Category — CODI2006

Thursday my day began with Eric Sisler’s presentation, Harnessing the Power of Virtualization Technology Using VMware. This was very interesting to me, since I really had no clue what VMware was before this, but I had heard the term mentioned several times on Horizon-L. Eric described how his library has successfully virtualized several of their servers, including SIP, HIP, and web and e-mail servers. VMware could bring substantial cost savings to small libraries like mine, as well as provide some cool disaster recovery tools. The most exciting news about VMware came in my next session when Talin Bingham announced that after things settled down a bit with 8.x, etc. SD does plan to look into supporting VMware in some cases. Extreme Makeover: Horizon 8.x was essentially a rehashing of Talin’s remarks at the opening session. I was once again left with the feeling that our migration will be some ways off…..probably sometime in 2008. In the afternoon, I attended What’s So Cool about Information Portal 8.x - The Tip of the Iceberg, presented by Shelly Neville. IP 8.x looks a lot like a stripped down version of HIP 4.X. Many of the features that caused problems….i.e. New Items, Popular items, and Patron customization seem to have been taken out. It looks like SD has finally gotten the message that stability is more important the feature richness…..although I hope that those features can someday return….when they work right. I guess the biggest change is that all of the portal administration is done in the Horizon Client…..there is no more separate IP admin tool. I got the distinct impression that IP is still very much a work in progress, but it seems as though careful thought has gone into this iteration of the product.

Friday began with the SirsiDynix Q&A. I was unable to make it for most of this….so I hope someone will blog about what happened…I can sort of guess what the questions were just from the tone of the conference. Next, I went to Horizon Pocket Circulation, presented by Brent Jensen. It seems that this is not quite ready for prime time, but could be useful when it comes. Basically it is a WindowsCE program that can run in online or offline mode. It does basic circ functions…checkin, checkout, renew, add patron, modify patron…and in the future inventory. They have tested it on the PSC Falcon 4220 (expensive but sturdy, with built in scanner) and the HPiPAQ 2490 with a barcode scanner in the CF slot (less expensive). Currently work is being done for 8.x and plans are being made for supporting 7.x as well. I saw some of the cool new circ features in 8.x in Holly Harvey’s Horizon 8.x and Corinthian Circulation Overview.  My final session of the conference was Taking the Next Leap Forward - Migrating Your Data to Horizon 8.x/Corinthian, presented by Paul Johnson and Ken Bond. The biggest news in this session was something that had been briefly touched upon by Talin in the opening remarks….but somehow didn’t sink in with many of the conference goers at the time. That is, that the only acquisitions data that can be migrated from 7.x to 8.x is vendor information…..for many libraries, this seems to be a deal breaker…we were assured that the data migration team is working diligently to figure this out, but until they do…I suspect that the rate of conversions will not be extremely high. Of course, for my library it is irrelevant, since we don’t use acquisitions anyway….we won’t be taking the plunge because our servers and workstations don’t meet the minimum requirements.

Wow, what a day.  It started with the first time attendees’ breakfast at 7:00 AM.  At first I thought this was likely to be some sort of hazing or initiation ritual, but in reality, it was just a chance for the CODI folks to try and make us feel comfortable, and to give us some idea of what to expect from the conference.  We were also told repeatedly how much CODI is doing for us.

Next we went to the Salt Palace to hear the opening session.  You can read about that here.  Next I went to Making your Move to Horizon 8 which was presented by Coleen Brown.  By this time I had already learned that I will need to upgrade my servers to 64 bit operating systems….so my enthusiasm for 8 had dimmed a bit….still, Colleen did a good job of describing some of the difference between Horizon 8.X, Horizon 7.X and Dynix.  A few things that caught my ear were:

1. No more Day End
2. Volume Level Requests
3. Sequenced Requests
4. MARC Batch Editor

After Lunch I spent the afternoon in Webreporter sessions…Attributes on the Fly, You’ll Be Wide-Eyed with Narrowcast, and Set it up Once -Monthly Reports with Web Reporter and Narrowcast.  I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed, particularly with the Narrowcast presentation.  Debbie Simpson did a great job of showing the great features of Narrowcast, but really didn’t walk us through the process of setting up jobs in Narrowcast….when someone asked about documentation, we were told that the only documentation came with the Narrowcast class, and that to get that manual, you had to take…i.e., pay for, the Narrowcast class.  Is it just me…or shouldn’t the company that sells you a piece of software, also, at the very least, provide basic documentation for it?

In the evening came the SirsiDynix 70’s party…..not really my cup of tea, but it looked like people were having fun, and I am sure that we will see plenty of Flickr pics of the event soon.

We had a great time exploring Salt Lake City and the surrounding area today. For those of you coming in for CODI, I highly recommend you make time to have a meal at Sawadee. The food was excellent, try the Green Curry, and the service was great. Earlier in the day we drove around the city a bit to get the lay of the land, then visited the SLC Public Library, Library Journal’s Library of the year. We wanted recommendations for a day trip, and the library actually had a tourism office on site. The friendly woman working there recommended that if we wanted to see the Great Salt Lake, the best place to see it was on the Antelope Island State Park….about 40 minutes from the city. It was well worth the trip! We did a short one mile hike up 286 feet to Buffalo Point, and the views were spectacular. It was also neat to see the wild bison roaming the Island. We ended the evening with a dip in the Little America’s indoor/outdoor pool. It was very nice to be able to stay warm inside….then swim outside to see the sunset.

http://www.codi.org/conference/2006/index.shtml

We are getting our last things packed, and will be off to Salt Lake City today. I will ofcourse be blogging about the conference, and about the sites and sounds in the Utah Mountains.

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