ITTS Update

Urchin, a web log analyzer from Google, has been purchased and will be installed shortly. We will begin creating new search and traffic reports in October.

The replacement Google search appliance has arrived, and will be installed in October.

No change.

The WEB is planning a half-day session on coordinating web content management for ALA staff. The group looked at known projects under development, and saw the need for greater cooperation and coordination throughout the association.

The website survey went live on September 5th and will remain up until October 2nd. Analysis of the survey results is expected to be completed during the first week of October. UserWorks is currently screening potential focus group participants. Two focus groups will be held, one consisting of 5-8 ALA members and one consisting of a similar number of non-members. Focus group sessions will take place in UserWorks state of the art facility in Silver Spring, MD.

ITTS staff are now using TrackIT for problem reports. ALA staff are also able to use the system to place work orders.

Now that the iMIS upgrade is complete, work on the SpaceMaster project will resume.

New switching equipment was installed on September 9th. These new "intelligent" switches will speed up network communications and enhance intruder detection. Some communications problems were discovered after the upgrade, but have now been successfully corrected.

The list migration project is being kicked off at the end of September. We will begin by asking list owners which lists they would like to have deleted and what they want to happen to archives of lists they want to migrate to Sympa. The actual list migration should happen in late October.

Unit and individual pages are being developed. Individuals will have the ability, through their "my resources" page, to track their library activity. We are also working on the ability to display phone trees (in the event of an emergency) on individual pages.

iMIS was successfully upgraded to version 10.6 on September 19th. The upgrade was delayed several days because an interim upgrade was required by ASI (the system manufacturer) in order to avoid data loss during the main upgrade. Some iMIS-to-Web incompatibilities were discovered early on and corrected the day after the upgrade took place. Staff are still working through some issues with reports from iMIS. Staff have been attending iMIS refresher sessions throughout the month. Implementation of installment payments for dues is next up.

We are now reviewing the specifications document on this from Sydney.

Several enhancements were made to the Online Communities (OC) system this month. Communities in the "general" category can now be grouped by unit, which reduces the length of the list under "general." This also allows for the creation of unit administrators for units other than Divisions or Round Tables. Also, changes to a community member's forum profile will now apply to all forums in which the member participates. Requests for new communities where there is not an existing unit administrator will now be sent to the global admin, who can then create both the community and a unit administrator.

A wiki has been created to track desired enhancements to the OC system. It is still under development, but will be located at http://wikis.ala.org/ocenhancements/ when it is ready.

Work on the current phase of this project was wrapping up at the end of the month. It is expected to go live in early October.

The CMS implementation was delayed for a time this month while Duo Consulting worked on a problem with left-hand navigation display in Collage. The current site and sections/divisions currently have a multi-level left navigation structure that expands based on the active page. This had to be recreated within Collage's framework. Within Collage, users can manage left navigation through site structures which are independent from the template. However, Collage's base functionality supports only a three level navigation. Due to this, Duo had to develop a method to support the current site functionality which includes over three levels, while making sure that users could take advantage of the Collage site structure functionality allowing for simplified control/maintenance of the left navigation.

More delay-causing problems were experienced after the new switching equipment was installed. However, by the time of this writing, we know that the switching problems have been corrected, and we believe the navigation problem has been solved. Duo has completed a penultimate conversion of AL Online data, and has done a preliminary conversion of ACRL/Choice content. We will re-evaluate the conversion timeline once these two sections have gone live.

Approximately 30 ALA staff attended a day-long two-part wiki presentation by Meredith Farkas of Norwich University. The morning session covered the "hows and whys" of using wikis to conduct ALA business. Three hands-on sessions were held in the training room in the afternoon. Staff practiced creating and maintaining wikis.

Recently added blogs include ACRL Effective Practices, Leads From LAMA, LAMA 50th Anniversary, and District Dispatch from the Washington Office. B2Evolution software is scheduled to be upgraded by the end of the month.

Recent wiki additions include Midwinter 2007, Online Communities Enhancements, Law for Librarians, and Interactive Web Applications (formerly Social Networking). We are looking into permissioning and bad behavior plug-ins for MediaWiki.

