The Gordian Knot

Sandwiched between two stormy days, twenty-six people met on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 in Pittsburg, KS for OZDUG (Ozarks Dynix User Group) Regional meetings. Presenters included Jim Taylor, of JTData.Com in the morning, and Bill Routt and Steve Orton, Regional Sales Contacts for the South Central and “Mid-Atlantic” regions of Sirsi-Dynix in the afternoon. At least, that’s the region we think Steve is representing, since he’s the Missouri rep, although the folks in Missouri are rather amused that the Mid-Atlantic region appears to reach to the easternmost borders of Kansas! (Do we dare ask “where’s the beach??!) And since poor Steve’s name doesn’t really even make the map, and the map really isn’t on the web site, and very few SD system administrators or directors have even seen the map or know it exists, it’s hard to say what the state of sales is. They’re lovely people and we thank them for coming to see us, but things are in a bit of disarray, we think!

Jim Taylor, who provides value-added products that other customers readily use, provided information on his JTACQ, JTURL, JTDataEntry, and JTMail programs. Jim brought along son Jonathan, who was by far the youngest member of OZDUG to ever sit through a meeting attentively!

Valerie Chase, graciously presented by speakerphone and gave us an overview of the expanded reports now included in WebReporter. The announcement on March 30, 2006 of the release of WebReporter 1.4, while extremely welcome, still raises questions regarding server specifications for it. A handout, provided by sales staff, brought a resounding “thud” to the proceedings as attendees tried to figure out the relationship between the feature designations for “reporter”, “analyst”, and “professional” functionality (dated, by the way, November 14, 2003) and their relation to pricing which was described in terms of “light”, “medium”, and “super”. Yellow highlighting, we decided, just meant these were the most expensive options that the company wanted you to buy! We hope that this particular handout goes back to the drawing board quickly, because while it attempted to address the training packages and licensing, it, in fact, confused us more and managed to completely ignore server specifications.

We were happy to hear that 1.4 would support CSV formated files, and that Narrowcast is now included in all basic packages. SQL gurus were also pleased to see the ability to use free-form SQL statements within the 1.4 functionality.

Server specifications were also lacking for HIP 4.x. We understand that benchmarking has not been completed, but the time frame needed to budget and purchase new HIP servers is not a fast process, causing chaos in the heartland.

Other discussion included where the ISBN-13 hotfix is for classic sites, where the ISBN-13 patch for Horizon sites not on 7.4 is, where the benchmarking for 8.x is, the need for 24×7 support, and the inability to get to a real person and get past the front-line support to a real person who can solve the issue in a timely fashion.

Two philosophical questions were asked, without a real sense of answer, that is, 1) are Dynix reps/developers/support staff allowed/encouraged to attend the librarian meetings at events such as PLA and ALA, or are they severely limited in their ability to attend sessions, see other products, ideas, mingle, and speak with librarians in the profession; and 2) What has become of Jack Blount’s plan several years ago to ensure that staff get “out of the office and into the library” and visit sites, work front desks, and experience library issues on a day-to-day basis in order to improve the work flow and functionality of the software.

Another issue was the amount of communication — on the updates of functionality, software delivery, new products, future products, server specifications, budgeting awareness, training — and the group was sorely disappointed in the amount and quality of communication from the company as a whole. Two members went so far as to rate the company on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being highest, as a “3″ and as a “1″. Which is a shame, really, as there are some wonderful people who work for the company, and who can (and frequently do) assist SirsiDynix customers are great deal in their daily work.

Issues with setup and the “migration” to 8.0 for existing Horizon clients is also a big unknown. This, coupled with both the uncertainty of the delivery date of 8.0/8.1 and the quality of the release functionality for 8.0/8.1 has really left people in a quandry. We did learn one finite fact, that Debt Collect would not be available until at least 8.1.

While the group greatly appreciated the afternoon allotment of time from SirsiDynix reps, and Valerie’s conference call time, the company must realize that when the majority of regional attendees must drive anywhere from 2-5 hours to attend these meetings, we do expect people to be physically present at the meetings and find the prospect of driving for several hours to stare at a speakerphone not the optimum communication experience. We sincerely hope the inability to schedule regular regional meetings or provide presenters of expertise “in the flesh” does not develop into a company trend.

All SirsiDynix presenters should be keenly aware that with Webex, with WebReporter, with any demo of any sort, please SIZE THE FONTS UP. The screen shots mean nothing if the person standing 10 feet away from the projection screen can’t read it. The only thing being worse having to drive 5 hours to listen to someone on a speakerphone is having to sit through a demonstration where you cannot read the details on the screen.

