Library Technology Guides

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Volume 17 Number 11 (November 1997)

Central site selection

In recent years, there has been a general trend in automated systems of all kinds to site the hosts or servers close to the department or unit being served. This trend was established long ago in libraries; of the more than 12,500 multi-user automated library systems installed in North America, an estimated 98 percent are believed to have their central site in a library rather than in a computer center.

Though it is generally assumed that the central site for a multi-user automated library system will be located in a library, rather than in a computer center, the issue continues to come up. This is especially the case when a library is being automated for the first time, or is switching from a system which had used software on a mainframe in the parent organization's computer center to a client/server or other turnkey system.

For those library administrators who need some arguments in favor of having the central site be in the library, we offer the following:

Simple site requirements-It is not necessary to build a traditional computer room to accommodate an automated library system, therefore, the cost of placing the central site in a library is small; rarely over $10,000. Typically an office of 120-160 square feet can be used with only the addition of two or three 30 amp electrical circuits. No special HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) is needed unless it is not possible to maintain a relatively stable temperature-65-75 degrees. If additional temperature control is needed, a unit specifically designed for small areas costs less than $5,000. If the floor is carpeted, an anti-static spray should be applied; if tiled, the wax should be stripped off. Alternately, anti-static mats can be placed in front of the system components. Additional physical security, if necessary, might be as simple as security shutters on windows and special locks on the doors.

System design-Automated library systems are highly table-driven. The tables are set up so that there is no need to work with the operating system to modify them. An automated library system is implemented by making selections from the tables to tailor the application software to the needs of the library. Making these selections requires an understanding of librarianship, but not of data processing. While the vendor develops the original "profile" of the library and delivers the system with the table selections already made, the library's system manager will be able to make many of the subsequent changes with little difficulty. However, this requires access to a system console. In those cases in which the changes require data processing expertise, this can be provided by the vendor.

Vendor maintenance-when vendors of automated library systems are responsible for system maintenance, it means that they will do remote diagnostics and reconfiguration, make regular preventive maintenance calls, and respond to problems which cannot be handled remotely by dispatching field service personnel. The vendor Will then guarantee system performance in terms of uptime and response time. Attempting local maintenance, no matter how simple, may be used by the vendor to nullify those system performance guarantees.

Minimal operator skills-An automated library system rarely requires a full-time operator. The duties of the operator are limited to removing and installing tapes, setting up the printer(s) for specific jobs, calling the vendor in case of system failure, and maintaining a log of system failures and other problems. Typically clerical staff who work near the central site are trained to perform these tasks. A designated operator leaves his/her regular assignment only as needed in the central site. Most libraries (those with systems supporting five to 100 remote peripherals) allocate only two to three hours of staff time per day to system operation. It is only when a library colocates an automated library system, a CD-ROM server with towers, and an Internet server in the same room that keeping an operator in the room all of the time may be warranted. More time consuming is network administration when a library has multiple locations. It is this role which is frequently undertaken by a network administrator in the library' s parent organization.

Hours of operation-A library often has operating hours which do not match those of a computer center, especially on week-ends. There is an important end-of-day routine which needs to be carried out just before a library closes. This includes removing the logging tape which has recorded all transactions to disk for possible restoration of transactions in case of a disk failure, installing the back-up tape for backing up the database overnight, and preparing the system printer to produce reports or notices overnight. None of these tasks is demanding, but they must be performed without fail.

There will always be certain "special cases' where a computer center will be the central site for the library system. If this is the case, it would be prudent for the library to prepare a memorandum of understanding which would iterate some of the foregoing facts and set forth the following:

• All profile changes will be made by the vendor or the library's system manager.
• There shall be a console in the library so that the library's system manager can make profile changes.
• System operators will not attempt preventive or remedial maintenance, but will, in all cases, call the vendor.
• The end-of-day routine will be carried out just before the library's closing, not earlier.
• If there is to be a charge-back to the library, it shall reflect the actual hours of staff time required to operate the system, not a formula based on the size of the CPU or the number of remote peripherals on the system.

