Koha >:-(

I am having two problems with this system:

1: When I click to save an imported MARC record I receive an error message that reads, "Can't save this record because the following field aren't filled: *tag 003 subfield 0 control field in tab 0." What is this?

If I click "ok" then Koha moves along as it should (I guess) and saves the record. I then create a barcode and save the record again. This then leads me to my second problem.

2: When I attempt to add my catalogue item to my list the system won't do it and gives me the following message "A record matching barcode 125364589642563214862 has already been added." However, I can't see any items in the list and the count says that there are "0 item(s)." What is going on here? Am I missing some important step like checking a box or setting preferences or something?

Gripe: How come there are no results for any searches of the Koha catalogue...even when you search for items you just added?

The disappearance of Jing

Jing’s little sunshine icon remained at the top, middle part of my screen until just recently when it disappeared. Now when I turn on my computer Jing pops up with a message that encourages me to reinstall it. How Jing ever uninstalled itself I’m sure I have no idea.

Book Recommendation

During our last class we talked a little bit about how people who have advanced degrees and people with good enough degrees (GED) compare when viewed through the lens of our discriminating society.

I would like to suggest the following book. It puts a whole new spin on how to view success.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.

Port problems

I work for a Pitt entity in a UPMC building. The Internet ports, along with other types of hardware like the phone lines and such, are owned by UPMC. However, in order for the Pitt employees who work in the office to connect to a Pitt server, the ports were mapped to the Pitt VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network). This set up is true for all of the ports in the office except for one, which wasn’t mapped to the Pitt VLAN by the request of the Ethicist who currently occupies the office where this lonely port is located. The Ethicist is moving to an office across the hall. He needs a UPMC port in that office. He’s moving to a smaller office because there are five women and a large grant moving into our office space at the end of next month. The women are Pitt employees. With the exception of the office the Ethicist is vacating the other offices these women will occupy have been vacant for some time.

Mission: to get the UPMC helpdesk and the Pitt helpdesk to communicate with each other to have ports activated (if necessary) and to get a UPMC port mapped to the Pitt VLAN.

My office is a real gray area. It’s a clash of jurisdictions.

(In regards to the Ethicist and his new office…I think it should be pretty easy to ask UPMC to install a port, because at least we won’t have to worry about having to get the two helpdesks to communicate for task.)

A story of a request for a SMTP exception

We have a new printer/copier in our office. It’s a SHARP MX-M283N. It’s very nice. It has a scan-to-email function, which is not set up. I called the printer/copier company to find out how we get this feature set up and our printer/copier representative said that we needed to put in a ticket with CSSD and request and SMTP exception.

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and we need an exception made in the firewall so that we can email our scans from the copier. Right now the port is a one-way street with information (print jobs) going in and once the exception is made it will be a two-way street with the ability to emails to go out.

In order to complete this request CSSD needed the IP address of the printer/copier and the number of the port. We ran into a problem here because we are a Pitt entity in a UPMC building with Pitt-owned ports. None of the ports are labeled. Therefore, we needed to find the MAC address or Media Access Control address, which also can be called the hardware address or the physical address. You can find the physical address of your computer (if it is running Windows) if you go into the Command Prompt and type “ipconfig /all” and hit return. However, finding the physical address of a printer/copier is a little bit trickier.

The user has to login to the printer/copier as an administrator, follow a chain of menus via the touch screen, and then print a test page, which is actually a configuration report—the MAC address is listed in that report.

Can we scan-to-email now? No, but we should be able to do this when we come into work on Monday 6/28 after the upcoming Change Management period according to CSSD.

Two recent articles on cloud computing

There are two articles in May/June 2010 issue of EDUCAUSE Review Magazine on cloud computing that I think add to last night’s discussion on the subject. The following are links to these articles:

Cloud Computing and the Power to Choose
By Rob Bristow, et al.
"Examples from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom illustrate both the opportunities and the risks involved in adopting cloud computing and cloud services."

Looking at Clouds from All Sides Now
By Richard N. Katz, et al.
"Higher education and corporate leaders offer their perspectives on the promise and peril that may lie ahead for cloud computing and above-campus services."

EDUCAUSE Review Magazine Volume 45, Number 3, May/June 2010

First impression of Omeka

I added an item in Omeka but it didn’t go into my collection. I thought it would because first I went to collections and then I selected my collection and then I went to “Add an Item.” However, this didn’t exactly work. I added an item but it ended up in no man’s land! Super confusing. Also, is there a way that I can import an item into Omeka and not have to go through the tedious process of having copy and paste the information into the Dublin Core fields. I’ll just work at it until I get my 15 items IN my collection.

Lingering thoughts on the Zotero screen cast

Once I figured out how to complete the Zotero assignment it was fairly easy. At first I forgot about using screencast.com. That was my main problem in posting my screen cast on my blog and the screen cast was too big to upload. The only thing that I am still a little sad about is that setting the size of the screen cast didn’t work out as I had hoped it would. When I set the size it was either too big or too small. I can’t really tell….but I suspect that Blogspot doesn’t have the ability to offer the option to set imbedded links to open in new windows.

How to Install the Firefox Extention Zotero

Thoughts on installing…Firefox, Jing, and Zotero

First I installed Firefox. I didn’t install it before now because I know that with my computer it would take FOR-E-VER! And it took about 20 minutes because my browser froze the first time I attempted it. Installing Zotero was easy except I wasn’t sure what website to visit to begin the installation. However, before I looked into installing this extension I Googled how to uninstall it. It’s good to have a backup plan.

There is a version of Zotero you can install from http://addons.mozilla.org and there is a version you can access from www.zotero.org. I visited the first site and decided I would complete a trail installation so that I would know what I was talking about when I recorded my screencast. When I clicked to download I received a security warning. Rather than risk destroying an already crippled computer I attempted the trail installation from the second website and still received a security warning so I figured it wouldn’t matter which site I used.

Next, I went about installing Jing using my new Firefox browser. This was a frustrating experience. First, I couldn’t find my “sun.” The demo said I should have one but I couldn’t find it anywhere on my toolbar or hovering about my screen. I assumed that Jing must not have been installed properly and I began the steps to install it again and found that new programs are listed in a little ready-to-install-box. Is this just a Jing thing or is this a Firefox thing? Either way I thought it was annoying that the installation wasn’t a straightforward series of menus prompting the user to read the directions, check the appropriate boxes and then click, “next” until the user can click, “finish” and be done with it.

I recorded my screencast. Old headphones with the fuzzy pads ripped off are a good substitute for a microphone. I’m fairly satisfied with the result of the recording except my gimpy computer was slow to restart Firefox so viewers have a nice long shot of my desktop.

Now, I’m sitting here typing my frustrations away and wishing that I had been able to upload my screencast video. It simply couldn’t get past the “Processing video” stage. Thirty minutes of that seems a little excessive. I’ll try again later. Now off to bed.

Thoughts on hard drives and storage:

I thought the schematics and labeled photos of the hard drives in the presentation were very informative. I really didn’t know how hard drives worked until Tuesday’s class and I think using pictures was the best way to go about it since the terminology for all of the different parts is a little odd. I’m curious to know why the individual who invented the hard drive called the disk space a “platter.” It seems to be more of a culinary rather than a mechanical term.

The concept of RAID (redundant array of independent/inexpensive disks) has me a little confused. I am not clear on how this exactly works. Is more than one disk drive recording the same thing at the same time? Are the drives different physical objects or are they virtual drives? Finally, what are the differences between RAID 0, 1, and 5?