February 2006

A “spot check” of feedback@ala.org messages for the weeks of January 30 – February 3 and February 6 – 10 showed almost equal numbers of messages in several broad categories:

Broken or missing Links: 12
(e.g., “the graphic on this page is missing…”)

Suggestions for content: 12
(e.g., “I’d like to suggest a link to my page…”)

Suggestions for improvement: 11
(e.g., “I’m looking for a list of ALL Newberry winners…”)

User Interface problems: 13
(e.g., “I’ve requested that my password be emailed, but it never arrives…”)

Other: 8
(e.g., “I would hope that ALA would file a “Friend of the Court” letter for Google…”)

Mail to the feedback and webmaster accounts is “triaged” daily in ITTS. Where messages can be linked to a specific unit, they are sent to the web content manager for that unit by cc’ing the response to the sender. Many requests for general information are referred to the Library. Customer service issues are sent to the Member and Customer Services Center. Messages regarding problems with systems or content under ITTS control are fixed as quickly as possible and the sender is notified (if they have so requested and have given us a valid email address to which to respond).

Because these addresses (feedback and webmaster) receive so much spam, we are developing a plan to accept input through an HTML form on the website. (Many organizations – NPR is an example – have begun accepting only form-based input as a way of reducing spam.) The form will deposit message content into a database where it can be analyzed on a regular basis to help guide improvements to our systems.

March 2006

The Web Editorial Board is moving forward on plans for a usability assessment of the ALA website. Rob Carlson has begun drafting an RFP for the testing. The usability assessment will lead to redesign recommendations that we will implement as resources become available.

An RFP for usability assessment was drafted and reviewed by the Website Advisory Committee. Their recommendations have been incorporated into the RFP. It will begin distribution May 1.

May 2006

The Web Editorial Board met with staff from the Governance Office and OIF on May 1th to discuss the placement of Council and Executive Board documents on the website. It was agreed that the Council and Board secretariats would place all official Council and Board documents in a single directory with a document inventory as “cover page.” Guidelines and recommended practices will be developed.

June/July 2006

The Web Editorial Board has spearheaded a drive to clean up outdated conference information on the website. The issue arises when content once tagged to show up on dynamic pages is not "untagged" after the event in question has passed. The WEB will continue to review other tagged sections of the website and encourage content managers to update their pages.

August 2006

In addition to overseeing the usability assessment project (see Usability Study), the Web Editorial Board ( WEB ) has developed plans for a members-only "landing page" that will be implemented in stages over the next few months. The WEB has also sketched out a plan for revising the layout of the home page to accommodate changes that have pushed the "Spotlight" section "below the fold." This rearrangement has been put on hold pending the completion of the usability study. The WEB recently launched a wiki to gather information from across the Association regarding social networking. This was prompted when it was discovered that numerous units of the organization were planning websites, blogs and wikis on this topic. The WEB has also developed an online community to collect and share information about the group's work. Jenny Levine has been added as a member of the WEB.

June/July 2006

The next major phase is to add a robust committee volunteer form that will retain demographic information, education and accomplishments, etc. ALA units have been solicited for their input in hopes of creating a universal volunteer form that can be used by all units.

August 2006

Work continues. We called for unit-specific committee volunteer forms and received approximately 10 responses. These forms will be analyzed for differences and similarities, with an eye toward developing a universal committee volunteer form. We are still on target for a fall release.

June/July 2006

Library and ITTS staff met to develop a plan for implementing the online feedback form. Specifications have been sent to SydneyPLUS, and we are awaiting their estimate of development costs.

August 2006

This project has been delayed while SydneyPLUS works on improving the login function.

April 2006

Implementation of TrackIt! was decoupled from the KMS launch to avoid training and support conflicts. ITTS staff continue to refine the system and expect to make it generally available in early May.

May 2006

Since our last update, an upgrade to TrackIt! was received and installed. Testing of the upgraded system is underway. We expect TrackIt! to go live early in June.

June/July 2006

After having resolved some early issues resulting from the upgrade, the system is now up and running and ITTS staff are managing problem reports using TrackIT! The next step is to put the web (user) interface on the Knowledge Management System. This will happen late summer.

