This month Suellen continued to work on the new Library web pages. She worked with Jim Toplon in Interlibrary Loan to redesign the Interlibrary Loan Forms and rewrite the scripts to correspond with the new form interface. She also created a submission form and script for the What Else section of the web page. She also worked with Library Staff and LTT team members to help coordinate the move of the web server back to the Novell server. Suellen met with Yvonne Boyer in September to begin discussing a focused web presentation/ exhibition for materials from the Baudelaire and Sigaux collections. Suellen worked with Elaine Goleski so that Elaine could begin editing the This Week at the Library section of the Library web page. Suellen also attended the monthly meeting of the Vanderbilt University Web Spiders group. This month they discussed the use of CyberCash for e-commerce applications.

On September 15, the majority of Library Staff moved from the SIRSI Infoview client to the Workflows client. Together with the Training Coordinators, Suellen worked to make the final push a smooth transition. The Coordinators gave library staff bags of candy along with the message "thanks for going with the flow" to assist with this transition. Suellen will continue to work with the few remaining staff who will move to Workflows on October 15.

Suellen worked with the Staff Development Coordinating Committee and the Training Coordinators this month to discuss the LMC suggestion that a more focused means of training for library staff be developed. The Training Coordinators will meet in October to begin working on a survey to help determine staff needs and interests in the area of training. Suellen also coordinated with the SDCC to arrange for two Brown Bag luncheons and a final celebration for this year's Community Giving Campaign on which Suellen is serving this year.

Suellen attended the kick-off lunch for the Community Giving Campaign and worked with Mary Conn and Peter Brush to develop a letter of request and Steve Cook of the Community Giving Campaign to create invitations for the Brown Bag and final celebration. The envelopes went out on 12/29.

Suellen also completed several Circulation related netfix problems including modifying the maps for the circulation of CDROMS at the Science library.

In addition to her usual weekly and monthly programs and statistics gathering activities, Nancy worked with Dale and members of the CAAG and RSIG to complete the work on the TOC project with Marcive. With this final piece in place, the project to automate the processing of YBP and BNA records received from PromptCat and the addition of the table of contents is complete. All of the details of the project can be read in the LTT Projects Database. This was a 2 year effort and, although there are still little tweaks and adjustments that we will be making as we come across them, the project was a success and all of those who contributed to the project should be congratulated and Nancy thanks them for their contribution.

Nancy continues to work with Dale on the project to automate the creation of invoices on Acorn and the eventual moving of payment activities from BFAS to Acorn.

Nancy and Anne Laws have been working on a project to clean up the descriptions in the Acorn policies for such things as item types, locations and holding codes, as well as doing some clean-up on some of the user profile policies.

Nancy was quite busy this month with creating new Acorn user records and modifying the authorizations for some staff who changed positions or changed job duties. She ran a report for RS Order Services to prevent ordering and paying on 2000 funds. She also made some additions and changes to Acorn policies including: Creating a new order type PROCURCARD for Acquisitions use; changing the fixed field labels in the authority formats to match the labels used by OCLC; created new holdings code DIV-PRES for permanent reserve materials in Divinity; created a new 987 entry ID and added it to each of the bibliographic formats; created new item type REVIEWBK and new location BOOKS-1FL for the Biomedical library.

Nancy submitted several problems to Sirsi this month. See the Sirsi problem database from the Staff Website for details on those. They included a problem with a new call number not replacing an existing one when a record is overlayed using SmartPort (663VAND); an error message that the catalogers in RS were getting when trying to return to a search results list after editing a record (664VAND); a request for advice on how to index the 4xx fields in the 130 authority records to the browse author search (666VAND). Nancy attended meetings of CAAG and RSIG.

Dale spend much of his time in September working with web- related projects. The first part of September was spent moving files from the new webserver to the old webserver. Time was also spent finding and correcting various bad links that were caused by separating out the webserver pages and the webscripts. This separation allows greater flexibility and durability but required a few changes. Dale also spent time reviewing options for upgrading the web search engine.

