Report from Head of IS 06/04/2009

3.1 Library restructure: We interviewed on the 1st April for the E-Library Infrastructure Manager. The software developer post has closed and we will be short listing after Easter, good response. Panel will be JMC, LB and Dave Cupit from ITS. We will then be looking at the Grade 4 posts; we will be looking at the displaced staff initially to fill new posts.

3.2 HERA: Negotiations continuing.

3.3 Learning Commons: The Learning Commons Away Day in March or the technical meeting did not take place. No further news to report.

3.4 Talis Prism 3: Project team has met with the Talis Consultant and it has been agreed that Kevin will be working up the design, based on the design concept that Talis came up with.

3.5 Talis/ Finance integration: We have now got approval from Margaret Laithwaite to go ahead with integrating purchase invoices. Project team has been set up with reps from Library, ITS and Finance. Timescale is to aim for end August but there are dependencies.

3.6 Talis Executive briefing:

• CEO from Talis, Dave Errington gave a presentation on future Talis developments.
• Talis now concentrating on public facing interface and not back office functions so they will not be developing an ERM.
• Met with Talis Aspire project manager, it is not realistic for us to migrate all of our reading lists to Aspire but we will be taking a phased approach.

3.7 Teaching and Learning bid: We got a total of 40K for the T and L bid, some on IT equipment, some for experimental furniture for the refurbishment. We also got an additional 5K for IT equipment for disability support. Gavin has been putting a priority list together.

3.8 JISC bids: We are looking at a number of possible JISC bids at the moment, with NaCTEM, Terri Attwood’s Utopia software and also talking to MIMAS.

3.9 GF refurbishment: 

• At the staff meeting CCS announced noisiest work will be 12th June to 17th August.
• Staff in admin B will be relocated for the duration of the move. KW and CCS are identifying a suitable location.
• IT Services desk will be relocating probably to Blue 3. 
• Laptop rental service will operate remotely and will store laptops in the safe during this period.
• Still waiting for confirmation about the cluster

3. 10 IT LT: 

Paul Harness’s email options paper was approved and an external project manager Philip Goldsmith has been appointed to manage the migration. He has worked on other major projects and has just left Barclays. • Portfolio of IS projects, when complete I will circulate to the team

3.11 IT Services: A naming competition for Right Answers was held and it will be called KnowIT.

3.12 PDR: Staff need to sign up for the training sessions.

3.13 Arcadia: This is ongoing and we are still happy to take expressions of interest. Also Stef Hundsberger has been accepted to start in April doing a project on Second Life with language teaching.

3.14 Future Leaders programme:

• LB did first module of this last week.
• LB will be using the architectural review as the basis for the project for the Future Leaders programme.
• LB took a paper to LT last week to approve the TOR and outline project plan and objectives.
• Next stage is to assign a consultant and assemble project team.
• Will be budget constraints on the review

Digitisation/E-resources R&D Update

Luna server and its collections

Support is ongoing for Deansgate projects and also work towards implementation of the new LUNA system. Manuscripts are being added steadily to the medieval collection. Having investigated the work involved, Genizah staff have decided to put their record enhancement sub-project on hold until they see how much time is available at the end of the main project.

Pamphlets

Christine Chappelle and I attended the project launch in Liverpool. This was the usual mini-conference with reception afterwards. Some interesting views on the value of the digitised pamphlet collection and ways in which it will contribute to research and teaching on 19th century social topics. Michael Spinella from JSTOR was very enthusiastic about their expansion into new types of content. The project has digitised over 1million pages. Our pamphlets are due for return on May 13th. Although many of them have been away since last September BOPCRIS have been providing pdf copies in response to store requests from prospective users.

IMP Conferences Scanning

Planning proceeding. MBS/IMP have agreed in principle to provide funding for the scanning.   Quotes received and being considered.

