Report from Head of IS

 3.1 Personnel changes: Welcome to Valerie Callow who is a new Support Analyst from the ITSD Shared Service Desk team who is working with us for a month to familiarize herself with our support requirements before going on the VSD.

3.2 Library restructure is progressing well. Most of the IS aspirational interviews have now taken place. The Leadership Team is intending to confirm posts on a grade by grade basis. New roles will be advertised when the aspirational interviews have been completed for that grade.

3.3 HERA: only news is that UCU and management will be meeting with ACAS on 6^th February to try and take negotiations forward.

3.4 Business case went to Finance Operations Group to integrate Talis and Oracle Financials. This was approved.

3.5Learning Commons: LB chaired a brainstorming session of the Learning and Technology sub group of the Learning Commons Project Committee, the output of which was a paper which went to the LC architects.

3.6 Staff portal – myself, Jan, Sandra and Barry met with Allan Copley and Dave Cupit to talk about which services we could make available through the portal. We discussed Talis services, repository submission, online course bookings, webfeat, document supply, recommending a book etc

3.7 e-payments – this service has now been launched and fully operational

3.8 We have an ebook reader on trial until the end of February. Stella’s team will be experimenting with this

3.9 Talis design team have sent us some new designs for the new version of Prism which L T will be discussing on Wednesday 28th January. After that we will have our data loaded and then we can start to customise it and integrate with our other services.

3.10 ITLT: 

• Looking at various options for a replacement email service.
• VSD – resourcing reviewed, decided to stick with same resource model for the Faculties and the central resource that we contribute to is still being reviewed. Sinead Renold has been appointed on a 6 month basis as Service Support Manager and 2 new support analysts have been recruited.
• Desktop 08 – commitment from IT, LT to move to Desktop 08 for staff as soon as we are all confident that it works and student version is stable.
• IT Security Implementation Group has been established which will be implementing a number of security policies.

3.11 L B is going to be doing the Future Leaders Programme which is run by the Leadership Foundation, starting in March. She will have to do a project which has to be significant and is going to be the full review of systems which will be starting in April. Are a few residential sessions so wanted to make you aware of that.

Library Systems 27/01/2009

1. Talis. Intermittent problems with access to My  Account in OPAC  – being investigated by Talis.  No obvious cause of problems identified yet.

 

Prism – Debbie and I attended Prism 3 day last week. Useful to see the range of options available. We have been sent some preliminary trial designs for the Manchester version of OPAC and have the first project meeting scheduled for Feb 12^th.

 

Talis List version 3 (to be renamed Talis Aspire) There is a workshop about conversion and upgrade issues in Birmingham on March 4^th – Barry White and Ian Fishwick attending.

 

The Library Talis group now meets monthly, and has offered to host the next Northern region Talis User Group meeting.

 

Decisions – I have been trying to set aside some time to get more familiar with the system but so far a lot of pressure from other work.

 

 

2. Self service. Machines in Joule and Precinct have been converted to handle discharge as well as issue and appear to be working well. The Joule machine has had a timeout setting fixed which means it stays running much more reliably  when usage is low eg weekends.

 

Machine in Stopford being set up today.

 

Discharge machine in SLC had a fault last week and was out of order for most of a day. This highlights the fact that it is a single point of failure and a second machine would be desirable, both to maintain up time and to ease the pressure at busy times.

 

Have been doing some work with SLC on using the RFID scanner for automated shelf checking for missing books and hope to make this a daily routine soon – plagued by a number of technical problems.

 

 

3. Sentry. Our Sentry database and software are moving to a new ‘virtual’ server in Kilburn – with the work scheduled for next week. Have arranged for John Catchpole from SB to attend here to supervise the data transfer once the server is ready for use, and then to install a software upgrade to Sentry Isis which we are beta testing. will probably install the new software in Joule initially and then all sites.

 

The Sentry server in Systems office also two other databases held on it – the PC inventory and a subject index file used by re-cataloguing projects for storing updated Dewey numbers. Need to decide a new location for these before that PC can be decommissioned. They could move to IT data centres like Sentry but As a separate project.

