Welcome to Library Technology Service’s occasional newsletter for anyone interested in Harvard Library IT.
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Change Management Primer
Change is constant, yet navigating it successfully can be a significant challenge. Organizational Change Management (OCM), also known as Change Management, is critical in ensuring smooth transitions and user adoption. Whether implementing new technologies or optimizing processes, change management is essential for success.
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Starting this month, we moved into the second phase of implementation, which includes approximately 150 resources that will migrate from EZProxy to OpenAthens. These resources were prioritized because of the method they use for authentication. It is more secure and it relies on single-sign on, rather than IP address for authentication. Currently, we are configuring these resources and will continue testing through January and February with a tentative plan to go live in March over spring break. A full list of resources in this phase will be made available soon. Please look to the Open Athens page on the LTS wiki for updates.
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Chinese Rare Books
In collaboration with the Harvard Yenching Library, the National Library of China, and Taiwan's Academia Sinica, the Library Technology Services (LTS) team is committed to enhancing access to and unlocking the knowledge in the Chinese Rare Books collection, which is among CURIOSity’s most heavily used site. Our joint effort aims to enable full-text search capabilities across the entire collection.
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We look forward to the next phase of this initiative, where we will integrate the extracted text into the collection to provide full-text search functionality. Stay tuned for further updates.
Support Ticket Refresher
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Refresher: Getting the Most out of LTS Support Requests
When you have a question or a problem with a library system or service, you want answers ASAP, and LTS wants to help! Asking yourself two important questions as you prepare to submit your support ticket will make sure you get the assistance you need as quickly as possible:
Are you asking in the right place?
LTS can help with technical issues related to library systems like Alma, HOLLIS, DRS, ArchivesSpace, and many more. But other types of questions will get a faster, better answer elsewhere. Here are some common topics and who to contact:
General computer issues like VPN, Windows/Mac, Outlook, or software installation: Email the HUIT Service Desk
Report an issue with an e-resource link: HL ITS E-Resources Team
Questions about library practices or policies: The relevant HL library or department
Report HOLLIS record metadata errors: HL ITS Metadata Management
Report an issue with a physical item’s status or shelf location: HL Access Services
That said, if you’re not sure where to turn, LTS Support is a great place to start. We work with nearly every unit across the HL and HUIT, and if we can’t answer your question, we can usually help figure out who to redirect it to for a better response.
Have you included all the details?
Since LTS does support such a broad swath of systems and services across the library, we know a lot about our library systems but less about the day-to-day details of local workflows in a particular unit. You know your local practices much better than we do. Especially if you’re reporting a technical problem, always make sure to include:
Context: What system were you in and what screen were you on? What were you trying to do? What operating system and browser were you using?
Detailed Description: What did you expect to happen, and what happened instead? If there’s an error message, what is the error text? A screenshot or link to a screencast is often worth a thousand words, but make sure to give us the whole window, including the URL bar.
Steps to Reproduce: List the steps we can take to reproduce the problem behavior.
Taking a few moments to consider these two questions means that the person who’s reading your ticket will better understand the issue you’re reporting without having to spend as much extra time on follow-up questions. It often benefits you more directly, too -- the process of thinking through and writing down the details of the issue for someone else may help you see a pattern or a possible solution to the problem before you’ve even submitted the ticket.
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Staff Presentation
Harvard Library and LTS jointly presented at the recent CNI conference (Coalition for Networked Information) on the topic of Reimagining Discovery: Transforming Access to Collections with AI-driven Exploration.
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