Scanning Equipment

Copibook scanner has been moved to the old bindery office where it is less cramped and we have improved ancillary equipment. Training programme in progress. Public scanners about to be available on 3 Blue 1 cluster machines – coincidentally at the same time as scanning via photocopiers is made available. Scanning will be free of charge to users.

Storage Infrastructure

The ITS Storage Infrastructure Group which I attend has been considering storage requirements around the University, investigating the best balance between devolved and central storage provision and backup. It has now moved forwards to look at the available storage technologies and solutions with vendors invited to give presentations. It is interesting to see the parallels between our storage needs, for example for archiving of large image files, with data archiving requirements elsewhere in the University. General clamour for more p: drive space.

Digital Curation

I attended a meeting in the School of Social Sciences in the National Centre for eSocial Science where a representative from the Digital Curation Centre was talking about their Lifecycle model for digital data curation. Particular relevance here was not just the subject matter but that the staff attending from NCeSS considered that the whole area of data curation, ie how research data is documented, archived, preserved and possibly re-purposed, was one in which the Library should be taking a lead in the University. Probably a topic for the Digital Preservation group which Phil is chairing to take forward.

Sustainability

One of the principal problems of digitisation projects is sustainability: particularly where institutions want to provide open access to the output from a digitisation project, a way needs to be found of coping with service maintenance costs once the project funding stops. I attended a workshop run jointly by Ithaka and the JISC Strategic Content Alliance which considered and discussed case studies of projects using different approaches to sustainability. The overriding theme was the importance of partnerships of various types, for example the JSTOR partnership in the Pamphlets project or the Oxford “Electronic Enlightenment” being marketed commercially via OUP,  in producing a model for sustainability.  However, it became obvious that many unsolved issues still remain and JISC’s desire to produce a “roadmap for sustainability” is still some way off.

E-Resources

As I now no longer have E-resources R&D in my job title this is probably my last report on these topics. Full handover awaits the return of Olivia and the arrival of the new e-resources team members.

SFX

Peter Jervis is doing sterling work with SFX knowledgebase updates. Statistics files have been sent to Ex Libris for use in their BX project. We await trial access to the product.

Webfeat

Work is in progress to expand the portal search to tailor the set of resources searched to the user’s faculty.  Mostly the SearchIt service runs without major problems but there have recently been some issues related to database vendors being changed.  For example where SilverPlatter resources were transferred to the OvidSP interface the corresponding Webfeat translators were not available or did not work as they should. Problems now being addressed by Webfeat.

Thin Client Server

Server has been patched and hotfixes loaded but there are still problems with many of the applications. The underlying cause is being investigated by David Hughes from ITS but is proving difficult to track down.  Our version of Citrix is becoming unsupported at the end of 2009 so we are working towards de-commissioning the service by then.  Applications will be assessed individually by Research & Learning Support staff and then moved to alternative access methods (stand-alone or web) or retired.  Scifinder client access via clusters, currently available only to EPS users, is being extended to MHS and FLS members.  Similar access for library staff can be enabled on DT08 machines.

IT Support Update

 1.       Virtual Service Desk

A new remote access tool is now in use and has already been useful for resolving incidents both here in main library and site libraries.

 

2.       AV support

The new procedure is now in place.  Several requests have been received for using portable and projector for meetings/interviews.  Some of the equipment has arrived from the L&T bid.  Andy has started to write documentation and will be arranging demonstrations of the new equipment.

 

3.       Ground floor Refurbishment

Initial prep work for office moves is underway.  This is still at the early stages.  DSU new home will be the Tyson room and a request for networking and electrical work has been made.

 

4.       Management Team Update

We had a presentation from collection care and their benchmarking standards and the JRUL disaster recovery plan.   Phil Butler also came and gave an update on progress on the repository project and a demo of the web site.

 

5.       Desktop 08

Alison is continuing to work on the JRUL specific applications.

