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!

OMG, Did they actually do that...!?

Most, if not all libraries, offer and participate in a service known as interlibrary loans (ILL). Since no one library can house absolutely everything, the idea is that libraries will loan materials to other libraries. The borrowing library will, in turn, loan that material to their patrons.

Our ILL department switched to a Relais hosted ILL system last September. Due to firewall issues, our automated overdue notices were not being issued. The ILL staff was, with a good deal of success, trying to stay on top of things manually. This all changed when the college replaced its firewall about three weeks ago. An unexpected result was that the queued overdue notices were released – they were sitting there like water behind a dam, which finally burst.

The consequence was some kind (and not so kind) panic calls and e-mails being placed to our ILL staff. The staff calmed most of the patrons and assured them that this was a onetime occurrence. One of the borrowing institutions, which will remain nameless, did decide to follow-up on the overdue notice. As it turns out, it appeared as though the patron did not return it to them.

Now the funny part, the item was returned to us but sloppily stripped of all MHC Library Services’ markings. It appears as though the borrowing library shelved the item in their collection. It gets better though; the item was not the original we loaned out – it was a facsimile of the original. The coil binding was gone and replaced by a stapled version that used black book tape (not unlike thick hockey tape) to bind the spine. The tape was even sloppily placed on the book (it was off center and crooked). Unfortunately there is not much recourse that we can take for trying to locate the original, which either resides in the office of the borrower or the stacks of the borrowing institution. By the way, the item is The Ecology & Zoogeography of Fishes in the Missouri (Milk River) Drainage of Alberta by Thomas Andrew Willock, published in 1969.

This is a practice that was allegedly done by the original Library of Alexandria. It was suggested that they would “borrow” copies from other libraries, passing ships, and traders; the owners would, however, have copies of varying quality returned to them. It is good to see that another 2,300 year old library tradition remains alive and well.

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.

Relais: Updates, Reports, and Self-Registration

Some very positive movements in the development of the Relais ILL system this morning. Some of the developments include:

SOFTWARE UPDATE
We updated to v2006 P1 of Relais ILL, which went smoothly. We seem to have less lag time on the startup and the interface generally feels snappier.

REPORTS
I installed the new ILL reports module. The reports were suitably impressive to both the ILL staff and myself. The new module also includes a number of export features that will give us greater flexibility when analyzing data.

SELF-REGISTRATION
Relais was able to address our concerns and questions regarding the last version of the self-registration module. I made a few more tweaks to the code and we will try to create a couple of test accounts once the update has been posted to the test server.

I will be installing the Relais packages in the library classroom in anticipation of our training session next week. We should be ready to launch the service by the beginning of the Fall semester.

Relais & News Feeds

We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for the Relais ILL self-registration project. The last version was the best yet, but it still needs a little refinement. I am still unsure of how (or if) the self-registration page “talks” to Relais’s Table Maintenance module. I am hoping that Relais can clarify this issue for me.

We are also set to receive training from Relais on the 29th of August. Our ILL staff have been working with the system, but have yet to refine their work flow. Hopefully the training will smooth out some of the rough edges that we have encountered.

I also distributed a handout that introduces “news feed” (a.k.a., RSS or Atom) technology to library staff members. It looks denser than it really is; the line spacing was condensed for the purpose of page/printing conservation. You can view a PDF of this document by clicking here.

Other time has been filled with an assortment of administrative-type duties – composing communications, interviews, meetings, etc.

General Update - Relais & Handouts

A few quick notes on a couple of my ongoing projects…

RELAIS. Our main technical contact from Relais is away on vacation and I have not heard from their support team regarding the last version of the patron self-registration pages that I sent. I hope to hear from them by the 15th – the never-ending project is starting to grate on me. I have also contacted Computer Services with regards to configuring the library classroom’s instructor station for the Relais training session on the 29th of August. This should be a relatively minor hurdle.

HANDOUTS. I am reasonably satisfied with the changes/updates that I have made to our main How-to-Guides. The guides that deal with writing and academic writing styles have been sent to the presses. You can see the latest updates by clicking here. Once our new display stand arrives, we will be able to host most of our current guides, as well as have more space for existing guides.