 

Room bookings – Planning to move to a Sentry Isis based system with automated access to the rooms  via scanners on the doors. There will be  a meeting on 19^th Feb to finalise planning for this.

 

 

4. E Payments. Two cash machines are installed  in the Main  Library along with PCs which run the Windows payment screen. The system is working well and £701 has been taken since the start of January this year.  Counter supervisors have been given access to the system for refunds where necessary.

 

We are now working on facilities for external members to have payment and printing facilities.

Institutional Repository Report 27/01/09

October 2008 through to January 2009 has been mainly a period of defining and implementing technical details around institutional repository hardware and software. Significant work has been done on the first phase of ETD trials. In November, Tom Grahame joined the Implementation Team on a one year position as the Team’s client-side technologies software developer. In January, Will Standring was appointed on a 3 month contract to help with data migration tasks.

Work during October 2008 to January 2009 has focused on the following areas,

a. Project management/governance

i. The ETD Working Group has met twice on 13th November and 8th January. Based on issues raised during the first phase of ETD trials (see bullet c below), the Working Group have agreed for us to proceed to the next phase of work with the following caveats. The Working Group agreed to delay the ‘launch window’ for PhD theses (provisionally set to April 09) to July 2009. This was done to give: Faculties and Schools more time to implement any necessary local changes e.g. update PGR handbooks; Faculties and Schools more time to communicate with students guidance around electronic submission; the IR Project, working with administrators, more time to address the significant number of issues raised; the IR Project an opportunity to FULLY pilot the submission process with real-world examples. Final confirmation of the launch window will occur in early April. During February and March the IR Project will address all issues. From April to July the IR Project will pilot real-world ETD submissions. Some Schools have questioned the value of adopting electronic submission of Masters Dissertations. As a result the ETD Working Group agreed to adopt an ‘opt-out’ option.

ii. The Technical Advisory Group has met once on 18th December.

iii. Professor Shôn Lewis has been nominated to replace Ivan Leudar in representing MHS on the Steering Group.

b. Communication and advocacy

i. A competition to name the IR was carried out in December. Around 500 individuals were asked to vote for one of five suggested names and contribute creative alternatives. Seventy individuals voted and many of these suggested alternative names. The most voted for name was “Manchester eScholar”. The Library Leadership Team approved this name.

ii. EM and PB have drawn up plans for a launch event. The Library Leadership Team have agreed this will take the form of a one day symposium on ‘scholarly communication’ followed by, at the end of the day, a reception where we will officially launch IR services. The event will occur on 23rd April 2009 at Manchester Conference Centre. A message announcing the event has been sent out in eUpdate and is posted on StaffNet. This will be followed by a message in the February issue of UniLife. We are preparing a package of promotional materials to send to key stakeholders in February. We are working up a programme of speakers and contacting possible sponsors for the event e.g. Research Information Network, Elsevier.

iii. PB and CG gave an update of the Project to the University Research Group. Simon Gaskell noted that launch of IR services should occur not later than the first quarter of 2009.

iv. PB attended the MHS Research Directors meeting on 10th November.

v. PB attended the School of Languages Research Committee on 8th December.

vi. PB has been invited to attend the MBS Research Committee on 28th January.

vii. PB attended the Research Information Network workshop entitled “”What does it cost and who pays? Scholarly communications globally and in the UK” on 11th December, the DPC/RSP/DCC/JISC workshop, “Tackling the Preservation Challenge: Practical Steps for Repository Managers” on 12th December and then JISC Information Environment and e-Research call for projects briefing day on 15th December.

viii. TG attended the UK and Ireland Fedora Users Group Meeting on 20th January.

ix. NG will attend the FedoraEU meeting at JISC dev8D on 13th February

c. Usability

i. During Nov, Dec and Jan, our usability work focused on capturing requirements and issues around submission of ETDs. We interviewed around 70 individuals from key stakeholder groups – students, supervisors, internal examiners, administrators (PGR and PGT) and librarians. Almost all individuals interviewed supported the University-wide adoption of electronic submission of theses. Some Schools expressed concerns over the benefits of electronic submission for Masters Dissertations. We logged around 70 issues in total. Although individual issues were minor, and each easily resolved, the high number of issues was unexpected.

