Library IT held its first two weeks of LibGuides 2 training from June 9 until June 17. Eight classes were held in four locations and 40 staff members attended training. Training materials are available online at
http://guides.library.yale.edu/libguides2
Two more classes will be held in July:
Bass Library L06
Tuesday, July 14, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Thursday, July 16, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
To support front line/public services and troubleshooting staff after the debut of Quicksearch beta on the Library Front Door, Library IT has created an FAQ document, in case any problems are reported through these typical channels.
Additionally, Library IT has held five informational/demo sessions staff on Quicksearch beta to date, in both Bass and Hillhouse. We’ve gotten really great feedback from these sessions, and we encourage all staff to let us know if you have questions, comments, or other feedback on the Quicksearch beta project.
Many staff have found it useful to use Quicksearch beta as they do their daily work. Again, please be encouraged to click here and share your thoughts with the implementation team.
We are beginning to focus more now on information sessions targeted at different groups. Representatives from the Quicksearch beta implementation team will be visiting a Tech Services department meeting next month, and hope to do more information sessions for other departments and groups.
Look for more documentation, tips and other information on Quicksearch beta in the coming weeks!
Please email Kalee Sprague (kalee.sprague@yale.edu ) or Jenn Nolte (jennifer.nolte@yale.edu ) for questions about the info sessions, or to request a visit to your group or department.
Earlier last month, members of Yale Library IT as well as colleagues from around campus and from other institutions attended Hydra Camp at Yale.
The group Data Curation Experts held the week long training in the Bass Library Instruction room L01. The training wrapped up on Friday March 13th with an Advanced Blacklight Workshop.
Some members of Yale Library IT who attended share their reflections below:
Eric James
I’m working on Findit, Kissinger, and the future Sufia/Spotlight instances
Kalee Sprague
I work on two Hydra/Blacklight related projects: the Blacklight-based Quicksearch unified search project and the Findit Hydra/Blacklight project
Lakeisha Robinson
I’ve worked on three Hydra/Blacklight projects: Findit, Quicksearch and Kissinger.
Tracy MacMath
I work on the Findit Hydra/Blacklight (Kissinger) project, and will soon be working on the Blacklight-based Quicksearch unified search project.
Jenn Nolte
I do external (non-development) work on the Quicksearch beta project, which is powered by Blacklight.
Eric James
I don’t know if I can name 3 things, but one is I found it helpful how Mark Bussey shared his personal process working with Hydra.
Kalee Sprague
Three things I liked about HydraCamp include:
The introduction to how RDF will fit into the new Fedora4 environment was very useful, especially the examples Drew Myers from WGBH gave showing their work converting PBCore to RDF. This provided an early road map for our own conversion from XML based Fedroa3 to RDF based Fedora4.
Demos of some of the new Blacklight plugins gave me some interesting ideas for things that could be done in the future in both the Quicksearch and Findit interfaces, including a date slider and gallery view.
I really liked the connections that we made with our colleagues at other institutions that are doing similar implementations; it’s always easier to solve problems if you have good contacts at other institutions, and HydraCamp really strengthens those ties.
Lakeisha Robinson
Here are the things I liked most about HydraCamp:
Recommendations for easier upgrades.
Suggestions for tools to aid in efficient workflow practices.
Clarity on certain pieces of code.
Tracy MacMath
HydraCamp helped me better understand the Hydra stack and how each component interacts with the others.
It was also good to learn a little about databases in Hydra/Fedora, especially how they differ from the relational databases I’ve worked with in the past.
Finally, it was nice to see Hydra/Blacklight/Sufia implementations from other institutions and learn about the Hydra/Blacklight communities. These are great resources, especially since we’ll be upgrading soon.
Jenn Nolte
I did not attend the whole HydraCamp, just the Blacklight session on Friday. To go through the motions of setting up a virtual machine and getting a Blacklight project up and running was really helpful (and fun!). It isn’t the type of thing I get to work on often and it puts a larger context around the work I do to collaborate with my colleagues in LIT.
Lakeisha Robinson
In general, I did like the HydraCamp this year and I think it helped a lot.
Tracy MacMath
I found HydraCamp to be particularly valuable because I am new to Hydra (and digital repository development in general).
The IT Infrastructure & Client Services unit is working with the Endpoint Engineering group at Yale ITS to begin automatically deploying Office 2013 to select Library workstations this week.
Workstations in MSSA and at Beinecke will receive their upgrades on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings,respectively. Next Thursday November 6 , systems in Access Services will be upgraded and on Tuesday November 11, Acquisitions and Cataloging will receive the upgrade.
Over the next several weeks, we will deploy Office 2013 to additional departments and libraries. Detailed information will continue to be distributed via the YULIB mailing list.
Reon Keller has been conducting Office 2013 overview sessions throughout the summer and into the fall to prepare the YUL community for this upgrade. Reon is holding another session in the Bass classroom on Thursday October 30 at 10 am. You are encouraged to attend if you have not done so. Seating is limited so please register here:
https://bmsweb.med.yale.edu/tms/tms_enrollments.offerings?p_crs_id=5440
Additionally, you can further prepare for the upgrade by viewing the lynda.com online videos available to the Yale community by visiting http://www.yale.edu/lynda and watching Office 2013 New Features. We also encourage you to check out the Office 2013 Quick Start Guides.