SiteSearch changes and development also occupied Dale's time during September. New ill pages and addtional checks were added to the java to asure that users have supplied adequate information for the ILL request to be placed. Dale also met with Beth Helsel from Clemson and discussed how we implement SiteSearch and answered several questions concerning the possible ASERL virtual catalog.

Other activities included:

Jody's work in September was fairly evenly split among various categories: administration and communications, teaching, technology planning and development, emergency response, routine network management and tech support. Under the first heading, Jody met with the Library Management Council on September 11th to discuss two issues: (1) timing and communication needs for switching the new Heard Library public web pages from the old public web server back to the new platform and (2) a general discussion of the Technology Coordinating Committee and/or its successors. Minutes of this meeting were sent to library staff and will not be repeated here except to say that the decision of LMC was to coordinate the timing of the web server switch both internally with staff who were providing training that involved the public pages and externally with faculty through the Campus Technology Forum. This was done and the ultimate decision was to make the switch on Wednesday the 20th. Jody, along with several LTT staff members, monitored the status of the new web server for several hours before and after the switch and were pleased to report that the new server performed as predicted. He is also happy to say that it has continued to perform well since the switch. Continuing under the category of administration and communications., Jody chaired the monthly Technology Support Coordinators meeting on September 12th, in which LTT staff regularly participate. The public web server project as discussed, as was the status of workstation deployments and the removal of Infoview from most Heard Library staff acounts, and Chuck Owen, LTT's newest staff member was formally introduced.

The Library Technology Team has been contemplating a reconfiguration of the team which would involve significant changes to the duties performed by Judy Carter, currently occupying the Help Desk Operator position. Specifically, we are planning to have Judy spend much more time "in the field" providing hands-on tech support. At the same time, other members of the team will spend scheduled time each week providing first-line telephone support. We have made a good deal of progress this month developing this plan and attending to details. Also, LTT has agreed that we need to update and redesign our web pages to be easier to navigate and to provide more information to our users. Jody has appointed a sub-committee of LTT to develop the new pages. We hope to have these tested and online within the next month or so. Jody continues to meet with the VU Stake Holders group each Thursday morning and this month asked for their suggestions about how we should communicate library technology issues with the wider campus community, especially regarding interruptions in access to resources provided by and through Heard Library. The consensus of this group is that we should communicate through the Campus Technology Forum list and that we should limit communications to major interruptions of service rather than attempting to provide fuller communications regarding each upgrade or possible interrruption. Jody, along with the rest of the Library Technology Team, also participated in the Cost Study Survey.

Under the category of teaching and training, this month Jody began regular training with the network technicians and help desk operator. The persons filling these roles already have a good deal of experience and a wide range of technical skills. Each has and continues to develop his or her own area of specialization. The regular training is meant to help insure that all three persons responsible for primary end-user support in our environment share a set of core skills and knowledge, as well as providing a scheduled forum for them to share their own knowledge with each other.

