ITTS Update

Just a reminder that the graphic design concept description and survey will be coming down at close of business on Thursday, January 31, 2008. If you haven't had a chance to look and comment, please do so soon. The URL is http://alamockups.luminanze.com .

We've had about 700 survey completions so far.

Rob Carlson
ALA Web Development Manager
800-545-2433 x3272

It's time for another database purge for Collage. Most of you will remember we did this a few months ago, and it significantly improved the performance of Collage, especially at deploy time. What this does is remove versions of assets older than 6 months, along with collateral information about properties, metadata, etc. It does not remove any current, approved assets, or the only existing version of any asset (whether approved or not), even if they are older than 6 months.

The purge process is very server-intensive, so everyone will essentially be locked out of Collage for the duration of the process. The last time we did this, it took 39 hours to complete. We don't know for certain it will take that long this time, but please plan to be out of Collage for most of the weekend.

We want to get on a regular schedule of trimming the database monthly, and February 1 seems as good a time as any to get started. Please check in all your assets and log off Collage by 4:30 p.m. CST, Friday, February 1. We'll send another message out when the purge is complete (probably some time Sunday afternoon).

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Rob
ALA Web Development Manager
800-545-2433 x 3272

Sorry for the short notice, but we need to install an upgrade to Collage this afternoon. Serena says this upgrade cures a number of the ills we've been experiencing lately.

Upgrading has been pretty painless in the past, so we shouldn't be down for more than an hour. Please check in all your assets and log out by 3:00 CST today. We'll let you know when it's safe to go back in. Thanks.

Rob

Update: Everything appears to have gone smoothly, and the system was back up and running as of 5:30 p.m. CST this afternoon. If you encounter any problems, please let us know.

Please join us in welcoming Donavan Vicha to the ITTS staff. Donavan should be no stranger to most of you, as he has worked at ALA for nearly 20 years, first in Publishing and most recently in RUSA and ASCLA. In his position as Web Developer in ITTS, Donavan will cover most of the areas previously tended to by Amos Lieberman (but please continue to send your help requests to the Help Desk). Donavan's vast skill set includes Collage, ColdFusion, Online Communities, Moodle, and Second Life (just to name a few), so we'll have no trouble finding things for him to get involved in!



Donavan can be reached at x2439.

Rob
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Rob Carlson
Web Development Manager

I did a few slides explaining where we're headed with "MY ALA" for the Executive Board session on January 11 and then again for the Web Advisory Committee meeting on January 14. PDF of the slides available here. There isn't much explanation on the slides themselves, so if you have questions, please leave a comment or email me at jlevine@ala.org .

Matt has counted up some statistics for some of the services ITTS provides, and there's more of pretty much everything than we would have thought. Since all new blogs and wikis get parked on Dreamhost, those sites have come online just within the last five months.

Not all of these installations are fully live yet (some have just been requested and are being configured by the owning unit), but it gives some sense of the direction in which ALA is moving. This also doesn't count blogs and wikis hosted offsite, since we have no way of tracking those.

Staff, please don't forget to link your sites from the Read Write Connect wiki so that members can find them. If you need help figuring out how to do this, please us know.

Wikis
-----
On wikis.ala.org: 74
On Dreamhost: 27
Total wikis: 101

Blogs
-----
On blogs.ala.org: 39
On Dreamhost: 19
Total blogs: 58

Lists on Sympa: 926

Courses on Moodle: 30

Online Communities by category
------------------------------
ALA General: 57
Divisions: 197
Round Tables: 20

Total Communities: 274

If you're interested in reading the report ITTS staff have put together for the Web Advisory Committee (WAC), it's available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF. It's an update of what we've been working on since Annual 2007, along with information about upcoming projects. We'll be discussing the contents of the report at the WAC meeting at Midwinter on Monday, January 14, from 8:00 a.m. until noon.

And yes, it's wack. ;-)

For the first time and at member request, ITTS will be holding training sessions at the 2008 Midwinter Meeting. The sessions will be taught by Louise Gruenberg, ALA's trainer, over a period of several days in order to provide as many options as possible. From Louise:

"I will be at Midwinter teaching Collage classes and providing help sessions in Collage, MediaWiki and Online Communities from January 11 through the morning of January 16.

Interested member-volunteers can register using the link below, and should do so ASAP, as sessions will be filled on a first come, first served basis. Those whose registrations are accepted will receive confirmation emails from me.

Please note that members must bring their own wireless-ready notebook computers to class.

If you are an ALA staff liaison, please forward this email with the registration link below to members.

http://creator.zoho.com/itts/2008-midwinter-registration

Please note that we used Zoho Creator for the registration form because we needed something fast, so this part is a bit of an experiment. It's not ideal, as we can't make the form as usable as we'd like, but so far it seems to be working well. The biggest issue is that upon submission of your information, the "success" message flashes too quickly, so check your email for a confirmation before resubmitting your data. If you encounter any problems with the Zoho-based form, please let us know.

I can't believe Midwinter is already here - see you soon.