Systems Staff Meeting Notes 11/23/98

Systems Staff Meeting Notes
November 23, 1998

Present: Rich Bennett, Brian Burton, Bill Covey, Debra Harris, Winston Harris, Ashley Jones, Bobbie Meng, Suzy Shaw

Review Minutes of 11/16/98
  1. Discussion on WSID removal proposal. Topics included correct information (such as SN) in the database and the migration of software.
Announcements
  1. Denial of service attack on NERDC which started on Friday continued through this weekend. Originally, NERDC thought it to be a SMURF attack coming from Library West - in particular, from Marcia Pearce's IP. Fortunately, our switch filter prevents this. Turned out to be a BellSouth mistake in identifying the source IP. Attacks were eventually traced to the Health Center. They did not have the proper filters in place - once they installed them, the attacks ceased.
  2. Ashley Jones is officially onboard as our Network Coordinator. He has met with the Directors, still needs to visit AFA & Education.
  3. Software Programmer Position - so far, only 3 responses. Two are not experienced with PC's - have mostly CICS & JCL backgrounds. Winston left a message on the other prospect's answering machine.
  4. New Christmas tree for Systems will be purchased. The old one we have is truly pathetic.
Ongoing Systems Updates
Equipment Received/Installed/Repaired
  1. Hard drive order (upgrade of 1 Gig drives) - reissued today. Original order did not go out. These upgrade orders will be ongoing all year.
  2. New staff work stations, SQL server upgrade - FCLA money is not free yet.
  3. We're trying to keep the orders small now due to storage space problems. Orders will be more frequent & spread out.
Liaisons
  1. Orientation is complete. The 16 page handout is not up on the web yet because of its size. Should be up soon.
Networking
  1. Smathers NT8 is coming up in Suzy's office. It will become a web server. It is having problems right now - it won't recognize the ethernet card. Bobbie notes that 3COM cards will do that - they get confused. NT8 is NT, so it has a different brand ethernet card, however the solution for the 3COM cards may work on NT. Bobbie recently located a 2 paged solution for the problem posted on the 3COM website.
Software Projects Status
  1. Mellon prototype is ready - created with Rubicon. Rubicon runs only on machines with DELPHI.
  2. Winston is working on the ILL/Borrowing - wants to have it ready by the end of the year.
  3. Special Collections meeting - they want databases hooked to the Web so patrons can search. Winston is investigating the options. Special Collections is fond of VTLS/OPAC that runs at the University of Virginia. Bill notes that "Visual Interdev" allows connection between the web & the SQL server.
  4. Meeting with Jack Waters - has an AC/MS Access database that he built to be multi-user. Needs to put it on the server.
  5. Brian Burton is learning Access to be better prepared on the newspaper project.
DP Coordinator
  1. Students will be sporadic this week.
  2. Phones - will set them to ring in the back as well as the front when the students are gone.
Calendar
  1. Brian Burton out Nov. 24-25.
  2. Thanksgiving Holiday is Nov. 26-27.
  3. Winston out Tuesday, December 29.
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Last updated February 24, 2000
by Debra Harris
debharr@mail.uflib.ufl.edu