MMM Minutes 1/7/99

Minutes of Smathers
Middle Manager's Meeting
January 7, 1999

Present: Rich Bennett, Gary Cornwell, Robena Cornwell, Trudi Di Trolio, David Hickey, Dot Hope, Erich Kesse, Barry Hartigan, Tom Minton, Richard Phillips, Jan Swanbeck, Carol Turner
Systems Personnel
  1. The Systems Department should soon be fully staffed.
Plaza Demonstration
  1. A permit has been issued to a controversial anti-abortion group to set up their very graphic display on the Plaza of Americas next Monday-Tuesday.
  2. Big protest expected.
Barcode Scanners
  1. We have located some barcode scanners that should work well in our environment. Will place order soon.
  2. They can be used as 'fixed place' or 'hand held' scanners.
  3. Will come equipped with a 'use' or 'not use' button.
  4. Vendor says it his best shot, given our rather demanding needs.
Y2K Dilemma
  1. With the advent of the New Year, the newspapers have been full of information focusing on the millennium hoopla.
  2. Some failures have already occurred at the onset of this year - incorrect date stamping & the like.
  3. Y2K is actually a misnomer - the problems will merely be hitting a crescendo in 2000.
  4. Internally, we have surveyed Gateway, Compaq & Dell to verify their Y2K compliancy. As far as we can determine, all is well.
  5. There are boxes & net time stamps that cannot be tested until the change occurs.
  6. All Microsoft operating systems should be compliant. Windows'95 has some problems, but we will all be converted to Windows'98 by the end of the year.
  7. Windows'98 will be our best shot at compliancy, it has built in features to go out & get patches to fix any detected problems. It will give notice when these updates occur.
  8. The internal programming done by Systems is done with DELPHI, which is Y2K compliant. It has plenty of room to store dates.
  9. There's no way to tell if elevators, electronic gates or compact shelving will be functional.
  10. The Libraries should only experience an annoyance level - not a shut down level - of Y2K problems.
Walk-Up Ports
  1. There is a lot of talk about installing walk-up ports at various campus locations.
  2. Standards on campus are variable.
  3. The threat of mischief encourages the use of a standard configuration.
  4. In addition, students would not have to change their individual computer configuration each time they plugged in at a different location.
  5. Campus standard should probably be similar to the way we have the first floor of Smathers configured.
  6. Walk-up port planning is essential.
Libpreservent Web Server
  1. Erich Kesse has announced that the Libpreservnt web server is dead.
  2. It will be migrated to Smathers NT8.
  3. Rich & Suzy will be issuing a how-to email addressing how to name folders on new server.
Google!
  1. Gary Cornwell notes that some friends of his from Stanford have developed a new Internet browser, called Google!
  2. It is rather nifty, located at www.google.com - check it out.
SUS Long Distance Learning
  1. Proxy server is up & running.
  2. Mary at FCLA is working on a help page.
  3. FCLA is trying to facilitate access to the proprietary database.
  4. They are trying to allow access by long distance learning students (not on campus).
  5. It will avoid long distant telephone charges.
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Last updated February 17, 2000
by Debra Harris
debharr@mail.uflib.ufl.edu