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Technical Services Report January 2007

Development and Systems News
  • The version 17 upgrade was completed and moved to production on January 2nd. There were problems with indexing and the configuration of the Aleph system and UNIX system that required the system to be brought down again for partial re-indexing on January 4th until January 9th.
  • Adjacency was turned off and the fixed fields that were recommended by the Indexing Task Force are in the version 17 production data.
  • The PLIF loader was fixed to work correctly in version 17.
  • Modified and reinstated background processing jobs that perform system cleanup for version 17.
  • Tuned ORACLE by increasing the Shared Global Area and the UNIX system by increasing the number of Semaphores for better performance in version 17.
  • The latest service packs were installed on Harp and Lute.
  • The EDI function in version 17 has been tested and fixed for Baker and Taylor, EBSCO, and Midwest Library Services.
  • Based on the current progress, the p-union-04 process should be caught up by the end of the week (February 2).

Work in Progress
  • Ongoing system maintenance and upgrades.
  • Ongoing installation of service packs on Lute and Harp for version 17 and ILL.
  • Attending Indexing Task Force meetings.
  • Attending Reports Group meetings.
  • Continuing to work with the UNIX system monitoring software.
  • Continuing to work on LibProxy.
  • Preparing to delete any patron records that have an expiry date less than 2/1/2006 and the note field is empty. When p-cir-77 runs today (1/31/07), it will flag for deletion any patron record that meets the criteria. When p-cir-77 runs the following week (2/7/07), about 174,000 patron records will be deleted.
  • Preparing to install the latest ORACLE patches.
  • Preparing to upgrade to Solaris 10 and ORACLE 10G for version 18. The technical staff will be taking ORACLE and Sun system classes to help in the process.
  • The last weekly update to the Authority database was the week of December 4, 2006. The backlog of Authority updates will be loaded during the next few weeks on Harp and ongoing weekly updates will resume.
  • Continuing to report ILL software problems to Ex Libris.
  • Waiting for p_manage_18_p (record loader using parallel processes), p_file_99 (Marcive), and "golem" fixes from Ex Libris.
  • Waiting to hear from Baker and Taylor to enable MWW to order from two accounts.
  • Working with MSU Mankato who is testing Blackwell's Book Services Collection Manager in version 17 and EDI book ordering with Blackwell's Book Services.
  • Claims testing with EBSCO will resume in version 17 once all previously working EDI functionality has been restored.
  • Waiting to hear from Ex Libris about problems with discounts and funds when using Blackwell's Book Services Collection Manager to create order records in Aleph.
  • Suspended loading all Marcive records until a fix or solution is received from Ex Libris about the matching problem. Cannot delete and reload GAC's Marcive records until the matching problem is resolved.
  • Ex Libris has requested examples of the matching problem with the Marcive loader again. The 1280 records that were loaded for WSU that did not get overlaid have been deleted by the library so they need new examples. Will be testing the loader on version 17 on Lute to get the data for Ex Libris.
  • Will be loading records for a new Rasmussen sublibrary on Lute for a final review and consent to load the records in production.
  • A problem with the NetLibrary records for CTC was reported. It appears a fix routine did not work. Will be looking at options to do a global fix on these records.
  • Currently working on SQL reports and services recommended by the Reports Group. Custom reports that were added in version 15.5 have been added in version 17.
  • A Reports Group Web meeting is scheduled on Thursday 2/8/07.
  • Continuing to work on the Aleph 17 tables and configuration issues and a myriad of Right Now tickets.
  • Local HTML customization for the ADMs is in progress.
  • Work on the file transfer from the business office and reformatting it for input to Aleph remains to be done.

Other
  • Rod is serving on the Search Committee for the PALS new System Director. He is attending the first meeting today (January 31).
  • Rod was asked to give a presentation at the MnLINK Regional meeting in March about Apache and Webalizer.
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