August 2006

TrackIT! is ready to go live. We have developed instructional materials for logging into and using the system which will be distributed to staff shortly. The software assigns work orders, tracks time to resolution, stores solutions in a knowledge base, and automatically escalates requests that do not receive timely responses. We expect the use of the email address helpdesk@ala.org to be deprecated when TrackIT! goes live.

May 2006

SpaceMaster is working on the conversion. We are waiting for SpaceMaster to get back to us with status.

June/July 2006

Spacemaster ad software is ready to be installed. We anticipate this will happen in the next few weeks, but are dependent on a successful conversion to the new software release.

May 2006

Cabling is in the process of being installed. We have two proposals for switching equipment and will make a decision the first week of June.

May 2006

Cabling is in the process of being installed. We have two proposals for switching equipment and will make a decision the first week of June.

June/July 2006

A decision was made to go with HP switching equipment, which has been ordered. Fiber cabling to support the higher speed switches has been installed. The new switches will be installed over a weekend, which will be announced in advance.

August 2006

The installation of new switching equipment has been scheduled for Saturday, September 9, 2006. Internet connectivity will be interrupted for at least one hour, starting approximately 8:00 a.m. CDT. The rest of the building will be down for most of the rest of the day. The interruption will cause the website to be unavailable for about an hour that morning. Email will be deferred and delivered after the upgrade is complete.

February 2006

At this point we are investigating an upgrade of WebCT software and the impact of Blackboard’s purchase of WebCT on our installation. The application was moved to a more stable and flexible Linux server in February 2006.

March 2006

A meeting of WebCT stakeholders was held on March 22. Participants discussed the process for creating courses and student accounts, as well as licensing issues and the need to break the connection between unused courses and their students. A “seat” is defined as one person in one class, and we currently have about 1700 seats occupied. However, Matt Ivaliotes estimates that roughly half of the courses that account for the 1700 seats are not currently being used. Breaking the connection between unused courses and students could free up 800 seats. Both the course materials and the student accounts can be retained for future use without affecting our license. The group encouraged Matt to upgrade to WebCT 6.0. Following the implementation of TrackIt! (see below), course developers will be able to request new courses through the new help desk application.

April 2006

Planning has begun for the upgrade of WebCT to version 6.0.

May 2006

The move to version 6.0 requires migration to a database back end. We are investigating whether we can use an existing SQL installation or whether WebCT requires the acquisition of SQL Server 2005.

June/July 2006

Hardware considerations are being reviewed. WebCT/Blackboard is concentrating its efforts on larger installations such as colleges and universities, so we are looking for the right combination of equipment and operating environments to meet our needs.

August 2006

We believe we have a solution that will allow us to continue with WebCT despite our not needing the large campus configuration they recommend. A test server has been set up, and upgrade options are being tested.

April 2006

The KMS was launched as scheduled on April 3. Training classes have been held throughout the month. Plans are underway for Phase II, to include unit and individual space, as well as remote access.

May 2006

On Apirl 3, at the beginning of National Library Week, ITTS and the ALA Library launched the ALA Knowledge Management System (KMS), using products from SydneyPlus International. The initial launch included the OPAC, a few web links, and the entire content of the former ALA Intranet, which the system has replaced. With 10 weeks of further development, KMS now features a searchable staff directory; a training calendar with downloadable handouts; searchable access to HR policies and forms, membership reports, conference planning forms, etc. The "virtual library" side of the KMS provides the OPAC, a dynamic listing of newly cataloged books, a dynamic listing of currently received serials, categorized web links on topics of interest to ALA staff, links to key ALA blogs, and access to a number of databases, including Booklist Online. ALA's implementation of the KMS has been reported to SydneyPlus Users Group meetings in Minneapolis and London, as well as to the Medical Library Association and the Special Library Association. Plans are underway to add a virtual reference component that will dynamically build the FAQ on the ALA website and a combined calendar for several streams of deadlines ALA staff must meet. Irene Marquez, ITTS; Karen Muller, Library; and Sherri Vanyek, ITTS are the project managers.