Under the heading of technology planning and development, Jody completed work on developing a prototype notebook computer configuration for use at the Walker Management Library. This configuration diverges in significant ways from our standard desktop configuration and has been very challenging to develop. Not only is the hardware significantly different, the operating system is Windows 2000, as opposed to Windows NT Workstation. This required a great deal of concentrated research and empirical testing to make work with our network environment. In addition, these notebooks will use wireless network connections when they are away from the desk, and wired connections when at the desk. The wireless access points in the building were installed for use by the OGSM network and so did not initially work well with the Heard network (the ipx networking protocol, used by our Novell network, apparently was not installed or was not functioning well on many of the access points in the building). Further, the access points do not belong to the Heard Library tcp/ip subnet, making it impossible to guarantee that the tcp/ip address dynamically assigned to the notebook when using wireless technology is within the Heard Library range. Most, but not all, of these issues have now been resolved so that staff using the notebooks can use both the Heard Library network and the OGSM network, or can work in "stand-alone" mode. Jody also worked with John Brassil, Rick Stringer-Hye and Sherre Harrington, to provide specifications and testing for the installation of a wireless access point in the Science and Engineering Library. This access point is within the Heard Library subnet and so tcp/ip address assignments will be easily managed. Jody facilitated the purchase of a wireless PC card that S & E will circulate for use by laptop/notebook users. In addition, since the engineering school has a wireless pilot project underway, the presence of the wireless access point in the S & E library should be quite welcome to these students. We have also nearly completed work on a notebook for use in the S & E classroom which will be able to take advantage of this wireless connectivity. Jody has nearly completed work on the configuration of the Heard Library deployment of Office 2000. Flo Wilson and Bill Hook have participated in a beta test of this deployment configuration. We will shortly announce availability of this suite of applications to Division directors and supervisors who may have staff who need the 2000 version of these applications. Jody also spent a few hours investigating the possible use of both ERES and Ultimate Bulletin Board (by InfoPOP) as possible communications tools to be used by groups within the library.

We also had several emergencies this month, requiring immediate attention and follow-up planning to avoid similar problems in the future. Probably the most significant interruption of service occurred on September 22nd at around 10 a.m. A serious problem developed with one of the hard-drives on LIBRARY1, interrupting file and print services for a large portion of Heard Library staff, the staffweb web services, and email within the Heard Network. The interruption lasted approximately two hours. Marshall and Jody were able to get the drive restarted and restore services. We immediately ordered a spare hard-drive for this server and have developed a plan to install the spare drive and "mirror" information from the existing drive to the new drive. This should minimize the impact of a similar event in the future on services provided to library staff. We will schedule downtime for this server during "off-hours" ( after 1 a.m. but before 6 a.m.) to install the new drive. The "mirroring" procedure can occur at any time after the new drive is installed and will not effect ongoing services delivered by this server. A second emergency situation occurred on Saturday, September 23rd. A power outage in the General Library Building caused LIBRARY7 (one of our older servers) to shut down. This occurred during regular Saturday service hours and resulted in an interruption to services provided for public workstations in the Central and Science and Engineering libraries lasting approximately one and a half hours. Jody was called in and was able to restart the server. The same server experienced a network communications problem at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning, September 30th, Information Technology Services' network operation center monitors these servers for LTT and notified us of the problem. Jody came in to resolve the problem before the libraries opened that morning, so there was no interruption to public services. The hardware for this server is scheduled to be replaced this Fall and we will provide power to the new hardware from our large UPS so these types of problems should be much rarer in the future.

Under the category of routine network management and tech support, Jody upgraded the version of Directory Services (DS) used by our Novell servers. This was "highly recommended" by the Novell Support center to correct several bugs that could potentially cause problems, although our systems have not triggered any of these. As planned in coordination with TSC and workgroups, the Infoview client NAL application object was removed from most Heard Library staff accounts on September 15th. Circulation staff had this application object removed on August 15th. Most of the few remaining staff accounts will have Infoview removed on October 15th. Jody also upgraded a network component used by Chemical Abstracts on CD (running from LIBRARY7) and configured the printer and network print queues for a new color laser printer for the Walker Management Library. Jody also resolved 47 netfix requests this month.

For several years, Jody has been interested in Z39.50 and has, in the past two years, provided support to faculty and library staff in the use of Z39.50 enabled personal bibliographic management software (e.g. EndNote, Reference Manager and Procite). He has developed a web page with connection files for Heard Library resources that are used by several faculty members on campus. This month, he has developed a listserv list for communicating with faculty and staff about these issues and has asked Susan Banks to help maintain the web page associated with this effort. Those who are interested in the list or the information may view the web page or refer others to the page at :http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/combs/z3950/resource.html

In September, Susan Susan resolved 31 Netfix problems. She worked closely with Mike Martin to create the database portion of the Central publicstation ghost image. This image included several new databases:

She ran ERL statistics for August and the Broken Link Reports for September.

