CCS News
MARCH 6, 2009
FROM THE COMPUTER ROOM:
NSLS Workshop - If you have not seen this already we will make a plug for this NSLS workshop given by our good friend and IT ally Rob Zschernitz at NSLS. When Good Computers Go Bad, featuring NSLS's own Rob Zschernitz, offers tips for dealing with your library's technology by bringing you troubleshooting techniques and an insight into the IT mind:
When: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 (9:00 AM - 12:00 PM)
Where: NSLS Auditorium (In Person, Max: 50)
Cost: $60 Presenter: Rob Zschernitz
Link: www.librarylearning.info/events/?eventID=5495
3.2.1 upgrade on Test Server – This upgrade is still being prepared on our test server. We have had to purge over 7Million inactive holds and it has taken over 80 hours of machine time. This is longer than Sirsi or we estimated. Naturally we don’t do the whole thing at once – so we work on one year at a time and check the database, gather statistics, timings and analyze a little at each step. Sirsi and the CCS staff have learned a lot during the process as Sirsi has not worked on a file as big as ours. This process will have to be duplicated before we can run an upgrade in production so we are documenting each step along the way. On our revised schedule, we should complete the last of the purge Thursday March 5, perform a backup on Friday (Mar 6) and rerun the upgrade on the test server early the week of March 9.
AUTHORITIES UPDATE:
CCS sent 3271 bibliographic records to Marcive on Thursday, March 5th for Overnight Authorities Processing. The records have been processed and were reloaded into our system. Of the 3271 bibliographic records, Marcive returned 1273 updated bibliographic records. Marcive also sent us 1512 new authority records. Marcive’s speedy service insures that the CCS database is kept up to date as much as possible with current headings and references.
-- Virginia R. Seward
CCS Authorities Librarian
DID YOU KNOW?
Did you know that we’re close to resolving the last of the technical issues that have been preventing us from testing Symphony 3.2.1 and we hope to begin initial testing next week? But regardless of when testing actually begins, we strongly suggest libraries use only one dedicated workstation to start with (one at each library that has participating testers) - instead of having multiple testers at each library using their own personal machines. The initial testing workstation should be a “back room” machine that’s not normally used for daily WorkFlows activities. We’re concerned that testers may not be able to easily reset a workstation to the current version of the Java client when they need to resume their normal work in production (the production server will remain at release 3.1 for the near term).
When testing a new release in the past, we were able to easily return test workstations to the older version of the Java client by saying NO to the “Want to upgrade client?” message that displays when logging in with the production server’s IP Address. But during our first trial of the Symphony upgrade it appears we can’t do this just now. We’re working with Sirsi to resolve the issue, but for the time being we want to limit our testing to only machines that are NOT normally used for daily WorkFlows operations. Even though this will slow down our testing, we don’t want anyone to upgrade their personal machines to Symphony 3.2.1 until we’re satisfied that we’ll be able to go back safely to using the 3.1 version of Java in the production environment. – Ken Victorson
CCS MEETINGS NEXT WEEK:
Mon., 3/9, 1:30, CCS: OPAC Review Task Force
Tues., 3/10, 9:30, Northbrook</span>: Director’s Station Discussion Group
00,
Wed., 3/11, 10:CCS: Executive Comm.
Fri., 3/13, 9:30, NSLS: Circulation
