Ex Libris news

Early October, ProQuest has announced that they’ve entered an agreement to acquire Ex Libris.  Among some of the products offered by Ex Libris, is Voyager, the library management system currently in use by YUL.  For more information about ProQuest’s acquisition of ExLibris, please visit: http://goo.gl/hJVlnM.

Through Ex Libris, there are several working groups and committees that endeavor to better serve their customers, such as organizing local and annual conferences, serving on committees or product working groups.  Recently, an opportunity to serve as Chair Elect of the Voyager (Joint Eluna-IgeLU) Product Working Group (VPWG), has been extended to Cindy Greenspun of Enterprise Systems & Services, LIT.  In this role, the Chair convenes monthly meetings with the VPWG members, coordinates and liaises with Ex Libris product management on development and enhancements of the Voyager product and communicates news or developments with Voyager users.  If you’d like more information about this group, feel free to reach out to Cindy at cindy.greenspun@yale.edu or visit: http://el-una.org/product-groups/voyager/voyager-product-group-leaders/

 

weak Diffie-Hellman key

In the past month or so, Library IT received several reports from users who have received an error message about a weak Diffie-Hellman key when attempting to get to various websites.  As a temporary solution at the time, it was suggested to use an alternate browser.   Bob Rice investigated this more closely and has implemented a fix so this error message shouldn’t surface for us again.

If you’re curious about what it is, a quick summary is the Diffie-Hellman key is a fairly basic tool used in cryptography based off of modular arithmetic.  It allows for the development of a secure key based on two weak keys supplied by either side of an exchange and is used to secure a variety of Internet services.  For those who are really interested in learning more about modern cryptography, feel free to view this informational video:  https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/modern-crypt/v/diffie-hellman-key-exchange-part-2.

For comments or questions, write to any of us in LIT, or to libraryit@yale.edu.

Library and Workday testing results

After months of careful planning and testing, the Workday transition is close to becoming a reality.  Even though not much has changed for the library, as one of the downstream users, the library played a role in the testing of the patron data extract process.  This is to ensure that all of the Human Resources data is carried through into the Voyager patron database correctly.  A team of approximately 15 Access Services staff members from Sterling, Divinity and the CSSSI devoted some time analyzing patron records before and after text patron extracts for comparison.  Between all of us, we analyzed a little over 400 patron accounts for accuracy.  Additionally, ‘mock accounts’ that were created by University ITS staff were also examined (ie, new hires, terminations, job changes, etc) and carried through a Voyager patron extract correctly.  All in all, with a strong team composed of Access Services staff, Library IT and University IT, we were able to confirm that the data flow will remain unaffected.  This change is scheduled to take place on July 1st.  For extra measure, the same team who participated in the testing will also check Voyager patron records for accuracy after the first scheduled patron extract when the Workday transition happens. For questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me at cindy.greenspun@yale.edu.

For more information about Workday, please visit: http://news.yale.edu/2015/06/08/workdayyale-launch-july-1.

To see the last post about this, please visit: https://campuspress.yale.edu/libraryitnews/2015/01/12/the-library-prepares-for-workday-testing-with-university-its/