Tag: LibraryIT

LIT and partners Tech Talk | Wednesday May 18th 2016

Jenn Nolte

Next Wednesday May 18th, from 2:30pm-3:30pm in Bass L06, join Library IT and partners in our monthly discussion of tech-related projects around the Library and beyond.

Our agenda includes:

  • Adding/migrating collections to Findit (George Ouellette)
  • Tour of Software at Yale (ITS web site) (Beatrice Richardson)
  • Google Cultural Institute (Jenn Nolte)
  • ArchivesSpace updates (Matthew Gorham)

For those who cannot join us in person, the session will be streamed via Adobe Connect:

http://greet.yale.edu/littechtalk/ [sign in as a guest]

Slides and recordings of the Tech Talk sessions will be archived in https://yale.box.com/LITTechTalkArchives 

See you there!

Results of the 2014 Library IT Satisfaction Survey

Katie

In Fall 2014 162 library staff members took the time to complete a survey asking them to rate the Library IT group and how it has performed on some of our major projects and services during the year.

You can see all the results (except comments) here.

The survey looks at overall perception of how Library IT performed over the year, and how well it did in specific areas such as communication, which we’ve tried to make a priority (hence this blog for example). We’ve already made some decisions based on survey results about communication. Because the LIT newsletter was judged the most popular form of communication, we are committing to repurposing blog posts in the newsletter and publishing it every two weeks via YULIB.

We also definitely saw a desire for more chances to communicate with or to LIT as well and we are working on ways to do that. We will start to hold annual Tech Talks for all major projects and services. Talks will be a half hour of background, developments and plans for changes, and then a second half hour for questions, ideas and discussion from all staff. This idea came from Enterprise Systems staff, but it seems to be such a good idea that the rest of LIT is adopting it.

There was also feedback on specific projects in the survey, and LIT staff are taking a very close look at these and thinking about places where we should make adjustments in our work. As LIT staff continue to meet and discuss the survey findings we’ll post ideas and action items with the survey results. You’ll see the first example of this with the results for the Web Migration, where we’ve started to list what we think about the results of the survey and how we want to use the results to improve our work.

Please take some time to look at the results, but also, and more importantly, continue to send us ideas and feedback so that we can make LIT work well for the library and its patrons.

LIT 2014 Satisfaction Survey

 

 

Library IT creates list of technology services for staff

Jenn Nolte

The User Experience group and the IT Infrastructure & Client Services group recently collaborated on a survey of productivity services used by Library staff. You can see the survey results here.

Informed by this survey, Library IT created a comprehensive list of available services, systems and software for staff to use in doing their work. Some of these are supported by Library IT, some by central Yale ITS, and some are simply freely available.

With this list of services, LIbrary IT hopes to make some recommendations towards which services are best suited for library staff use in a particular context. As services evolve, mature and decline this list will also be updated accordingly. Please feel free to consult the page, or anyone in Library IT, if you have questions about which service will best suit your purposes.

Take a look here! http://web.library.yale.edu/applications

LibraryIT begins transparent outward communication program

Jenn Nolte

This semester, LibraryIT established several different venues of outward communication, meant to convey the work done in our department and with our collaborating partners. The outward communication channels are as follows:

This is the main source of communication from LibraryIT to Yale Library staff. The blog is updated often, and posts will be short but informative. If there are questions about the blog or its content, please email jennifer.nolte@yale.edu.

  • The Library IT Newsletter

The LIT newsletter rated highly among LIT satisfaction survey respondents as a preferred way to receive information about LibraryIT’s activities. In response to this, LibraryIT will publish a newsletter every two weeks and send it to the Yulib-L mailing list. Some content in the newsletter will come straight from the blog. Other content will consist of shorter news items. The newsletter will also be archived in Eli Scholar, details on that are forthcoming.

LibraryIT maintains a group presence on Yammer, as well as being represented by individual staff Yammer accounts. Being that Yammer is used primarily by central Yale ITS staff, this venue of communication may involve more sporadic and more technically-oriented notes.