Library service for distance learning

The State of Florida is funding a program entitled the Distance Learning Library Initiative to provide community college and university students with desktop access to an electronic collection of databases. The databases will include course syllabuses, scholarly electronic journals, electronic reference tools, course reserve materials, and patron access catalogs. Using the Internet and the Web, students will be able to connect to the resources from their homes, offices, and classrooms-or from academic libraries near their homes. There are plans to include patron-initiated interlibrary loan.

The Initiative is a cooperative effort among the State Department of Education's Division of Community Colleges, Florida Community College System's Division of Universities, Florida State University System, and the State Library. Two million dollars in state funds will be available in fiscal 1998. The goal is to make distance education more credible and successful by giving students working at some distance from their educational institutions access to resources more nearly comparable to those of on-campus students.

OCLC will be the primary service provider. FirstSearch will be the central component, augmented by local databases and patron access catalogs and Sit eSearch, OCLC's single user interface to multiple resources. Solinet, an OCLC-affiliated regional network, will provide profiling, training, and support services.

[Contact: OCLC, 6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, OH 43017-3395; telephone 1-614-764-6000; FAX 1-614-764-6096]

EDIFACT invoices

The Kansas State University Library appears to be the first to receive invoices for their serials subscriptions electronically using EDIFACT, the international standard for electronic data interchange. The transfer occurred between Otto Harassowitz in Wiesbaden, Germany, and the Library's Endeavor system. The Library will soon begin using EDIFACT for all business transactions for both monographs and serials.

Similar online transfers can be made from any other subscription agency which supports EDIFACT to any automated library system which supports EDIFACT, and vice versa. While the majority of systems still conform to EDI, the U.S. standard, active EDIFACT development work is going on at most subscription agencies and automated library system vendors.

[Contact: Endeavor, 2200 E. Devon, suite 381, Des Plaines, IL 60018; telephone 1-847-296-2200; FAX 1-847-296-5636]

Horizon 4.2 deployed

Most of the 400 libraries using Ameritech's Horizon software have now loaded Version 4.2. Among the enhancements are greater searching capabilities through linked bibliographic records, multiple authority records, and the ability to request closed-stack materials from the PAC. The last of these enhancements reflects the fact that a majority of the 400 systems are installed outside the United States in countries where closed-stack libraries are common.

Ameritech now maintains development offices in the United States, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and has undertaken Beta testing at libraries in each.

[Contact: Ameritech Library Services, 400 Dynix Drive, Provo, UT; telephone; 801-223-5200; FAX 1-801-223-5202]

CSUlink expands

For the past year six campuses of the California State University have been using Innovative Interfaces' INN-Reach to support unmediated interlibrary requesting and borrowing of materials by students and faculty in participating institutions. The software provides union catalog, interlibrary loan, and circulation capabilities among multiple libraries. With a query the patron is automatically given the item's circulation status and is able to place a request, monitor the status of the item, and pick it up when it arrives. All of the information is accessible not only from within the libraries, but from office and home computers. Online renewals are available. Given the experience of the initial group (Fullerton, Hayward, Pomona, San Diego, San Jose, and San Luis Obispo), the campuses at San Francisco and Long Beach have announced their intent to join the CSULink Consortium.

CSULink is an example of a growing trend toward linking other functions as well as catalogs.

[Contact: Innovative Interfaces, 5850 Shellmound Street, Emeryville, CA 94608; telephone 1-510-655-5200; FAX 1-510-450- 6350.]

Geac reports financials

For the quarter ending August 31, 1997 Geac Computers, Inc., the publicly traded Canadian corporation, reported record revenues of $145.6 million (Canadian) and a net income of $30.8 million (Canadian) the latter an increase of 258 percent over the same quarter in 1996. No separate figures are available for the Library Division, but upgrade sales continue to be strong and a considerable number of "new name" sales have been made in Europe in the past few months. Product development is spurred on by a corporate policy that calls for spending 12 percent of revenues on research and development.

