USMAI Status Report

University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions

ITD's USMAI STATUS REPORT FOR JUNE 2005

prepared by USMAI staff in ITD

SFX:

Continued to work on getting v.3 ready for live

Two rounds of usability testing complete, one more for week of 25th focusing on Citation Linker

Menu customization for each campus completed; campuses are testing

Trained E-Collections Task Group on SFX admin "read-only " access for statistics and confirming Knowledge Base setups

ResearchPort:

Completed work for database vendor switches; new databases set up in RP and SFX

MetaLib 3.13 installed on test server in preparation for work to implement. Changes will be mainly to make RP work better

Changed the Researchport overnight batch process to reduce the downtime from 1 hour 30 minutes to 3 minutes.

MdUSA: EZ Proxy set up for 11 MDL campuses to replace MdUSA completed.

Aleph Version 16:

Data Warehousing/report writing: We finally decided to not pursue the Ex Libris product, ARC. We are working on defining and building our own data warehouse. Staff are studying Oracle's built–in data warehouse features.

Reindexed the test database: we are testing 6 different improvements to the indexes:

Restore v15 brief records functionality.

Fix call number browse for CP LD3231.M70 call numbers.

Fix normalization for correct call number sorting.

Reindex BC–BC/STCK to BC–BC/STACK.

Add new index on oclc number for Z39.50 access from Illiad.

Add an index for Item Processing Status.

Started Year End Processing in Acquisitions/Serials. Three campuses tested twice and 12 campuses completed live process; two more to go: CS (09/30) and BS(10/01).

Installed Service pack 1153 in test. That means there have 1,153 different changes added to version 16.2 since it was released. We are working to keep up with these changes as they are released.

Working on improving security by restricting access to the staff module server by IP address.

Fixed display of Hebrew characters in the PAC.

Fixed Reserves PAC display for St. Mary's and CP so that only active courses display. Working with other campuses to apply this fix.

Report requests were up to date as of 07/13/05.

Released new test clients.

Continued to work with UMBC on the problem of their clients crashing.

ERIC:

Created SFX version 3 export program.

Completed work on connecting the Find It button in the test catalog with the correct SFX instance, including all patron identification cases (on campus, off campus, logged in , etc).

Added Request (PPH) and Availability links to SFX menu for review by the Task Group.

Electronic Resource Licensing: ALA: vendor meetings re: e journal renewals

Personnel

Training: new GA, Sheila Hadley, trained in RP troubleshooting.
Dave Kennedy attended a Shibboleth pre–conference at ALA.
Tom, Betty, Laura, Kari, and Heidi attended ALA.
Unsuccessful in our search for a Systems Administrator. We are reviewing our options.
Opening a new search for a Web Applications Programmer that will be shared with UMCP.

ILL: Began work on configuring a Windows server to handle 8 institutions on one instance of Illiad.

Authentication: Ex Libris will be working with us on the Shibboleth beta test with PDS (patron directory service, which is used in Metalib).

Patron Loader: Worked with University College on their newly formatted output from Peoplesoft. UMCP is ready to load in their new format, as soon as one question is answered by campus IT. Continued testing UMES's loader, they are very close also. Working with College Park, Salisbury and Towson on email notices. Its clear from the priority lists that we have a lot to do in the next 6 months to a year concerning patron loads and email notices. We are re–assigning staff to get these tasks done as soon as possible.

Infrastructure:

Aleph Test database was refreshed with live data.

Aleph Test server crashed, many system files had to be rebuilt.

Finalized order for replacement hardware. This is a major equipment order and a project for us for the Fall. We are buying 3 new servers, turning in 2 for price breaks. In the end we will have a new Aleph live and test server and a new database warehouse server. We have negotiated a longer transition period than SUN normally gives their customers, so we can have the Aleph live switchover in January. The live Aleph server CPUs will be 1.35 GHz, the current live CPUS are 400 MGHz. We are also ordering faster disk drives that can be added to our Storage Area Network.

USMAI | ITD | Metalib/sfx | Aleph