If you participate in other regional meetings and wish to post your comments, thoughts, about them, please drop me a note — this is not meant to supercede the great site set up at http://www.codi.org/newusersgroups.html, but perhaps will provide a way to get more reactions or comments out and about…

I have spent the last week or so writing a firefox search plug-in, and wtih the help of Jon Udell, configuring the library lookup bookmarklet to work with HIP 4.1. I know that most of you did these things ages ago, but since this is the first time that we have had a modern PAC, this is all new territory for me, and honestly, I am thrilled that our patrons will soon have these services available. I have also been taking Stephen’s advice and working on “portal customization” and I have put a weather channel thingy on our catalog page. I have also rendered channels for CNN news and Library news, but I haven’t found any way to implement them in a way that would be useful to patrons.

You can see the plugin and bookmarklet here.

For those who are interested here is the code for the plugin:

<search version=”7.1″
name=”Cass District Library”
description=”Search The Cass District Library Catalog”
action=”http://ip4.cass.lib.mi.us/uPortal/Initialize”
searchForm=”http://ip4.cass.lib.mi.us/uPortal/Initialize”
method=”GET”
name=”search”>
<input name=”uP_tparam” type=”hidden” value=”props”/>
<input name=”props” type=”hidden” value=”CAS”/>
<input name=”doSearch” type=”hidden” value=”true”/>
<input name=”uP_sparam” type=”hidden” value=”activeTab”/>
<input name=”activeTab” type=”hidden” value=”2″/>
<input name=”index1″ type=”hidden” value=”GW”/>
<input name=”term1″ user=”"/>
</search>
<browser update=”http://mycroft.mozdev.org/update.php/id0/Cass.src”
updateIcon=”http://mycroft.mozdev.org/update.php/id0/Cass.jpg”
updateCheckDays=”7″
></browser>

And here is the Library Lookup Code:

javascript:var%20re=/([\/-]|is[bs]n=)(\d{7,9}[\dX])/i;if(re.test
(location.href)==true){var%20isbn=RegExp.$2;void
(win=window.open(’http://ip4.cass.lib.mi.us’+'/uPortal/Initialize?
doSearch=true&uP_tparam=props
&props=CAS&uP_sparam=activeTab&activeTab=2&index1=ISBNEX
&term1=’+isbn,’LibraryLookup’,’scrollbars=1,
resizable=1,location=1,dependent=1,width=575,height=500′))}

I have been working with Jon Udell to make this work with other HIP installations, but in his words:

This is perhaps the most unpredictable web app I’ve ever seen!

technorati tags: Library 2.0 , Hip4.1, Hip4.x, SirsiDynix

Industrious members of the Rolling Prairie Library System have posted a report to their constitutents on the recent CODI conference sessions — if you haven’t found a blogged report yet on the session you missed, check out RPLS/LLSAP User Group CODI Report, complete with photos. Additionally, a reminder: if your regional user group has a web site, posted minutes, or has meeting announcements, please post to the Gordian Knot, or let Luke or I know about your regional news. As you can see, we will be able to track much of this on the blog, but our information is only as good as what we receive. :_)

I am just now able to take a breath. We went live on November 10th with Horizon 7.4 and HIP 4.1. That’s right, I said 4.1.

We were moving from classic Dynix and WebPac, and this is my first experience as a SysAdmin ;) On the Horizon side, things have gone extremely smoothly so far. We have had a few glitches with printing reports, and we don’t yet have e-mail notices working correctly, but all in all, circulation and tech processing are working well.

Now what everyone is interested in…. how is HIP 4.1 working? I won’t kid you and say that everything has been peachy. Since Wednesday when our library consultant arrived, I have had to call client care a couple of times, and had to have our project manager get involved at one point, but the problems that we encountered seem to have been fixed. I have become aware of a bug that keeps subject headings from being displayed in the bib display, but I have been assured that a fix is coming pronto. I have been somewhat apprehensive about doing too much customization to HIP until I know that it is stable, so my installation isn’t too fancy, but I have created a simple search box from my homepage that submits a general keyword search on HIP. (this was done with the help of Jerry Kuntz, who responded to my call for help on the horizon-l list.)

Some exciting and frightening news we received is that, we may well be the first site to attempt to install Kid’s HIP on 4.1 (Which mouse am I again?…Oh well, someone has to be first.) Sometime on Monday we should have Kid’s HIP running.

