Beth’s Blog

But don’t delay! Ms. Has-it-all-but-wants-more keeps calling us back to ask why she hasn’t gotten hers yet.  And she can’t even spell iBorrow.

 –Al Carlson

The latest build of iBorrow was installed on our server in Provo Friday evening, and we tested it over the weekend.  Our assessment so far is that it passes the test nicely.  Here’s some detail.

Java 1.6 compliance:  Yes.  No problems at all.

Faster “Edit Request” response:  Well, maybe.  A little faster, I think.  It’s not yet what you would call ’speedy’, but if you can set up a three way race with MS Vista and a glacier as the other two competitors, you can bet on URSA.

Proxy Request Improvements:  The patron’s barcode is now readable as you type it in.  Yayyy!

Incoming Loan to Fill Loan:  This one is lovely.  It is still true that URSA can’t place a hold on your local system, if it can’t give your server a single unique bib record to request.  That is why ISBN’s are so important.  But there are several other things that can drop a request into your Incoming Loan box, even if it has an ISBN.  Most of these are transient.  So, if you could try again, the hold would take.  The new build lets you do that.  If you go to your Incoming Loan space and find requests there with ISBN’s, you can right click on each request, choose Process Request, and watch it go to Fill Loan.  That’s not the important part, though.  The important part takes place in your server, where a Hold gets placed, and a copy will show up on someone’s pick list tomorrow morning.

More Detail in History:  I’ll send this out to you as Email and attach a spreadsheet Holly gave us.  When you edit an item now and look at its History, you (and SirsiDynix Support) will see a lot more information.

Availability Rules and LOLR Issues:  These weren’t really testable over one weekend.  Time will tell us how much closer to ‘perfect’ iBorrow/URSA is at following the Availability Rules and properly routing requests that run into LOLR issues.

As we learn more, we’ll share it with you.  And I trust you to tell me when you find something that doesn’t work.

–Al Carlson

It is Saturday evening, and so far the new build looks good.  Very, very good.  It has been well behaved in all the tests I’ve done so far, and the new features just add to the good feeling.  Like having the vinyl in your car replaced by hand sewn leather.

The neatest trick is being able to go into the Incoming Loan work space in the client, find a request there with an ISBN, right click and ‘process’ it, and have it show up in Fill Loan.  With a hold placed in the local system.

I used this a lot on Friday evening, because both Hillsborough County and Sunline have been ‘resistant’ to iBorrow requests for the past week.  Both issues were resolved Friday afternoon, just before the new build was loaded, so there were LOTS of requests hanging around, eager for a chance to create a real Hold.

It also runs nicely with Java 1.6.

We’ll keep testing and keep you informed.

–Al Carlson

Hernando County has been using iBorrow for a few months now, but only as a Reference tool. That is, when a patron came to the desk needing help locating a title, and the Librarian concluded it was not something Hernando County could provide, she or he would call up iBorrow and use that.

But as of Monday, April 21, that changed!  Now, Hernando patrons who can’t find what they want in the Library’s online catalog can click on—are you ready?—”Can’t Find It?”   That takes them to a page with a couple choices, and one of those takes them to an iBorrow link.

This is sort of a soft launch for now. They plan to do some classes in May and bring in the brass band from River City in June.

It’s been days—possibly weeks—since we threw anything new at you.  And we don’t want you to get complacent.  So, here’s another opportunity for change and excitement. 

As you may have heard, the Statewide Delivery Service is getting an upgrade.  On Monday, January 14, we’ll begin Beta Testing barcodes on orange Delivery bags using print-on-demand labels. (The TBLC and Ft. Myers hubs will be the participants in the Beta Test.)   Several of you have contacted TBLC to ask how you should integrate these new high tech labels with your existing procedures for AlleyCat and iBorrow materials, when you become part of the action.  Here’s the plan. 

If you currently use AlleyCat labels, use the new barcoded labels, but whack them with the iBorrow rubber stamp before you put the label into the orange bag pocket.  This will alert anyone with 20-80 vision or better that these are AlleyCat/iBorrow items and should be handled accordingly.  If you don’t have an iBorrow stamp, contact Vickie Frost at frostv@tblc.org, and she will send you one.  If you don’t currently use AlleyCat labels, you may ignore this message. 

And if your palms are feeling sweaty, because this is the first time you’ve even heard of the whole idea of barcoding Delivery bags, visit www.tblc.org/delivery.  All your questions will be answered.

After some scary moments Friday evening, the second load of our new build passed its tests and is now up and running.

Whew!

For a partial list of new features, see the article below called “Early Christmas Gift”.

–Al Carlson

Users who jumped in early Monday morning and opened up the new iBorrow build that was loaded on Friday evening were heard to mutter to themselves, “This new build sure looks a lot like the old build.”

That’s because it was the old build.  Our weekend testing revealed a deal breaker, so we had SirsiDynix restore the old build Sunday evening.

We’d hoped that our testing would be just a formality, and that we’d sign off on the new version by Saturday noon and go back to Christmas shopping.  But we ran into a problem Friday night that the SirsiDynix engineers were not able to diagnose and fix.  Not that they didn’t try.  We caught Holly at the SirsiDynix Christmas party Friday evening, and she had Keith Poole in on the problems before the first round of canapés was gone.  We all continued testing the next day, but by Saturday afternoon, it was clear that this was not a trivial coding issue.  Peter Fripp restored the build we’ve been using late on Sunday afternoon.