For the Divinity Library, she installed the new non-Hasp version of RESPONSA (Bar Ilan's Judaic Library).

She added netLibrary to the Research Database page as well as Human Relations Area Files Collection of Archaeology and Human Relations Area Files Collection of Ethnography. She also added IT Knowledge to the Trial Database page.

Susan worked with several of the reference librarians conducting BI classes to increase our license subscriptions for the databases used in the classes. These included getting a training license from SilverPlatter for EconLit, Art Abstracts and MLA as well as Anthropological Literature from the Resource Library Group.

At Management, she upgraded:

She worked with Technical Support at Bowker to determine a sporadic error received while trying to access Books in Print.

The SilverPlatter databases she upgraded include the following:

In September, Anne returned to LTT from Maternity Leave on a part-time basis. Working 20 hours a week from home, she has been concentrating on a few long-standing Acorn-based projects. In the early part of the month, Anne met with the team and again with Nancy to discuss plans for her what projects she would be doing. She began with a thorough read-through of all the Sirsi Enhancement Forums for modules we currently use and she sent reports on those discussions to Dale, Nancy, Suellen, and Jody. She has continued to read new posts on the Forums and has kept team members apprised of pertinent developments.

Mike's report

September's major project was the continuing installation of new workstations. Mike and Susan set up prototype workstations for the Central and Management Library public workstations, and a ghost image of these prototypes was copied so that other workstations can be similarly configured with the Norton "Ghost" process. In the Central Library, Mike, Judy, and Chuck installed 27 new workstations, and 10 of the replaced workstations were rolled out into new locations. New workstations were also installed for staff members in OUL and Divinity. Two new LCD monitors were installed, and several other monitors were replaced across the library system. Upgrades for the Central Library public workstations are now complete except for two workstations which are waiting to be upgraded by rollouts from elsewhere. The Management Library has no new workstations, but all existing workstations will soon be ghosted with the new image. Divinity and Music public workstations will be the next priority, and staff workstations will follow.

In addition to the new workstations, color laser printers were installed at Science and Management. Both libraries have or will soon have access for public patrons, but there will be a charge for color printing at each.

Mike also helped configure new laptops purchased by Science and Management, and helped to test wireless access for the laptops in those libraries. Delivery of the laptops to staff in those libraries is imminent.

Mike attended the monthly meeting of the campus WebSpiders and the Library Technology Coordinators, and participated in two training sessions with Jody. He also listened to the webcast of Clifford Lynch's "Where is the Digital Library" forum in the GLB Electronic Classroom, and assisted with the setup for same.

Judy began the month of September learning to install & ghost new workstations and also how to ghost rollouts for public and staff machines in the Central Library. The technicians installed 27 new and 10 rollout machines in Central this month. Michael spent several afternoons patiently helping Judy and Chuck become familiar with the steps of ghosting. A couple of problems surfaced as workstations were being ghosted: the wrong home page was coming up for Central Library and the new machines were set to auto wakeup which was causing some to power up after they had been turned off for the evening. Both problems were corrected immediately by the technicians.

Judy spent some time this month reorganizing telephones in LTT. She had some phone lines added/deleted and ordered a portable NEC Dterm Series E for the main LTT line. The team has agreed to rotate phones using a monthly calendar so that everyone can stay involved in customer service for the libraries.

She attended a Web Spiders Meeting and the Technology Support Coordinators monthly meeting. Jody has begun holding weekly training sessions with the technicians. The first meeting's topic covered servers in the library system and the second was training for InCtrl4 software. Judy spent an unusual amount of time entering request in the Problem Tracking System this month. She resolved 52 problems and entered a total of 311 in the database.