[Contact: Geac Computers, 9 Technology Drive, Westborough, MA 01581; telephone l-800-825-2574; FAX 508-871-6850]

Sirsi to automate the U.S. Courts libraries

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the twelve U.S. Circuit Court libraries, including 100 satellite libraries, will be installing Sirsi's UNICORN software. The contract is valued at more than $2.1 million. The libraries of the U.S. Courts serve the information needs of more than 2,000 judges and their staffs.

[Contact: Sirsi Corporation, 689 Discovery Drive, Huntsville, AL 35806; telephone 205-922-9820; URL www.sirsi.com]

Standards for 56 kbps modems delayed

The International Telecommunications Union failed to complete work on the standard for 56 Kbps modems during its September meeting. The next meeting is in January 1998. The failure of the ITU to complete the standard means that there continues to be two competing approaches for providing 56 Kbps dial-up access; the x2 technology of 3Com Corporation and the K56flex technology of Rockwell Semiconductor and Lucent. As the issues which have delayed completion of the standard involve intellectual property rights, licensing of patents, and royalties, rather than technical problems, there is a real possibility that no standard will emerge from the next meeting either. For potential purchasers this means waiting longer to purchase faster modems or purchasing prestandard products. If the latter, upgradability to the standard for a known cost is essential.

Internet biz

UUNet, North America's largest ISP (Internet Service Provider) has decided to limit the number of "peering arrangements" into which it will enter with other ISPs. The Internet consists of a large number of networks which agree to exchange data traffic with each other. These agreements, called "peering arrangements," provide for each ISP to accept an unlimited amount of traffic from another ISP; in return for which it can send an unlimited amount of traffic to the other ISP. The exchange of data occur at "network access points" in Atlanta, Chicago, Pennsauken, NJ, San Francisco, and Vienna, VA. No money is exchanged.

At present, to qualify as a UUNet Peer, an ISP must operate a national network with a dedicated, diversely routed backbone of high capacity which can connect to UUNet's backbone at the same speed in at least four geographically diverse locations. Only ten peering partners have been identified by UUNet. Other ISPs may connect, but they have to pay for the privilege. This cost is likely to be passed onto subscribers as most ISPs have very small margins. UUNet, on the other hand, will realize income from a new source, therefore it is in a position to reduce rates and gain even greater market share.

PSINet, another major ISP, has announced that it will not charge smaller ISPs. None of the other major ISPs had announced their positions as of press time. They apparently are waiting to see the outcome of the UtJNet and PSINet moves.

In another recent development, UUNet, Digex Inc., Exodus, FastNet, and InterNex have announced that they are now able to allocate bandwidth to customers on the basis of need. Rather than forcing a customer to pay for bandwidth levels that are higher than needed or sacrificing availability, these ISPs will adjust bandwidth on an ongoing basis. The tiered service begins at 1 Mbps, however, and therefore is of potential interest to large libraries, only.

Online booksellers

At first glance it might not seem important to libraries that many people now purchase books online, but given the recent discounting practices of the "big three" (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Book Stacks Unlimited) , small libraries who are not getting good discounts may wish to become online buyers. The Contributing Editor recently checked 50 titles against the offerings of all three companies and found that each had over 75 percent of the titles available for sameday shipment at prices 30 to 40 percent off list for hardcovers and 20 to 30 percent for paperbacks. Each of the three companies lists at least 400,000 titles on its site, therefore, the selection is much broader than today's best sellers. Book Stacks Unlimited, which offers the largest discounts, requires the payment of a membership fee-$29.95 to $69.95.

[Contact: www.amazon.com; www.barnesandnoble.com; or www.books.com.]

