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Technical Services Report: 2008 Annual Meeting

System Operations

  • The mainframe was shutdown in July, and all processing is occurring on our production server (Harp).
  • Installed Media Wiki and Simple Machines Forum (SMF) software.
  • Completed hardware and operating system (OS) upgrades on our production and development servers. The servers are identical Sun 6900s running on Solaris 10.
  • Installed NetBackup software on the development server.
  • Released an alpha version of the Discovery Tool in February, 2008. It can be accessed at the following location: http://solr.mnpals.net/
  • Created a new board on the MnPALS forum for Discovery Tool questions, discussion, bug reports, and enhancement suggestions at the following location: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=35.0
  • The mailing lists have been merged into the following two lists: mnpals-discuss@lists.mnpals.org and mnpals-announce@lists.mnpals.org
  • An announcement was sent in February with instructions of how to subscribe to the lists. The mnpals-discuss mailing list should be used to post any messages to the MnPALS consortium list members, and the mnpals-annouce mailing list will be used by the PALS staff to post important systems-related messages to MnPALS consortium members of the list. The following child boards were also created on the forum for functional information sharing and communication: Interlibrary Loan, Cataloging, Acquisitions, Serials, Circulation, Systems, and Reference and can be accessed at the following location: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=3.0. As of March 13, 2008, there were 318 members subscribed to the mnpals-discuss mailing list and 333 members subscribed to the mnpals-announce mailing list.
  • Installed CUFTS on a virtual machine. It is an open source open URL link resolver.
  • Installed Koha on a virtual machine. It is an open source ILS.
  • Ongoing system maintenance, security patches, and upgrades.

Aleph

Task Forces, Presentations, Committees, Conferences, Training:

  • Attending the Indexing Task Force web meetings.
  • Attended ILL conference calls with U of M and Ex Libris.
  • Attended Authorities Task Force web meetings.
  • Attended Validation Task Force web meetings.
  • Attended Reports Group meetings.
  • Attended the ELUNA Conference and Technical Seminar in Spearfish, SD.
  • Attended Solaris 10 training.
  • Attended Oracle 10G training.
  • Attended Cognos ReportNet Authoring training.
  • Attended Linux training.
  • Attended Discovery Tool Task Force meetings.
  • Performed a short demo of the Discovery Tool at the Fall, 2007 User Groups.

Record Loads:

  • Loaded the Marcive records through March, 2008 for all of the libraries that subscribe to the service.
  • Loaded several sets of NetLibrary records for the various libraries that purchased the sets.

Reports:

  • The Executive Committee recommended that we do not pursue the purchase of ARC2 because of the higher than expected price quote from Ex Libris. There are contractual issues to pursue related to the inability by Ex Libris to provide a report writer tool at the cost specified in our contract.
  • Many custom reports (mnpals-xx) have been added to the services menus in the Aleph Cataloging, Circulation, and Acquisitions/Serials modules. An Excel spreadsheet listing all of the reports that are available in Aleph can be found by clicking on the MnPALS Support Center button from the PALS home page and selecting the “Documentation” and “List of Aleph Services and Reports” links at: http://www.mnpals.org/
  • Fixed the totals in the Acquisitions report, Titles Per Budget Spent (mnpals-28), to account for credit transactions.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI):

  • Testing EDI book orders with The Book House.
  • Completed testing and set up of Yankee Book Peddler’s GOBI product, and implemented it on the production server.
  • Set up all existing EDI functionality in version 18 in the Dev18 zone on our development server.

Version 17:

  • Upgraded and installed the latest ORACLE 9i security patches on our production server.
  • Service packs are being released quarterly.
  • Implemented new inventory functionality.
  • Full re-indexing of the production database was performed in June of 2007.
  • The keywords were re-indexed in November of 2007.
  • Populated the z106 Catalogers table for bib and holdings records.
  • Removed all but the last five catalogers who edited the records from the bib and holdings records.
  • Removed the holdings records (sys60) templates from the production, development, and Dev18 servers per request and approval of the Cataloging Users Group and relocated them to the following location: http://tables.dev18.mnpals.net/u18_1/sys60/pc_tab/catalog/templates/
  • Fixed nearly 18,000 bib records with a cataloger and level on records owned by another ADM.
  • Completed global changes as requested by libraries.
  • Completed global deletes as requested by libraries.
  • Continuing to work on PALS Support Center tickets.

Version 18:

  • Ex Libris completed version 18 and Oracle 10G installations on October 29, 2007.
  • Version 18 was installed on the development server (Tenor) in the version 18 zone (Dev18).
  • Performed two version 18/ILL2 and Oracle 10G upgrades on Dev18.
  • Because of problems encountered during the second version 18/ILL2/Oracle upgrade and the delayed switch to production date, a third upgrade will be performed on Dev18 beginning the week of March 31, and Dev18 will be unavailable until the upgrade is finished.
  • Fixed the service menus in version 18 to be consistent with version 17.
  • Working on manual changes and set up for version 18 and Integrated ILL2.
  • Finished customization of the ILL GUI form templates from the ILL web forms for all 63 ADMs.
  • Continuing to report version 18 and ILL2 problems to Ex Libris.
  • The final version 18/ILL/Oracle upgrade on our production server is scheduled to begin late on May 29, 2008 and complete on June 1, 2008. For a detailed version 18/ILL2 project plan, see the last revised posting on March 6, 2008 at: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?topic=327.0

Enhancements, Fixes, Miscellaneous:

  • Developed a new method of indexing that significantly reduced down time on our production server (Harp) to approximately eight (8) hours.
  • Created a secure ftp site on the production server for patron data.
  • Created an ftp site for the cash input/output file from ISRS on the production server.
  • Set up a job to automate the Discovery Tool database updates, and it runs every morning.
  • Installed EZProxy and set up South Central College (SCC). It uses LDAP authentication, and they have tested it and are using it in production.
  • LibProxy for Minnesota Statue University Moorhead (TRM) and Concordia College Moorhead (TRC) was migrated to a virtual machine.
  • Working on EZProxy configuration steps and automating conversion from LibProxy to EZProxy as much as possible.
  • Ex Libris announced that service packs will move to a quarterly release schedule for all versions of Aleph. The next service pack is scheduled for release in April.
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