More Print/Copy Issues

The color webprint issues remain unresolved and now we have a new glitch. The color copier devices reads that the charge for color copies is 9¢ per page. That is incorrect and it will charge 50¢ per page. The appropriate people have been informed and we are waiting to hear back. I'll post up when I have more information.

Web Printing is Now Available at UNF, but.....

Web printing is a great tool I've been asking Auxiliary Services to add since about May. It enables patrons to use their own computers to print to our pay-4-print system without any form of configuration or driver installation. The only limitation is the file support which is pretty good but does omit .odt or the open document format. I've made a brief video walk-through so you can take a look.

Now for the down side. Color printing is not working properly. If you send a file through the web printing page to the color queue, you will be charged for a color print but it will come out of one of the monochrome printers. I've submitted a ticket and spoken with Auxiliary Services and others and will give an update once I hear something back

Looks like web printing is working properly now.

Process Maps

If you know me, you know I like to create process maps. Since we had some confusion around creating Special Borrower cards for Dean's Leadership Council members, it seemed like a perfect candidate for mapping. Have a look at the file area if you want to see it. This one is rough and I'll update it as I get more information. I'll also add more over time.

Another LibX Update

Per request from the Library Collection Development Liaisons, I have updated LibX to include the SUL Union Catalog. Click on the appropriate link to the right for the latest version.

Note that contextual menus may still only search the UNF catalog. That is adjustable through the LibX tool menu.

Select the Context Menu tab and choose which fields you wish to search.

Be sure to leave comments if you have thoughts about the update.

LibX Update

I recently discovered that the libx plugin for Firefox did not work with version 3.5 so I have updated it. Some of you have found it to be helpful with your liaison work. If you were not aware, you can right click on any text and choose to search our catalog by title. In any event, look to the right column where I keep links to files for the latest version or click here to download.

Aleph 19 Upgrade: The Final Week

On Tuesday, July 21 FCLA will upgrade our Aleph Library System from version 18 to version 19. Our system will be down from approximately 5:45AM to 10:00AM. The library OPAC will work but the patron empowerment features, like holds and renewals, will not. Here is how the upgrade process should proceed.

Some of you have been asked to to assist with the testing in preparation for this conversion and department heads of affected areas have been given a checklist to verify functionality using the test client. If you were given a checklist, please review the operations and let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I will be coming by this week to install the Aleph 19 Production client on your machines. It will not work until the new system is brought online Tuesday.

On Monday, July 20 I will install the new offline circulation module on to the circ desk. In the highly unlikely event that Aleph goes down Monday evening, circulation events should be recorded manually. Please insure that all student workers understand this or library transactions will be lost.

On Tuesday, July 21 all circulation should be handled through the Al500 Offline client until we are given the go ahead to switch over to production. Once that happens, I will share through a lib-all email. At that point I will be at the circ desk ensuring that the morning’s data is loaded properly. If you have any issues with the new client, please email me and I will do my best to find a solution as soon as possible. I am setting the circ desk and the OPAC as my first priorities.

I do not expect this process to be difficult or painful. FCLA has put a great deal of effort into preparing for this and we have been testing for quite some time as well.

Again, if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know as soon as possible.

Aleph 19 Offline Circ Client

In testing for the Aleph 19 upgrade, we made a couple of discoveries. First, the version 19 offline client is different and must be installed. I was hoping to use the v18 client but FCLA says no. Second, the path to the dat file created by the client is slightly different. Instead of going to T:\AL500\OFFCIRC\FILES\NFU50\OFFCIRC.DAT we need to go to T:\AL500\OFFCIRC\FILES\USM50\OFFCIRC.DAT Not much of a change but certainly enough to throw people off if they are not comfortable with the process.

Aleph to Banner Data Transmission

This week we met with UNF ITS and Finance to go over the progress of our Aleph to Banner export project. The news was very good. FCLA sent over the data from Aleph and ITS successfully imported it into our Banner Financial System. The process appears to match what I envisioned from the outset. When the data is imported into Banner, all of the fields will be filled an our business office will simply need to approve the transaction without entering much, if any, data.

Our next steps will require ITS to automate the ingestion of our index number. This number is the same 99% of the time so that will be part of the approval process for our business office. We will also have an "accuracy report" produced, again by ITS, to tell us what was entered into banner and what was left out. Finally, we decided to ask ITS to script the import process to run nightly which is, of course, much faster than our current manual process which is only done once a week.

We are going to retest the rejection process of PCARD transactions. The initial thought was to automatically reject any invoice without the proper n-number and ingest any invoice with an n-number but we must also reject invoices that contain the text PCARD even if it has a legitimate n-number. We will perform one more export to validate the process and then go live. Hopefully this will all be wrapped up before Fall.

