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Article of the Day
RSA News For Thursday, November 20, 2008
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Busy, busy, here is a project update
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As Jon mentioned in his email, we will be upgrading the production server to Symphony 3.2.1 Sunday evening, 2 November 2008. We are about a month behind on getting this done due to the difficulties of getting the online production server and backup production server to sync each night. Now that Jon has figured out how to get the two Oracle databases to sync (they are configured slightly differently which meant creating translation software), once we come up on Symphony, we will have a standby production server ready to replace the production server if it ever fails again. The backup server will be current as of midnight each day, so if we every have to put it online, it will be as up to date as possible. If we have a failure, you could be back online circulating in just a few minutes. Symphony itself is nothing more than Unicorn with some upgrades. You will not have to learn new software, workflows will look the same but have some additional options. Over time, we will be turning on lots of new options like patron credits, linked family cards, holds filling groups, etc. We will also be working on turning on additional modules in the software like Serials and Materials Booking. We’ll be running training classes for them at ALS in the next couple months. Serials will likely be first and we’ll be getting online training from Sirsi for the initial group of folks interested in using it. For some of these modules, we’ll need help from the initial batch of folks in the training to train others. Using it every day is much better from a training standpoint than using it only to find issues and fix problems. Having Symphony running also opens access to other tools, the Staff Web Client and Web Reporter chief among them. The Staff Web Client is the first browser based Workflows replacement tool from SirsiDynix. As currently designed, it is primarily for K-12 school users, but will work in other settings as well. The thing really holding it back from wider use is a lack of receipt printer support. The next version of this client will be for all users and will include support for printing receipts. However, if you don’t print receipts, you might find this to be a great replacement for your common tasks like check-in, check-out and billing. Sirsi is targeting the upgraded release version of this tool for next summer. In the meantime, we are getting it installed for those that can use it now and don’t care about printing receipts. Web Reporter is the other major tool that Symphony opens up. Jon and I have been making and modifying templates to get everything ready for the rollout of Web Reporter. This product will be open to all basic and online libraries and is intended to replace the bulk of the reports that you need to run in Unicorn right now. This product runs in a web browser and is template based. For example, if you want a list of your incoming or outgoing transit items, you could simply run that template, select your library and perhaps one or two other options, then run the report. The output of the report shows on the screen, can be printed, exported to Excel, or turned into a PDF document. We’ll continue to make new templates to satisfy your requests for reports. Once we have Web Reporter running, we will ask you to not use the Symphony reporting module unless you have to. We would like to better control those reports and run them here at RSA HQ since they can cause lots of issues if the report isn’t set up correctly. The Director’s Station upgrade has been released by SirsiDynix. The issue with getting it deployed here is that it requires MS SQL 2005 instead of the 2000 version on the server now. We are trying to find a less expensive place to purchase the software right now, the best quote we have at the moment is around $13,000. Microsoft sure knows how to rake in the cash on their upgrades. Since there are a lot of great new features and useful functionality, we will be doing the upgrade which is free as far as Sirsi is concerned. Once we find out if there is a cheaper place to order or not, we’ll work on purchasing the software and upgrading the server to the newest version. We are working with SirsiDynix to load E-library and Enterprise on the RSA Cat server. These two products will eventually replace all of the current RSA Cat with a simpler, more easy to use catalog. We will have a lot of configuration to do initially, but long term, our patrons will probably like these better. E-library is the just released update to the old iBistro product and Enterprise is the new, still be developed at a rapid pace, faceted search and eventual EPS functionality replacement product. All we need running first is the E-library part as that will totally replace everything in RSA Cat right now. Once it’s installed and we are working on it, we’ll put a link on the current RSA Cat to let folks try it out and see what we are doing. That will help break them into using the new catalog product. Oh, by the way, this product will do ‘and’ searching (like google does and CARL did) by default instead of the ‘same’ search that Sirsi has used for years. That change alone should help folks find items easier. The Union Listing record export program is 99% done. The remaining 1% is waiting for our beta testers to give us some info on what didn’t quite work correctly so we can finish and release to all. If you are somewhat computer savy and would like to help Jon with this program, please let him know. We just need to check 1 or 2 final changes prior to releasing it to everybody. New and upgrading libraries. We have several Union Listing libraries that are currently moving up to basic online and several more awaiting board or school board approval to do so. We are setting them up and training them as quickly as possible. We also added the library for our newest RSA member, St. Marks Middle School in Peoria, and they are working to enter all their items and patrons now. We have several schools adding a branch library (usually the middle school) or thinking of adding a branch library. The membership listing on the RSA Website is always the most current location to see the membership listing, system code names, and who that library loans to (schools or publics or both). The listing is broken down into Full Online libraries, then Basic Online libraries, then Union Listers. Right now we have 41 Basic Online libraries and I expect 2 more will get approval in the next week or so. That’s 41 libraries that we’ve automated either at or since go-live in December. That’s much better than we expected and we are really pleased with how popular that has been. |
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Goings On Update
