MHC Library Blog Traffic: A Real Head Scratcher

Yes, I am still here. I have been very engaged in a number of library projects lately. One that I have taken great pride in is our revised APA guides. It seems that the guides have struck a chord for a great many people, but not from a group that I would have expected.

Interestingly enough (to me), there seems to be stronger interest from our American friends in the guides. The APA guides have proven to be a great draw to the MHC Library Services blog. The pie chart that accompanies this entry is a snapshot of Web traffic to the library blog. American interest can swing between 40 and 60 percent, but it almost always matches or exceeds interest from within the college. This trend started the day I posted information on our updated APA guides. To me, it is both disappointing (that our own college population seems less interested in our product) and gratifying (that we have reached a broader international audience) at the same time.

Relais Post-to-Web Nearing Fruition

After a great deal of effort we might have wrestled the beast known as Relais Post-to-Web down. After some minor set backs, our testing was finally successful yesterday. We can now proudly send our ILL team to Calgary for the Relais workshop on Monday, June 15th with some bragging rights as the first college in Canada to implement this system. I believe this progress document delivery system is a feather in our cap - especially for being such a smaller college.

What am I talking about? What is Relais Post-to-Web? Essentially it is a paper free document deliver system for patrons that use the ILL service to acquire journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. When a patron requests an article, (a) we order it, (b) the lending institution transmits a copy of it, (c) we receive and send a notice to the patron that contains a link to download the article, and (d) the patron receives the notice, at which time they can choose to download or print the desired article. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.

The most difficult part (well maybe not "the most" difficult part) was coordinating schedules between Relais support, ILL staff, and myself - due to staggered shifts here, and time zone differences between Medicine Hat and Ottawa. After several WebEx sessions and phone calls with Relais Support, we were able to hammer our the major kinks. The next step, before opening it up completely to our patrons, is to recruit some guinea pigs to help us test the process in a real-world context.

Next issue: Millennium printing to the new Xerox print centre. Works for somethings, but not others. Argh!

General Update - 2008 Projects

Well, I did finish cleaning-up the database pages and everything seems to be functioning properly. The projects that I am working to now include:

• modifying/up-dating PowerPoint shows for various presentations
• preparing handouts for the history and political science classes that I work with
• redesign the layout of the library's website - primarily integrating the Brooks Campus site into the existing Vera Bracken library site
• preparing for an assortment of instructional classes

That should be enough to keep me busy for a bit. Well, it is time to get busy.

Update & AAQ

It has been an extremely hectic few weeks, hence the rarity of my posts. For now, you will have to be content with knowing that I am simply posting my latest AAQ and will be writing my report for the Campus Card Frontier conference that I recently attended. More about everything later.

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Hello and thank you for using the Ask A Question service.

You are inquiring about how to make sure that students, in their learning groups and in the classroom environment, can reach an academic goal.

We cannot give you an absolute solution for this inquiry, since there are many different paths to success, but we can direct you to resources that might assist you in discovering a method that suits your needs.

The first step would be to build a list of keywords that could be used to perform searches. Since we are looking to maximize performance in the student, then we could employ terms such as: student (pupil, learner), education (academics, teaching, instructing, etc.), classroom, goal (performance, achievement, success, maximization, achievement, motivation, etc.), manage (direct, lead, supervise, organize, etc.) and group (team, “group dynamics”, etc.). Please note that our primary terms are listed and followed by alternate terms in parenthesis. We will mix and match these different terms to maximize the possibility of locating the best possible set of resources.

A good place to start would be the library catalogue. You can select Books and Audiovisuals from our homepage, or go to: http://eureka.uleth.ca/search~S2. The best search option to begin with is the Basic Keyword search. If we were to enter the: “classroom and success”, “classroom and achievement”, or “classroom and management” [each in a different search], you are sure to find a number of titles that might assist you in answering your inquiry. To discover more about maximizing success in groups, you might also want to search for titles that are related to managing group dynamics. Though they might be related to business or management fields, the theories/methods could also be applied to the academic setting.

If you need additional resources, you can also employ our large collection of online databases/periodical indexes. These tools will search journal, magazine, and newspaper articles for the latest articles related to your search parameters.

From our homepage, select Journal, Magazine, and Newspaper articles. The best place to start would be the databases under the Education heading – ERIC is the most comprehensive of that list to start. You will need to select the On Campus or At Home link to access the resource – if you are at home, be sure that your library privileges are up-to-date, otherwise access will be denied. Please be aware that ERIC is not the only database you can use, try some of the other education related databases or any of the General/Multidisciplinary databases to maximize your results.