d. Technical implementation

i. Hardware infrastructure has been procured and installed. This includes: dual-sited load-balanced and clustered Sun Solaris servers; dual-sited and replicated high performance storage for repository indexes; dual-sited and replicated cost-effective mass storage for repository metadata and full item records (~800Gb); virtualised operating system and oracle server software; virtual production, user acceptance and development servers.

ii. Mark Los (a Graduate Trainee), working one day a week has captured comprehensive metadata and full text for around 5,000 RAE2008 records ready for migration into the repository.

iii. In discussion with Faculty representatives we have drawn up provisional plans to migrate metadata from MHS, LS, EPS and HUM databases (~70,000 records). Work is on going to implement and demonstrate the integration of repository services with existing central (e.g. Portal) and faculty (e.g. intranets) services.

iv. We have defined a set of repository services that will constitute the core areas of functionality at launch. Significant work has been done towards implementing these services. Work is on going.

 

Electronic Resources Delivery 27.01.09

Replacement of Athens accounts by the use of University central usernames and passwords

Service links and access information continue to be modified as changes are made by publishers and service providers.  It is intended to remind all staff and students about the change from Athens authentication to the use of University central usernames and passwords.

Off-campus access

Two of the walk-in machines on Blue Ground (B51 and B2) and the computer at the Information Desk nearest to Reception have been set up so that they can be used to demonstrate off-campus access. An announcement about this has been posted on the Information Desk blog.

E-resources usage statistics

Usage statistics on the S drive continue to be updated. Statistics have been provided to Faculty Librarians and Academic Liaison Librarians when requested.

SCONUL statistics

Estimated statistics relating to e-resources and their usage were provided before Christmas for inclusion in the SCONUL return.

E-journals

Changes continue to be made to the e-journals lists reflecting changes in subscriptions for 2009.

Computer Support Update

1.       Welcome

I would like to welcome Val who started with us in January.  Val is on a secondment to us from IT Services and will also be working on the VSD and the PSD.

 

2.       Virtual Service Desk

The report on the VSD was presented to the Library MT who accepted the recommendations.  Work on identifying skills required by all analysts working on the VSD continues and is now at the stage of identifying the core set of skills and determining what training/development is required. A new reporting tool to query the remedy database is now available and developments for central reports are being identified so common report queries can be shared across service teams.  A knowledge cleansing project has been started to ensure that all information is valid and up to date so analysts can be confident that they have a useful database to access. 

 

3.       Additions to the Computer Support Team Functions

The Computer Support Team is now responsible for AV support, Teaching rooms, Walk in PCs and study rooms.  Andy has written an AV user guide for users of the rooms.  This will be uploaded onto the intranet. In future the guidelines for room booking will ask the requester to state if they wish to use the AV equipment, so we can provide support where appropriate. The support process is being finalised and information will be placed on the intranet.

 

4.       PC Upgrade programme

The schedule was drawn up and work has begun on the cycle to upgrade the old PCs.  In future the schedule will be put onto the intranet for all to see.  There have been additional PCs replaced prior to this as machines have failed which were not down to be replaced but were out of warranty. PCs are now available for replacing the OPACS.  This a 3 phase upgrade and is expected to be complete by 6^th February.

 

5.       NHS PC Support

This issue has been raised again and Helen McEvoy would like to move forward on this issue.

 

6.       Data Points and other network work

There has been some difficulty obtaining some work, apparently all job requests need to be submitted by a system in IT Services, which we were unaware of which Network Liaison Officers (NLO) in Faculties/Administration use.  Darren Hankinson suggested it would be useful if I took on this role as we had no direct representation.

 

7.       Copibook machine

We are working with Jenny on the requirements for the move of the copibook machine to the new location. There are additional requirements which can’t be met at the moment but temporary solutions have been found to assist the move.  

 

8.       Ground floor Refurbishment

As you all know the library was successful with this bid.  The actual work on site starts in June and there is a lot to be done in the mean time.  KV is representing Information Systems on the group.  The group is reviewing the initial requirements and fine tuning the plan.

