PERSONNEL

As with all divisions and units, LITS was stunned by the events of September 11th. We, however, have had to come to grips with additional implications of these events. Chuck Owen, a Navy reservist, was almost immediately notified that he needed to be ready to be called up. Perhaps without a real basis, we had hoped that this would not come about, but we began planning for the possibility. Finally, on September 28, the orders came for Chuck to be called up beginning October 15th. These initial orders are for 30 days. Again, we hope that this will be all that is required for him, but it is very likely that the orders will be extended well beyond this. Of course, our initial and primary concern has been for Chuck and his family. However, we also have to manage the issues that his absence from LITS will raise. These issues are made even more complicated given that we were already dealing with Susan Banks' FMLA leave.

We had developed an interim reorganization of Susan's workload by spreading the core duties over several other staff members, including Chuck. We will now need to reorganize both that set of duties and Chuck's so that existing staff can manage them. At this point, we have made only beginning progress on this reorganization. It is important to simply state that, in the short run, we will need to take longer providing those services that Chuck and Susan formerly delivered including

· CDROM product upgrades and new installations
· Various statistical reports (including Web Trends Reports)
· New workstation deployments
· Peripherals (barcode readers, printers, magnetic stripe readers, etc.) installations and repairs
· Workstation based software application installations and repairs

In the near future, we will be shifting work among LITS team members to allow us to continue to address the more pressing items in each of the categories above, as well as cover our mission critical services. We will provide division directors and team leaders information about how this work will be reorganized as soon as we can develop firm plans.

REQUEST MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (replacement for PTS) COMING SOON

Library staff have become quite familiar over the years with our "netfix" system for reporting problems and requesting routine services. The netfix system is actually composed of several different services that work together:

· Telephone and email services for reporting problems and making requests,
· Web based forms (including forms for requesting new network and Acorn accounts),
· The problem tracking system database (PTS)
· Manual processes for assigning requests to individual LITS staff members.
· A web based user interface for searching and displaying information from the PTS database.

As part of an overall effort to streamline the processing of requests for service and problem reporting and to increase communications about requests for service, we have been working with the Technology Support Coordinators, the Training Coordinators and Marshall Breeding to develop a new Request Management System (RMS). The new system consolidates several of the services that support netfix and automates some of the manual processes including

· Automated initial assignment of the request to an LITS staff member based on category
· Email integrated within the RMS system (doesn't rely on Pegasus or other email client)
· Modified prioritization system allowing the user to assign a priority from his or her perspective.
· Integrated tutorial for first time users of the system.
· "One touch check status" requests for requests in the system.
· Automated entry of requestor's name, email address, phone number and department.
· "One touch" query for all requests entered by requestor.
· Completely web based

The Technology Support Coordinators and Training Coordinators have been using the new system for over a month. During that time we have been able to fine-tune features and add a few new ones. Our plan is to make the new system available in mid-to-late October for the entire Library. For those of you who have not had the chance to see the new interface, the URL is:

http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/libtech/netfix2.html

[NOTE: After the new system is released to the entire system, the URL will change to http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/netfix.html ]

Please feel free to send any comments or suggestions to Jody.

NETWORK OPERATING SYSTEM UPGRADE

We have been working for some time on preparing the way to upgrade our network file and print servers from Netware 4.11 to version 5.1. Early in the month, we were able to upgrade all staff workstations to version 4.8 of the Netware client software. We thank the Divinity Library staff for their help in testing the automated deployment of the new client prior to the general release. With the new client in place, we have been able to turn our attention to upgrading the servers themselves. In September we installed our first 5.1 server (LIBRARY3). The installation went very well and was, at that point, transparent to users. Shortly after that we successfully upgraded LIBRARY4 to version 5.1. Our plan now is to upgrade each of the servers in the Novell network until all are running the new version of the network operating system. As we do this, we will be replacing the hardware for the server used by Annex staff (LIBRARY5) and eventually adding a new larger file server to replace LIBRARY1, which is the home server for all library staff except Law, Eskind and Walker.

Once we have upgraded the file and print servers, we will be able to begin work on providing new services to the user's desktop including remote training and help and automated individual upgrades and application software repair.

PLANS FOR NEW PUBLIC WEB SERVER PLATFORM

In addition to allowing us to provide new workstation and user support services, the network operating system upgrade allows us to upgrade our web servers to the latest version of the server software (Netscape Enterprise Server). We have installed the new server software on LIBRARY3 and have spent significant time testing it over the past several weeks in preparation for putting it into production as a replacement for our current public web server (www.library.vanderbilt.edu currently hosted on LIBRARY9). The new platform, with better hardware, newer operating system, and server software should prove faster and more reliable even than the existing server. Our plan is to move the new platform into production on the morning of October 15th, barring any unforeseen scheduling conflicts. This will be a "hot cut-over" with essentially no down time for our users and should be transparent to staff involved in editing web pages on this server.

BEGAN WORK ON AUTOMATED INVOICE LOADING FOR SWETS-BLACKWELL

With automated loading of EBSCO invoices under our belt, this month LITS staff spent time preparing to automate the creation and loading of Swets-Blackwell invoices. The programming is complete and should be implemented soon.

KUDZU LIBRARIES

We worked with Clemson, East Carolina University, and Cumberland University to configure their catalogs for work with the KUDZU virtual catalog.

PLAN TO DEVELOP NEW ONLINE TRAINING MODULES

Working with the Training Coordinators and Staff Development Committee, LITS staff discussed the development of new Training Modules for "How NT Desktop and Roaming Profiles work," "File Management Techniques and Best Practices", and "How to manage E-mail." We also continued work on Smart Force online tutorials.

ADDITIONAL
In addition to participation on library committees and taskforces, some of our more "routine" activities for the month include:

· Deployed 13 new workstations
· Re-ghosted (disk-cloning) 7 existing workstations
· Installed color-laser printer drivers to 33 Central staff stations
· Worked with Acorn Virtual Catalog Taskforce to change messages received when "no hits" are found for various types of searches
· Rebuild and de-duped Weeding Project Database
· Worked with Walker Library to institute several changes to EZProxy services
· Upgraded AcornTest server with Unicorn 2001 for testing
· Created new ghost index image for LIBRARY1 staff users.
· Developed new active desktop wallpaper for Music and Divinity Libraries.
· Helped Central Government Documents staff convert Word documents to PDF format.
· Worked with the catalogers and CAAG to work out the policies to be set for the new 774 field
· Ran report for Elaine Goleski to get a list of Acorn users whose priviledges had expired between June 4 and August 20 of this year
· Worked on a new method of getting the patron file and continue to work on some problems associated with how this file interacts with Acorn user records
· Began work on a project to consolidate some of the item types and holdings codes for the Law library
· continue to work with Sirsi on the problem of phantom references caused by old references not being deleted from the search results when an authority record is overlayed or updated
· Sent a file of authority records to Marcive to be deleted from our updated authority records file that we get from them monthly
· gathering data for a project that John Haar is working on. This work entailed running individual scripts on the Acorn server to select data based on predetermined criteria and then exporting it to Access and running various calculations
· Worked on various staff MS Access projects meeting with a few staff to discuss their issues and ideas related to those projects
· Worked on New Titles List. Created XML application for demo to Web Task Force. From discussion, determined that it would be better to create a dynamic query of Acorn
· Worked with Kitty Porter and other members of group to create web pages for the Virtual Reference interface. Included creation of new graphics. Currently working on graphic for Heard homepage
· Upgraded several CDROM products.