Delay of Version 18 and Integrated ILL

February 27, 2008
To:         Consortium of MnPALS Libraries
From:    Linda Richter
Re:         Delay of Upgrade to Aleph Version 18 and Integrated ILL

The upgrade to Aleph version 18 has been delayed until the weekend of May 29 - June 1, 2008. There are several reasons for this decision, but the primary one is that outstanding issues with the new integrated ILL software make it too risky to implement during a very busy time of the academic year.

Reasons for the delay

The announcement by Ex Libris that there will be no March service pack for Aleph version 18 (including integrated ILL).
Concern about the April date expressed by the Executive Committee and User Council at their February 7 meeting (because of the heavy ILL load at that time in the semester).
Additional significant issues found with integrated ILL during further testing.
News from CCLA in Florida that problems with integrated ILL have turned up with production use of the software (problems that did not show up in testing). These problems are random and appear to be volume-related, which would be an issue for us in April.
Remaining problems with the propagation of blocks and expiration dates for patrons.
Ex Libris has recommended that we delay production use of version 18 because of outstanding problems and the change in the service pack schedule.

Rationale for the new date

The new date was chosen because it is after the last of our academic institutions completes final exams on May 27. We realize that several institutions are into their summer sessions by this weekend, but assume that system use, especially for ILL, will be less than during the final weeks or days of the spring semester. In addition, the Executive Committee and User Council suggested the first weekend in June as the alternate to the April date.

We are hoping that the April service pack will include some of the fixes that we need for integrated ILL. However, it is likely that there will still be some glitches in the software when we go into production on June 1. We do expect another service pack in July, which may bring improvements. In addition, using the software during the summer months will give us a chance to identify and iron out issues in advance of the beginning of the fall semester. All things considered, this seems to be our best option.

Production server downtime

The production system will be taken down late in the day on Thursday, May 29. It will be available again by Sunday noon, June 1. During this downtime, the web OPAC will be re-directed to lute, so that patrons will have access for searching. You will need to use offline circulation during the downtime.

Synchronizing tables

We will be synchronizing tables this week. That is, the tables on dev18 will be updated to reflect any changes that you have made on harp in the last 2 months.

Changes to staff privileges

In December, we announced a deadline for having changes to staff privileges made in version 17 of Aleph carry over to version 18. With the significant delay in production use of version 18, we have decided that we will do another conversion during the week of March 31. Because we told you in December that we would preserve any changes you make to privileges on dev18, we will not copy the staff privileges from version 17 on harp to dev18 at that time. We have noticed that some libraries have added new staff to harp, but not to dev18. We will attempt to add those to dev18 at the time of this conversion. Keep in mind that any changes made to staff privileges in version 17 will need to be entered in dev18 as well. The privileges on dev18 will be the ones carried over into production on June 1.

Integrated ILL Training

The Integrated ILL Training web sessions that were scheduled for March will be re-scheduled for late April and early May. In addition, we will be offering two in-person training sessions on Thursday, April 17 and Friday, April 18 at St. Cloud State University in conjunction with the User Group meetings. Watch for details and new registration information soon.