Minutes of September 21, 2010 Meeting

Present:

J. Abraham, M. Belasco, A. Butman, J. Gibson (recorder), K. Kuehl, K. McGuire, R. Sandler, C. Singh, N. Gonzaga, A. Ruggiero, S. Bartz, D. Voorhees

Excused:

A. Bijur, J. Maxymuk

Excused:

K. Au, P. Johnson, J. Hartstein

IIS Update:

• Laptop Lending – Preliminary reports from Art on circulating laptops indicate that they are being used moderately, yet not as frequently as hoped. The group also inquired if there was an advertising, public relations, or sign campaign displaying their availability. No problems in implementation of the pilot or issues have been reported.
• Calendar Support/Migration Update – The migration from RULINK to Zimbra awaits approval from Cabinet. At the meeting it was mentioned that although Cabinet has not approved the migration at this time, they are hopefully that it will occur in October. Since the availability of RULINK ends in October, IIS is making every effort to accommodate users of the current RULINK calendaring system with a new temporary solution and if necessary accounts on Zimbra - that if cabinet approves Zimbra it would become their permanent account. Basic training will be provided in NB and if approved detailed training will be provided via OIT. Necessary Douglass migrations are expected to occur on 9-29.
• PC Availability Page – It was stated this this is now available for many locations, and will be available publically soon. The group discussed if we should wait for the Apple statistics to be implemented before it is used publically, but concluded that the predominant computer platform available at this time is the Microsoft based PCs and it should not hold up the announcement. The statistics for the Apple computers were then suggested to be masked from the public page until they were available; including an additional note in the buildings that have them.

Backup Subgroup:

The backup subgroup will begin the implementation on 9/27 with a test group. Nick has outlined goals to benchmark performance and would like to test those numbers in a 3 week trial comparing Master Backup from OIT and Microsoft Backup. The trial will be completed by October 15^th. Nick stated that he should be able to provide weekly logs of the performance to this group. The test will consist of 6 users from each building, of which, each group will be split in two. The two groups will be assigned one of the programs above. The backups will occur weekly from the local campus where the users are located and then will be backed up centrally. The items to be included in a backup will be similar to the items included in a system swap or migration. The backups will include default backup locations and the user will be able to request additional locations that are not standard. The local users will be given a network resource that isn’t currently in use, but will be made available to the backup software for storage of data. This resource will not be directly accessible to the user to prevent them from accidently harming their backups. Buildings that are south of the Raritan will back up to Alex, locations north of the Raritan will backup to TSB. TSB will backup to Alex, and vice versa. The group decided that the first level of restore of PC data will occur locally with UCS, but if the UCS needs help with a restoration, perhaps from a centrally stored data point, Nick could help or make the data available. Having more than one person available to retrieve the data may also improve efficiency and possibly prevent a single source of failure when data is needed.

PDF Creator Software:

Joseph brought forth the suggestion to implement a print to PDF option for users. As a result, Camden suggested the open source software program PDF creator to be compared; it was also noted to compare that program with the freeware version of PDF redirect used elsewhere. The testing group agreed that although PDF redirect was more visibly aesthetic and easier to use, the feature set was too small for our internal needs. PDF Creator has a larger subset of needed features and it was recommended to the group to be implemented on future installs, only when there are no licenses available to use Adobe Acrobat Distiller.

CD Burning Software:

Chris Singh is investigating various programs to burn media on PC’s. The goal is to unify the software used at locations. John G. and Rich S. have volunteered to assist in this investigation and will report their findings back to the group October 5^th and then will discuss at the next meeting the findings. Programs being investigated on Windows XP include: CDBurnerXP, BurnAware, and ImgBurn

PCWG 2011 Goals:

• Desktop Video Conferencing: This will look into various solutions to provide desktop video conferencing cohesively to our patrons. The task will be undertaken by Rich and he will get feedback from others. Rich will also look into any license/issues with Adobe Connect for sharing and implementation. He will also look at other software to evaluate and provide a suggested testing implementation mid-year and an end year report of that testing pilot.
• Laptop Lending Pilot: This pilot will evaluate usage of the current laptop lending pilot and provide recommendations of its implementation and usage as an end year report.
• Technical Skills Workshops: This goal will look to implement a method that could provide live and recorded training sessions on various software packages. The recorded sessions could then be made available to users that are unavailable for training and will remain categorized and useable after the sessions. The workshop will look to include teaching on packages that could overall benefit RUL and help produce a more productive end user. This goal will be outlined with more information in the near future.
• 2010 Carryover - Backup: This will be a carryover goal from last year, the implementation of last year’s analysis will occur shortly as described.
• 2010 Carryover - Calendar: Do to the inability of IIS to start a complete migration, due to funding; this goal also is being carried over to this year as well. After funding occurs the final migrations of this pilot will be implemented.

Experience Sharing & Observations:

• Kilmer - The Mac’s are extremely popular.
• Robeson - During the recent summer heat wave\AC outage, Robeson found a way to innovate services. Updates about the library were being tweeted via Twitter and also transmitted to our lobbies LCD screen. Reference was able to provide services via laptops in front of the building and circulation activities were able to occur in other locations that had separate a\c units.
• Alex – Due to a power outage Joe found a need to be able to activate equipment in lieu of any staff around. One way to do this was to use a script to bring machine back up and activate the machine in a locked setting. This allows the Envisionware software to be available at times where there are no staff able to reactivate them.
• Dana – Received permission to have 6 LDAP machines to print to OIT printers on first floor.
• Douglass - Having issues with the PC Reservation system in that the clients randomly lose connection to the management console, necessitating a reboot of the clients and management console. Also, since the semester has gone into full swing, librarians and staff are reporting increased frequency of inquiries for public wireless.

Other:

• PC Reservation personal information collection policies are being adapted by ISG to no longer include year collection for NB patrons. There was a complaint from 2 years about birth years so it is being modified to instead include month and date of the user’s birth instead.
• Mobile device discussions are being left to the Mobile Device Task Force, or the group that this will be absorbed into.
• Wireless discussion was believed to be in the hands of the USC. Joe will reach out to Tibor for clarification on our response to wireless support.

Next recorder: A. Bijur