K-State Libraries: Digital Initiatives

HDDY meeting

I was looking for some catchy name for our meetings, and just decided to use our initials. I think HDDY looks cryptic and mysterious.

Here's what we agreed to work on:

Wikis

We decided to divide up the task of reviewing the various options. We'll report back at our next meeting on our impressions:

• Yongli - PmWiki, PBWiki
• Harish - MediaWiki, PHPWiki, Twiki (and/or whatever David is using)
• Dale - MoinMoinWiki
• Donna - will scour the earth for reviews and comparisons of these systems

Additionally, I agreed to get around to posting as a user in the BYU MediaWiki instance to which I can post to get an idea of how easy (or not) it is to use.

Blogs

Continuing an earlier discussion, Yongli will take a look at the TP file Donna created and see if she can get her WordPress installation to ingest it.

3/15 Meeting Notes

Attended by Allen, Askey, Devlin, Ekart, Maringanti, North, White

• Search Appliance
  • Probably will arrive by March 31st, so we need to know about UPS purchases now.  Dave W. will check with Julie about responding to Dale's earlier message to libtech.
• OPAC
  • Creating a virtual host for staff version of OPAC, with 60 minute timeout.  Should be a big help to catalogers and the ref desk.  Address will be staffcat.lib.ksu.edu.
  • Harish suggested a static "front page" for the OPAC to potentially drop the wait time for session loading.  We're going to wait and see how the response time is from the new servers before making a decision.
• Meridian
  • Installation can be completed Monday after the switch.  Marjorie will contact Endeavor to arrange.
• Servers
  • PHP  is ready on Grace.  Yongli has Grain Milling project, Sara Kearns has Assignment Calculator from U. Minnesota.
  • Harish volunteered to do mySQL admin.
  • Last meeting before server switch, so we reviewed the plan.  At 10:30 on Saturday, 3/25, dewey will be brought down.  m1 will be unmounted and remounted to Cosmos.  Dave W. says 20 minutes, but we have a 4 hour window. 
  • Pulsar is working, and can be tested.
  • www2 addresses become catalog.lib.ksu.edu alias, with DNS change on 3/25.
  • We won't make any more changes to horizon before the switch, Marjorie will copy over the few files Dale has modified since the original copy date.
  • Still OK to do preview server changes through Friday 3/24.
  • Staff will be notified this week by Michael about getting new .ini file for Voyager clients from the DID blog. Michael will work directly with 2 special cases.
  • We need a security certificate for the new servers.

3/8 Meeting Notes

Attended by Allen, Askey, Devlin, Ekart, Maringanti, North, White

• EZProxy
  • Admin rights will go to Dale once the switch is made to Ada
  • Pre-proxy "broke" free journals since they weren't on the proxy list.  Fixed, but there are others out there that need to be added to the list.
• Servers
  • Pulsar is nearly ready, just needs apache
  • Copies of our current website are on Ada and Grace for testing
  • Switch to new servers on March 25th will break Voyager clients unless the .ini file is modified.  Michael will email staff2 with instructions on how and when to modify the file, and will also come in on Sunday (3/26) to make sure things are working in Circulation.
  • It may be possible to use an alias in the .ini file (voyager.lib.ksu.edu) so this type of change won't be necessary in the future - Marjorie will look into this
  • We may purchase another server for an SFX test environment.  Discussed using mirrored drives rather than purchasing SAN card/space.
  • Once server switch is complete, we can proceed with Meridian directory setup - if we do that now, we'll just have to do it again in a couple weeks.
• Search Appliance
  • Could be here in early April, just waiting on pro-forma vote and funding to arrive
  • Dale will email libtech to set up racking
  • Current UPSs are close to maxed out, we could use some surplus funding to purchase another.  Dave W. will check on costs.
• OPAC
  
  • We're looking at java script from UCLA's library to modify WebVoyage and make the OPAC better

3/1 Meeting Notes

Attended by Allen, Askey, Devlin, Ekart, Maringanti, North, White

• Server Migration  
  • Grace (web development box) up by Friday
  • Content switched to Cosmos (Dewey) and Pulsar (Horizon) on Saturday March 25th
  • Vista going to the SAN, needs a SAN card
  • Dewey and Horizon going to scrap heap
• EZProxy
  • Creating PURL to full-text objects doesn't work off-campus because of current need to login
  • Some places (KU) pre-append proxy to avoid this problem
  • Only drawback - won't be able to live demo login on campus for instruction
  • Shouldn't increase load on EZProxy server; just adds a single call for on campus users
  • Dale will ask public services people about it
• OPAC
  • Login drop-down order flipped so SSN is on top
  • Dale will add note regarding potential outage on 3/25