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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