June/July 2006

The KMS was made remotely accessible, which now requires all users to login to the system. We have discussed with SydneyPLUS how to allow access from within the building without logging in. Next steps include unit and individual content sections in the KMS.

August 2006

The vendor continues to work on a solution for a less cumbersome login process. A plan is being developed to implement unit and individual pages within the system. A Webex meeting is scheduled for September 12 to resolve issues regarding the development of the feedback form.

February 2006

Matt Ivaliotes has been converting ListProc lists to Sympa as time permits over the past year. He has recently proposed a “mass migration” that we intend to pursue. First we will poll staff to get a count of dead lists and the staff owners’ desires regarding any archives. Dead lists will not be migrated. Some programming (scripting) will need to be done to automate the conversion process. List users and owners will be notified of the pending conversion at regular intervals. Training materials on Sympa list use and management will be provided along with the notices. Both ListProc and Sympa will need to be taken down for approximately half a day to accomplish the conversion. We will do this on a weekend to minimize disruption.

March 2006

Planning of the conversion continues. We have created a list of all list owners and their associated lists to use in sending out a memo asking them to “weed” their lists.

April 2006

Planning continues. Scripting of the conversion will begin when Jack Briody returns from his honeymoon in May. In the meantime, list owners will be asked which lists can be abandoned and which need to move to Sympa.

May 2006

ITTS staff are currently reviewing conversion script requirements. The conversion can begin as soon as the scripts are finished. Current list owners will be asked to weed their lists during the first week of June.

June/July 2006

A project timeline has been developed and Jack and Matt are working on the scripts necessary to migrate all active lists en masse. We anticipate this will happen in late August.

August 2006

Work on the scripts continues, but has been slightly delayed due to the implementation of the new web content management system (see CMS). We expect the mass migration to take place early this fall.

April 2006

We continue to experience extremely high traffic on weekdays, and the “peak” period now appears to be 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. We have increased our contracted bandwidth to 10 megabits per second (Mbps), which has brought some relief. ITTS is investigating to see if this traffic is routine or exceptional. If it is routine, we may need to increase our contracted bandwidth even more.

Website traffic increased 25% to 30% between 2004 and 2005. Total page views for 2004 were generally in the range of 6 million to 7 million per month. For 2005, page views were consistently well over 7.5 million, and later months have hit the 10 million page views mark.

Alexa, a service that ranks websites based on usage (1 = most heavily used), shows the ALA website as consistently being ranked about 12,000 in popularity for 2005. In 2004 the ALA website was generally ranked above the 20,000 mark.

April 2006

We continue to experience extremely high traffic on weekdays, and the “peak” period now appears to be 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. We have increased our contracted bandwidth to 10 megabits per second (Mbps), which has brought some relief. ITTS is investigating to see if this traffic is routine or exceptional. If it is routine, we may need to increase our contracted bandwidth even more.

Website traffic increased 25% to 30% between 2004 and 2005. Total page views for 2004 were generally in the range of 6 million to 7 million per month. For 2005, page views were consistently well over 7.5 million, and later months have hit the 10 million page views mark.

Alexa, a service that ranks websites based on usage (1 = most heavily used), shows the ALA website as consistently being ranked about 12,000 in popularity for 2005. In 2004 the ALA website was generally ranked above the 20,000 mark.

May 2006

System load has been reduced significantly with the recasting by Tim Smith of how tagged pages are created and presented out of the SQL database. In short, the Active Matter system was programmed to select all tags (nearly 500,000), and then eliminate those that were not relevant to the page in question. Tim re-wrote the procedure to select only the relevant tags in the first place. We continue to look at system load issues, but further enhancements a) probably would not gain us that much performance improvement, and b) will obviated by the move to Collage.

June/July 2006

The website has been considerably more stable since the tagged page routine was changed in May. Traffic seems to have moderated as well. We are experimenting with Urchin, a website statistics program from Google, which appears to be very flexible and comprehensive. If it is determined that Urchin will fit our needs, it will be implemented in conjunction with the rollout of the new content management system.

