Major maintenance coming this weekend

We'd like you to know that some major work is planned this weekend on our Library systems and campus IT infrastructure. READ ON for important information on outages :

1)  On Thursday 14 Nov, there will be a backup of all of our current Oracle data, approximately 11:00 pm - 4:00 am.  The Library catalog may be inaccessible during this period.

2)  On Friday 15 Nov, our vendor will perform a data extraction on our catalog systems, about 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm.  During this time, all Circulation accounts will be unavailable.  If you need to borrow anything, the Circulation staff (both Richmond and Charlotte) will record the transaction offline and then enter it into the system later.  You won't be able to sign in to the catalog to renew a book, place a hold, request an Ask-to-Order book, or anything else that requires a catalog login.

3)  All day Saturday and Sunday (16-17 Nov), the vendors will be upgrading our data from our current software to the new program.  They will run some initial tests to see if it works.  You can still use the catalog for searching throughout Saturday, but Circulation functions will be performed offline. 

4)  On Sunday afternoon, 1:00 pm - 7:00 pm, the Library catalog will "go dark".  All Richmond-based IT services will be DOWN.  THIS INCLUDES ALL NETWORK ACCESS TO OUR CATALOG AND ONLINE DATABASES, and the Library website.  Please plan ahead so you are not in dire need of research materials on Sunday afternoon/evening!! 

5)  On Monday morning, we will update links on the Library website, restore online Circulation activity, and hope for the best!!

I want to stress that preparations for this work have been going on intensively for months, and our wonderful systems librarian, Leland Deeds, has done everything humanly possible to increase the likelihood of a smooth transition.  But of course, it is possible that something unforeseeable may arise.  Please let us know if you have problems with any Library systems after about 10:00 am on Monday morning.

We also want to thank Leland for devoting so much of his time late and night and on weekends to this work, trying to minimize the impact of outages on our users.  It's now your responsibility to plan ahead and make sure you have the materials you need to complete your assignments before this work interrupts our service.

Paula