Recent Improvements to Television News Archive search

The Vanderbilt Television News Archive has been recording, preserving, and providing access to television news broadcasts of the national networks since August 5, 1968. There are currently over 1.1 million broadcast records in the system, and all are searchable via the VTNA website.

In recent years, a persistent theme in user feedback has been slow search result retrieval times, which impedes a user’s ability to conduct research and find the information they need, leading to a frustrating experience. Recently, we were able to improve the architecture of the search portion of the website. By querying a different data set and utilizing search indexes, we were able to improve search result retrieval times for the majority of searches. In most cases, retrieval time has been reduced by roughly 70%, sometimes more! We were also able to improve the relevancy ranking sort option, helping users find relevant broadcast clips faster.

The Television News Archive website is one of many systems the LTDS team supports.

LTDS Dec. 16-22th 2018

LTDS used much of this week to wrap up a few items and prepare for the break.  LTDS will be closed during the holidays but will continue to monitor systems and INFORM for any emergencies.    Beyond the work,  the team took time to attend the library Holiday luncheon and go out for a team lunch during the week.

LTDS wishes every one a very happy holiday and look forward to new opportunities in 2019.

  • Alma/Primo (Jamen, Nancy, Tao)
    • Added SSO for the Alma sandbox
    • Reviewing various reports from Alma
  • Desktop/Application support (Judy, Matt, Nancy)
    • Review hardware in the Fine Arts Gallery and added to inventory
    • Met to discuss various A/V needs in the Gallery areas
  • Digital Collections (Nathan, Judy, Scott)
    • Ingested several items
    • Scanning of several items from large INFORM requests
  • Web/Web applications (Jodie, Scott, Matt)
    • Cleaned up some of the LTDS blog pages
    • Revised/improved the laptop availability page
    • Began work on new calendar plug-in.
  • Other (all):
    • Continued work an clean-up for the SEM project
    • Worked with M3 to upgrade A/V in several GLB rooms (800FA,800BB,208,418a)
    • Resolved several INFORMs
    • EzProxy project
    • Four Winds work and discussion of needed permissions.

 

Report from WordCamp US 2018

WordCamp US, the national WordPress conference, was back in Nashville for a second year on December 7-9, 2018. Jodie and Scott from LTDS attended — here are some highlights.

Jodie:
WCUS 2018 conference badge
I attended several great sessions on topics such as project management for developers, ARIA/accessibility, and code review. Tracy Apps gave a very compelling talk on diversity and inclusion, and how that must play a huge role in user experience work. Lara Schenck hand-drew her slide deck for her talk on CSS algorithms — they’re worth a glance, even if you don’t understand the content! 🙂 I felt right at home in a lightning talk from a former Drupal developer comparing Drupal with WordPress — in the end, he asked us to just all get along, since both are great platforms with their own strengths. John Blackbourn introduced us to Git Bisect, a debugging tool that uses a binary search to help you pinpoint where a bug was introduced into your codebase.

Scott:

The sessions that I attended had some interesting topics. I went to two sessions that dealt with WordPress’ new block editor, Gutenberg, which will be replacing the classic text editor for creating posts in new versions.  Gary Pendergast talked about how the flexibility of Gutenberg’s block system will help users create more exciting sites and posts without the use of custom code.  In Jason Bahl’s session, he demonstrated how Gutenberg was used in an innovative way on a state government WordPress site he helped build. I also enjoyed Dwayne McDaniel’s talk “Nobody Wants a Website. They Want Results!“. Among other things, he discussed the importance of ensuring that a website keeps true to the reason it was made, and that that doesn’t get overshadowed by the design and building of the website. Basically, he maintains, a cool website is no good if it doesn’t lead to the results that were intended.

How to Set an Out of Office Reply

It’s good business practice to set an Out of Office Reply before leaving for vacation, holiday or sick time. Follow these easy steps:

In Outlook, chose File tab in the blue ribbon.

Out of Office Replies, Step 1

Next, choose Automatic Replies (Out of Office) button.

Out of Office Replies, Step 2

The next window allows you to choose a start time and end time range. Also, enter text you want to display  in the email, while you’re out. Follow these steps:

  • Click on Send automatic replies and choose a time range.
  • Choose the font and size for your message.
  • Type in the text you want to include in your message.

Out of Office Replies, Step 3

Click OK and you’re done.

Public Mac Deep Freeze Upgrade

With macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced a new file system creatively named Apple File System (APFS), replacing the old HFS+ file system (also known as Mac OS Extended) from the 90s. Unfortunately, Deep Freeze at the time was incompatible with APFS-formatted volumes, preventing us from upgrading our public Macs beyond macOS Sierra. For those unfamiliar with Faronics Deep Freeze, it is reboot to restore software; in other words, any changes made to a computer do not persist across reboots, thus protecting the machine and reducing administrative time.

