Come listen to your fellow Library IT colleagues and partners present tech-related projects from around the Library. The Tech Talks for March will be heavily focused the processes and methods used in Library IT.
Save the date and come to the Tech Talks on March 28th.
ILLiad, the library’s interlibrary loan and scan and deliver management platform, has been successfully migrated to VMware infrastructure hosted by Yale ITS. The system is used to receive, track, and manage patron borrowing requests including physical delivery of items from libraries worldwide, scanned book chapters, and scanned articles from Yale University Library’s collections. Yale ITS will now provide systems and database administrative support for the service. The Enterprise Systems group within Library IT will continue to act as the owner and primary point of contact for the service and Atlas Systems will continue to provide application support. ITS staff, including Robert Wolfe from the Windows systems administration team, Kathryn Dobbins from the database team, and John Lee from the information security group all worked closely with the library systems group and were instrumental in completing the transition on schedule.
Yale University Library FindIt and QuickSearch services have completed a Security Design Review (SDR) by the Information Security Office of Yale ITS. These systems use the Hydra repository solution as the underlying technology stack. The SDR process is used to provide recommendations for building, improving, or reengineering services to meet University policies, industry best practices, laws, and regulation requirements. Thanks to Bob Rice for evaluating and implementing the recommendations and Tom Castiello and Marcus Aden from the Information Security Office for their insight and participation.
LibraryIT recently purchased a license for the performance management and monitoring service New Relic. We will be using the New Relic APM-Application Performance Management application to monitor and improve performance of the new Hydra/Blacklight complex (aka Findit and Quicksearch beta). This is a SaaS, cloud-based service for monitoring applications and their underlying infrastructure as well as the programs themselves.
New Relic does do some usage monitoring, much in the vein of Google Analytics, but the particulars of installation and setup of this service will allow the Information Architecture Group in LibraryIT and others to specifically target performance issues like page loads and search result returns. New Relic will be a great help in assessing the health and responsiveness of the critical servers, applications and which run the Library’s key services.
This week, a group of Yale librarians presented the results of a pilot project using Omeka for creating and curating digital exhibitions at the Library. Library IT was pleased to provide infrastructure and support for the initial Omeka installation. The Systems Infrastructure and Integration Services unit configured and deployed the underlying infrastructure according to specification provided by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
LibraryIT looks forward to supporting more successful pilots like this one!
Here is the announcement regarding the group’s presentation:
Omeka: Piloting a Web Platform for Digital Exhibitions at Yale
When: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Where: Sterling Memorial Library (SML), International Room
120 High St., New Haven, CT 06511
Description:
Over the course of the last academic year a working group made up by Francesca Livermore, Melissa Grafe, Peter Leonard, Kerri Sancomb, Robin Dougherty, and Andy Hickner, has been tasked by the Web Group with investigating a platform for digital exhibitions at the library. After developing a set of system requirements and exploring several options, the working group suggested a six-month pilot of Omeka, an open-source web platform created by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University with support from the Mellon Foundation. As the pilot draws to its end, Francesca and Melissa will discuss the work of the group so far, including our experience working with Omeka, and next steps beyond the pilot period.
via Omeka: Piloting a Web Platform for Digital Exhibitions at Yale.