Overall, our migration has been a positive experience. Our project manager and library consultant have been wonderful to work with and we have had good experiences with all of the SirsiDynix staff we have encountered.

Of course there are things that I wish were different. I wish that staff had had more time for training. I wish that Horizon were more intuitive for staff, and for me….(I get the feeling that I am going to be VERY familiar with the table editor.) and I wish that Horizon loaded faster at my branch locations, but I also understand that no ILS is perfect, and in the end….I am pretty happy with the decision we made.

technorati tags: SirsiDynix, Hip 4.0, Hip 4.1, Kid’s Hip,

This will be a very long post, and also a lot closer to rough transcribed notes than the other posts you’ve seen in our blog coverage. We wanted to make sure this session was thoroughly and accurately covered for the benefit of those that couldn’t be there, and because it was specifically requested by commenters on this blog. Both suzyq and I took notes at this session, and we folded our notes together to fill in areas each other had missed; once we had done that, I also emailed those notes to Jim Wilson, and he was kind enough to take time to look through them and add a few comments and clarifications. What you will see, however, is a very honest, unvarnished, frank discussion. For that, I want to give a lot of credit to those who were up front: moderator Barbara Lowry, and Jim Wilson and Steve Orton from SirsiDynix. So without further ado…

Barbara Lowry, Moderator: We are all in this together. These are our brothers and sisters. This is not a gripe session — it is an opportunity to deal with issues and communicate with each other.

Jim Wilson: “We screwed up.” Previous conversations with Steve Nielsen, company not aware of additional 4.1 problems until users arrived at conference.

Question from floor: What changes are you doing to avoid screwing up in the future?
Jim: 4.0 first tested out on a dozen libraries, went fine; then opened to world, put another 25 on. Fell under the floor, we stopped it. We will stop it if we see something like this again.

Jim: For you who are on 4.x, has your level of contact with the company increased?
Answers from floor: Some yes, some no. (Some indicated it had only increased as initiated by customers.)

Jim: For those still on 4.01, I will not take you a little farther and drop you into another hole. To those that are on 4.01 limping along, we’re going to fix the 4.1 customers first, so that we can get 4.1 stable and then bring 4.01 customers up to 4.1. The first ones that will upgrade to 4.1 are those who are still on 4.01. We will not release 4.1 until the 25+12 are stable and comfortable.

Comment from floor: 4.01 crashed; documentation was incorrect. Support was helpful, but documentation was incorrect. Was the documentation tested?
Jim: Yes, but there were flaws in beta process, and changes have been made to the beta process to avoid this in the future.

Comment from floor: No utilities for 7.4 listed on the website, including killbib marcin/marcout.
Jim: 7.4 was not a huge horizon upgrade, didn’t change much at all. 7.3 utilities, 99% will still work, but it is “our” [company] responsibility to test the utilities, list them, and update the website and make them available for each release.

Question from floor: Can you tell us what the changes to the beta test process are?
Jim: More time with testers in an ASP model of the release before they get it on site. We start training them in more detail before they start. Train in terminology, flow, showing them interpretations of this table of that piece of code. This is how 8.0 beta is being done today. This is being done in 8.0 beta testing today. All are in an ASP environment. This week, several of them will install a version in their site for backroom environment testing.

Question from floor: Doesn’t beta testing imply that the code is there for them to test? It appears that the code is being developed in the 8.0 model as they test.
Jim: to the company, Alpha means “company testers”. Beta means “outside testers”. The code was given to “betas” during this first phase in order that they can actively evaluate during a pliable stage, testing the code while it is written. These testers will take it to production, then the product will be given to early-release candidates.

Question from floor: How long will beta testing occur with sites in production?
Jim: Greater than 30 days. It depends on the testing for a real time frame. We will test as long as is needed.

Jim: If you hear a rumor, don’t spread it. Email Jim Wilson (jim dot wilson at sirsidynix dot com). Call Jim Wilson.

Comment from floor: People at 4.01 / 4.1 felt isolated; it seemed that front-line support personnel were learning the product along with the customers.
Jim: This has changed with 8.0. Trainers are already trained and being trained as the product progresses on 8.0 Support staff are already being trained on 8.0 When it is rolled out, support staff and trainers should already be trained and experienced on it. We are trying to train the whole company, so that when 8.0 does go out, you aren’t experiencing it the first time with support staff who haven’t seen it.

