There are a number of things happening in January so please keep checking Counterculture on a regular basis

Horizon upgrade – This will now start Tuesday 12 Jan at 4pm, finishing Wed 13 Jan.
New Web design – Catherine will start implementing this when she is back 5 Jan, there are lots of web content changes that will be needed after this is completed.
Collection code cleanup – 11 Jan there will be a number of changes removing unused collection codes and the start of changes for the “EPS Library”
Summon – access is expected first week in Jan
Lending changes for 7 day loans and 1 day grace – will be implemented 25 Jan, info going out on 11 Jan
Automated recalls – may go live week 11 Jan for PG and staff under current rules.
Access to e-reserves – See Library News article – user access to the Digital Library e-reserves will be cut by 15 Feb, library staff will have access to the files for term one
EEBO MARC record load into catalogue – this will happen once we are happy with the Horizon upgrade possibly week 18 Jan
Endnote X3 is now the supported version for 2010, make sure you have upgraded and are familiar with it before the start of term

As you know things are a bit stressful in Library IT at the moment with the change proposal. You can help by reporting issues to us as soon as you notice them, give us plenty of warning before you need things done, and gently reminding us of things we have missed doing before they becomes urgent.

Cheers
Anne

There will be no-one in Library IT from 11.30-1.00. Please send an email if you need anything. If you want to know why, there is a meeting in C3 at 12 noon you may want to attend. Anne

The Horizon upgrade has been postponed until the week starting January 12 as tomorrow the IT change proposals are being announced so it is not a good time to do a complicated upgrade. Anne

We intend to upgrade Horizon over 14-15 Dec. Please let Library IT know asap if the following will cause problems

Monday 14 December
4.00pm – All Horizon staff users except Lending Desks to log out. No reports to be run after this time
5.05pm – Horizon will go down for an hour, when it comes back it will be slower than usual
After 9.00pm – Horizon will be down for 2 hours to run database checking
Tuesday 15 December
Horizon and the catalogue will be up and down from 7.00am-11.30am. HIP (catalogue) will be upgraded while the custom views in Horizon are being fixed and staff test the Horizon upgrade. LIbrary IT will run dayend.

For users this will affect the catalogue, parts of the Library website that are dynamically created from Horizon and some Library applications such as interloans. While the catalogue will be available for large chunks of this upgrade, it will be going up and down without warning and when up will be slower than normal.

Apart from Lending, LIbrary staff should expect to have no access to Horizon from 4.00pm Monday to noon on Tuesday.

As we are upgrading Horizon, Sybase, HIP and Java, we need to do this upgrade when Library, SirsiDynix and ICTS staff are available so we will not be able to do it in the weekend as usual.

There is not a lot of immediate benefit in this upgrade but it does put us on the latest Sybase and Java versions which provided administrative and security benefits as the current version of Sybase is no longer supported.

We are still looking for testers, please contact Donna or Peter if you are available to do testing.
Cheers, Anne

A large number of things are happening in Library IT at the moment so it is hard to keep up. Some staff have been asking for updates so this is a quick summary of just some of the things we are doing:
Summon – the Library is purchasing Summon and Library IT are about to begin the implementation process. We hope to have a working version of Summon in early January. Digital Library and UC Repository indexing will come later.
Catalogue – working on purchasing cover art and TOC from Syndetics.
Horizon 7.5/HIP 3.10 – working on the upgrade with SirsiDynix. We now have Horizon 7.5 ready to test and HIP will be available soon. This upgrade will require Horizon to be down for up to a day and will be done during the week. We would like to do this upgrade before 14 Dec so anyone with time to test should contact Library IT asap.
Office 2007 migration – done, dealing with remaining issues as they occur.
Student install – the 2010 student install is being rolled out now, this includes Endnote X3 and Office 2007; currently the Dojo and parts of the Loft have been upgraded. Students with problems should contact the ICT Service Desk
Collection changes – large number of reports and database changes have been happening for the Eng/PSL merger and the relocation of stock to Crown and the Warehouse.
Web rebranding – Catherine has been working on this, but there are 1300 pages to check. At the moment this is likely to go live in January
High Demand Project recommendations – Donna is working with Jack on the processes for getting e-reserves into Learn. Some work has also been done on automating 80% of recalls, but a lot of testing is needed. The recommendation to change the guaranteed loan period from 14 to 7 days in the Lending Policy goes to the Library Committee on Friday.
Server patching – started. The Horizon server will be done Thursday night after 9pm
MB Databases and Digital Library upgrade to SQL2008 – happened today although some issues still with Digital Library.
Online payment – There are some issues with payments, including speed problems and it is not working for some UC staff. We are working with ICTS to try to resolve these issues. Continue to report problems to Library IT. We are also working ICTS to expand this to handle departmental charges for Interloans in 2010.
UC Research Repository – now have over 3000 items live. There will be a project next year to look at ways to improve the collection of outputs. Grant is working on reporting to College PVCs via BLT on current state of the repository and various other communication channels. Now is a good time to promote the Repository as researchers need to add their material into the Research Database by March 2010
IT Purchasing for 2009 – this needs to be completed very soon, email Library IT if you need anything.
If you want to know about anything else, add a comment, or email Library IT or me.
Cheers, Anne.

The Library will be upgrading to Horizon 7.5 and HIP 3.20 before Christmas. There is little change in functionality for academic libraries in this upgrade but it does upgrade the software underneath to Sybase 15 and Java 1.6. Library staff will be asked to test the software before the main upgrade as per usual.

NLNZ is migrating a number of services in early November to new search software using either Primo or in the case of Matapihi, a DigitalNZ interface. Websites changing in 2009 are Matapihi, findNZarticles, PublicationsNZ, Discover and Timeframes. Details of the changes will be updated on the NLNZ website changes page . Cheers, Anne

Some convincing looking email messages are coming through asking for staff to click on links for various reasons such as confirming a UPS package delivery or checking for compatability for a software upgrade. These are SPAM and will attempt to load a virus onto your PC. If you get an email like this check if it has a signature with a person’s name that you recognise and have dealt with before. If it just says “System Administrator” or “UPS” delete it. Do not reply to these messages. If you have any doubts forward the message to Library IT. ICTS will never ask you for your password and should not ask you to load software. They will work with Library IT and we will put a message on Counterculture or contact you directly. Cheers, Anne

OCLC will do a demonstration of Worldcat Local at 9.30am (note time change was 2pm) on Friday 23 October in the L4 Training Room. Worldcat Local, OCLC’s discover and delivery portal, is similar to Summon.
Anne

The Library is seriously looking at Summon to replace 360 Search and possibly be our main search mechanism. It will also search our catalogue, UC Research Repository and Digital Library. A number of staff went to the demonstration both in the Library and at conference. Some sites are
http://unisa.summon.serialssolutions.com/
http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/home/find/summon/

The advantages of Summon
• it is a Google like, one stop search
• the content is preindexed and facetted, which makes it much faster that other federated products
• searching across all the content at once rather than 30 items from 6-8 databases so relevance works properly
• it gets around the problems shown in the usability testing where students don’t know the difference between a journal and a database

Summon is new and there are some gaps in coverage. It does not currently index 2,500 of our 18000 unique current titles. The list of approx 400 peer reviewed titles is available at K:\projects\Catalogue_replacement_implementation\UC_non_overlap.xls. Please let me know if there are any titles in here you would be particularly concerned about and I can feed this back to Serials Solutions.

The Library will still have a catalogue. Library IT is looking at VuFind as an option.

Please provide feedback on what you think of the product. If we go ahead it will happen rapidly as we need to get it into this year’s budget.
Cheers, Anne