Browser Functionality

Recently a couple of links were sent my way that my browser wouldn't render properly. This is particularly irritating to me. I believe a browser should work properly, quickly, and conveniently in that order. Unfortunately my browser of choice at the time (Flock) was not up to the challenge. Sure, it has a ton of cool features that I love but it is not particularly quick and seemed to be falling flat on the proper aspect as well. I decided to have a look by running it through the acid test or acid3test to be more precise.

The Acid tests are part of the Web Standards Project developed to discern a browser's support of html standards, particularly DOM and Javascript. By going to http://acid3.acidtests.org/ you can see how your browser rates. I did this with the Mac version of Flock and scored a 70. I didn't know how good or bad that was but I wasn't terribly encouraged so I ran a couple of others through the mill. Firefox, unsurprisingly did little better with a 72. I say unsurprisingly because Flock is built from Firefox. Next I tried Opera 9. It did much better with an 85. Finally I tried Safari and scored a perfect 100. Safari is very fast and apparently supports html standards very well. It does fall short on a few of the features that I have grown accustomed to, though so I decided to see if I could fix that. I found keywurl which restores my keyword search functionality I grew to love in Flock and Firefox. Other plug-ins allowed me to try to replicate Firefox's "Awesome Bar". Oddly, the next time I hit the acid3 site, my score had dropped to 99. After uninstalling the other plug-ins (keywurl did not have an impact), I made it back to 100. This might explain the disparity between Flock and Firefox given that Flock uses the same engine but is a very heavily "plugged-in" version of Firefox.

So I guess the lesson here is that you can't have it all. Speed, compatibility, and functionality are truly warring with each other and it looks like you are going to have to take your pick. Oh and in case you were wondering. Internet Explorer 7 on Windows scored a 5 on the Acid3 Test. No, not 50 but FIVE! IE8 reportedly is much better with a score of 20. That is particularly disappointing considering all of the things Internet Explorer can't do and it isn't even very fast.

Aleph Version 19 and Receipt Printers

On July 21, 2009 UNF is scheduled to undergo the upgrade from Aleph 18 to Aleph 19. As part of our preparation for that event, we are looking at how v19 handles receipt printing. UNF already has receipt printing configured and if your school doesn't I highly recommend it. Contact Ellen Bishop at FCLA for help with this one. She and Robb Waltner (then Head of Access Services) put together the templates which are now part of our client package and carry over from version to version.
What does not carry over are the settings which I would like to share in case anyone else needs to do this. I must say in advance that I had intended to do this myself this week but Robb (now Head of Acquisitions) beat me to it). Once you have v.19 Test installed and your receipt printer set as your default printer you must implement the following steps:
1. Set the receipt printer to be the default system printer.
2. Edit the circ\TAB\print.ini to P for loan and return receipt.
3. Run htmlprint.exe (in alephcom\bin) and set the margins to 3,2,3,2. Note: This is different from v18.
4. Edit alephcom\TAB\alephcom.ini to NewPrintType=Y
5. In the Circ client under Aleph - Options - set up loan options select "all loans in one receipt".
6. In the Circ client under Aleph - Options - set up return options select "print return receipt"
7. Edit alephcom\TAB\alephcom.ini to defaultPrintConfig=0 in order to bypass the print preview.

That should get the receipt printers humming. Again thanks to Robb for doing the labor on this one.

Aleph2Banner: The Problem

The Aleph2 Banner project is an attempt to automatically export book vendor payment information from Aleph into our Banner financial systems. Our current process has library staff enter this data into Aleph, then pass paperwork to the library business office where it is re-entered into Banner and then, entered one final time into an Access Database for reporting purposes. The work performed by our business person on these tasks is said to average about 20 hours per week. If we could automate this task, we stand to make a huge impact on our workload.

With some direction from FCLA, we've found a report (ACQ-16) that we believe can take the place of our Access database report but it will requrie Acquisitions and Serials to complete the budget information in Aleph. Up until now, they have not entered assigned budgets which meant that the report shows a negative balanace after the first payment.

Other issues include the use of library specific codes for the vendors that do not match Finance's vendor codes and the fact that purchases made with our PCard are automatically entered into Banner so they will have to be bypassed somehow in the export or import process.

The projet team includes Serials, Acquisitions and Systems with support from ITS, Fianance and FCLA. Our goal is to implement this new process for the start of the new fiscal year, July 1 2009. Over the next few weeks we hope to make subtantial progress which I will document here.

LibX and Acquisitions

Ever since Robb Waltner took over Acquisitions, we've been looking at ways to modernize the book ordering process. Robb is a great manager and has some excellent ideas including the use of Blackwell's Collection Manager. Unfortunately one of the useful features of CM doesn't work properly for us. CM has the ability to use an open url to quickly search our catalog for duplicate titles. Hopefully this will be corrected in the near future but, in the mean time, I've put together a little toolbar using LibX. LibX is a site that allows you to build a toolbar for Firefox or IE that searches your catalog. I built one a long time ago but didn't see the use. Fortunately, Robb did. Try the UNF versions of the LibX toolbar if you would like. It's pretty raw but it allows you to search UNF Mango as well as drag and drop terms to Google Scholar. There's even a shameless link to this blog. Hey, if you don't like it, make your own.