Shorter, more news-oriented content will be posted to LibraryIT’s new Twitter account. Announcements about conferences, talks, as well as shortened key updates from the main blog, will be posted here. Yale LibraryIT will also engage with the wider Yale community and peer institutions on Twitter.

The LibraryIT home page is still the central place where project descriptions, points of contact, and other services are still listed. In the coming months, the blog will be embedded into the LIT home page so staff can easily view news items at a glance.

  • Talking TO LibraryIT

The list above details the new ways we will be communicating outwardly to staff and the wider Yale community. You can still communicate with us in all the usual ways: email libraryit@yale.edu if you have a question, concern or request but aren’t sure who to contact. Check the staff directory if you need clarification. You can Tweet at us, tag us on Yammer, or comment on our blog, as well.

  • Additional channels (project specific):

Quicksearch beta Project blog

Project Hydra at Yale blog

 

Yale ITS to hold Tech Summit this month, Library IT to present

Jenn Nolte

Join us for the inaugural Yale Technology Summit, a day-long program of conversations with Yale faculty, students, and staff working with innovative and cutting-edge technologies. The event, coordinated by Yale Information Technology Services, is free and open to all members of the Yale community.

Library and Library IT presentations at this event include:

  • Library Development for Digital Repositories: What is this Hydra Fedora stuff?
    In response to a fragmented digital collections environment developed over many years using many systems, the Yale Library has launched a project to unify digital collections within a single open source software framework using Hydra/Fedora. Michael Dula, the Library CTO, will talk about the decision to go open source with Hydra and Fedora as the underlying technologies. Topics will include Yale’s contributions to the open source Hydra community, a demonstration of initial projects, and future development plans and possibilities. 
  • Quicksearch: Universal Search at the University Library
    The Library offers several search interfaces: Orbis and MORRIS search the Library and Law Library catalogs, Articles+ for articles, journals and newspapers, and several digitized collection searches. The many search interfaces present a challenge to our patrons, who have to select the correct search depending on the material they need. The Library will combine several of these search interfaces into one unified ‘Quicksearch’, which over time will become a comprehensive search interface for the majority of Library resources. The Quicksearch poster session will highlight progress on the project so far. We will also provide laptops so Summit Participants can try the new search for themselves.

  • Humanities Data Mining in the Library
    In response to increased scholarly demand, Yale University Library is helping humanists make sense of large amounts of digital data. In this presentation, we will highlight recent projects based on Yale-digitized data, data from large commercial vendors, and data from the Library of Congress. We’ll address 1) working with digitized collections that are subject to license & copyright, 2) thinking about both explicit metadata and latent structure in large digital collections, and 3) moving beyond text to consider machine vision and computational image analysis.

  • Preservation and Access Challenges of Born-Digital Materials
    We will provide an introduction to the scope of born-digital materials at Sterling Memorial Library and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and in particular will discuss the innovative ways staff at the Yale libraries are collaborating with colleagues on different initiatives, including a digital forensics lab devoted to the capture of born-digital materials, an emulation service that can provide online access to vintage computing environments via a web browser, and a vision for digital preservation to ensure that collection materials we capture today will remain usable in the future.

Watch the conversation on #YaleTechSummit2014 on Twitter!

via 2014 Tech Summit | Yale ITS

Yale Library Technology Roadmap: Where are We, and Where are We Going?

Jenn Nolte

Yale Library Technology Roadmap: Where are We, and Where are We Going?

Thursday, November 6, 2:00pm

SML International Room

Michael Dula, the Yale Library’s Chief Technology Officer, will summarize major Library IT activities from the past year, talk about projects being launched in the current fiscal year, and provide a roadmap of anticipated and potential technology projects for the next two to three years. There will be time for questions about past and current projects, but this should also be an opportunity for an interesting dialogue about future paths for library technology.

This event is sponsored by SCOPA and is free and open to all.

via Yale University Library News: Yale Library Technology Roadmap: Where are We, and Where are We Going? Archives.