WML Tech Updates

Jenny Levine had a great post today on communicating with library users, whether in-person, on the phone, IM, texting, or just changing the status of your IM so people can easily tell whether or not you are available.

I talked with my colleague Cynthia just the other day about this, and how we both change our status in Trillian quite regularly. Unfortunately, only a couple other WML library staff use IM, and they use different clients like AIM, Yahoo, or MSN. Heck, even LITS set up an in-house client (Exodus) to test, but it’s never been announced or promoted to all the libraries for use, nor do they intend to advertise it. They say it’s up to the directors of the individual libraries to determine whether or not to implement it. So I guess if I am really adamant about using IM in WML, I need to make a convincing case to our director. We need to be on the same page internally before we even attempt to do IM reference interactions with library users. But wouldn’t it be cool if I could IM with any of my colleagues throughout the Heard Library system, many of whom I need to interact with regularly because of committees and project teams? And do you know anyone not in favor of reducing the amount of email we get?

I personally communicate with my colleagues in a number of ways. Some people only respond to email, but I have several colleagues throughout the Heard Library system that I communicate with via Facebook, IM via Exodus, IM via Trillian, and even SMS texting. And with some people, it’s just easier to call. But one thing Jenny said really hit me.

“…it’s important to do the cliche and “think outside of the box” of how we ourselves might view communication. Even when we do focus groups or informal surveys, it tends to be with library users, who might not be that different from us. Therefore, we might miss patterns like these that show a shift in how the outside world communicates.”

I think it is important that we keep in mind how other people communicate and want to be communicated with. I know some reference librarians that when they get an instant message, or even an email, they insist that the user come into the library because the librarian thinks it’s easier to explain how to find something or use a particular resource. But there are so many tools out there that can help the patron just as much as an in-person interaction. We could be doing screencasts, mini podcasts, creating interactive tutorials, adding the info to a wiki or a research guide. I am sure other people besides myself get tired of answering the same questions over and over again. But I think our users like having options on how they not only find information, but having options in how they interact with us as well.

The person who emailed a reference question to a librarian - she emailed because either it was inconvenient, she didn’t want to come into the library, or she didn’t want to talk to a person. Isn’t customer service about giving people the type of service they want, not what we want? Why do we present to our users so few options of interacting with us when the communications possibilities are almost endless and continually expanding?

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!

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.

Acorn will be reindexed beginning Wednesday, November 22nd at 9:00pm. The indexing will be finished by Friday, November 24th at 10:00pm and we will be back on the production server by 11:00pm.

Webcat will be unavailable to the public between 9:00pm Wednesday
(11/22) through 3:00am Thursday morning (11/23) and 10:00pm-11:00pm on Friday (11/24). Should anyone attempt to access Webcat during these times a maintenance notification with a contact email address will be presented.

This reindexing will NOT require an upgrade to the Workflows client and will NOT upgrade the Unicorn software.

From 3:00am Thursday morning through 10:00pm Friday morning the following activities CAN be done:

* Circulation (check-in, check-out, reports, etc.)
* Cataloging (creating records, editing records, importing records through Smartport but not Passport, CatME, or Connexion–no bibloads will run)
* Authorities (deleting, and editing)
* Acquisitions (editing and creating records manually –no scripts will run.

Records from Gobi, BNA, and OCLC will not be loaded during this period. We will obtain these records once we are back on Acorn production.

We thank you for your cooperation as we work to improve Acorn services.

Jason J. Battles
Systems Librarian
Library Information Technology Services
Vanderbilt University

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.

