Library Service Overview Updates

Library IT began an initiative last year in 2016 to implement a standard set of documentation for library services establishing expectations and documenting the resources required to provide ongoing operational support. Borrowing elements from service-level agreements, these overviews are internal agreements between the service owner and the library units that support the service, all of whom have an interest in service success and sustainability. These are living documents that will change as the nature of the service evolves.

To date the following services now have approved overviews:

Library IT is working with various stakeholders, user groups, and committees to move forward overviews for Avalon, GFA LAS, FindIt, Emulation as a Service, as well as the MSSA payment gateway application. For existing services, events such as an upgrade, migration, or enhancement will trigger the creation of a new overview should one not already exist. The creation of an overview is now included as a step in the implementation and deployment of new Library IT supported services.

Should you have any questions about these documents or the process Library IT has established, please do not hesitate to reach out to Ray Frohlich at raymond.frohlich@yale.edu for more information.

Library Service Overviews

Library IT began an initiative in early 2016 to implement a standard set of documentation for library services that establish expectations and the resources required to provide ongoing operational support. Borrowing similarities from service-level agreements, these overviews are internal agreements between the service owner and the library units that support the service, all of whom have an interest in service success and sustainability. These are living documents that will change as the nature of the service evolves.

To date the following services now have approved overviews:

Library IT is working with various stakeholders, user groups, and committees to move forward overviews for Ares, Avalon, FindIt, ILLiad, and other key services. For existing services, events such as an upgrade, migration, or enhancement will trigger the creation of a new overview should one not already exist. The creation of an overview is now included as a step in the implementation and deployment of new library supported services.

Should you have any questions about these documents or the process Library IT has established, please do not hesitate to reach out to Ray Frohlich for more information.

HathiTrust Enhanced Access for Yale Users with Print Disabilities

Students with print disabilities now have enhanced access to an additional selection of digitized books through the HathiTrust. Yale University Library in partnership with the Resource Office on Disabilities are both pleased to announce the availability of this new service. Through its partnership with HathiTrust, Yale has access to millions of items through the HathiTrust Digital Library, however materials that are in-copyright or restricted are not available to our community by default.  Access to this restricted content has been made available through a recent legal ruling.  Instructions and further details about the service can be found here – http://web.library.yale.edu/hathitrust-access-yale-users-print-disabilities.
Thanks to Judy York, Carolyn Barrett, Anthony Kulikowski, and Rob Rocke from the Resource Office on Disabilities, and to John Gallagher, Katie Bauer, Cindy Greenspun, and Steve Wieda from the Yale University Library.

Library IT Tech Talk, May 28, 11-12 in CSSSI Classroom

Yale Library IT invites you to our May Tech Talk Lightning Round hosted by CSSSI. We will give a brief five-minute update on the topics below, followed by a ten-minute question and answer period. These talks are meant to be an informal way for IT staff to share information about initiatives and projects, while giving library staff the majority of the time for their questions and feedback. You are free to ask about any aspect of the initiative or project and not just what we elect to highlight.

 

The details:

Tech Talk Lightning Round

When: May 28, 11:00am to 12:00pm

Where: CSSSI Classroom

 

Agenda:

CrashPlan, George Ouellette

To provide a more cost effective and stable workstation backup service, Yale is migrating from TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) to Code42’s CrashPlan. We will discuss where we are in the conversion process and our next steps to ensure that everyone’s data is protected.

 

Quicksearch Performance Tuning Techniques and Insights, Robert Rice

A brief overview of the tools and techniques used to optimize performance of the Quicksearch, the Library discovery service, which is based on Blacklight and Apache Solr.

 

Auditing Fedora 4, Eric James

An essential component of a repository is an audit service to log the events related to repository activity. There is ongoing work now to develop this feature. This involves setting up a model for capturing external events and tracking internal events by triggering the creation of audit objects based on reusable linked data namespaces, and leveraging the ability to take these object’s metadata and persist them in an external triplestore.

 

CSSSI StatLab Overview, Themba Flowers

An introduction to the StatLab and associated services provided to the research and teaching community at Yale.

 

Thanks very much to the staff at CSSSI for hosting this upcoming Tech Talk. We look forward to seeing you next week!

Library IT and LSF Complete GFA LAS Overhaul

Since the inception of the Library Shelving Facility (LSF), staff rely on GFA‘s Library Archival System (LAS) for inventory and storage management of both local and in transit items. Staff from Library IT and the LSF, in conjunction with GFA, have successfully completed both an upgrade and migration of the LAS application. Thanks to Mike DiMassa, Gary Burcheski, and staff at LSF for their participation in the planning and testing phases of the project.

For the original project announcement see here.

Update: Service Disruption Notification

Library IT trialled a fully automated disruption notification service from December 2014 through February 2015. Shortly thereafter we asked staff to participate in a short survey to evaluate the trial and found that the majority of survey respondents indicated a desire to see the service continue as an opt-in offering.

