LibX Updated for Solr

Last week FCLA replaced the search technology behind our OPAC. The new open source Solr seems to be working well and is expected to save money over licensing the commercial product Endeca. Unfortunately it broke our Libx plug-in and the other liaisons have quite clear that they want it fixed. I am pleased to say that this has been resolved. If all works properly, your browser should alert you to the new update but, if not, you can get it from the links to the right. So go get it and start searching.

Getting Ready for Fall #1 The New and Improved Lab

I've not blogged in a while but that is not to say that I haven't been working. In fact, this has been my busiest summer yet. The good news is that we have made some improvements that should be appreciated by the students and faculty.

As the title states, we've upgraded our lab. 95 new computers were purchased to replace some of our aging machines. The new machines have 2.93GHz Core i3 processors and 3GB of RAM so they should be plenty fast. They also have Windows 7 which we have found performs significantly better than our old Vista image. Finally, in response to the many requests from students, we have installed SPSS and Minitab on all of our lab PCs. This last part is really exciting. I believe we have opened the door to truly enhancing the student experience in the library by providing more of the tools needed at this university. In the future I hope to be able to add other titles like Photoshop.

The new computers were deployed in the Reference Lab (second floor), Periodicals lab (third floor) and the west half of the West Lab (second floor). We also placed iMacs in the first floor group study rooms. The iMacs have built-in mics and cameras for audio/video capture so groups can have a little privacy when creating those A/V projects.

If you would like to see other features or enhancements in the library labs, sound off in the comments section.