LS&T TALON: September 2005 Archives

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September 26, 2005

PuCRA Progress

PuCRA, the Public Computer Refreshment Action, is complete on the Main Campus. All public-access computers in Paley, Zahn, and the Engineering and Science Libraries have been replaced with new models. The work is one of our initial Technolgy Fee-funded projects.

The computers are much faster than their predecessors, featuring 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 processors, speedy hard drives, and half a Gigabyte of RAM. They also sport LCD monitors, optical mice, CD-writing/DVD-reading drives, user-facing USB and headphone ports, and the sleek black styling that has become Dell's norm of late.

We expect to complete work in the HSC and Suburban Campus Libraries in the next couple of weeks.

Posted by bcmayes at 03:39 PM | Comments (1)

September 21, 2005

Library Web Server

The Library Web server was down this A.M. and is now back up. An anti-virus scan showed that it was okay, and required patches were applied, so it will remain up until further notice.

ILL-Man, Snowy, and Brodei remain down, but we expect them to be brought back up within the next hour or two in the order listed.

All other servers remain unaffected.

Posted by bcmayes at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2005

Snowy, Brodei, ILL-Man Down; Library Web Being Watched

An emergency call was received this evening from Frank Azuola, Asst VP for Enterprise Systems CIS, advising that servers running the Windows 2000 Server operating system are under attack on campus. This affects four of our servers.

Snowy, the Libraries' Intranet; Brodei, the development web server; and ILL Manager have been shut down temporarily. They will be restarted tomorrow when I have more news. This means there is no access to WINGSS, the help desk system; or to any development work (subject guide updates, etc.) for the web.

The Libraries' Web server (production) is still up at this time, and will be up through the night. It may be taken down tomorrow if the situation warrants. At that time, we will enact phase I or our Business Continuation plan to provide continued access to resources.

Diamond, the Library Blog, Ask a Librarian, the shared network drive, and the Exhibitions servers are unaffected as they all run different operating systems (UNIX, Linux, or Windows 2003 Server). They are all up as well.

More news as we get it.

Posted by bcmayes at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

Staff Directory Update

As we continue to update web pages to include the new University Libraries' signature, we took the opportunity to make some updates to the staff directory. Most obvious, of course, are the cosmetic changes to make the directory fit in with the appearance of the the rest of the site. The standard banner appears across the page with the new signature at the top left, and the cherry and white color scheme has been abandoned in favor of the current blue & white with tasteful cherry accents scheme. Also, the URL has been changed to match its place in the hierarchy: http://library.temple.edu/about/directory/.

Less obvious, but perhaps more important, are the changes to the underlying technology from an Servlet/XML base to the JSP technology of the rest of the site. This means lots of uninteresting geeky stuff, but it also means that we're better positioned to make additional improvements to the directory, and better use of its contents. The search is noticeably faster, and we have much better control over display. Search for the name "carol*" -- including the asterisk -- for a good example.

There are more updates to come in the future, but we believe this first step will be an improvement to the users' experience.

Byron

Posted by bcmayes at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)

Interesting Web Search By-Products

Some interesting and unplanned side-effects of our newly-implemented web search "powered by Google".

First, because of our set-up, all sites ending with "library.temple.edu" are indexed and returned with a search. This means not only items on the main web server, but also public articles on our blog server -- blog.library.temple.edu -- will appear. Search for "dissertation" or "elevator" and note that the blog articles are among the first few entries. This should add additional functionality for our users that we wouldn't get with the built-in indexing.

Also, in the "Results" line at the top of a results page, there is a discrete link next to the search term labelled "definition." Clicking this link performs a reference search on Answers.com, essentially a "federated search" of several dozen freely-available reference sources. "Elevator," for example, yeilds results from the American Heritage Dictionary, Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Princeton University's WordNet, Wikipedia, and translations by WizCom. You can read more about Answers.com at their web site.

Additionally, there's a link to Google Scholar at the bottom of each results page. This just goes to the main page and does not execute a search.

All of these come with our use of the Google search engine for our site search, so we can't turn them off. Not that we'd want to, as this all adds significant value to our search engine without taking away from our main purpose in having one.