LTDS is now LTAS

Library Technology and Digital Services (LTDS) name has changed to Library Technology and Assessment Services (LTAS) to emphasize the addition of library assessment. The team continues to support all library systems and digital initiatives. Over the next few weeks, we will update various websites to reflect the change. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you.

LTAS Team Members:
Dale Poulter – Director
Jamen McGranahan – Associate Director
Matt Dillingham – Web developer
Jodie Gambill – Web Development Lead and Librarian for Digital Projects
Lee Ann Lannom – Assessment Librarian
Seeraj Somla – Associate Cloud Engineer
Scott Walker – Library Web Applications Administrator
Tao You – Librarian for Assessment and Digital Projects

The full organizational chart for the Library is available here.

LTDS Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2023

Library Technology and Digital Services (LTDS) Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 (October 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022) 

This second quarter of fiscal year 2023 was busy for the team but they also had the opportunity to take a break for the holidays. The team was able to complete several projects (tasks requiring more than 40 hours of work) and still resolve an impressive number of INFORM tickets.
  

A few of the projects that LTDS completed during the past quarter are:  

  • Completed implementing new campus branding on LTDS managed sites. 
    • Brings the library into compliance with campus guidelines. 
  • Performed an additional upgrade of ArchivesSpace and continued work to integrate with other systems. 
    • Assures that security patches are applied and allows us to continue to work towards a more inclusive discovery environment. 
  • Completed cleanup of diacritics for the Green Glass process 
    • This was required for the project to move forward. 
  • Completed testing of the AWS storage gateway 
    • The AWS Storage Gateway (ASG) will provide growth opportunities for the library digital collections. 
  • Completed migration of common area phones 
  • Created new quarterly report site for ACE 
    • This new site will enable ACE to publish information about the library.  
  • Upgraded all Omeka instances 
  • Created display for Occuspace data 
    • Provides a tool to determine where study space is available. 
  • Officially completed Alma-D implementation 
    • Alma-D allows users to access some items, such as digital scores, directly through Primo. 
  • Completed automation of BPA record additions to Fedora. 
  • Completed updates to the staff directory 
    • This updated to staff information with contact changes that have occurred over the last few years. The form remains available for future changes. 
  • Implemented new solution for email processing in INFORM 

 

 Partnerships:  

LTDS continues to work with other groups in the libraries, on campus, and in the broader library community. Selected partnerships during the first quarter are listed below.  

  • ACE on the web migration project. This project is co-chaired by Jodie Gambill and Kristina Bisbee and will migrate the primary library website from Omni to WordPress.  
  • SCUA and Digital Preservation to develop improved workflows for assuring that digital collections are preserved and discoverable.   
  • VUIT Genesis project to complete migration of library application authentication to the new campus system. These changes allow us to continue to use VUNetIDs for authentication.  
  • PSI and Center for Teaching to maintain LTI integration between Leganto and Brightspace. 
  • Digital Strategies to utilize the new campus web templates and deploy the new server.   
  • VUIT Cloud Services team and VUIT Storage team to explore storage options for the growing needs for library digital collections.  
  • VUIT Desktop Engineering continued collaboration to support library staff and circulating laptops.  

   

LTDS by the numbers:   

  • Number of Proxy Sessions:  162,713 
  • Number of Informs Resolved: 452  
  • Number of servers managed: 35+   
  • Number of items added to Fedora:  73,482 
  • Number of sites and applications managed: 150+ 

  

During the coming months LTDS will continue to work on several projects including:  

  • Creating a set of tools for staff to assist in sharing metadata from digital objects between systems  
  • Continued work to migrate resources from older systems to current technologies. 
  • Increased transparency concerning storage use 
  • Migrate additional digital content to the storage gateway 

 

Inability to Access Oracle Due to a Locked Account

We have had reports of users receiving the a popup window upon attempting to login:

authentication popup

Recommended action/workaround:

Please note that users should only enter their VUnetID and ePassword for Oracle login through the Vanderbilt Single Sign-On screen.

If you see a pop-up window or prompt for VUnetID on a screen other than the Single Sign-On page, DO NOT enter your VUnetID and password there – this can lock your account.  Please clear your browser history, close and reopen your browser, and then reattempt login from the SkyVU webpage – the link there is: https://oraclecloud.vanderbilt.edu/

If you have already entered your VUnetID and password on this page, please email skyvu@vanderbilt.edu to have your account unlocked.