Comment from floor: 4.0 required login use name and password, to the consternation of libraries and patrons. 4.01, same. 4.1 same?
Steve Orton: 4.1 can use barcode and pin or login and password, but not both.

Steve: We appreciate those who suffered through our training. We dumped it and rewrote it. If you have other training comments, please let me Steve Olson or Jeff Olson know. The problem was, if you wanted to use with barcode and pin, it didn’t tie in with Horizon.
Comment from floor: The “other Mr. Wilson” [Jeromy] will synchronize either barcode and pin or username or password.
Steve: It is an either/or for this and this is not fixed in 4.1
Comment from floor: This needs to be a training/setup question which is given attention.

Comment from floor: If you move to 4.1, don’t delete your 1.46 [sic - should be 1.42?] java. 4.1 uses both parts of 1.46 [sic] java and 1.5 java.

Comment from floor: 4.1 still has problems with browse search. Sorting by publication dates. It is not a mass indexer problem. Company is building and doing the loading for the sites, including the mass indexing.

Comment from floor: Lost subject index when company did mass indexing. Will company put it back?
Jim: We are dealing with different issues with each customer. The answer is YES.

Comment from floor: Cannot turn off tracking of patron history. (patrons in their preferences can choose to keep circ history).
Jim: Should come turned off and be patrons’ choice to turn on.
Steve: Location table should have 3 options: tracking on, tracking off, or let patron decide.
Floor: other sites have confirmed that location table is ticked correctly, and it still defaults to keeping track of patron history even if you try to turn it off.

Comment from floor: Bug with PC Reliance as well and patron history tracking.

Question from floor: From the business process standpoint, who makes the decision about limited pre-release vs. general production release?
Jim: Steve Nielsen decides the showstoppers in consultation with his product managers. In 4.1, product manager is Jeromy Wilson. If a beta has an issue, see Jeromy; 4.x product managers should get the information as they speak with betas every week.

Question from floor: how many betas participated in the beta test?
Jim: 10-12 betas per release on average. Then we try to expand it to pre-release sites as a release candidate. Then it will go general.

Comment from floor: Many SAs had performance benchmarks and targets for successful installation and timeframes for other projects within their libraries. These people have been penalized by their institutions because of the faulty products. 4.0 was a release candidate back in April. This has been a very long time in not having anything to show. We are in a stage of disillusion. Our staff attribute every human error they find now to a “Horizon” or “HIP” error. Where are the resources needed to get these 36-38 sites on track with a useable product? Our public are calling, cursing, political entities spending money are concerned; additional local hoops are being imposed on sites now, limiting their ability in some cases now to do incremental build updates.

Comment from floor: Build 56 browse title problems. Browse scoping with consortia and limits still not working;

Comment from floor: We are working with support people only. Jack came on site, which helped with director. But he is not an engineer per se. Your support people are also frustrated. We are still not in conversation with an engineer.
Jim: we are putting the engineer side by side with the person in support. We need to fix your problem. Betas particularly, to get these problems solved.

Question from floor: Why did some libraries get things fixed and others did not?
Jim: Standard procedure for contacts (engineers) to be side by side with support. All will get fixed eventually. Somebody has to be 1st and somebody 2nd. We cannot solve all issues at the same time.

Question from floor: What’s the scoop with Macs and IE 5.5 with the login/password issue? Will the problems on Mac platform be corrected?
Jim: Dynix is committed to supporting IE on Macs.

Comment from floor: I want to thank Jim for the guys who came out [to Howard]. This was a valuable lesson for them. They learned a lot that they can take back.
Jim: Thank you, but shame on us. Some of the libraries that we deal with are in the same town. We should not have had to fly across the country to learn those lessons. We may *not* have a site like you in town. We don’t get or let our product managers out of the office as much as we need to. At the minimum we ought to be able to go over to the ones in our neighborhood and see them in action.

Question from floor: when do you expect to see light at end of tunnel?
Jim: We are working on these logs as we are sitting here. We have people back in the office as we speak who are working as we speak. We feel we are within days or hours of solving these problems.

