

3) Printer Server being Maintenanced - Rachel talked with Owen IT about performing maintenance on the print server (or any server) when the library is open, even if it seems like a slow Friday afternoon elsewhere in the school. This incident happened last time without warning, and patrons as well as staff were caught unaware. She was told that next time, they will try to communicate more in advance when services will be down for maintenance. As you noticed recently, Jason Reusch announced several days in advance that they would be doing server maintenance Thursday night through Friday morning. Rachel is glad the communication lines are open.

4) SFX Project Team Report - On February 27th, Rachel and the rest of the SFX Project Team met with some members from Order Services (Mary Ellen Wilson, Chris Waldrop, and Roberta Winjum) who wanted a clearer idea of what the project team does, how much time is spent fixing things, and how often updates are run. The team will meet again soon to discuss:

* Status of the OpenURL generator
* Status of local holdings enhancement
* Additional databases to be SFX-ized (including a discussion about other WML databases that might work with SFX)

5) Primo Demonstration - On Thursday, March 30th, 2 representatives from Ex Libris came here to talk about the library possibility of being a beta test partner with them for their new end-user information discovery and delivery tool called Primo. Rachel went to the demo and was thoroughly impressed with the product despite it still being in early development. It was very reminiscent of Amazon’s interface and Google’s search engine and features. The system utilizes FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) which, in short, takes full full advantage of all the fields in the records, and therefore primo won’t require recataloging. All information also comes from local collections (catalog, journals, repositories, etc.).

There is another tab could could work with MetaLib, the metasearch engine that searches multiple databases. We currently do not have a metasearch tool such as this, and from the trail we had last year with MetaLib, there would have to be a lot of improvement with that particular product before the VU libraries would purchase it, I believe.

Other cool features of Primo include: Reviews of books can be imported in from Amazon, and users could have the option to write their own review, as well as rate items. Users can search on similar resources, subject, other languages, editions. Tagging, as in the kind used in del.icio.us or Flickr, can also be used within Primo. There is the “People who viewed this item also viewed X, Y, and Z” feature.

Primo also utilizes faceted browsing where you can narrow your search by clicking on other related and extracted information to narrow your search. Examples are narrow your search by subject (a variety of subjects are listed), author, type of item (books, journals, audio, etc), language, publication date, etc. Basically, faceted browsing allows users to choose predefined options rather than guess. It gives the user the opportunity to refine their search and they won’t be able to hit a dead end.

Primo ranks its search results based on a relevancy ranking. This relevancy ranking algorith can be fine-tuned. You can assign more weight to some resources to make them more relevant, or appear higher in the result list. You can also analyze user statistics and make adjustments accordingly. It will also work within a Course Management System such as Blackboard

There are many, many more features, and I could say a lot more, but overall, I personally think it would be foolish for us not to partner with Ex Libris in beta testing. This seems to be the type of product our users want.

Here is a breif mention of Primo in Library Journal.

6) Public Workstations & Upstairs Computer - Rachel talked with Danny and he’ll be reimaging the public workstations, including the one upstairs, within the next week or so.

7) Update on the NEW WML Website - Rachel has made great strides on the website, and it’s at a point where some usability testing can be done again before many of the deeper pages are created. Sometime within the next few weeks, she will be showing the website to WML staff for feedback, and doing some usability testing with a few Owen students. She’s also been working on capturing every single page of the site on paper, and seeing what is done, and what yet needs to be done, and by whom. It will serve as a task list and hopefully help people know exactly what needs to be done yet. Many of the pages need much discussion on the content before deeper pages can be made. David is helping her organize this so it will be clearer as to what is done, what isn’t, and hopefully won’t be so overwhelming to people.

Have a good weekend, everyone! Thanks for your attention and time!