The card catalog is back online, but at what cost?
“We have no financial information at the present time,” said Joan Overfield, director of library services. “Our primary focus has been returning the catalog to full functionality.”
No discussion about the final financial cost has been done at this time. No action against the outside consultant who made the error that put the catalog offline been discussed.
After the online catalog went down on Wed. Oct. 8 during its transfer to another server, library employees worked around the clock to fix the error.
“During the recovery, we worked with both the outside consultant and Computing and Network Services to bring all functionality back,” said Overfield. “It was a real team effort.”
On Fri. Oct. 17, the catalog went back up with full functionality and accessibility.
“We recovered all data, including all records and transactions,” said Overfield.
Since the catalog came back, the library has been checking all parts of it to verify that it is complete and correct.
The catalog has still not made the move to the new server, which library officials hope to complete soon.
“The catalog is still in a temporary mode while it moves to the final server,” said Overfield.
While the online catalog was down, the library was used an offline database to keep track of books checked in and checked out.
That database has not been included in the online records yet, so the catalog will not be fully up to date until it is added.
“The offline database is the last piece to go in,” said Overfield. “We want everything to be set up and finished before we add the database to the online catalog.”
This incident has forced library officials to admit that the procedures used while moving the catalog to a new server will need to be reviewed.
“It was an unusual accident,” said Overfield. “We will certainly review our procedures and will probably build in more safety factors.”
Leave a Reply