The problem we ran into was a variation on one we’ve seen before:  declining requests.  About a third of the time, we would get a rude and cryptic error message, when we tried to decline a request.  We hoped to find the pattern behind the problem.  Maybe something like, “When the requesting library is their own Lender Of Last Resort and they are set to unmediated, declining will fail.”  Nahh!  Nothing that easy.  I had three requests from the same library lined up in Fill Loan in the iBorrow Training database.  The first declined fine.  The second failed.  The third worked.  Go figure.

So, Holly, Keith, Peter, and Aaron will put the new build up on the rack (Think mechanic, not inquisition) this morning, tear it apart, and see if they can find the cause of this nasty bug.  You will keep using the build you know and have grown to love.  And we’ll let you know when we’re ready to try again.

–Al Carlson

We’ve had the current build of the IBorrow Staff Client in place for quite a while.  It’s not the most exciting piece of software on the planet, but it’s been stable.  And after its early history, that’s counted for a lot.  But, behind the scenes and under the radar—and possibly over the rainbow and through the looking glass—Holly Harvey’s software engineering team has been hard at work to improve it.  Barring the always possible last minute show stoppers, we should see the new version this weekend.

As we’ve done with the past two releases, Matt and I will test it on Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday.  If it breaks or goes catatonic on us, we’ll call Holly and ask her to take it off the server and put the current version back on.  If it survives our rigorous beer-and-pizza-driven testing, we’ll leave it in place, and you’ll see it Monday morning.

If you need help from your IT Department to load new iBorrow builds on your PC, please let them know that one is—probably–due on Monday.  Most of you will see it when you click on the SirsiDynix icon Monday morning and watch the download.

So, what are these new features?  I’m glad you asked.  There are over 40 of them, so I’ll hit only the highlights.

1. When you are pushing requests out to other participants in Mediate Borrowing, the request will actually go to your target location and not hang around in your work space, tempting you to try it again and then generating an error message.  We like a practical joke as much as anyone, but this one has gone on long enough.
2. They’ve added some “hover text” to the Portals, so that “mousing over” choices such as “Volumes Needed” will bring up an explanation of what that means.
3. Many of the error messages currently end with, “If the problem persists, ask a Librarian.”  That’s a nice tribute to our profession’s skills, but not very useful to the patron using his browser at home.  Or even to the patron in the library, because few library schools offer courses in NCIP error message diagnosis.  So, the “ask a Librarian” line will leave iBorrow and go stay with Virtual Reference where it belongs.  Other misleading messages in the Portals have also been fixed.
4. When you are searching in the staff Portal and pick a group of target libraries, you won’t have to pick them again every time you search.  Your choices will persist through that session.
5. When you use Search Requests in the URSA Staff Client, it will be MUCH faster than it has been, even if you do a complex search, such as “How many requests are there with a requesting agency of Pinellas Park, a lending agency of Lee County, and a status of Pending at Lender?”  And the columns you set up to show the results of those searches will now persist, so you don’t have to drag them into place every time you log in.
6. A couple of the tabs or ‘buttons’ on the Home screen in the Staff Client have been relabeled.  Instead of having Mediate Loan mean “either borrowing or lending, depending on how I use it in the rest of the sentence”, Mediate Loan will mean you are borrowing from someone else, and Incoming Loan will mean you are lending to someone else.  If you want confusing labels, you’ll have to shop elsewhere.

There will also be some visual differences that are tough to describe, so I’ll just say “Watch for them!”  I expect to hear at least one “Oooo!” or “Ahhh!” next Monday.

If you have questions or concerns on any of this, please contact me.

–Al Carlson

I don’t yet have the details on what went wrong or what the specific fix was, but RPA seems to have been pummeled into submission and is now validating patrons throughout the iBorrow realm again.
The most complete explanation I’ve gotten so far is:  “..the cookie setting in RPA has to be at least ‘5’”.  I have no idea what that means.  Or how it got to be less than five.  But I’ll keep asking.

The other news involves iBorrow/URSA updates and the next build.  The target date for the next release is early December.  We’ll see if they can convince us that Matt and I don’t need to pre-test it over a weekend.  So far, we are still a mite skeptical. 

As was the case with the previous build, the next one will focus on stability and reliability rather than flashy new features, but there will be some nice new stuff.  We should get a list next week, and we will pass it on via Email and post it here on Beth’s Blog.

–Al Carlson

Just so we wouldn’t get complacent, iBorrow has decided to mess with us again.

If you try to log in as a patron from East Lake, Palm Harbor, Sunline, Lee County, or Hillsborough County, you’ll get the error message that says:
“Invalid username and/or password, please login again”
Or you may get some variation on that wording.  The bottom line is that you won’t get in.

(If you log in as a Pinellas Park user, or one from Citrus, Hernando, or Collier, you’re fine.  Go figure.)

This seems to be a problem with RPA.  Peter Fripp and Sandy Schlueter have been working on it since yesterday (November 12), and we hope—but cannot guarantee—that they’ll have it fixed today.

Stay tuned for updates.  Contact me if you have questions.

–Al Carlson