1. VUprint - Never a week goes by without an update about VUprint. But Rachel feels confident that written policies and procedures will be coming soon from the OUL on Library Use Cards, who can print, and much more.
   David, Rachel, and Brent are still figuring out the administrative VUprint/copy cards issue. Once it’s figured out, rest assured that you will be informed! WML will be also receiving a print release station next week. It will be near Kilimanjaro on the circulation desk so that library staff can more easily help confused patrons. Also, Rachel anticipates 1 of 2 possible events for the future.
   1. There may be another open house type session for training on VUprint and all the policies and procedures that accompany it.
      The Tech Support Coordinators may be responsible for the training of VUprint. In this case, Rachel would be the VUprint trainer for WML, and would hope Brent would collaborate in this.
   • LITS has been working hard with the people who make the CSprint software, and all of the known problems have been fixed. The libraries are probably going to be turning on pay-for-printing prior to the labs, as they aren’t all ready yet. Why not wait till everyone is ready? The library feels most pressed to start charging very soon for printing. According to Bill Hook, the libraries recorded 250,000 pages printed in just the first 2 weeks of Sept, a 25% increase over last year’s September activity. Holy printing, Batman!
2. New Network Port - Someone from VU ITS will also be arriving early this week to install another port by Kilimanjaro. LITS arranged this, and Rachel also assumes that someone will then also activate the port for use.
3. Possible New Printers - David, Danny, Barry, and Rachel met last week to discuss the replacement of Kilimanjaro and Matterhorn. Something formal is being written and will be presented to the Dean, so keep your fingers crossed!
4. Database Update - We have a trial to a new database: Business Monitor Online (BMO) Also, the current subscription to the Forrester database has been extended till Friday, October 14, until more discussion takes places about it’s cancellation or renewal.
5. Upstairs Computer - This computer is ready! That’s right. You didn’t misread. The upstairs computer is ready for public use. The CPU is locked in the cabinet. So if you turn off the computer, you will need the key to turn it back on. Rachel has a key, and Elaine put the second key with the opening keys. It is set to go into sleep mode after 2 hours, so there really isn’t a reason to turn it off each day.
6. Digital Suggestion Box - If you haven’t done so already, please register yourself and have a look at the new Digital Suggestion Box. Feel free to post things, but remember that this is online and available to the entire world to see, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t mind outsiders reading. See Rachel is you need any help.
7. Google - Did you know that you can now personalize your Google homepage? That’s right! You can add all kinds of information to your Google page, besides the Google search bar. You can add local weather, stock info, news, your favorite links, and even RSS feeds! It’s a piece of cake! When you go to Google, you’ll see on the top right-hand corner, “Personalized Home”. Try it out! The personalizing of search engines is something that I have been anticipating for a while now.
   Amazon is the master at this, and even some libraries have portals that are more personalized. Google is now on the bandwagon, and soon you’ll see other search engines emulating Google.
8. New WML Website - Rachel is making slow BUT STEADY progress on the new website and the Staffweb. She is meeting with David this week to discuss its progress.

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

1. Hours have been updated on the website.
2. Proxy Migration — Emails were sent earlier this week regarding the scheduled migration of Owen databases from one proxy server to another. This, for the most part, was successful. There were some technical problems, however, but through collaborative efforts from Jason Battles, Jason Reusch, Dale Poulter, and I, things are now working properly again. Thank you for your patience!
3. Alumni proxy server — The Alumni Proxy server, which is still separate from the other database proxy servers, and was not involved in Monday’s migration, has had an update. Jason added an email alert to be sent to him when the alumni proxy server is down. Upon detecting the proxy is down, the system will automatically attempt to restart it. This has been occurring a lot lately, and even occurred twice over this past weekend, and according to Jason, the auto restart worked each time. Yeah! Later this month, or possibly in June, we would also like to migrate the alumni proxy server to the main proxy server, too. It will be considerably easier to manage for LITS .
4. CDROM server and public workstation databases — Then, when those are settled, Rachel will be talking with Deb, Owen IT, and LITS to discuss the issues involved in possibly taking the 3 databases that are on the Heard Library CDROM server and the 3 databases that are installed on our laptops and public workstations, and making them more accessible by being on a secure Owen server.
5. On Tuesday, May 3, Rachel met with Julie Loder to discuss plans to build a website on Library Staff Computer Accessibility Information. This project is being done for the Heard Library Technology Training Coordinators, and will probably be linked off the Heard Staffweb at some point.
6. On Tuesday, May 10, Rachel attended the monthly Technology Support Coordinators Meeting in the Baker Building. There are several things to announce:
   • Baker is getting a facelift! There are several projects going on, including the building of a new server room in LITS, new carpeting in some areas, and new and improved HVAC to improve the temperature of various departments, including the server room. Where is it being built? Well, let’s just say that Dale Poulter will be office-less for about 4 weeks, and then when he gets his office back, it will be considerably smaller, but less noisy and a cooler temperature.
   • LITS will be announcing their new site (which is powered by a wiki!) sometime later this month.
   • New computer workstation deployments will start taking place in early June. Sylvia, Marie, Laura, and Brent will be getting new computers along with 9 new public workstations! Woo Hoo! Rachel will talk to each of you before your computer comes to make sure all your information is saved in appropriate locations and bookmarks are exported.
   • New circulation laptops are being deployed this week and next week. Rachel believes that we are getting one. Marie has more details.
   • LITS is doing some beta testing on a new Java Client for our current and upcoming Sirsi products.
7. The following database training sessions took place:
   • Tuesday, May 3, 11am - 12pm, Business Source Premier
   • Tuesday, May 10, 2 - 4pm, Lexis-Nexis Congressional and Statistical
   • Wednesday, May 11, 3 - 4:30pm, S&P NetAdvantage
8. Rachel is making good progress on the new website. She will have lots of things to show you all on June 1, at the staff meeting. Get excited! It IS coming!

