IIUG Systems Pre-Conference 13/6/2013

The Systems Pre-conference, consisted of a Systems Librarians' meeting chaired by Margaret Waldron, Institute Librarian, at GMIT, and a series of presentations about systems projects undertaken to expand the capacity of the library system. (IIUG is the Irish Innovative Users Group who use the Millennium or Sierra systems. See more at http://irishinnovativeusersgroup.blogspot.ie/ )

Outcomes from the meeting included the setting up of a share wiki https://sites.google.com/site/iiugsystemslibrarians/  for the systems librarians, and the decision to approach HEANet for training re EDUGATE usage statistics. The share wiki is private and only available to users by invitation. All members are asked to share one systems related document. Details were posted to the IIUG Systems Librarians Google Group. https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!forum/iiugsystems
I have added our systems administration task list.

It is hoped to use Google hangout to exchange experience later in the year.

The afternoon as dedicated to presentations

Gary Cullen from LYIT spoke about their SMS texting solution

 for circulation notices. This solution was put in place following the observation that the students were not reading their notifications. It was decided o try SMSing them in addition to the e-mails automatically generated by the system. These notices were copied to a dedicated e-mail inbox and utilized by a custom script to populate data fields into the sms's to be sent. A second year computing student undertook the scripting work, working closely with the library. The selected SMS provider is an incubator business at LYIT, and costs significantly less than the III provider in the UK. c. 200 texts per month are sent. Students opt in at registration, for data protection purposes.

Elaine Doherty from DIT spoke about their OPAC refresh project in 2012. 

This was a very structured overview of the processes used and decision making processes employed. A fresh uncluttered look as implemented as a result of the project. The homepage looks simpler while offering more search options. A cross-browser design was implemented, using the firebug extension for Firefox. Useful resources included the Webpac WIKI and Sue Boggs IUG presentation.

Catherine Sanborn from UCC spoke about their implementation of Print Templates

, and resources that are available for implementing them locally and on the III web sites. The print template wiki was mentioned. Advice included starting with someone else's templates to see what they had done (TCD have loaded theirs onto the wiki). Notepad and iReport can be used to edit the templates, however it is important not to rename the files or they won't work.