Question from floor: [Australia/NZ customer] we spent 15 weeks testing. When the logs were passed from Australia to Provo, 1/3 of the issues were quickly fixed; 1/3 of the issues were bugs and things they had not even seen or had reported by US sites. What can you do to incorporate these international issues more comprehensively?
Jim: We are training world wide and improving our tracking methods.
Jim: Do not even thing of going to 4.0. or 4.01. Put it out of your mind. It is possible that you will not see 4.1 or above. [transcription note: Jim wore a shirt covered with HIP 9.0 buttons]

Comment from floor: But there’s a communications problem not just between the company and the beta sites, but between the company and the rest of the customer base. Sales is giving us a different story. How can we be getting straight, direct status information for those who are not here, and next week, and next month?
Jim: At this time, I can’t tell you. If you are not on 4X wait until release and then listen to the list serve. We as a company will try to be more proactive.

Question from floor: Where is the communication? Communication from the betas and group who took an announced general release product and got stuck? Where is your communication with the people who are not at this conference? Where is your communication with directors and others who are paying maintenance?
Comment from floor: We closed the lists, yet you do not use them.
Question from floor: Where is the bug list?
Jim: We will not publish [bug lists for beta products]…
Question from floor: Will you publish what the test and test results of the betas are? Will you publish what the issues are? If there are problems with betas and testing it has to be because the functional specification requirements are somehow flawed.
Jim: Testing procedures have to come from extensive requirements lists. Testing procedures have changed drastically for 8.0/8.1

Jim: let me stress, there is a WHOLE LOT OF DIFFERENCE WITH 8.0 testing than with 7.4 and 4X.

Question from floor: Beta testing: public library should not be testing reserve book room, libraries should be required to test what they know and what they are functional with. Do you need a bigger pool?
Jim: Pool of 10-12 betas of all types is reasonable. Pre-release candidates expand the “ripples” accordingly.

Question from floor: Processor in initial documentation didn’t exist on the unix side; did you target the release on what you wanted to build it on before you built it?
Jim: Yes.

Comment from floor: When moving from beta to “early release candidate,” “known bugs” need to be listed at that stage so that customers can make educated decisions about moving.
Jim: yes, this is true and this list of bugs could possibly be made available, but only to the testing sites. We are not going to rehash all we have fixed for everyone. No Need.
Comment from floor: There is still need for the bug database, or the delta document.

Question from floor: is a test database or test server required for implementation of new software? Implementation > delivery and implementation > are development servers being required? Do we have to backroom everything in order to load a release? One of the problems is that we have backups of our database server, but not necessarily the HIP server.
Jim: We are training our trainers, our support, or project coordinators so they are trained in advance. Production environment, 90% of the customers have a backroom database Question from floor: implementation teams didn’t even recommended it, didn’t even suggest it. Is it required? Sounds like it. If I told them that, they said it would cost. Jim: Our intent is if we help you upgrade on your test system, you will then do the upgrade on the production server. If we do it twice, we charge you. We intend for our releases to be solid enough that you should not have to do this. But if you want to practice and learn on a test database, we expect you to do the production database by yourself.
Comment from floor: it was never suggested that I could do the 2nd one by myself…
Jim: If you want help doing your test server, fine. If you want help doing the production server AND the test server, then I am going to charge you.

[note: The training database is not the backup of the HIP server].

Comment from floor: As customers, we recognize we have responsibilities.
Jim: The company, the implementation team should have suggested that you do this.

Comment from floor: suggestion for pre-release candidates, includes a checklist and disclaimer similar to the beta one.
Jim: I will talk to implementation team should need to suggest and support this.

Comment from floor: when 4.0 released, I attempted to install on background environment. It didn’t work. It is critical also that you release more accurate specifications for test server environments to get accurate sizing into the server specs to minimially use test servers. We don’t need a honker, we need a test environment.

Question from floor: LDAP… LDAP is in 4.1, I can use the same login for HIP as I do for LDAP server, so I don’t remember two logins.
Steve: It is not today [4.1] a single sign-on.

Representing the best spirit of cooperation and peer assistance that CODI is frequently known for, Julio Campa, Miami Dade Public Library System, presented a session on Tuesday on making your own version of HIP in Spanish. We welcome Julio to CODI, and thank him not only for his presentation, but his offer of assistance to any library configuring their ipac, HIP, or C/HIP Portal’s Spanish interface. The Spanish interface currently comes with 3.x or higher. However, manhy of us realized that any local customization or items not on the default profile do not translate unless we edit the strings and provide the translations ourselves. Some libraries are blessed with native speakers in their libraries, but many of us do not. The only thing worse than not having a Spanish profile is having a Spanish profile configured by a systems administrator who thinks she knows Spanish but her college French resurfaces! (I resemble this remark!)

