Information Technology

The Libraries IT Division is planning to upgrade Sierra to Release 4.2 (from 4.0) on Monday, January 21 beginning at 10 am. This will require approximately five hours of downtime for both Sierra and the library catalog. We chose that date because it occurs when the number of people affected by the downtime will be diminished.

While we upgrade the system we don’t expect the system to be down for more than five hours, but we will send out an update should that time be extended for any reason. We are expecting this upgrade will resolve several issues that are outstanding.

If have any problems following the upgrade, please report them to Hub (go.osu.edu/hub). 

Have you ever made a mistake in Sierra, and wished you could undo it?

Beginning today, you can help Innovative decide what specific “undo” options would save the most time, reduce the most errors, and improve the system for all users.

These challenges spring from a winning idea from the Always Open space in Idea Lab: Undo Function, from Gretchen Allen (Fayetteville Public Library).

The Innovative Product Owners want to implement this idea, but since they can’t put an undo button everywhere, our community needs to help Innovative prioritize undo functions across various system functions and behaviors.

From now until September 25th, you can submit, share, and discuss your ideas. From now until September 28th, you can comment on and rate everyone’s ideas. Beginning September 29th, you will have 5 days to prioritize ideas for future development.

So join the conversation today at idealab.iii.com . Sign up for access here: https://idealab.iii.com/main/User/Login#/login and scroll down to the link for registering as a new user. 

New to Idea Lab? Idea Lab (idealab.iii.com) is our IUG enhancements platform. Idea Lab is designed for users to submit, discuss, and vote on ideas to improve our existing systems and to drive development on new products and services. Anyone at any Innovative library may participate in Idea Lab – you do not need to be a site contact or system admin. Read more about Idea Lab.

From the Idea Lab site:

Idea Lab is for libraries and consortia of all types, using any Innovative product. We need all Innovative users to drive innovation.

Join an active challenge. Share ideas, comment, and vote on what’s most important to libraries. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Sign up for access here: https://idealab.iii.com/main/User/Login#/login and scroll down to the link for registering as a new user. 

With the introduction of Idea Lab,  Innovative changed how improvements were suggested. Previously, members of the Innovative Users Group (IUG) could suggest enhancements, and those would be added to a long list from hundreds of libraries. The list would be reviewed by volunteer functional experts and then shared with the IUG members to vote for their favorites. The items with the top votes would be forwarded on to Innovative, and those were used to inform future development of the ILS and online catalog.  

This wasn’t always a perfect system, however. Requests would get lost in the shuffle between members, functional experts, system leads and Innovative staff. Because of this, Innovative and members of the IUG partnered to create Idea Lab, a place open to anyone with an interest in improving the product they use.  If an idea gets enough support, it is automatically shared with Innovative, and influences the agile development of their Sierra and Polaris products.

The new Idea Lab site is divided into  two sections: Challenges and Always Open. Challenges are timeboxed  and focus on a specific topic. Past Challenges have included “Leveraging Data,” which generated 83 new ideas, and “Sierra Public Services Workflow,” which generated  150 ideas.

The Always Open section accepts ideas without restriction, and is dependent on garnering votes (in the form of “likes”) and comments.   If an idea gets both enough votes and comments, it flows on to the next stage for further review.  Because this system depends on crowd validation, it is a good idea to check back for new ideas often. 

Some recent suggestions that have attracted votes and comments:

• Add an Undo Function: “It would be universally helpful to have undo functions wherever possible. Accidentally waive a fine? Didn’t mean to delete that block? Shouldn’t have hit save? Let’s undo our mistakes!”
• Allow for system wide customization of fonts and colors to assist those with low vision.
• Responsive, Accessible Catalog, Discovery Platform(s)

If you have an idea for improving Sierra, check out the Idea Lab.

Libraries Infrastructure staff will be updating Sierra server firewall rules on Thursday, August 2 at 4 pm. The update will be brief and there should be no down time.  We don’t expect this change to block access for staff to the Sierra Desktop application, but if there is a problem, please report it immediately to Hub, or by emailing henley.77 at osu.edu.

UPDATE: Release 3.1 upgrade is delayed until a later date. Sierra was upgraded to Release 3.0 on May 3.

The Libraries IT Division has scheduled an upgrade of Sierra to Release 3.1 3.0 for Wednesday, May 3 beginning at 5:00 pm. This will require approximately six hours of downtime for both Sierra and the library catalog. We chose the date because it occurs at the end of the Spring semester when the number of people affected by the downtime will be diminished. By scheduling it in the evening, it is less likely that staff workflow will be disrupted. 

As Sierra is upgraded, we don’t expect the system to be down for more than six hours, but we will send out an update should that time be extended for any reason.  

New Features in Sierra 3.0 and 3.1

• Web Management Reports no longer require Java (!!!)
• Performance improvements for exporting review files especially for databases with high numbers of linked records
• Performance improvements for exporting records from Data Exchange especially for databases with high numbers of linked records
• Performance improvements for keyword searching in WebPAC especially for databases with high numbers of linked records
• 3.1 only: New Sierra holdshelf architecture: Provides increased stability and data integrity. In addition, Create Lists supports searching for items by hold On Holdshelf and Pickup By dates.
• 3.1 only: The maximum number of entries for the RLOC-BLOC Addresses table has been raised from 255 entries to 2000.
• 3.1 only: The maximum number of entries for the Branches table has been increased from 3600 to 10,000.

Known Issues reported to Innovative that are resolved in this release:

• Rapid Update: no calendar for some date fields Rapid Update does not offer a calendar dialog or prompt for the correct date format when rapid updatingsome date fields. Affected fields include patron BLK UNTIL and CIRCACQTIVE, item LOUTDATE, checkin CLAIMON, and course END DATE.
• In Rapid Update, when staff choose a date field (like patron EXP DATE) and enter ‘b’ in the Value box, nothing happens. That is, the Current Command table remains empty, and the Start button remains inactive.
• In the Check Out (Circulation Desk) function, when listing holds for a patron, long Arabic or Greek titles are truncated in the middle of the internal code for Arabic or Greek in curly braces. This results in a partial code displaying, not an Arabic or Greek character.
• Initials are missing from the “Waive” message in the circulation overrides file, even though initials are entered in to authorize the waive when an overdue item is checked in.
• Cannot move to next/previous record using keyboard shortcuts such as ctrl ] and ctrl [ or File – Next Record /Previous Record in such functions as Cataloging in Multi-Windows mode, in Compact Browse. It works in Create Lists.
• Performance improvements to Fines Paid Mode for scrolling through the table and exporting data.
• Reported in Sierra 2.3, the checkin card number sequencing in Serials is not displaying in the correct chronological order. Some examples provided by customer libraries show the checkin boxes in order for several months and then one from a previous year is displayed. Also, the checkin dates being displayed for many issues is years later than the publication date of the magazine issue. This non-standard display is happening on a wide variety of journal titles and not necessarily on every journal title held by the library.

If you have any questions, please contact Michelle Henley (henley.77).

The Libraries IT Division has scheduled an upgrade of the Sierra operating system for Wednesday, March 15 beginning at 5:00 pm. This will require approximately six hours of downtime for both Sierra and the library catalog. We chose the date because it occurs during Spring Break when the number of people affected by the downtime will be diminished. By scheduling it in the evening, it is less likely that staff workflow will be disrupted.

As the operating system is upgraded, we don’t expect the system to be down for more than six hours, but we will send out an update to staff should that time be extended for any reason.