Kia ora koutou

The Horizon upgrade to version 756 is scheduled to take place 7-8 am Monday 12^th July.

For information about outages etc. during the upgrade see my earlier post Horizon Upgrade from 7.5.5 to 7.5.6 Monday 12th July.

This post is just a reminder of what to do to prepare and what to expect when you come in to work on Monday (or whenever you are next in after Monday).

Before you go home for the evening on your last working day before Monday – please close Horizon on your computer and leave the computer on and logged off (this should mean you get the new version of Horizon installed automatically early on Monday morning).  If someone near you is on leave etc. it would be great if you check their computer is on too and do the same for shared/hotdesk PCs too.

What to expect on Monday 12^th July.

We’re aiming to have the upgrade finished and Horizon, RFID, catalogue etc. back up and running as usual by the time the central/PJH library opens (8am), so should be pretty much business as usual by the time most of you get in.
If you arrive between 7 and 8am, please check with us (Peter and I are the only digital services staff on Monday) or check Counterculture to see if it is ok to use Horizon on your computer.

If the upgrade process takes longer than expected or if instructions change we’ll alert you via Counterculture so please check that when you arrive.   If all is well, check if you now have Horizon 756 installed (Horizon 755 should have been removed).
If it didn’t install overnight Sunday night you should be able to install it from the Software Centre (if it is not there either, or if there is a problem, let us know and we will come and install it manually).

The first time you log in to Horizon 756 it may require you to enter a server login e.g. if the database bit of the login screen is greyed out (see screenshot below).

The login for this is staff and pwd is gromit.

If you have any questions, please let us know (email eservices@libr.canterbury.ac.nz).

Ngā mihi,

Romy
(on behalf of library digital services)

Kia ora koutou

I have guinea-pigged a potential fix for the issue of only seeing the last 12 months of emails in shared maiboxes for IT and it was successful.

IT will roll this out to all library staff in the next round of Windows updates due around 23rd July.

If you’d like to have your Outlook fixed before then please send us your username and we will pass your details on to IT.  Once they’ve applied the fix you need to restart your computer to pick it up and then your Outlook will be quite slow to start (as it will be downloading the entire back catalogue of emails from all the shared email accounts you have added to your inbox).
Took about 10 minutes for mine to start co-operating properly ( I have 3 shared accounts) and a fair bit longer for it to finish downloading all the older emails in the shared mailbox folders.  This should just be a one time issue (though if you log on to other computers you may have to repeat it on each PC).

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

We are planning to upgrade Horizon from our current 7.5.5 version to version 7.5.6.  We have selected Monday 12th July as a date to do this – aiming to work from 7-8 am and have everything back up and running by the time the library opens so services won’t be impacted too much.

IT will push out the new Horizon client early on Monday morning so you will need to leave your computer on and logged off on your last day of work before the 12th July.

While we upgrade the database there will be an outage to the library catalogue so users will not be able to search, request or manage their library accounts.  The UCGo library tile library account management function will be down too.  Multisearch will still be functional for e-resources but the availability data and links to our print holdings won’t work.
RFID issuing and returns will also be unavailable during this period but should be back running before the library opens.
The outage shouldn’t be more than 30mins if all goes well.

Library staff who work 7-8am won’t be able to use Horizon or Horizon reports until we give the go ahead (more details will be sent out about this closer to the date).

The upgrade is just a minor one so there won’t be any drastic changes to the Horizon client you know (and love?) but there are a few small enhancements we may want to take advantage of, and bug fixes.  Our testers haven’t identified any significant issues.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

Some of you may have noticed there seem to be some emails missing from shared email accounts e.g. Library contact, Library support services.
IT have put in caching for shared mailboxes limited to 12 months.  Emails older than 12 months are supposed to be able to be requested and retrieved directly from the mail server (you’ll see links at the bottom of search results or folder email list in your own email mailbox to this effect) however, because none of the library shared email accounts were migrated across to the new exchange online/365 email server this feature seems to be unavailable for them.
IT are working with us on our shared mailbox and should hopefully have a resolution soon but in the meantime you can still access  older emails via Outlook Web App.  You can’t toggle to the shared mailboxes from your own OWA at the moment so have to enter the direct link to the old OWA in your browser.  To do this, edit the link below (for our shared mailbox) swapping the email address bit after the owa/ to the email address of the shared mailbox you want to access.

https://exchange.canterbury.ac.nz/owa/eservices@libr.canterbury.ac.nz/

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

IT are switching from one firewall provider to another this weekend.  The work will start Friday 2nd July at 9pm and go through the evening (hoping to finish by Saturday morning).  There is the possibility that it might continue through until 6am Monday morning  so weekend library hours may be affected.

We can expect some of the things below while the work takes place:

• Brief UC wi-fi  (UC Wireless and guest wifi) outages
• Halls of Residences internet/wi-fi outages
• Intermittent 10-15 minute UC internet access outages (you may not be able to get to non-UC webpages at times)
• Access to UC websites (including web-portals like LEARN) from off-campus will be unavailable for a short time.
• Delays in sending/receiving emails for UC accounts.

There should be something coming out in Tū ki te tahi about this this week that might narrow down the timeframe a bit more

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

I know I promised the link to this page was stable in my post about it in March…alas somehow the page was deleted from LEARN (thanks Simon for the heads up).  It’s now been restored by FTL/Moodle developers but doesn’t have the same URL as before.

If you had it bookmarked please update your bookmarks to https://learn.canterbury.ac.nz/mod/page/view.php?id=1844585

I’ve got a copy of the page as a backup now so should be able to get it restored in future if it disappears again.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of library digital services)

Kia ora koutou

Margaret has noticed that some of our notices are being rejected by the automated checks of emails for credit card information again (this happened last year but IT put in a workaround for us that seems to no longer be working).

Some borrowers may have missed getting pre-overdue, hold notices, overdue notices from us where one of the items they have out/on hold has a college of education style barcode (3800xxxxxxxx).

We have an assyst job in for IT to fix this again, hopefully won’t be too long before they do.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)

Kia ora koutou

In order to complete the changes to Horizon/requesting required for the end of the COVID postal service for staff and postgrads we need to restart the library catalogue.

It will be down for a couple of minutes during the restart (starting now at 12:42pm).  Apologies for the inconvenience.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services team)

Kia ora koutou

The scheduled maintenance for 360 link that was causing the Multisearch full text link issues yesterday and today now looks to be complete.  I’ve tested a few searches and it appears to be working ok – however the vendor’s status page does indicate that there are multiple issues following the change so it is possible there may still be a few glitches.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services Team)

Kia ora koutou

Ex Libris (Multisearch vendors) have added the option to ezproxy all the DOI links in the preview section of the search results.  This is turned on for us in Multisearch so off-campus users will be able to click on the DOI links in the preview pane and not hit a paywall.   If the main full text online link isn’t working the DOI links are another option to try.

This also gives lecturers another option for linking to articles in LEARN – they can just copy the DOI link from Multisearch preview pane  (right click on the link in their browser and select “copy link”) – no need to put the link through the link maker.

NB: there could be situations where there’s a DOI in the preview pane for a resource we don’t ezproxy e.g. open access or a resource we manage through username/password or single sign on.  In this case users might get our add host error screen.