Executive Director’s Report – Staff Information System

NOBLE Upgrading to Evergreen 3.10 in January

December 5, 2023 Kathy Lussier Evergreen, Executive Director's Report

NOBLE is pleased to announce the network will be upgrading to Evergreen release 3.10 in early January.

The upgrade will begin the night of Saturday, January 6. The system will be down from 6:00 p.m. Saturday until some time Sunday p.m. The system will be up and ready on Monday morning January 8.

Downtime Information

The extended outage for this upgrade is due to several factors:

The postgres database will be upgraded from 9.6 to 10. This involves dumping the entire database to a file, installing the new version, and importing the data back into the database. These steps take 4-5 hours each.
The operating system will also be updated which means that new application servers will be built.
Database scripts that add new features to the database are standard for most upgrades.

What is affected when Evergreen is down:

circulation and other staff functions
authentication via SIP2 (Overdrive, selfcheck, Hoopla, museum pass, EZproxy etc.)
web catalog
patron services like placing holds and signing up for ecards

We had a phone call with MOBIUS, our Evergreen hosting provider, about minimizing the effects of the down time and came up with a few solutions:

We will have a copy of the database put on a test system about a week before the upgrade. This can be used by staff to search for materials to get call numbers. We will send the URL to this system out the week before the upgrade.
Mobius will point the SIP server to the test system. We will pull the recently added patrons and import them so authentication will be available. Early in the upgrade and late in the upgrade the SIP server will need to be taken down, once to point to the test system and again to upgrade it and point it back to production.
Self check machines also use SIP and it will be important to not operate those during the down time. You don’t want transactions recorded on the test system.
Offline circ will be available to record circulation transactions. It is important to review Michele’s offline checklist prior to the down time.

Previewing 3.10

NOBLE staff can log into the training system to get a first-hand look at release 3.10, which we will be using for training and testing the new release. Here’s how to login and set search preferences for the old and new versions of the staff catalog: Logging Into the Training System.

Hello NOBLE Libraries

July 3, 2023 Kathy Lussier Executive Director's Report, NOBLE

As I settle into my first day at NOBLE, I just want to say hello to everyone in the network and provide a brief introduction for those who have not yet had a chance to meet me.

My name is Kathy Lussier, and I come to NOBLE as its new Executive Director having worked with member-driven library organizations for more than 20 years. Many of you may know me from the years I led the Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (MassLNC), a project where I worked with NOBLE and other Massachusetts networks to move to Evergreen. After the three participating networks were live on Evergreen in May 2012, I continued to work with these networks to coordinate shared development projects, help network staff with their Evergreen implementations, and advocate on behalf of Massachusetts libraries in the larger Evergreen community.

Since leaving MassLNC in December 2018, I have worked as Executive Director for the SAILS library network in the South Coast area of Massachusetts. As much as I enjoyed supporting SAILS libraries as they supported the needs of their library users, I am thrilled to return to working with NOBLE libraries again.

I consider it a privilege to be in a position where I can go into work everyday to support libraries and help them provide new and innovative services to their users. I strongly believe in the mission of libraries to build information literacy skills at a time when the information landscape has become so complex, to provide equal access to information regardless of a person’s means, and to stand up for the intellectual freedom and privacy of all users. I am also an advocate for open-source software as a means to respond to the growing expectation of users while maintaining the fundamental values of the library profession.

When I’m not working, I live in Seekonk with my husband, Paul; my two adult children, William and Emily; and my cat, Q-Tip (named for the small bit of white on the tip of the tail of this otherwise black cat). I enjoy hiking, biking and baking. Now that my youngest has graduated from high school, we plan to move further north, most likely to a NOBLE community.

Over the coming months, I plan to visit the NOBLE libraries to become acquainted with everyone working in my new library community. I look forward to meeting all of you and working to support your libraries!