 

6.       Store

Our store room has now been tidied and is a more efficient room. Racks are labeled and there is a place for most things.  A polite notice has been placed on the corridor asking people not to leave items there. There is a goods receiving area which is now full of the 53 PCs which arrived this week.

 

7.       Knowledgebase

An initial list has been forwarded to the project team and work continues on populating this and identifying authors to update or write the content.  A demo of the management system is being held  3^rd April and Allison and Andy are accessing it  from their desktop.

 

 

Electronic Resources 01.04.09

Staffing

Olivia will be returning from maternity leave on 16th April and, for the first six months, will be working on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Siobhan, who has provided maternity cover during Olivia’s absence, finishes on April 15th. Despite being unable to receive any training from Olivia, Siobhan has done an excellent job in electronic resources delivery – quickly becoming familiar with a number of different systems and providing users with effective support by telephone, e-mail and in person. Recently she has spent much of her time updating SFX.

From the 1st April I am no longer the Faculty Librarian for Life Sciences. I have had a preliminary meeting with Helen McEvoy, the new Faculty Team Manager for the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and the Faculty of Life Sciences, to discuss the hand-over of my responsibilities.

The UK Access Management Federation

The change from Athens to Shibboleth is ongoing. Last summer a lot of time was spent creating, testing and putting in place links which would allow us to use University central usernames and passwords to access Athens authenticated services through the gateway system. This was so that new students did not have to be routinely issued with Athens accounts which would cease to work later in their courses.

More services have joined the UK Access Management Federation and it is hoped that it will not be necessary to continue to subscribe to Athens in the future. To this end links using Shibboleth have been created, tested and implemented on our database and e-journal pages. This has necessitated many changes to database and e-book pages on the CMS and to electronic journal access information. We are working with a number of services providers (including Proquest, Cambridge University Press, LNB, StatRef and Info4Education) to resolve problems with Shibboleth authentication.

Pete Birkinshaw of IT Services is creating a proxy service which can be used to provide remote access to services which have not yet implemented Shibboleth.

Enquiries

Electronic resources enquiries dealt with by Siobhan and Nigel:

January 435

February 375

March (to Friday 27th) 284

Changes to resources

Electronic resources lists, links and descriptions continue to be amended to reflect current subscriptions. Recent and forthcoming changes include the following.

Changes to journal packages

Anthrosource, Bepress, Institute of Physics, Oxford University Press, Persee, ScienceDirect and SwetsWise

Online only titles

Serials have forwarded a list of about fifty (mainly foreign language) journal titles which are no longer provided in print. All the titles need to be checked against the AtoZ list of e-journals. If they are not listed it will be necessary to identify the publisher and see if access has been enabled and, if so, to which volumes / time period. If we do not have access we will need to contact Harrassowitz to ask that they contact the publisher to enable access or provide the necessary details to allow us to do so. The supplier database, SFX and the catalogue will need to be updated accordingly and it will be necessary to investigate methods of providing off-campus access.

Music databases

In the past we have had access to the following music databases through the Biblioline service provided by NISC. In future we will have access to these databases through EBSCO. We have had dual access until the 4th April. One advantage is that we will now have off-campus access via Shibboleth authentication. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature RIPM: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals RISM Series A/II: Music Manuscripts after 1600 Index to Printed Music

PIRA

We are hoping to subscribe to PIRA (Paper, Printing and Packaging Database) through CSA rather than Dialog. This would have a number of advantages including IP access on campus, remote access using Shibboleth and the provision of access for more than two simultaneous users.

Ovid

More databases have moved from the SilverPlatter platform to OvidSP. The following databases are still available on SilverPlatter:

RPS e-PIC (Electronic Pharmacy Information Coverage). This database will not be updated after the end of March but should remain available until the SilverPlatter platform is finally withdrawn in June.

Humanties Index. This database is now available on OvidSP and should have been removed from SilverPlatter.

ATLA Religion + ATLAS Database and Social Science Index Database. The future of these services is as yet unknown.