OCLC signs more publishers for ECO

OCLC has completed agreements with Jossey-Bass, Ohio State University Press, Plenum, and Sage to add their journals to its FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online (ECO). That brings the total to 21 publishers and 850 journals. At this time only 200 of the journals are available online, but the number is expected to increase to 500 by the beginning of 1998. Subscriptions may be placed for individual titles through the publishers or serials subscription agencies.

[Contact: OCLC, 6565 Frantz road, Dublin, OH 43017-3395; telephone 1-614-764-6000; FAX 1-614-764-6096].

Online publishing

Ernst & Young and the Magazine Pubushers of America have recently completed a study of online publishing. They concluded that only 20 percent of the more than 45 publishers who participated in the study are turning a profit. This is so even though more than 90 percent of the electronic publications are extensions of print publications. The two reasons why publishers continue to pursue online publishing despite the lack of profits are the belief that the electronic publications stimulate interest in the printed publications, and that the long-term prospects for online publishing are positive. The expectation is that the $1.5 million in revenue realized from online publications will increase to more than $15 million in the year 2000.

Over 53 percent of the online revenues currently come from advertising, and only five percent from subscription fees. The publishers expect subscription fees to grow significantly, but they also expect to realize revenues from transaction charges or use fees-fees which now account for only one percent of online revenue.

Ernst & Young concluded that growth in electronic publishing will improve when publishers get away from their print roots. Specifically the report recommended: "Online publications' content must be distinctive, uniquely compelling, and fully leverage the media's potential."

Distribution of the report is limited to members of the Magazine Publishers of America.

OCLC dial TCP/IP access

It is now possible to dial OCLC from much of the world using TCP/IP over ordinary telephone lines. Dial TCP/IP requires a Pentium-level PC with Windows 95 or Windows NT4.0 and a modem of at least 28.8 Mbps. The new access method offers full-featured access to all OCLC systems and services. Dial TCP/IP users may open multiple sessions while being billed only a single connect-time charge.

The new access option is superior to regular dial access because there are no barriers to accessing the full range of features of the OCLC system; it is an attractive alternative to the Internet for those who cannot achieve good reliability and response time over the Internet.

[Contact: OCLC, 6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, OH 43017-3395; telephone 1-614-764-6000; FAX 1-614-764-6096]

Current Contents via the Web

Web-access is now available to Current Contents, both via the Internet and within an organization which mounts the product on an in-house server. All of the function-ality has been preserved in creating the new user interface. The name of the new product is CC Connect.

[Contact: Institute for Scientific Information, 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; telephone 800-336-4474]

Lexis-Nexis moves to the Web

It has been estimated that the number of documents on the Web has been growing at the rate of four per second. That rate of increase will now increase exponentially to more than 240. A single decision by Lexis-Nexis to offer access via the Web means that its giant 2.5 TB (Terabyte) database, one which grows by nearly 240 documents per second, will dominate the Web. As Web access will be less expensive than access via the company's private telecommunications network, it is likely that 300,000 searches each day by the company's 1.3 million subscribers will shift to the Web. As most of the Lexis searchers are relatively skilled, the company is taking a chance that the users will be satisfied with response times on the Web. It is likely to fall far short of the six seconds achieved on the private network.

E-mail performance

Inverse Network Technologies recently completed a study of electronic mail performance. The company determined that between April and September, 1997, the number of messages which were delivered within five minutes dropped from 92 percent to 81 percent. Tracking was done every two weeks during the six-month period. There was a steady month-to-month decline. America Online appears to have had the highest incidence of e-mail being delayed overnight. This also affects other ISPs because the saturation or breakdown of one ISP's SMTP servers causes a chain reaction. The mail delivery error messages go back to the sending ISPs and build up large queues. It is the increasing number of messages which are delayed many hours which affect the overall overage. Inverse expects the problem to continue, therefore, one should not assume that an unanswered e-mail message has been delivered.

