The student accounts will be managed by a person in the department who will be responsible for assigning one account to each student employee. The type of account assigned to any one student employee will depend upon the type of work the student performs, i.e. do they need OCLC search only access or full updating access. The student will change the password for his student account. When that student leaves the Libraries' employ, the department manager will reset the password on the account. When that location reassigns this student account to a new student that student will change the username and password. In this way the same student account can be reused multiple times as student are hired and leave the Libraries' employ.
Automation Office expected to complete the new student accounts for Technical Services units by end of day January 26 and then will begin on student accounts for other departments.
Generic computer accounts will continue to be used on circulation desk workstations (i.e. PCs).
Automation Office is uncertain how this change could be implemented in the non-Novell networked locations.
2. WebOSCAR screen designs
Some questions were raised about the WebOSCAR screen designs and difficulty reading some
text. Sally Rogers has limited ability to change WebOSCAR screen designs. Specific issues of
concern should be sent to her so she can see if she can change them.
3. Staff workstation upgrades
Ken will email liball when he is ready to move ahead with the following items.
Upgrades to be done via the network for all staff workstations on the Novell network include:
4. Public workstation upgrades
The public workstation software upgrades planned during December have been completed except
for all BUS public workstations and selected public workstations in EHS, MUS and Main which
are some non-standard workstations due to additional software loaded on each machine.
5. MS Office installation report
MS Office is not being installed across the board for all library employees due to cost. It is being
installed on selected workstations for personnel who have a special need for it as determined by
the Assistant Directors, Susan Logan and Ken Cherrington. Anyone who feels they have need to
MS Office should speak with their Assistant Director.
The MS Office viewers have been installed on public workstations so documents and websites created with MS Office can be viewed.
6. Computer Use Policy
The Automation Committee (Dr. Studer, the Assistant Directors, and Susan Logan) have
discussed a computer use policy which will be adopted by the Libraries. It is based on a new draft
UTS policy which is awaiting President Kirwan's approval. The Libraries computer use policy
covers appropriate and inappropriate use of library public and staff computers, i.e. illegal
downloading of licensed software, establishing a personal business with library computer or
servers, computer hacking, etc. All library personnel will be expected to abide by the policy
regardless of whether they have seen it or not. This is likened to new laws passed by the
legislature which all Ohio citizens are obligated to abide by regardless of whether they are aware
of the new law or not. All newly hired personnel, including students, will receive a copy when
hired. Human Resources is considering methods of distributing copies of the policy to staff.
Violations of the policy will be referred to the appropriate Assistant Director or equivalent, i.e.
Head of Automation, Business Officer.
7. Downloading software
Library personnel are asked NOT to download software to their workstation because it has the
potential of breaking the workstation. Automation Office staff spend lots of time downloading
software needed by library employees and testing it with our workstation configurations and in
our networked environment. They frequently encounter compatibility problems which results in
crashing their workstations -- and which they then rebuild.
Software patches cannot be downloaded to our workstations because the .exe. (executable file) will not work due to our networked environment. Ken Cherrington is on several mailing lists and receives notices of patches. Patches for networked configurations (like ours) are usually one month later than announcements of general patches.
Please notify Automation of software and patches you need and Automation Office personnel will test the software/patch and install for you.
8. Blocking specific sites on public workstations
Presently Matt Jewett is anonymous email sites on public workstations because everyone at Ohio
State has an e-mail account. The question was raised if the chess game sites and college jeopardy
can be blocked. Subsequent to this meeting is was decided that we will consider revising the
computer use policy posted near library public workstations to include a statement regarding
playing games on library public workstations. The computer use policy is in two formats: yellow
half-sheet and a smaller strip posted on monitors.
The Karl bridge can handle a finite number of IPs, but the capacity can be extended if there are several IPs in numerical order that we want to block as a range of IPs. The more sites blocked on the Karl bridge the slower the response time to load web pages.
9. Banner pages on shared staff printers
Deb Cameron distributed copies of her instructions on enabling or disabling banner pages. She is
frequently asked by Technical Services staff for this change and wrote these instructions so each
staff member could make this change themselves.
10. Paradox, Access software
Tom Heck asked about Paradox and Access software used by some units to create databases.
David Gabriel (of Automation) is doing lots of work in this area. He has assisted CGA, TRI,
Friends of the Libraries and Human Resources with their databases and moving some of them to
Access. David can look at a Paradox database and determine what is involved to move it to
Access; however this activity is just one of David's many activities.
Tom was also concerned about making these locally-built databases available to the public as finding aides for unique collections owned by the Libraries. As part of the University's Academic Enrichment program, the Libraries is submitting a proposal for staff and equipment to establish a digital project which will include building finding aides and making them available to the public via the web. We are moving toward using ORACLE as the search engine for searching such databases.
In the meantime the Automation Office can put the database on the w: drive where it can be accessed by any library location on the Novell server. There is presently no way to allow inbound internet traffic so that outside users could search the database on the w: drive. Putting the database on the w: drive also provides for automatic back-up by the server and a means for Automation Office to retrieve an earlier version if a problem does arise.
11. Liaison responsibilities
The December meeting notes should also have stated that the liaisons are the first level of trouble
shooting computer problems in their units. The work of the liaisons analyzing a problem and
reporting it to libmicro@lists helps the Automation staff determine the nature of the problem and
the fix. Also if liaisons have identified a fix to a frequently occurring problem in their unit, they
should email that information to libmicro@lists so that Automation is aware of the problem in
case is appears in other units.
12. Novell server login
Ken Cherrington recently discovered an explanation for some of the network problems some staff
have experienced, i.e. difficulty printing, unable to access web-launched databases. The problem
happens when someone is trying to log their workstation into the server network.
A message appears across the bottom of the dialog box where one enters the users name and password. Your workstation is not logging in correctly if that message says you are logged into "servers2". Clicking the "Advanced" button to the right and changing the settings on the subsequent screen will correct the problem.
Ken Cherrington has written detailed instructions, including screen captures, for diagnosing and fixing this problem. We will email liball when Ken's instructions have been posted to the ostaff webpage so staff can check this setting for themselves.