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).

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.

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!

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.

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.

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) 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!

1) Kilimanjaro - As we all know, Kilimanjaro hasn’t exactly been the perfect printer since being implemented in mid December. There have been mysterious paper jams, odd errors, and Tray 1 has been insistent on wanting to be used, despite the number of times we alter the settings. Danny has been vigilant on trying to resolve these seemingly perpetual problems. Fortunately, he noticed something funky with the port settings, and Cliff from VU ITS came out on February 14th to inspect. He adjusted and maximized the port speed to match the printer, and things should be working smoother. However, everyone is still baffled about why so many print jobs attempt to go to Tray 1. While Danny investigates and monitors this issue, please assist those patrons who don’t read the little sign about pressing the checkmark button when the screen indicates that Tray 1 is empty.

2) Public Workstations - If you have ever opened in the morning, or had to reboot the public workstations, you may have noticed that background was in Active Desktop Safe Mode, an annoyingly bright white screen. For some odd reason unknown to me (as well as Dennis Boswell and Danny Sulkin), this was occurring after every reboot. I have found a solution to the problem, and things seem to be working much smoother.

Unfortunately, there are still problems, though. Computer #8 won’t login to the Owen network, although it does get an internet connection. Computer #10 (the one upstairs) needs to be reimaged to match the computers downstairs. Reimaging it might also help with the login problems on that computer. Rachel has alerted Danny about this and hopefully it will get taken care of in a somewhat timely manner.

3) VUprint - If you saw that email that David forwarded about VUprint, you may have noticed that printing has gone down in every library except ours, where printing volume has risen significantly. This could be due to the new duplex printers, or the types of assignments students have. Although we have heard through the grapevine that printing has risen dramatically in the Eskind Biomedical Library, they aren’t using VUprint (yet) and therefore weren’t included in the report. In the chart below (thanks to Bill Hook), observe the change in printing volume in the various libraries.

VUprint Volume

4) VUprint Task Force Meeting - This meeting, on January 5th, was called by Bill Hook to provide an opportunity to reflect on how VUprint worked this semester as well as to talk about establishing a structure or process for making decisions about VUprint enhancements and policies. Bill emphasized that although the library is seen as the implementer of VUprint, the library shouldn’t be, or seen as, the only advocate for VUprint. Also, since it’s implementation, VUprint seems to be working rather smoothly in every location except for the Science & Engineering Computer Labs within the school.

5) VU Web Developer’s Forum – The Spiders group on campus is mostly a virtual network of people who deal with technology and web development on both the academic and medical campuses. They usually meet once a month at the Kennedy Center on Peabody’s campus and have a topic for discussion. This meeting, however, was a gathering of over 60 web developers and folks interested in technology, and it was held in the new Student Life Building. Many topics were discussed, including the search engine used on VU’s homepage, layout and links on the main page, new technologies being implemented throughout campus, and an intro to all the nifty things on VUCast, which is Vanderbilt’s new news site. There was great discussion on RSS and podcasting, and Tim Moses from Sitemason was also there to demo all the new, neat features in Sitemason. He even created a little podcast in front of everyone in about 3 minutes. The meeting concluded with a discussion on what topics people would be interested in seeing, sharing, or learning, for upcoming 2006 Spiders meetings. There were about 8 people from the library system present.

6) ATLAS.ti Software – You may have noticed the little signs sticking up on 2 of the public workstations. This software, bought by Professor Torsten Ringberg, is also installed in his office and on 2 computers in the Owen 2nd Floor Computer lab. What does it do? “ATLAS.ti is a powerful workbench for the qualitative analysis of large bodies of textual, graphical, audio and video data. It offers a variety of tools for accomplishing the tasks associated with any systematic approach to “soft” data - i.e., material which cannot be analyzed by formal, statistical approaches in meaningful ways.” (UPDATE:  We no longer have this software in the library system or in Owen as of January 2007.)

7) SDC Platinum - This database, which is client-side (meaning, it’s installed on the computer and isn’t loaded on a server somewhere else where it would be accessible via a network or the Internet), is now installed in the Owen 2nd Floor Computer Lab. It’s traditionally only been installed in the library, but PhD students wanted more access than what library hours could provide. A password is needed to gain access to the resource, so be sure the patron asks for help at the Reference Desk before using this resource.

8) Technology Support Coordinators Meetings - There has been several meetings since the last Friday Tech Update, but most of the discussions have revolved around the email and SMTP server problem across the campus or new computer deployment. VU ITS and LITS are working hard to improve email and spam handling. Our email here in Owen works fine (besides the occasional spam) because we are on a separate network and Owen IT uses different technologies and servers than what VU ITS and the Heard Library uses. However, at February’s TSC meeting, Jody reminded us that viruses and spam and malware are running amuck and getting harder to manage. He thought it might be good for LITS to host some sort of workshop how to safeguard one’s home computer with various security measures. This may take place in April or in May.

9) VUnet ID and Password - You may have seen the email from ITS or from Jody earlier this month about changing your password yet again. Yes, it’s the third time the database was hacked into in 6 months, but ITS is working hard on improving the security. They also have lots of “alarms” in place to alert ITS staff once the system has been hacked. Jody Combs estimates that it still may take a while for the security system to improve drastically. Also, if you do receive a message asking you to change your password, and you aren’t 100% convinced that it’s legit, feel free to call LITS to double-check. They really don’t mind, and appreciate that you are paying attention!

10) SFX Project Team - You may or may not have heard, but Rachel got appointed to the SFX Project Team with Dale Poulter, Ann Ercelawn, and Rick Stringer-Hye. Why should you care? Well, when you are using Acorn or a database, and the FindIt@VU button isn’t quite working as expected, or you discover journals that should be SFX-ized, you will be able to contact me and I can investigate it. But until I get a handle on using the complex and most unfamiliar administrative interface, please continue to submit the problems to LITS via NetFix

11) Cover Sheets on the Color Printer - I asked Danny to look into why some print jobs that are sent to the color printer have cover sheets, and others don’t. Usually the setting for a separator page affects all jobs on the printer. Danny did some digging and found a separator page setup and removed it for both the PostScript and PCL versions of the printer. This may or may not take care of the problem. If you still occasionally get a cover page, please let me know.

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