For those that provided feedback we thank you very much for your participation and helpful comments. We are pleased to announce that the disruption notification opt-in service is now available to all. Please take a moment and join the new opt-in mailing list at the following address: http://web.library.yale.edu/lit/email-alerts

If you are a supervisor or department head interested in registering your entire group, or you would like to recommend the monitoring of other public services, please coordinate with Cindy Greenspun (cindy.greenspun@yale.edu) in Library IT.  Please route all other questions or comments to Ray Frohlich (raymond.frohlich@yale.edu).

Feedback Requested – Service Disruption Notification System

Over the last three months Library IT has piloted a service disruption notification system which has provided the YULIB list with fully automated disruption and restoration notification of critical public services.  We would like to solicit feedback regarding the service to better gauge if it has been of value to the community.

Please take a minute and provide us with your feedback by completing this short survey by the close of business on Friday, March 6th.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me.  For more information about the trial and the services currently monitored see here.  For information about the underlying solution see here.

 

Library IT and LSF Plan for GFA LAS Overhaul

Since the inception of the Library Shelving Facility (LSF), staff have relied on GFA‘s Library Archival System (LAS) for inventory and storage management of both local and in transit items. A planned upgrade and migration of LAS has been tentatively set for the weekend of February 28th, 2015. The project goals are to upgrade the LAS application and underlying database, as well as migrate the service to ITS infrastructure for hosting. Over the next several weeks staff from both the LSF and the Enterprise Systems and Services group in Library IT will validate and test the new environment to ensure a minimally disruptive transition.

Library Participates in UMBRA: Search African American History

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, with technical assistance and support from Library IT, will participate in the UMBRA: Search African American History project hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries. Metadata and digitized content from the Yale Collection of American Literature that documents African American history and culture have been made available for aggregation. In partnership with Penumbra Theatre Company, the Givens Collection of African American Literature and Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries is developing a shareable online search tool that brings together archival content documenting over 400 years of African American cultural history from across the country, with a focus on African American theater and performing arts.

Yale University is one of many organizations committed to this project which includes over 50 theaters across the country, as well as the Digital Public Library of America, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of African American History and Culture, New York Public Library Schomburg Research Center and Library for the Performing Arts, Columbia University, Tulane University, Dance Heritage Coalition, Theatre Communications Group, and Theatre Library Association, among others.

For further information please contact Melissa Barton and Nancy Kuhl, curators of the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Service Disruption Notification System Trial

I am pleased to announce that Library IT will soon begin rolling out a new solution for the Library community that will provide fully automated service disruption and restoration notification of critical public services. Over the last several weeks Library IT has been investigating potential options in order to provide consistent and timely information regarding the availability of systems to all staff. We have selected a solution that meets our criteria and will run a public trial of the service beginning now through February 2015. Over the next several days the service will be configured to alert all staff when unanticipated outages occur. Details regarding the notification solution are as follows.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  Additional information about the underlying solution selected can be found here.

What services will be monitored?

During this initial rollout, services listed on the Library homepage will be included. These services will be monitored 24*7. The preliminary list is below and includes services managed by Library IT, Yale ITS, other Yale departments, and vendors.

  • Aeon (BRBL, MSSA, and the routing layer)
  • Ares
  • Articles+
  • Ask Yale Library
  • BorrowDirect
  • Digital Collections (ContentDM)
  • EliScholar
  • FindIt
  • ILLiad
  • MORRIS – Yale Law Library Catalog
  • OCLC WorldCat
  • Open URL Resolver (360Link)
  • ORBIS – Yale University Library Catalog
  • Overdrive
  • Yale Finding Aid Database (YFAD)
  • Yale Library Subject Guides (LibGuides)
  • Yale Study Spaces Scheduling
  • Yale University Library Website

Who will be contacted?

All staff included on the YULIB mailing list.

 

When will the Library have an opportunity to comment on the service?

This is a trial and your input is greatly desired. Library IT will send around a survey to staff to evaluate your impressions of the service in February/March 2015. If staff find it helpful, we will look to expand the services monitored. If staff find it to be burdensome, we may opt to discontinue use going forward.

 

Will there be an opportunity to expand use to include additional services?

During this initial trial phase, other than the services listed above, no additional services will be added. If the alerting service is of value and staff indicate a desire to see use continued, we will reach out to the broader community to expand use.

 

Is there a place to view real-time status availability of these systems?

Yes, please visit http://status.library.yale.edu for current status of all the systems listed above.  The status site is hosted outside of Yale, so it should be available even if a major on-campus outage occurs.
What will a typical message look like?

Below is an example of a typical alert message when a system becomes unavailable.

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[This is a message from the Library IT automated monitoring service.]

Dear Colleagues,

ORBIS, the Yale University Library Catalog, is currently experiencing a service disruption. The incident occurred within the last fifteen minutes and persists for public users of the service. 

Library IT staff have already been alerted and we are addressing the issue. Watch for another email from our automated monitoring service when ORBIS is restored. Until then, Library IT staff will also provide status updates to this list as necessary. You can also monitor status availability in real time here:

http://status.library.yale.edu

Thank you for your patience. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know.

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