ERIC and other related databases are quite sophisticated and offer many search options. You will want to employ search terms from your previous book search, and apply those same terms to your journal search. We cannot give you a full list of all options that you could employ here, so we recommend that you visit us at the Vera Bracken Library’s Information Desk (or your closest library) for assistance with these resources. Each database will also provide “Help”
pages and some, such as ERIC, will have video tutorials in the help section.

If the article is not available on line, consider using the Interlibrary Loan Service or the Find It services to acquire the article.

Thank you again for using the Ask A Question service. If you need more help, please use the service again or see the Information Desk in the Medicine Hat College Library (Phone #: (403) 529-3867; Toll Free Phone #: 1 (866) 282-8394 (Ext. 3867)).

AAQ #: 39418

I am back...

Well, I have returned and it is time to review e-mails and other assorted goodness. Fortunately there were only 87 e-mails waiting for me – excluding regular notices that I set to be automatically deleted.

My goals this week include: (a) complete the History 331 pathfinder, (b) finalize the APA presentation for Health Studies 210 and its complementary Classroom Performance System (CPS) component, and (c) design signage for our upcoming Halloween event. All this while juggling the everyday components of my job – AAQs, staff communications, information/public services, troubleshooting, and Web work.

No small tasks here, now back to work.

Yes, I Am Still Here

This blog has not been abandoned. It has been a hectic two weeks, and there has not been enough time to make a satisfactory entry. As my coworkers might attest, I have been running around frantically trying to come up with solutions to the various issues that plague us.

Some updates on various outstanding issues:

RELAIS INTERLIBRARY LOAN

Hooray, the never-ending project has been completed! We can now move it to simple maintenance keeping mode. The best part was that we were able to launch it on time for the start of the new semester – September 4th.

Among some of the achievements with this project included:

• We performed customization of the self-registration forms from the source code that Relais provided.
• Relais went beyond the call of duty and customized the login and patron forms pages. They employed our desired colour scheme – which was a bonus that we did not expect.
• The training session that we underwent was most helpful, and put the ILL staff at ease with the new system. A couple of Lethbridge College staff members also attended the session.
• The trainer from Relais said that we were the first group that completed the generic system testing without training and with very little intervention by them. A real feather in our cap, and a testament to the high level of determination and skill of our ILL staff – Jason and Valarie can take a bow.
• The trainer was also surprised to see that we installed and began to use the new Relais Reports product. This new module is definitely an improvement over the previous ILL system.
• TAL targeting of Find It/SFX has moved from the older Innovative Millennium ILL system to the new Relais system – thanks to Weiwei for her promptness in honouring our request.

As you can see, despite some trials and tribulations, the Relais Implementation Committee was able to pull a rabbit out of its hat to better serve our patrons. Whoo hoo!

START OF THE SEMESTER BLUES

We are happy that the school season is in full swing, but we are plagued by the start of the semester growing pains. The college has modified many aspects of how computer services are delivered this year, and this led to some confusion about the access of those various services.

PASSWORDS GALORE. Students must now know not less than 5 user name/password sets to access resources. To clear up confusion about the various logins, I created a new handout that demonstrates the various user name/password sets. You can view the document by clicking here.

Additionally, I also created a “pocket guide”. The pocket guides are printed on a standard business card and present examples of all 5 user name/password sets.

SLOW LOGINS. For some reason, computers around the campus are very slow at logging-in. Wait time for logins can take 10-15 minutes. Naturally this hobbles the library, since it is a main hub in the institution. Students popping in to check e-mail between classes are leaving before their machines full authenticate. Library staff have been graciously shutting these machines down for students.

NO NETWORK DRIVE SPACE. Students were originally going to get up to 1GB of drive space on the network servers. Due to technical difficulties, those personal drives are not presently mapping. The sneakernet is alive and well for the time being.

WIRELESS NETWORK.
The wireless network remains unavailable. Many returning students are somewhat annoyed by this development, and all we can ask for is patience. Computer Services has set this as a high priority, and we hope to be able to offer this service again.

There are scads more, but am I too short on time and recollection to make a record at the moment. Stay tuned.

General Update - Relais and Millennium LIS

We did get some good news with regards to our system today. The public side of things seems to be functioning properly now. The catalogue, ILL, and home authentication seem to be working properly as of this writing.

The bad news is that some staff functions are still not fully operational. We are limping along and awaiting a system back-up. It sounds as though everything is being rebuilt from scratch at the UofL. Thanks to a very regimented backup process our core information has been preserved. It now appears to be a matter of tweaking systems until the new parameters are inline with the previous parameters.

