Hi everyone

By the time this appears on Counterculture, Philip and I will be well on our way to Uppsala Sweden, by way of Amsterdam, Paris, Bordeaux, Avignon, Salzburg, Leipzig, Prague, Vienna and Berlin. We are going to visit our son and daughter-in-law, with a grand tour of parts of Europe first. After that, it’s home for a whole new direction in life – a direction we are not really sure of yet, but will no doubt unfold itself in due course.

My sincere thanks to everyone who has extended support and friendship over my years here, particularly my colleagues in Library IT in its golden days and before we’d heard the words “Project Star”. We achieved some remarkable things, and you’ve been wonderful buddies. The last couple of years haven’t been so easy, but it’s still been good to work in the smaller eservices team and in the extended Library Support Services team.

There are a lot of people to thank (you know who you are) but I want to offer a particular word of thanks to Peter Kennedy who has been such a tower of strength and support over the last year. I hope the rest of the Library values his expertise, professionalism and friendship as much as I do. And welcome back Donna (can I say that if I’m not actually still here?) – it’s great for the Library that you are returning

Goodbye and good luck. I’ll keep in touch

Catherine

High demand items still need to have a pickup location of High Demand. This doesn’t make sense any more, and we will have to reconsider how all this works. We will look tomorrow.

Catherine

The course code index on the catalogue has been changed over to work with the new High Demand process. Search results will look slightly different, but all bib records connected to a course should appear in the results.

Lecturer index has been removed.

Please report any problems to eservices.

Catherine

Location a (High Demand) is now almost obsolete – the transfer process from RBR module to the new inhouse high demand system has moved almost every item from the High Demand location to the branch which matches its collection.

For this reason, do not check High Demand items in at location a any more, as these will go into in transit.

There are only 139 items left and a quick look at some random examples of these show them all to be problems – there is nothing in the RBR module to match the barcode. We will deal with these items individually. If you come across one, please send it to the appropriate person in the owning branch, either Jack Arron, Caroline Anderson, Lisa Lee, Joanne Webb or Nicola Smith.

Please contact eServices ASAP (ext 8603)if you encounter any problems, and phone or email us if you have any questions.

Catherine

Horizon and HIP will be upgraded on Wednesday 18 January, and so will be unavailable from about 7.30am until the upgrade is completed, probably 9-10am.

This will affect all Horizon applications, the Library catalogue and large chunks of the Library website, including the hours, databases, bookings pages.

Please ensure that you are logged out of Horizon on Tuesday evening, and do not login again until you hear from Library eServices that it is OK to do so. It is likely that we will check modules incrementally, with public interfaces taking priority, so even if you see some functions of Horizon working, please do not login to other functions until you have been given clearance. This includes Horizon reports and the new High Demand system. RFID should not be used until the upgrade is complete. We are still working out how items will be issued – we will let you know as soon as we do.

Education will be the first Library to go live, followed by Central, Law and then MB. There may be issues with RFID as this is the first Horizon upgrade since the new system has been implemented. Plan on staff having to issue material until noon.

Please ensure that all staff in your area are aware of this posting.

Library Support Services have been evicted from Otakaro at very short notice this afternoon. A fire escape was damaged during the last lot of earthquakes and they need to close the building for a while. We are not sure how long.

In the meantime, those of us at work are camping at the Education Library, and can be contacted on ext 3321/

The University wiki software is being upgraded this coming Friday from 8.30 am. That means that all wiki pages will be unavailable, including Camelot, and the EndNote wiki.

Once upgraded Camelot wiki will look quite different. I will be making changes to Camelot after the upgrade to make it look as similar as possible, but it won’t be exactly the same as it is now. The navigation bar needs to be added back to pages, so I have to do this bit by bit and will only be doing it on top level pages to begin with. Some current layout may need modification as well – please be patient, or contact eServices if something needs to be changed quickly.

Editing has changed significantly too – it should be a great deal easier in the longer term, but may be a bit unfamiliar at first. People who prefer to use the wiki markup editor will find that this is no longer available, though there is the facility to type in wiki code – the new editor will convert it on the fly.

Library eServices will be offering some training on the new wiki editor over the summer, but in the meantime, we can help with editing individual pages as needed.

While there will be some initial pain as we all learn how to use this new editor, I do believe it will ultimately be easier to use, and the new version offers some very nice new functionality. I was initially concerned about the lack of access to the wiki markup, but as I’ve used it more and more, I’ve been convinced that the new editor works very well.

A notice about the downtime has been posted on the main wiki site, but because Camelot doesn’t use the standard layout, this notice is not being displayed. In the new version, we will be using a more standard layout, which is why is has to look a bit different, and this is an example of why it’s better to do so.

Any questions or concerns can be addressed to Library eServices.

Catherine
eServices

Changes have been made to the opening hours of all branches to reflect the change to Summer hours.

However, the hours for all branches are different and High Demand can only be changed to match one branch. Currently this is set to match Education Library hours as they are still in their academic year. After the 25th November, High Demand hours will be changed to match the Central Library, as this will then have the longest opening hours.

Branches with shorter opening hours will have to edit High Demand items which Horizon issues for periods beyond their opening time.

Catherine
Library eServices

It would appear that some users are missing the Request first available copy button in the Library Catalogue, and are instead placing separate requests on multiple items on the bib record. This could be that they just don’t understand or trust the process for requesting the first available copy, but it could also be that the button is not placed where people see it. Once you get to the point of wanting to place a request, you tend to be looking at the Copy/Holding information section of the screen, and the button is not right in front of you.

For that reason, it might be useful to repeat the Request first available copy button in the Copy/Holding information section, either above or below information about the individual items. To see what it looks like in context, and where out of 3 possible places it could go, please have a look at it in the test library catalogue, and let us know what you think via a comment to this posting.

Catherine
Library eServices

I was wrong in saying in my email yesterday that the fact that access to Counterculture now needs you to login will break the rss feed in Outlook. My feed broke, but others have since told me that theirs hadn’t, and I’ve been able to get it set up for other people. Mine is still having problems, but I’m not sure why.

So if you would like to receive new Counterculture postings by email, please follow the instructions “Setting up RSS Feeds in Outlook“.

Contact eservices if you have any questions or problems.

Catherine