August 2006

After some experimentation, we believe Urchin will meet our needs, and plan to implement it along with the new CMS.

March 2006

The Web Editorial Board is moving forward on plans for a usability assessment of the ALA website. Rob Carlson has begun drafting an RFP for the testing. The usability assessment will lead to redesign recommendations that we will implement as resources become available.

April 2006

An RFP for usability assessment was drafted and reviewed by the Website Advisory Committee. Their recommendations have been incorporated into the RFP. It will begin distribution May 1.

May 2006

Six proposals were received and are being reviewed by the Web Editorial Board and the Website Advisory Committee A decision is expected by June 16th.

June/July 2006

An agreement was signed with UserWorks of Silver Spring, MD, and the project is underway. Groups of stakeholders are being interviewed in late July and early August. Other activities include an online survey, focus group inverviews, heuristic analysis, and web log and problem report analysis. The final product will be a report of recommendations on how to improve the overall usability of our website. The final report is expected around the middle of October.

August 2006

Stakeholder interviews have taken place and an online survey is about to go live. Approximately 55 members and staff were interviewed in 16 groups during July and August. A requirements report is being developed, which will help us determine benchmarks for the actual usability test. UserWorks will now embark on an analysis of web logs and help desk requests.

March 2006

Contact has been made with Google to review available pricing options. Discussions are ongoing.

April 2006

No change.

May 2006

Investigation into options continues. Google has just announced an upgrade to the search appliance software, which we are evaluating.

June/July 2006

No change.

August 2006

Google pricing has come down, and the number of documents indexed has increased, so we were able to renew with Google for another two years. We will get a new appliance in September, pre-loaded with the latest version of the Google software, yet we will retain our November renewal cycle.

May 2006

A kickoff meeting for this project was held on Wednesday, May 10th. A test conversion will happen in June. Interviews with key users will be taking place over the next two weeks (late May / early June). Demonstrations for staff will be held after Annual Conference.

June/July 2006

Key users were interviewed in late May and the test conversion was performed July 18, 2006. Early indications are that it went well. Web applications that interface to iMIS still need to be tested. Demonstrations for staff will be scheduled in the near future.

August 2006

The iMIS upgrade is scheduled for the weekend of September 15, 2006. Introductory sessions have been held for staff, with more to come on September 7th. Two-hour training sessions will be held throughout the fall. There will be a slight interruption to iMIS availability during the upgrade, and we will notify users as early as possible. To facilitate the iMIS upgrade, each desktop in the building was visited by ITTS staff on August 26th to install Zen Works software. Zen Works will allow us to automatically update each workstation's software when the time comes, and will allow us to push out properly configured browsers ahead of the Collage implementation.

February 2006

An e-Learning Instructional Designer has been hired (January 30, 2006) and has as one of her highest priorities the creation of documentation and online tutorials for the OC system. Matt Ivaliotes has been providing administrator training at ALA, but sessions have been sparsely attended. We take this as a sign that staff in those units interested using the OC system have been trained. We will continue to offer admin training as we ramp up efforts to provide online documentation and user tutorials.

March 2006

Training of OC users continues by phone, Live Meeting (web) and face-to-face. There are currently about 145 communities in the system.

April 2006

Training continues. There are currently 156 online communities in the system. We will be soliciting input from staff about possible future enhancements to the OC system.

May 2006

Use of the system continues to grow. A group of participants in the Library 2.0 boot camp project has taken on the use of the online communities system as a way to enhance member participation in the organization. Another Library 2.0 group has proposed encouraging new members to become active in a community as a way of improving the “initiation” experience of new members. A meeting with the OC system developer has been scheduled for May 31 to discuss questions about the current system and to explore enhancements.

June/July 2006

Two meetings have been held with the online communities system developer to identify areas for improvement, based on input from staff and members. A list of enhancements has been developed and we are awaiting an estimate of how long it will take to implement them.

August 2006

Use of the communities system continues to grow. Display of available communities was modified to allow grouping by unit. This reduces the long list of available communities upon start-up. This will also allow the designation of unit community administrators within the "general" category. The developer continues to work on our list of enhancements. As enhancements are done, they will be reported here.