Faronics recently released Deep Freeze Mac version 7 with full APFS compatibility, allowing us to upgrade to the recently released macOS Mojave starting with the Science Library’s public iMacs. LTDS plans to upgrade the remaining public Macs this summer.

LTDS Update December 9-15th 2018

LTDS team members spend time this week preparing for shutting down Acorn and SFX servers.  The team also had several conversations about internal workflows and ways to improve the services we offer.

 

  • Alma/Primo (Jamen, Nancy, Tao)
    • Special collection item request and Alma booking form
    • Continued work with Alma accounts and user records
    • Loading records into Alma
    • Prepared for Acorn and SFX final shutdown on Dec. 14th.
  • Digital Collections (Nathan, Judy, Scott, Nancy)
    • Continued to utilize new ingestion method and develop processes
    • Assisting students submitting ETDs
    • Taking care of several scanning requests
  • Web/Web applications (Jodie, Scott, Matt)
    • Completed rewrite of TVNews search
    • Worked on setting up/designing 2 wordpress sites
    • Create interface for Music recital requests
  • Other (all):
    • Completed inventory of laptops
    • cleaned up 401 before our students leave for the holidays
    • Met with Joseph in the Fine Arts Gallery to discuss technology needs
    • Consultation with faculty member concerning HathiTrust Data capsules
    • Working with FourWinds
    • Continued work on EzProxy server migration and workflow changes

 

 

 

 

 

 

LTDS Dec 2nd -8th 2018

Another busy week as LTDS continued to work on various projects and attempt to finish up a few items before the holidays.

 

  • Alma/Primo (Jamen, Nancy, Tao)
    • Continued working on user account processes
    • Creating several reports in preparation of shutting down Acorn permanently on Friday.
    • Various discussions around Alma request forms
    • Autoloading of leisure reading materials
  • Desktop/Application support (Judy, Matt, Nancy)
    • Preparing Macs for roll-out and correct a few minor issues.
    • Updating inventory
  • Digital Collections (Nathan, Judy, Scott)
    • Scanning several requests
    • Completing the Nashville Voter
    • Continued to complete ingestion of the the last of ESSSS project and working towards migrating the system to different systems.
    • Reviewing Photo archive metadata
  • Web/Web applications (Jodie, Scott, Matt)
    • Web day 2 items
    • ETANA export and cleanup
    • Completed first pass at  changing the TVNews search method on the TVNews website.
  • Other (all):
    • Preparing for January Brown bag session
    • Various Informs
    • continued planning and testing for migrating ezproxy to new server
    • OJS Iris Journal of Scholarship went live

 

LTDS November 25 – Dec 1st 2018

LTDS returned from the holidays and resumed work on various projects as well as reviewing inform requests.  Please let me know if you have any questions about open INFORM requests.

 

  • Alma/Primo (Jamen, Nancy, Tao)
    • Work on recall requests in Alma and the notices
    • Continued work on Alma accounts and various issues related to the data feeds and external users (friends, alumni, etc.)
    • Discussions concerning normalization rules for external resources
  • Desktop/Application support (Judy, Matt, Nancy)
    • Replaced older hardware
    • Continued work on deploying new macbooks and creating the new image.
  • Digital Collections (Nathan, Judy, Scott)
    • Continued working on Nashville Voters and ingesting
    • Review of the new systems and methods for ingest
  • Web/Web applications (Jodie, Scott, Matt)
    • Continued working on forms and changes to existing forms
  • Other (all):
    • SEM migration
    • Fourwinds development
    • Ezproxy configuration file consolidation

 

LTDS November 11-17th 2018

The team continues to work  on various projects.   Take a moment and ask a LTDS team member about their current projects!

 

  • Alma/Primo (Jamen, Nancy, Tao)
    • Continued to localize outward facing notification letters
    • Technical Migration cleanup
    • Working to add additional local collections
  • Desktop/Application support (Judy, Matt, Nancy)
    • Preparing new laptops
    • Working to deploy new version of deep freeze for the Mac
    • Ordered additional new equipment
  • Digital Collections (Nathan, Judy, Scott)
    • Started reorganizing scanned assets in order to allow streamlined ingestion of materials
    • Continued to migrate data to new system.
  • Web/Web applications (Jodie, Scott, Matt)
    • Worked on several new forms and changes to existing forms
    • WordPress updates
    • Corrected several issues with the Bandy website
  • Other (all):
    • Team members continued to work on various professional development tasks including local and national committees
    • Continued ezproxy migration
    • SEM Migration