 

A Librarian’s Guide to Cybercrime Mitigation – Review

Yesterday, I attended the Choice webinar, “A Librarian’s Guide to Cybercrime Mitigation” and it was one of the more rewarding webinars I have attended. It reminded me of why we do the things we do when it comes to security. I would encourage any and all Library staff to watch the recording, found here:

https://www.choice360.org/webinars/a-librarians-guide-to-cybercrime-mitigation/

They provided several tools that can help you yourself protect your digital footprint. From checking how secure your password might be to seeing if a website is malicious or not. Here are a few of the tools mentioned:

How secure is my password? https://www.security.org/how-secure-is-my-password/

Check if sites have been reported malicious: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/url

Check to see if your email address has been a part of a data breach: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Please, secure your passwords; use a password manager; don’t re-use passwords; and above all else, don’t leave passwords laying around on sticky note! 😊

LTDS First Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 

LTDS First Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 (July 1, 2022 – September 30, 2022)

 

This first quarter of fiscal year 2023 was another productive period for LTDS (Library Technology and Digital Services). The team was able to complete several projects (tasks requiring more than 40 hours of work) and still resolve an impressive number of INFORM tickets.
 

A few of the projects that LTDS completed during the past quarter are: 

  • Migrated systems using LDAP authentication to the new LDAP authentication servers 
    • This will allow us to continue to access resources using the campus LDAP instance.   
    • The change does not allow VUMC users to access some resources due to information not being available in the system.  
  • Migrated the Digital Commons website to the library website 
    • Allows the Digital Commons resources to be available and the web presence maintained through the library website. 
  • Redeveloped Primo views to utilize the upgraded software provided by Ex Libris 
    • Ex Libris changed the version of the programming language (AngularJS) that is used to present the Primo interface.   
    • Several parts of the Vanderbilt code needed to be adjusted to maintain compatibility with the recent changes. 
  • Upgraded ArchivesSpace 
    • The updated version of ArchivesSpace provides a foundation for new services in the coming years. 
  • Began use of CloudFront distribution 
    • The CloudFront distribution (CDN) provides a central repository for library web assets. This AWS (Amazon Web Services) based system allows for core web elements (branding, menus, styles, etc.) to be changed in one place and reflected across all library sites utilizing the CDN.  
    • The next project is to incorporate the CDN into additional systems. 

Partnerships: 

LTDS continues to work with other groups in the libraries, on campus, and in the broader library community. Selected partnerships during the first quarter are listed below. 

  • ACE on the web migration project. This project is co-chaired by Jodie Gambill and Kristina Bisbee and will migrate the primary library website from Omni to WordPress. 
  • SCUA and Digital Preservation to develop improved workflows for assuring that digital collections are preserved and discoverable.  
  • VUIT Genesis project to complete migration of library application authentication to the new campus system. These changes allow us to continue to use VUNetIDs for authentication. 
  • PSI and Center for Teaching to implement the improved LTI integration between Leganto and Brightspace. 
  • Digital Strategies to utilize the new campus web templates and deploy the new server.  
  • VUIT Cloud Services team and VUIT Storage team to explore storage options for the growing needs for library digital collections. 
  • VUIT Desktop Engineering continued collaboration to support library staff and circulating laptops. 

  

LTDS by the numbers:  

  • Number of Proxy Sessions: 145,166 
  • Number of Informs Resolved: 697 
  • Number of servers managed: 35+  
  • Number of items added to Fedora: 484 
  • Number of websites rebranded: 110+ 
  • Number of sites and applications managed: 150+

 

During the coming months LTDS will continue to work on several projects including: 

  • Creating a set of tools for staff to assist in sharing metadata from digital objects between systems 
  • Adding information about space usage in the libraries to the website. 
  • Adding additional storage capacity to digital collections. 
  • Continued work to migrate resources from older systems to current technologies. 

When your Microsoft Team goes inactive…

VUIT has recently implemented a policy that will expire/delete your Microsoft Team if it has zero activity for a full year. Never fear, all owners of the team are notified well in advance of the expiration and are given the chance to renew the team and keep it active. If this happens to a library team that you have ownership of (as a chair, group leader, director, etc.), LTDS will reach out and help you determine if the team is still needed, and where to go from there. If you have any questions, reach out via Inform!