We did get a chance to see the latest version of our Relais ILL self-registration pages and they are coming along nicely. I made a few more changes and resubmitted it to Relais. It looks like we will be able to go live in the next couple of weeks with the service. We are about 3 months overdue and everyone is eager to tear into the service.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

THE GOOD NEWS
The most recent edits were made to the Relais ILL self-registration pages. A problem with the CSS and JSPs has hopefully been resolved. The package was zipped and transmitted to Relais for posting on the test servers.

THE BAD NEWS
A clerical error led us to believe that the previous weekend was the Medicine Hat Campus's scheduled annual power outage. This was not the case - it will now occur from the 20th-22nd of July. Campus-wide services are expected to return to normal by Monday morning. [I think I heard that last week. Which lets me nicely segue to...]

MORE BAD NEWS
Day 5. The Millennium LIS continues to be inaccessible. There is still no end in sight. Stay tuned.

General Update - System Down and Shopping

We continue to slog along as our Millennium LIS remains down for the 5th straight day. The UofL's technicians continue to work on the problem, but we are getting conflicting messages. We were initially informed that the problem was with the LIS's operating system, and later that it was a combination of hardware and software; however, their website suggests that it has to do with renovations being done in the server rooms. Whether one caused the other is unclear at this time. What we know is that this all began on Friday, July 13th.

I am not superstitious, but if Friday the 13ths cause such a flap amongst the populace, then perhaps we should do away with it - not unlike how some buildings omit the 13 from their elevator buttons and floor numbering scheme. What would we use in place of the 13? Perhaps 12a, 12th -the-Sequel, 14th-the-Prequel, Pre-14th. Perhaps we should just omit the number - 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, etc.; so months having 30 days will end on the 31st, while months with 31 days will end on the 32nd.

In the meantime I was able to perform some administrative tasks, Web work, and AV shopping with Barb. Shopping for AV equipment is not as much fun as I hoped. You have to try and keep the technology "cutting edge", accessible enough for students and staff to use, as well as cost effective. The fun really starts as you haggle with sales people and shop around for the best prices. Once you have have the products picked out, then you have to arrange for Finance to create purchase order number for the selected vendor. Yes, shopping really can be work; but I still get to play with cool new toys in the process - things that I could not afford otherwise.

Admittedly, Barb and I took a detour through Tim Horton's [the drive through was on the road we were traveling] for an Ice Cap - after all, we have to beat these mid-30°C temperatures somehow. I think we were the envy of the college's Center Core as people salivated and inquired where we got them from - in the past Tim Horton's has served coffee on campus. We were not without hardship though, the vehicle we were driving in did not have cup holders. What auto manufacturer builds a vehicle without cup holders? I will not say the name of the company, but honestly, what were they thinking? Or is that not thinking?

Time to get back to working on Relais. We are making some headway in developing the online self-registration pages, and updated pages will be posted by the end of this week - I hope.

General Update - Relais and Web Work

I have been busy again today. The New Materials lists were created and posted for this month, and I have been working on cleaning up e-book URLs in our catalogue. Soon we should have our full collection of 3,500+ e-books available for home access by faculty, staff, and students.

Relais posted our initial test pages for the ILL patron self registration system. They turned out better than I thought, but I see there is still work to be done. I will be working on those files tomorrow and hopefully have them uploaded a day or two after.

Bowker's Book Analysis System

I believe that I figured out how to perform the processes for Bowker's Book Analysis System for collection development. Not that they are overly hard, but some of the system and required formatting tricks were new to me.

Since getting MARC records from our system was a tricky affair, I decided to upload specific MARC fields in a CSV file. Whether or not it is formatted correctly is another matter. At any rate, two different files were uploaded and are now processing. We will know tomorrow whether or not the procedure was successful.

If the test is success, other collection areas will be uploaded. The Reference Collection was the test file, so other significant areas (AV and Circulation Collections) will follow. Then it is on to Relais ILL form customization.

One cool thing that I played with is using an FTP extension in my Firefox Web browser. FireFTP proved to be an easy and successful FTP client.

General Update - MHCLS Blog and My Work

I made a few changes to the Medicine Hat College Library Services Blog. The changes include:

• LINKS
  They are now underscored for easier visibility, however, the underscore will disappear when rolled-over. This adds, in my mind, a more animated/interactive approach to linking.
  
  
• BANNER
  I created a custom banner that employs the college's crest/logo. This replaces the default text banner that is provided by Blogger.
  
  
• BACKGROUND
  The background color has been changed to a dark sage green color. Previously it was pure white and looked too dull/stark.

I will working on uploading MARC records to Bowker's Book Analysis System over the next day or so, and followed by customization of forms for the Relais ILL service. I will deliver a mini report of the AAQ Coordinators Meeting next week.