April 2006

Blogs for AASL, OLOS, ALCTS, Mary Ghikas, Andrew Pace (American Libraries columnist) and Membership have been created. Following recommendations arising from the spring ALA Executive Board meeting, we will extend blog support to officers (President, President-Elect, Treasurer).

March 2006

ALA’s blog software has been made “users only” to eliminate spam attacks on the YALSA blog. New blogs for ALCTS, OLOS, and American Libraries are in the works.

May 2006

New blogs have been created for RUSA, ACRL, and ALA Editions. Matt Ivaliotes has been working with Troy Linker and the staff of Production Services to develop the capacity to customize blog “skins” for units wanting a different look and feel. Once a blog is created, units can contract with PS for graphic design services.

June/July 2006

The monthly ITTS Update is now being delivered by blog. Visit blogs.ala.org/ittsupdate.php for monthly installments.

Wiki software has been installed and two Wikis have been created. ITTS staff will again work with Production Services to enable customized skins for Wikis. Contact the help desk if you would like to create a Wiki or blog for your unit.

August 2006

New blogs have been created for "Leads from LAMA" and "District Dispatch" for the Washington Office. An upgrade to b2evolution is in the works.

New wikis have been developed for social networking, Jenny Levine (several), ACRL and OIF ("Law for Librarians").

February 2006

A “proof of concept” was performed on February 24th to test assumptions about the conversion of content, metadata, and user permissions settings. It is of primary importance that staff not be required to manually convert large amounts of content when the new system is installed. It is also very important that metadata pertaining to our content remain intact through the conversion, and that user permissions pertaining to content and metadata remain in place. Staff observers of the conversion test are satisfied that Duo will be able to convert the current database with a high degree of precision. We will begin contract negotiations and project specifications immediately.

March 2006

On March 6th, Duo Consulting performed a test of content deployment. 25 pieces of content were set to deploy simultaneously. Then, fifteen minutes later, an entire section (we used ACRL/Choice) was set to deploy. There was no noticeable stress on the servers. A statement of services was drawn up after Sherri Vanyek negotiated more favorable terms. It is currently being reviewed by legal counsel. The statement of services calls for a unit-by-unit deployment of content to the new system. Early adopters could begin as early as April. All content conversion is expected to be completed by October.

April 2006

Agreement with Duo Consulting has been signed and Serena Collage has been licensed. Duo and ITTS staff are meeting weekly to discuss issues that arise during the discovery phase. Duo has done a trial conversion of the website content database and reports very good results. Most of the “missing” items appear to be redirects, which will be transferred into the new system. We are getting quotes on new servers for the system. We have asked the original RFP team to serve as the implementation team as needed.

May 2006

The discovery phase is well underway. Duo has run several test conversions of the data and report excellent results. The new servers have been purchased and installed. The first meeting of the implementation team (a recasting of the RFP task force) was held on May 23rd to update and discuss issues that have arised during the discovery phase. (See meeting notes on KMS). As part of the conversion, ITTS staff will begin converting all Access databases currently in use on the website to tables in a SQL database, or to individual SQL databases, depending on their complexity.

June/July 2006

Content conversion is underway. We are waiting on the arrival of a content services switch (CSS) before we can go live with any converted content. The switch has been ordered but we do not yet have a firm arrival date. In the meantime, Duo staff are working on the conversion of graphic elements and training ITTS staff and staff of the first two units that will go live in the new system. The implementation task force (the reconstituted RFP task force) has met twice to review and discuss conversion issues.

August 2006

The Cisco Content Services Switch (CSS) was installed on August 25, 2006. This switch allows us to direct web traffic between the Active Matter CMS and Collage as conversions progress. It will also perform load balancing between the two web servers that will deliver web content once Collage is fully implemented. American Libraries Online content has been converted and reviewed by American Libraries staff. Once the minor issues found have been resolved, AL Online will go live and conversion will begin on ACRL and Choice content. Collage training for power users and early converters is taking place August 29-31 in the ALA training room. Another session for power users will be scheduled for November or early December. Units whose content will be converted in the meantime will receive basic training from Louise Gruenberg.