Zoom and LibCal Integration

4 Comments on Zoom and LibCal Integration

LTDS  worked with VUIT who have turned on the libcal plug-in for Zoom. This plugin allows the automatic creation, update, management and deletion of Zoom meetings and webinars for libCal events and appointments. Now library staff with a libCal account can begin using Zoom within LibCal to schedule online events and appointments.

To use the Zoom plugin, libCal users will need to do the following:

  1. Log into LibCal, click on your email address in the navigation bar.
  2. Click the Integrations tab of your Manage Account page.
  3. In the Zoom panel, click Authorize with Zoom account button and follow the prompts to finish the authorization.
  4. When you receive an email from zoom.us with a subject line of “libCal for Zoom is approved to use”, that means your libCal account is linked to your unique institutional zoom account, and you can start scheduling zoom appointments and events within your libCal account.

Feel free to try out this new feature!  To set up virtual appointment and online events within libCal, please refer to this libguides,  and submit an Inform if you encounter any issues.

Reducing Time Spent Applying Updates

I wanted to briefly share a win we had a little while back involving the Nursing Wiki. Security and maintenance patches for the current LTS version of MediaWiki are released roughly every quarter, and these have historically been a time-consuming manual process — around 90 minutes.

For the most recent update, we scripted the majority of the required steps and reduced the time spent applying the patch down to around 30 minutes, a 66% savings!

Setting browsers to automatically clear history & cache upon closing (Update from 2020 post)

UPDATED version:

Sometimes our browsers get clogged and cause issues, especially when trying to access sites that are behind protective layers. Then we have to tell users to go clear their browser’s history and cache. There is a way that this can be done automatically, though, when a user closes their browser. Please see below for how to do this based upon your preferred browser:

Edge (Version 100.0.1185.36 (Official build) (64-bit))
  1. Open the Edge browser
  2. Click on the 3 dots on the top-right and select “Settings”
  3. Click on “Privacy, search, and service”
  4. Click on “Choose what to clear every time you close the browser”
  5. Turn on at a minimum “Browsing history”, “Cookies and other site data”, “Cached images and files”

Edge privacy, search, and services settings
After this, you are done. There’s nothing else you need to change for Edge (and there is no “Save” button). You can now start using your browser as normal and when you close it, it will automatically clear your history & cache for you.

Firefox (Version 99.0 (64-bit))

  1. At the top of the Firefox window, click the menu button on the right and then select Settings

Firefox menu options

  1. Click on Privacy & Security
  2. Look for the “Cookies and Site Data” section click the check box next to “Delete cookies and site data when FireFox is closed”

Firefox cookies and site data settings

  1. Scroll down to “History” section and change the drop down next to “Firefox will” from “Remember history” to “Use custom settings for history”. Then click the check box next to “Clear history when Firefox closes”

FireFox custom settings for history
That’s it. Like Edge, there is no “OK” or “Save” button – it automatically saves your changes/updates so you can now use your browser as normal. And the next time you close it, it will automatically clear your history and cache for you.

Chrome (Version 100.0.4896.75 (Official Build) (64-bit))

  1. Open the Chrome browser
  2. Open the Chrome menu options (3 dots to the right) and then select Settings
  3. Click on Privacy and security
  4. Click the Cookies and other site data
  5. Scroll down until you see “Clear cookies and site data when you close all windows” and toggle it from off to on

Chrome cookies setting
Like the other browsers, there is no “OK” or “Done” button – it automatically saves your updates. But this is it – this is all you need to change.

Zoom Meeting vs. Zoom Webinar

Zoom Meeting vs. Zoom Webinar — how do you choose which platform is the best fit for your virtual gathering? Here are some questions to consider:

  1. How many attendees are you expecting? Webinar can have up to 1000 attendees; meetings are capped at 300.
  2. How much attendee interaction do you want? Webinars are more appropriate for one-way broadcasting to a large group. Attendees can’t un-mute and speak unless explicitly given permission individually by a host. Attendees also can’t see who else is there, i.e. there is no participant list visible to them. There are options on whether to enable chat or the Q&A feature for attendee interaction.
  3. Do you need breakout rooms? Webinars can’t do breakout rooms — only meetings can.

Zoom provides a meeting and webinar comparison which might further help with your decision. LTDS is also available to talk you through each option. Submit an Inform to get in touch and/or if you decide to utilize the webinar option.