CCS News
JUNE 27, 2008
NO CCS NEWS NEXT WEEK: Due to ALA and vacation next week, there will be no CCS News till July 11.
FROM THE COMPUTER ROOM:
iBistro – We are working with Sirsi to create a project plan for replacing the iBistro server. Tenetatively, we are looking at the end of July. Shortly before the move we will need a hiatus to any iBistro interface changes. Please stay tuned for actual dates. We will post information as soon as we have the plan in place with Sirsi.
TEST PATCH iBistro – please take a look at the test server and ensure that the patch to show that patron name now appears when placing a hold on a multi-volume item. We will be moving this patch to the production server the week of July 7 if we hear no complaints.
LOCAL NOTICE PRINTING – the next group of libraries will be able to print notices locally during early July. You know who you are and will have a separate email from the computer room to confirm the exact date and your final okay on the switch.
WORK IN THE COMPUTER ROOM – As of this writing we will be doing some work in the computer room to create rack space for the new iBistro server and move some of the equipment into permanent racks. This will occur the evening of July 1 after hours. This should not create any disturbance to the libraries, but we want to inform you in case anything should not seem right when you go online on Wednesday morning.
AUTHORITIES UPDATE:
CCS sent 3350 bibliographic records to Marcive on Wednesday, June 25th for Overnight Authorities Processing. The records have been processed and were reloaded into our system, so full cataloging may resume. Of the 3350 bibliographic records, Marcive returned 1020 updated bibliographic records. Marcive also sent us 1742 new authority records. CCS will be sending groups of records for processing each month, so that our database will be kept up to date as much as possible. – Virginia R. Seward
CCS Authorities Librarian
DID YOU KNOW?
Did you know that there’s a work-around for the problem some libraries encounter when trying to view in-transit items using the Pending Transits wizard in Java? The error only occurs at libraries that have a large number of items in-transit to them (around 1000 or more, it seems). When someone at one of these libraries tries to see a list of current in-transits, they get the following error message: “Invalid data length. Response might be truncated” and no in-transit list is produced (truncated or otherwise). This is a known bug that Sirsi says they’ll fix in WorkFlows/Symphony release 3.2 or 3.2.1, but there’s a way to avoid the error message and display large lists of Pending Transits. From the Menu Bar in Java WorkFlows, open Preferences -> Desktop -> Desktop Setup and look at the value in the “Max Response Size” field. The default setting is 200000, but it can be increased to allow large in-transit lists to display. Try increasing the Max Response Size to 400000 or 500000 and check Pending Transits again. If you still see the error, bump the MRS up to 600000 or 700000 and test it again. Repeat until you see your Pending Transits list.
But be aware that there may be a trade-off associated with a Max Response Size increase. It’s possible that a bigger MRS value could impact response time for other large search result sets, particularly on older, less powerful workstations. If you see degradation in the time it takes to retrieve search results on your machine after increasing the Max Response Time, you may decide to return to the original setting and only make this change on those occasions when you see the error viewing Pending Transits. However, I have a fairly new PC that exceeds Sirsi’s minimum recommended specifications for using Java and I’ve been keeping my MRS at 800000 for awhile without any noticeable impact on response time in other areas. Ken Victorson
FOURTH OF JULY
The Computer Room will be closed for the July 4th holiday. We will be open on our normal hours on Saturday July 5 and Sunday July 6.
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY HOLIDAY TO ALL FROM THE CCS STAFF!
CCS MEETINGS THE NEXT TWO WEEKS:
Wed., 7/9, 10:00, CCS: Executive Comm.
Fri., 7/11, 9:30, NSLS: Circulation