 

9.       Upcoming Work

• Build of objects for D08
• Disability PCs – setting up new PCs and installation of software
• Information/documentation  –
• Designing the Computer Support pages and info for end users,
• Knowledge cleansing on the systems intranet (ties in with VSD project)
• Determining content for VSD knowledge base

 

10.   Training and Development Activities

Congratulations to Andy on passing the ITIL foundation exam

Karen attended a mobile learning workshop in Liverpool and  a course on using Discoverer for Remedy reporting

Alison and Val attended a seminar about an encryption product organised by Tony Arnold

 

Digitisation/IT Research and Development

1. Digitisation
Luna Insight has been migrated to a new server and upgraded in the process to the new Version 6.0.  Service name remains the same (enriqueta.man.ac.uk) so that existing client viewer installations do not need upgrading immediately.  Old server is still running under a new name and will be used for testing purposes.  The new viewer, LUNA, is currently being implemented.  If all goes according to plan this will replace both the current JVA client and simpler browser viewers as the preferred access method.  JVA client may still be required for specialist purposes as it includes additional facilities not included in LUNA.  We may also find that LUNA is not suitable for all collections.

Second batch of pamphlets is being prepared for sending to BOPCRIS  at the end of February for digitisation.  Work needs to be done quickly so thanks to Simon and Victoria from cataloguing for their help in meeting the deadline.  Pamphlets project is holding a launch event in Liverpool on March 20th.  Some searchable content should be available in JSTOR around this time.

Old bindery office has now been cleared so it should be possible to make progress with moving the scanner.

2. SFX
Knowledgebase updates have all been run up to date at last.  Processing of the updates is proceeding.  Thanks again to help from cataloguing.

3. RAE
Outputs have been returned to us and are currently being distributed back to their owners.

JMC.   23/01/2009

Institutional Repository Report 04/12/08

• Hardware to host the repository has been purchased and is in the process of being installed, it has been specified to handle 60000 pdfs which is enough storage for all of the identified migrated content and the projected requirements for the next 2 years.
• Electronic Thesis and Dissertation trials are well underway with approximately half complete. People being approached include Students, Supervisors, Internal Examiners, Faculty Post Graduate Trainers, Researchers and Administrators.  We also have names from the library and they are involved.
• Provisional Workflow for ETDs has been established.
• The team has a new starter, Software Developer Tom Grahame, and as such working practices have been adjusted to allocate work using an issue tracking system (JIRA) and share code using a versioning system (Subversion).
• Work on submission interfaces is on target to demonstrate within the month.

Library Systems Report 04/12/2008

1. Talis hardware replacement completed as scheduled. A few problem areas, notably Talis List didn’t have the right port open – took a long time to track down. Also telephone renewals didn’t get set up straight away.

 

The  JRUL group of Talis users has met twice and seems a useful group.

 

I attended Northern regional meeting of Talis User Group in Birmingham.

 

Prism 3 and TalisList – at least one of us will go to a Prism day in January, which will look at configuration, layout and design options etc. There will then be a timescale drawn up, with a view to completing the project by June 2009 ready for the next academic year.

 

 

2. Decisions system (Management Information) installed. Training course for staff next week. Our system is installed and running with user names being created now.

 

 

3. New self service machines running well. One of the issue machines will be converted to be a second discharge. The machine for Stopford has not been set up yet.

 

 

4. E-payments – two credit machines installed in library. Web interface for paying library files etc is completed and working. Delays with credit card payment system but should be launched next week. We will be given a PC image for PCs to run the payment interface only.

 

 

5. Sentry turnstile software – we will move from a PC in the systems office to a virtual server supported by IT services. Meeting with SB and Shaz from ITS next Thursday. The server can be dual sited in two buildings, although probably only one site to begin with. Also we will beta test the next release of the software, probably starting in new year.  Note that there are also two smaller databases on the same current machine (inventory and subject index). We need to decide whether to ask for these to be on the Sentry virtual server?

 

Study room bookings – meeting on Monday to consider new system.