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

Grab a cup of’ coffee. This is another long one. :)

1. Rachel attended the monthly Technology Training Coordinators meeting over in Baker. The group has been looking at usage statistics for New Horizons, the online, self-paced training modules, and doing research on other various training tools and opportunities. Additionally, Rachel is working with Julie Loder to develop a website to aid library staff in adjusting accessibility features in Windows XP . The group hasn’t been doing much as of late due to the anticipation of the Heard Library Strategic Plan, and the hope that it will give the group more direction.
2. The monthly Technology Support Coordinators meeting was also held:
   • There have been many problems with the campus-wide email system, so be glad we are on Owen’s network! Jody is working close with VU IT Services to remedy this major problem.
   • An announcement: If you need to send an email to the entire Library Staff, you must have approval from any LMC member before doing so.
   • The Print Management Project (Pay-for-Print) is coming along. All the libraries, the deans of all the schools, student government, the VU card office, and others have been consulted regarding the implementation of the pay-for-print system. At this time, Rachel is is unaware if there was a final decision made on Owen students paying for print jobs. Nevertheless, Implementation will begin in May, and we should have about 2 months to “work out the kinks” before anyone on campus starts charging.
   • Malware and phishing has been on the rise, and the spam that you are getting is getting better at coming in disguised. For example, someone in LITS received an email that was localized (talked about Nashville and the TN Titans) and had his name on the attached .zip file. There was also a message and a McAfee logo within the email saying that the email had been run through your virus scanner and was clean. All in all, this attachment was a worm that would wreck your computer and find its way into the network. This “phish” would only be “caught” if your virus software was up-to-date.
   • LITS already has a pool of candidates and will begin interviewing soon for Mill’s position.
   • Jason Battles, one of LITS’s newest members, will be doing a lot more of the proxy server set-up and maintenance, as well as working closely with Dale on other projects. He has server, programming, and system admin experience. He also used to work for Sirsi, and since he’s from Alabama, he gets a “Roll Tide!“
3. On March 3, Rachel attended a presentation from SIRSI on some new products the Heard system will be investigating for possible purchase. One is an Electronic Resources Management System (ERMS) tool, and the other is their Director’s Station product (which would collect tons of statistics and data for management). Both sound very promising!
4. On March 10, Rachel attended the first program of ACRL’s virtual 12th National Conference. Lynch and Keller discussed issues like googlization, digital repositories, distance education, and privacy. Clifford Lynch was very insightful as usual, but this audio only program had lots of room for improvement.
5. On March 18, Rachel and Amia attended the Library as Place: Where People Want to Be Webcast. Very informative, and Rachel and Amia took great notes and got some good ideas.
6. Also on Friday, March 18, Rachel, Amia, Deborah, and Dale Poulter met to discuss new proxy configurations, database management issues, and answer many access and proxy questions. Many things have evolved as a result of this meeting:
   • We are beginning to migrate some databases that used a special proxy server over to the same one that the rest of campus uses, making it easier for Dale to manage.
   • We are confirming which databases are indeed Owen only, and which are not. Deb is assisting in this process as well.
   • We are trying to get the same configurations of databases on both the Heard page and the Walker page so there are no discrepancies and it’s easier for the students.
7. We subscribe to many print journals and magazines, and some give free online access to the electronic version via a username and password. Dale is trying to make it accessible to the Owen community with an automatic login so users don’t have to stop by the Reference desk and ask for login information.
8. Jody Combs reported that LITS is seeing an increase in staff members bringing service requests and problem reports directly to LITS staff members or reporting them through LITS email addresses rather than through NetFix. As you know, this causes several problems for LITS and for the Library. Follow up reporting can be done through email, phone, or in person–but if the request doesn’t initially get into the NetFix system, they cannot track or manage it efficiently.