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We have the new production server online and the old production server now in the standby role. We are working on moving both of those servers to Symphony. We are having the digital archives software installed and will be getting training on that. We are also having the K-12 web client software installed. That client will allow basic functionality (but not receipt printing) via a web browser instead of Workflows. The new version of Director’s Station was just released. As soon as I get the upgrade price (for Microsoft SQL, not Director’s Station) we will press ahead with the upgrade. This is a major upgrade and contains lots on new functionality including multi-selecting on the top measures and library groups. We are also working on designing templates in Web Reporter to replace a lot of the reports in Unicorn/Symphony. These will be very simple to use templates and look much nicer and are exportable as PDF or Excel documents. That upgrade is waiting on the move to Symphony and some licensing issues that arose in the 2 years since we contracted. Finally, we are working with SirsiDynix to install e-library and enterprise (faceted search product). Once they are loaded, we can begin configuring them. They will replace the current RSA Cat online catalog. |
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DiAnn had a little boy
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DiAnn spent the Labor Day holiday in labor with her first child. She delivered a healthy boy on September 1st around 7:30. Giovanni Wrigley Sances and DiAnn are both doing fine. |
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Jon is working night support
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Jon will be working most of the night support hours with some help from Vicky and Kendal. Jon is working 10:30 am till 7 pm. Feel free to call if you need anything. |
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DiAnn is on pre-maternity ’vacation
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DiAnn is at home and may or may not have her baby over the weekend. We don’t really expect her back at work until her maternity vacation/leave is finished. We expect her to return in Nov. Until then, either Jon or Kendal will be covering night support (till 7pm or so) most days. |
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Temporary Night Hours Shift
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Due to DiAnn’s rapidly advancing baby due date, we are moving her hours to 10 am – 6 pm. That way if something happens during the day somebody will be here to help most of the time she is at work. Once she delivers and starts her maternity time off, Jon or Kendal will be covering her 11 am – 7 pm shift. Once she returns, she’ll be back on the normal 11 am – 7 pm shift. |
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Summer vacations are just about over...
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And we are all back at work. Yea. We are going to be upgrading the RSA Cat software on 6 Aug. We’ll have the test RSA Cat server online during this time so searching will still be possible. Also we’ve corrected the sort order in RSA Cat to make reverse publication order sorting work correctly. |
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New Director’s Station Help Uploaded
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I’ve just updated the Director’s Station Page (in the RSA Reports section) to include 1 SirsiDynix guide to the default measures and a guide we just completed here in RSA describing each of the available data measures and ways they can be used. I also added links to all the reports shown in the Definitions Guide so you can manipulate what you see in the guide. There are also some additional Director’s Station report links as well that will take you straight to that report in DS. |
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ILL Monthly Statistics Guide
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We’ve added a ILL Monthly Statistics Guide to the RSA Reports, Report of the Week section of the website. This gives the background behind each line, the reports needed to fill them out, and the formulas for each line. |
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A trying week
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Due to the difficulties in getting our system back online, this has been quite an eye opener on the evils of telephone support. As mentioned in the system status and info blog post for today, we’re looking into purchasing another complete server to serve as a hot spare for the future. According to the laws of probability, if we get that server, our system will never go down again. |
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RSA Cat updates
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The text message you see when a successful hold has been placed has been updated to inform the patrons that they will be contacted when the hold is ready. It also tells them how to look in their "My account" info to see this. The ’see (234) more’ results link that shows on the main search results page has been fixed so that it correctly takes you to page 2 of the results (if more than 10 results) instead of right back to the first page of results. We are the first site in the world to get this fixed! Yea. I’m sharing with others now as it’s been a major source of frustration amongst lots of other sites using the same OPAC software. |
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Kendal’s back - Martha’s gone
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Kendal got back from vacation today and will be working through his email and phone message lists. Now it’s Martha’s turn to take a few days off. She will be off until Monday the 28th of April. |
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Call Number Madness
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We’ve made a small change to RSA Cat that removes the call numbers from the main results screen. These numbers were confusing and not at all helpful unless you were limited to a single library or branch. Otherwise, the system was pulling the call number for the first copy of the item attached to the bib record resulting in random looking sets of numbers and letters. They are gone now. Call numbers still display on the item details screen for each library or branch that owns the item. |
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Printing the Membership List / Holds Groups Document
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By popular demand, we’ve added a link at the top of the Membership List page that will allow you to open it in Word and print it out. The list currently has the short system name, library description, and holds group information in it. I’ll be adding in the Gmail address of each library as well to make it more comprehensive. Word of warning: I update this document frequently to keep the holds info as current as possible. If you print it out, please only use the library name portion as everything else will become out of date within a week. |
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Rebuilding the RSA Website
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The content is gone, but the files still live. We will be rebuilding the RSA website ASAP. |
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