Report for Library Database 26/06/2009

Not that the rest of the year has been quiet but the end of the teaching year brings a new peak in demands. Several of the Libraries use this time to take stock of their holdings, so I have spent a fair amount of time devoted to the production of shelflists for them.

However the highest demand on time has been the work involved with the re-classification of the Precinct Library, most of which has been done now, and the major re-classification at the Eddie Davis Library where they are moving from the London Classification of Business Studies classification to the Dewey classification.

I took the opportunity to re-write the scripts that were previously used to change Talis, produce labels etc, and have reduced the number of Fortran programs by two. Only about another 40 to go!

The coming month sees more stock moves as Des will be weeding Blue 3 and moving the stock to Store and no doubt planning for financial year roll-over will begin.

IT Research & Development Report 4/12/08

SciFinder

The new improved Web version of SciFinder is now available, and usage has been increasing  – in October (the last month we have full statistics for) there were 452 uses compared with 150 in September.

John Blunden Ellis has now become our SciFinder Key Contact. (Diana was the previous Key Contact)
Wireless Network

The wireless network seems to have been performing well since it was installed. The change of SSID from University to University of Manchester does not seem to have resulted in many problems.

Laptop usage in the Library seems to have increased greatly, particularly in those areas which have an adequate wireless signal. The plugin zone on Blue one seems to have eliminated the spaghetti of cables all over the floor.

Green 2 Study Rooms

Currently installing the PCs in the Study Rooms, though this is quite tricky as they tend to be fully booked from 10am to 8pm. We should have one side (Rooms 1-7) completed by the end of this week, and should be able to proceed more rapidly next week now that Jan has been replaced.

At the moment, the users can’t see the PCs, and they are still connecting their laptops to the screen, but we hope to connect up the PCs to the screen in rooms 1-7 next week, at which point the access to the screen for laptops will disappear.  We need IT Services to convert the network sockets from roaming to Library network before doing the switch.

We have been running a pilot project in room 1, where the network was changed a couple of weeks ago. When people have been having difficulty connecting laptops to the screen, we’ve put them on the installed PC, and they don’t seem to have had any problems.

4th Floor Teaching Suite

The Projector in the Teaching Suite is no longer projecting a satisfactory image, and a Saville engineer we called decided that repair was not economically viable. The projector is being replaced with a much inproved one, capable of coping with the requiremwents of high Definition Video. This will be installed next Monday (8th). We’ve have a temporary system using the old projector from User Education in the room until then.