9. Rachel and Amia taught a workshop on Thursday, March 24 in collaboration with the Business & Technology Club on Electronic Networking and Job Search Resources.
10. LITS is now participating in The LOCKSS Program , (for “Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe”). What is it, and why is it important?
    • The evolution of web technology is disrupting the critical library role of libraries as one of society’s most important memory organizations. Libraries without collections have no memory; they are not libraries. LOCKSS restores to libraries the ability to collect, to preserve, and to provide access to web-based materials.
    • The software provides libraries with a tool they can use to ensure that current and future generations have access to scholarly content.
    • The system is an open-source, peer-to-peer persistent access preservation system for web-based information.
    • Through the LOCKSS Program, libraries can own content they currently lease or access on the Web. Each library instructs its LOCKSS machine to preserve the content it considers important to its collection; the LOCKSS then machine collects and preserves an authoritative copy. Publishers grant libraries’ institutional users the right to access the preserved content in perpetuity. Readers see the publishers’ content, unless it is unavailable for any reason (canceled subscription, network outage, etc.) in which case they see the preserved content.
    • This is very good indeed!
11. Rachel attended a live Webcast: Teaching, Learning, & Research: Libraries and Their Role in the Academic Institution on Tuesday, March 1 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm in the Central Library Classroom . Very good webcast.
12. Through March and April, Rachel and Marie worked with Jim Toplin and Dale Poulter to get Illiad up and running on the main circulation computer. Marie will announce when we are ready for training and or launch!
13. Rachel has also been working with Mills (before he left) and Jim Toplin to figure out why Ariel wasn’t connecting with the Ariel server. Additionally, Rahn is talking with copyright experts regarding posting scanned articles to the web in a secure, password protected location. Rachel and Laura are meeting again next week to get Ariel up and running.
14. On Tuesday, April 5, Rachel and Laura attended a panel discussion on Open Access. Roberta Winjum spoke about the VU e-Archive , Vanderbilt’s institutional repository, and the other 2 panelists were faculty and editors of journals, one of which was not open access, and the other being AmeriQuests, Vanderbilt’s first online peer-reviewed Open Access journal. Laura always takes excellent notes, so if you are interested in this, please see her.
15. Rachel is working on the Staffweb and incorporating your ideas and documents to be linked. She’ll have something to show by next week’s Staff Meeting.
16. Rachel is also working on a wiki for us to use eventually. She originally wanted a wiki for the Staffweb, but she’s got a lot to learn about wikis and is not ready to show a URL for that one yet.
17. Implementation of the new Pay-for Print system should begin in May, and we will have the summer to work the kinks out. We will not begin charging until the start of classes in Fall 2005. Rachel will keep you (and Danny) updated.
18. Databases. Just the typical breaks, fixes, and horrible customer service from Ebsco. Rachel typically updates the Info Services Staff of the changes at the Tuesday Reference Meetings, which are also put in the minutes.
19. Password Management is a good thing. Hilary and Rachel are leading up the effort to gather all the usernames and passwords used within the library (not personal usernames and passwords) for things like database, workstation, and software access.
20. The new WML Website is coming along slowly. Hopefully next week, Rachel will schedule and meet with the Website Planning & Implementation Team (Rachel, Amia, Marie) and plan the goals for the site for the rest of the summe r and for August implementation. Also, the Information Services team is working hard at sprucing up and developing more comprehensive Research Guides for the new site. It’ll be exciting when they are done!
21. Public workstations. You may have noticed some changes.
    • Seven of the eight computers have been ghosted and Deep Frozen. This is good. But DataStream and SDC are not working properly on all of them, due to restrictions Danny and I put on the computer to not let the normal wmlpublic login have administrative rights. This is bad. Rachel is working hard to fix the problem and will keep the librarians informed of her progress.
    • They shouldn’t be turned off at night as that is when they will run Windows updates. Marie will be noting this in the opening/closing procedures in due time.
    • Rachel will create a list of all the programs/resources on the public workstations.

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