To this end, Julio is a blessing to all of us, and has provided not only step by step instructions, on how to do the setup and modification of the strings, profiles, and variables, but he continues to offer his direct translation of various library catalog phrases for the upcoming releases. While Julio is a valuable employee to Miami Dade with a day job that keeps him quite busy, we thank him (and his director) for this gracious offer in the spirit of cooperation and giving.

It looks like while the HIP 4.1 and higher releases will come with a full Spanish version, any customizations will again need to be re-translated by hand for local tags, buttons, and strings when the library has chosen to modify the default. Therefore, Julio is guaranteed job security in his unofficial post of “translator laureate” to the user group for many years to come. Thanks, Julio, for a great presentation, and your willingness to lend a hand to all of us!

“We screwed up.” — Jim Wilson, on What Really Happened with 4.0?

On Monday afternoon, Steve Orton and Jeromy Wilson discussed the multilingual features and capabilities of HIP 4.x — and it really looks like they have made some progress in this area.

First of all, the following languages will be supported by 4.1 out of the box: Armenian, Catalán, Chinese (simplified & traditional), English, French (Canada), French (Europe), German, Spanish (just one translation, no mention of Latin America vs. Spain), and Turkish. That means that in the HIP admin tool, you will be able to choose System > Labels > Global Labels (or Agency Labels) to set up HIP to display labels in that language by default, either for your entire organization or agency-by-agency. I say “by default” because the individual portal customization features of HIP 4.x allow for your users — once they are logged into their own portal — to change their own portal to a different language from that list.

If you as the administrator wish to change the wording of a label — in any language — you simply change your administrative tool to that language (File > Language) and then browse a tree of labels for the Launcher or for HIP (or search them by key or value) and make your desired change.

That procedure covers all the “standard” or “default” labels that come with the system. But what if you create a customization — a new tab or subtab, a new display or label — that involves a text label or other text string, and you want to make sure that string will display appropriately in other supported languages? All setup dialog boxes in 4.x that involve entering a custom string will have a new feature — to the right of the text entry box, you will see a small button with a globe icon on it. When you click the globe, you will be able to enter the equivalent values for that string for any and all languages supported by the system. Likewise, in the Portal Admin web interface, creating and labeling a new tab, for example, will pop up a new browser window allowing you to enter the desired labels in other supported languages.

At the beginning of the session, Steve and Jeromy invited us to let them know about other languages that we wished to be supported; they indicated that with this new model for localization, it was a fairly straightforward matter for them to export a list of strings to be translated, pass it along to professional translators for the desired language, then re-import those translated settings back into HIP. As the session went along, quite a few of the questions focused on how customers could be a part of that process. Could there be a way for us to “copy” a translation set so that we could make modifications while leaving the original (default) set for a language in place? If we take the time to customize a translation to meet our needs, shouldn’t there be a way for us to distribute those changes to other customers who might be interested (kind of like we distribute serials prediction patterns, etc.)? Eventually we observed that it sounded from Jeromy and Steve’s description as though SirsiDynix had already created a process to export, modify, and reimport translation sets already. We proposed that they work on a way to expose that process to customers, so that we would be able to copy, modify, distribute, and reimport those translation sets.

Audience members also noted several other localization issues to be considered in association with translations:

1. spatial orientation of navigation labels like “previous” and “next” need to change in languages written right-to-left (i.e. “< next | previous >” instead of “< previous | next >“)
2. date formats should, in many cases, change in conjunction with a language change

Can you think of any others? Please give us your ideas, because Steve and Jeromy seemed interested in finding ways to optimize localization to serve our needs.

“We do not support VMWare, you will continue to see problems with VMWare in 8.0.” – Jack Blount, Corinthian Beta Experience – The Real Story

Steven Orton and Jeromy Wilson don’t ever need to worry about job security. If they ever get laid off at SirsiDynix, they have the underpinnings of a duo comedy team that could rival even Will Manley some days.

That said, among key points in the session was that HIP Administration 8.x, we have new words to use: some of them are old words, and clearly we’ve run out of novel new words since the new product has to use old words with new meanings, thus the profoundly true, “That’s how we improve our software by changing the names of things.” So, pay attention: here’s your first test:

1. target = database
2. agency = location
3. profile = policies
4. search subtab= (the same)
5. portal properties=(your old “profile”)

Don’t be caught snoozin’ thru this release. Meanings change. Products change. Clearly there are very tiny dictionaries in product development with abridged sets of words in them, which must be why SirsiDynix keeps re-using the same words to mean different things in different releases. :_)