Automatic configuration of CD-ROM servers

Configuring a CD-ROM server with towers on a network can be a very frustrating experience, but a new generation of products promises to change all of that. They are designed to connect to a network, to be turned on, and then to configure themselves without intervention.

One of the new models-highest rated by InfoWorld, a trade tabloid which regularly publishes product reviews by independent contractors-is the Boffin Multiplatform CD-ROM Tower. The basic model is a SCSI tower with seven drives and an Axis StorPoint CD-ROM controller. All necessary software is included for connecting the server to an Ethernet or Token Ring network, and all configuration work is done on the tower itself. It is this ease of installation that led to the high rating. Once set up, the CD-ROMs are accessible from NetWare clients, Windows networking clients, and Netscape and Internet Explorer clients. When configured with a seven-drive tower with 16x NEC drives, the price is $3,132. A 14-drive option also is available.

The most recent entrant is Micro Design International's CD-Express Connect, a CD-ROM tower that can hold up to 14 drives. The tower has an onboard 32-bit RISC processor and 32MB cache for fast access. MDI ships the product with its l2x drives. The CD-Express Connect currently supports 10BaseT Ethernet and Token Ring, but will shortly support 10/100BaseT for use in a Fast Ethernet environment. The device automatically configures itself as a CD-server when installed on a network and works independently of existing file servers. The product comes with utility software that lets users manage CDs and assign access privileges. The base price is $3,995 for a seven-drive model and $7,199 for a 14-drive model.

[Contact: Boffin Ltd., telephone 800-248- 5328, FAX 612-894-6175; Micro Design International, telephone 1-800-920-8205]

National digital library guidelines

The Library of Congress is once again accepting applications for grants under the National Digital Library Program. Funded with a gift from Ameritech, the program seeks to create a distributed collection of primary source materials in U.S. history and culture in digital form. This year the focus will be on the digitization of collections of textual and graphic materials that illuminate United States history and culture during the period 1763 through 1920. The panel of scholars, educators, and technical specialists who will be evaluating the applications will be asked to give special consideration to collections which emphasize the history of popular culture; and the history of political, social, and cultural institutions. The primary criterion for evaluation of an application will continue to be the significance of the collection for historical understanding and its utility for students and the general public. Applications from ARL (Association of Research Libraries) and non-ARL institutions will be evaluated separately.

The application guidelines are available on the Library of Congress home page: http://lcweb2.loc.gov and clicking on American Memory. An order form is provided for those who wish a print copy of the guidelines.

1998 CIL and National Online/IOLS

The 13th Computers in Libraries Conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, March 2-3, 1998. The Special Library Association will be a cosponsor. Topics will include library systems and software, CD-ROM products and services, library security, online services, and imaging. An attendance of 4,000 has been projected. As usual, there will be exhibits.

The National Online Meeting and IOLS have been scheduled for May 12-14, 1998. The venue will be the New York Hilton. Conference topics will include intellectual property and data rights; integration! connectivity and the seamless interface; CD-ROM vs. online; multimedia and image databases; information communication and bandwidth; Web browser interfaces to the OPAC; library Web pages; network computers; and many more.

[Contact: Information Today, 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055; telephone 609-654-6266; FAX 609-654-4309; e-mail custserv@infotoday.com]

Faster disk drives

Seagate, a major manufacturer of SCSI disk drives has introduced two 10,000 rpm disk drives: a 4.5 GB drive and a 9.0 GB drive. The line has been named "Cheetah." Each rotates approximately 40 percent faster than the 7,200 rpm drives now in widespread use. The faster speed means that latency is much improved from an average of 4.2 ms to 2.99 ins. Latency is the average time to access the next data called for. The new drives also have an outstanding MTBF (mean time between failures) one million hours (114 years)

Other manufacturers are expected to introduce 10,000 rpm drives. When they do, it is likely that prices-which have not yet been announced-will drop and vendors of automated library systems will begin to incorporate them into their systems. The benefit will be even faster response times.

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