Laptops Return to XP, Students Save Time!

Back in February I wrote about the good and bad of Vista on the laptops. Well, as it turns out the bad outweighs the good and our laptops have returned to WindowsXP. When it was all said and done, speed mattered most. Here are some numbers that should make it easy to understand. Starting up our laptops took 53 seconds with XP, 73 seconds with Vista. That's over 37% longer to boot up with Vista. Login times were worse. It too one minute and 35 seconds (1:35) for XP to log in and get a useable browser one screen. Vista took two minutes and fifty seven seconds (2:57) to do the same. That's more than 86% longer. Overall from off to ready to use, XP took 2:28 to Vista's 4:10 (~69% longer). Yep, close to 5 minutes from the time you check out a laptop to the time you get to use it not including the amount of time it takes to type in a user name and password. Heaven forbid you mistype or have to reboot. This was just unacceptable and the return the XP seems to be just fine with the students. In fact, I've not heard any complaints about XP or the rollback to Office 2003. Now I see why Dell charges users to downgrade to XP. I still wouldn't pay it, though. :)

Aleph Reports Downloads

Due to increasing demand, I'm starting to put some collected Aleph reports online to download. The first is Circ08 which includes annual circulation data by sublibrary and collection. Each tab represents an entire fiscal year starting with 2004/2005. I'll add 08/09 at the end of this year.

As I find and create more general interest reports, I'll post them on this blog. You should see links in the right hand column.

Aleph v.19

This summer FCLA will begin to migrate the SULs to Aleph version 19. Already available is a draft time line which shows that we will have full test servers available to us by the end of April and the upgrades will begin in July. I will primarily focus on working with FCLA and ITS to ensure that our many automated jobs like the PLIF, CashExport and Banner Export continue to work smoothly. In addition, Nick, Jose and I will ensure that the test client is installed on all of the appropriate computers so that library staff can take a look and see what is new and also run through their workflow to ensure that everything still works. On FCLA's upgrade agenda are some webinars to help library staff transition but we do not expect to see a big change in features with the exception of E-Reserves. If you are interested in jumping right in, the v19 users guides may be found here.

Revisiting Vista and the Laptop Checkout Program

Over the summer we brought in 40 laptops to check out to students. They were tested with WindowsXP but immediately moved to Vista to support the campus effort to migrate. The good news was that Vista enabled us to map the student network drive and print reliably. The bad news was that Vista is much, much slower to boot and log in. The image for these computers was pretty well streamlined thanks to a lot of hard work from our C-Tech Nick so we decided the best option was to increase RAM from 1GB to 2GB. After discovering a very good deal on memory prices, we actually jumped to 3GB. This dramatically reduced the boot time but it is still very slow compared to XP. In he mean time, laptop popularity has really spiked and we may have 30+ laptops checked out during our peak periods. It is at these times that we run into trouble and students have difficulty logging on. Right now, Nick is working on an XP image that will preserve students' ability to access their drive and print but it is not likely to be as seemless as the Vista image. Another concern is ITS' reluctance to allow Office 2007 on an XP machine. This may require us to put Office 2003 on the laptops further increasing the disparity between the laptops and desktops at the library.

Clearly there is no easy solution. Of course we could hope that Windows 7 is released this summer and that is packs the functionality of Vista with the performance of XP but I'm not holding my breath. I have said a few times in the past that Vista was a victim of exagerrated media and that it isn't as bad as you hear (yes, it's slow). I still believe that statement to be true, but I also believe that Windows 7 is experiencing the same kind of hype in the opposite direction. I doubt very much that it will be as good as the current buzz is making it out to be but we can always hope. I'll post more as the laptop situation evolves.

Student Scanners in the Library

Almost since the first day I started here at UNF, I have heard students ask our librarians about scanners. Two years later I finally pulled the trigger and bought a couple. On the second floor, next to the Reference Commons, we have a fairly standard 8.5"X11" flatbead HP scanner connected to an iMac. It is on the network and automatically maps to the H drive when students log in with their n-number. It already seems to be getting heavy use and Sarah has spoken with me about training so expect to see some meeting invites soon.

On the third floor, I've added a large format Epson scanner which will scan ledger size (11"X17") documents. It too is connected to an iMac on the network and resides in Paul's fish bowl in front of the big microform scanners. Hopefully this will be a benefit to the students and Faculty alike.

While both scanners connect to the network and map the student drive, they do not automatically map any other drive. There is a simple, though not intuitive, method of mapping other drives. If you wish to save files to the network simply follow these instructions:

First, click on the desktop, then  click on the menu item "Go" and select "Connect to Server". A box will appear will where you need to type  smb://oak/library$/ to get to the library drive or smb://oak/Users/N-number/ if you want to get to your private network drive. In the case of that last one, type your actual N-number. This will create an icon on your desktop for the respective drive. Give it a try.