Systems Staff Meeting Notes 3/16/98

Systems Staff Meeting Notes
March 16, 1998

Present: Rich Bennett, Brian Burton, Bill Covey, Destry Fudge, Debra Harris, Winston Harris, Martha Hruska, Sharon Henry, Bobbie Parker, Suzy Shaw, Leota Whitfield

Announcements
  1. Rich Bennett recognized for 20 years of service to the Libraries.
  2. Bill notes that minutes of the staff meetings are being read by the outside world now that they are on the web.
  3. Major campus network upgrade - BellSouth-UUNet hookup. Procedure failed Saturday at the BellSouth end, but worked on Sunday. Our 45M pipe out may soon start to fill. Response time is now much faster - not as many hops.
  4. Disposable PC’s may cause major changes in Library purchasing - Byte Magazine recently ran an article which projected the price of PC’s to drop down to $300 by the end of this year. Manufacturers are integrating functions on chips - making only 2 chips crucial to production. It used to be that the high-end device was the buy to go with - now it will be the low-end. PC’s will have a ‘born-on’ date. These are stand-alone machines. RAM density is getting so high that the HD may become obsolete.
Ongoing Systems Updates
Equipment Received/Installed/Repaired
  1. CISCO switches have finally been received. We are in the process of changing out the interfaces for 2 of them. Still waiting on the switch for West. We have a tentative agreement with NERDC to put it all on a VLAN - including the branches.
  2. 6MP printer for Personnel was received today.
Liaisons
  1. John Ashcraft has asked for nine sets of 8M for public work station upgrades. Will give some thought to upgrading the public ones to 32M. Will probably do some side-by-testing of 16M vs. 32M to see if the results will offset the costs of memory upgrade.
Networking
  1. Cable modem testing has begun - there are about 2 dozen out. Bill will get one at home on Thursday. Reminder: 3 prong outlet needed to insure grounding - had an incident of near electrocution.
  2. BellSouth has increased pipe - cable modem provides megs of bandwidth.
  3. ADSL - doesn’t require Cox cable or dedicated phone line.
  4. Wiring: mostly finished - Physical Plant will get Systems started soon and Preservation is in the pipe. There is a possibility that Pat Simms from Physical Plant may be leaving, which could complicate things if that is so.
  5. MSL - Martha heard that they will be starting over there this week and be finished within a few more weeks. Will need 40 work stations for this area.
  6. Library West wants to add 12 more work stations.
  7. Education - People are all moved and the 100M fiber path has been activated. Improved bandwidth should aid congestion.
  8. Circ desk - operational, there is still one SNA terminal located in the back of Reserves.
Software Projects Status
  1. ILL - Winston has received feedback from David Fuller & Grace Strawn on the migration spec.
  2. Accounting - they are now set up to print invoices themselves, but Systems will still have to download the ILL records off the mainframe. He has a list of upgrades to make, but it currently achieves basic functionality.
  3. Sharon has the OPS side of Personnel almost done - she has trained the ‘new Melita’, Evelyn Anderson, and they are currently using the system. They are working off the SQL server in West.
  4. Sharon will begin working on the USPS/Faculty side next.
  5. TMSG - Winston attended. Wishlist updated. Martha will send the final list by the end of the week.
  6. Mellon - David Allerton has stated that Winston can take the database away tomorrow.
  7. Special Collections - Winston, Carla & John have scheduled a meeting on manuscript tracking - they want to know how to make changes. They may need to upgrade to Delphi.
  8. Martha has scheduled a meeting with Personnel about the sharing of databases with multiple units.
  9. Bill has read about a project involving a disk drive, logic board & CPU - cable to outside with key. It allows you to transparently put out a workstation so that no one can wipe it out. The software driver works only with Win’95. Bill will check with vendors - could make public work stations more secure. We’ll want to do a test & check with Microsoft.
  10. App sharing - it’s on the budget list.
  11. Microsoft will soon have 8 different versions of Windows out.
  12. Shared mode - wizards are a problem, otherwise it works.
DP Coordinator
  1. Debra has copied the floppy disks & 9 track tapes for Peter Marin from Stanford University in California. Will need to locate the algorithm chart to decide what the charges will be.
Calendar
  1. St. Patty’s Day March 17.
  2. Destry out March 18 & 23.
  3. Shower for Marilyn & Destry - March 19, 11:30 AM - West Lounge. Marilyn is registered at Target & Toys ‘R’ Us.
  4. Bobbie Parker out March 23 - 25.
  5. Winston Harris out March 31 - April 1.
  6. Sharon Henry out April 3 - 6.
  7. Winston out April 13 - 15.
  8. Brian out April 16-17.
  9. Sharon out April 17.
  10. Rich Bennett out April 13 - 17.

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Last updated March 7, 2000
by Debra Harris
debharr@mail.uflib.ufl.edu