Handouts & Self-Registration

This has been a relatively quiet week. My primary focus has been updating some of our handouts. Most are ready for press, but I will delay that until next week. An error of some fashion is always there to be found and nothing irritates me more than a little typo after printing 250 copies. When I return next Tuesday, I will review them again (hopefully with fresh eyes) and send them to the printers. The latest updates have been posted on the Web in the meantime at: http://www.mhc.ab.ca/library/howtoguides.html.

Jason and Valarie decided to run with the idea of creating a folded leaflet for issuing student identification cards in. The leaflet will deliver information on the functions of the ID card, but also promote library services. The idea was inspired by the type of leaflet you get with a pass card when you check into a hotel. They did a nifty job, and hopefully we will get fewer students saying, "I thought I got new card every semester." [Students tend not to like the $5 replacement fee.]

Finally, I continue to muck around with Relais's self-registration source code. I am 90% of the way there, but a few issues confound me on the actual registration page. A consultation with our Webmaster was informative, but he thinks that it would take him a couple of days to understand what all the Java scripts' functions are. In the meantime, I took a different approach and hopefully it will be successful.

General Update - Relais & Website

I have uploaded the latest revisions to the Relais self-registration pages. The last version went horribly wrong somehow, and turned out looking worse and less functional than the first. I do not know when they will be uploaded to Relais's servers and ready for testing, so it is a matter of being patient. If this version fails, I will call Grant and hopefully we can sort out what is going wrong.

I finished a few minor tweaks on the Vera Bracken Library's homepage. Changes include:

• Google site search has been removed and replaced by a widget that searches the OPAC. I developed several different versions, but went with the advanced drop box version for now.
  
• The XML [] icon for our news feed has been replaced by the more common RSS icon developed by Microsoft - this icon [] has become the default icon for all manner of web news feeds (e.g., Atom, RSS, etc.).
• A new link (Site Map/Search) has been posted as well. The site search feature that was previously on the homepage has been moved under this link's location. A site map was also added - I would call it less than pretty.

I am not sure on how keen I am about the Site Map/Search page or the OPAC search tool. I might scrap both by the end of the week. My major concern is that the homepage is getting a little cluttered; to this end, I will explore alternative layouts with Spry.

General Update - Relais & E-Books

The latest communication from Relais tells us that our last revision of the Relais self-registration pages will be posted tomorrow. We wait with bated breath.

I finished correcting the 70+ e-book URLs in the catalogue. Patrons (faculty, staff, and students) now have the ability to access e-books from their homes. Additionally, I also created a tool that will search exclusively for e-book titles. You can find out more about our e-book content at: http://www.mhc.ab.ca/library/ebooks.html. The search tool can also be found on this page.

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 - 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.

Relais ILL Update

We have opted to employ patron self-registration as a means of enrolling community, faculty/staff, institutions, and students in our new interlibrary loan system. To this end, we are hoping that the vendor, Relais, can customize some of the forms' appearances. You can view our desired preferences for the front-end forms at: http://www.mhc.ab.ca/library/relais/.

Current Relais ILL patron login page:
[Click image to enlarge.]










Desired [?] Relais ILL patron login page:
[Click image to enlarge.]

Patron Uploads for Relais

Grant will be working on creating scripts that will parse data from the library system's patron database to conform to Relais's XML format. He does not anticipate a great deal of difficulty in mapping the metadata fields, so hopefully we will able to upload data in the next week or two. [Hmmm... I am sure I have said this before.]

Once the scripts are established, we should be able to upload records to Relais on a regular basis with little or no difficulty.

OPAC & Relais ILL Updates

I am currently working on the online public access catalogue (OPAC) updates for both the Vera Bracken Library and Brooks Campus Libraries. I anticipate completing this project by the end of this week. Hopefully our partners at the U of L will be ready to upgrade the online catalogue to the WebPAC Pro module.

WebPAC Pro will include nifty new features for patron such as: a spell checker and preferred/saved searches.

You can view the Vera Bracken & Brooks Campus Libraries' shared catalogue at: http://eureka.uleth.ca:2082/search~S2; and the Brooks Campus Library catalogue is at: http://eureka.uleth.ca:2082/search~S3. Please be aware that each site can only be accessed from on either of Medicine Hat College's campuses (Medicine Hat or Brooks) or the University of Lethbridge.

Upon completion of this project, I will be devoting the better portion of my time to the Relais interlibrary loan implementation - Relais is intended to replace our current interlibrary loan software that is part of the Innovative Interfaces Millennium library system. Hopefully both projects will be complete by the end of this month.