Informatics Devotion 2013

As we embark on another year please consider why you are here, not just here in Informatics but here at Olivet.  You made a choice and regardless of the reason, you knew that you were choosing to come to a place where the name God is freely used in a loving and respectful way.  You knew that God could and would be a topic of discussion throughout a typical day.

Informatics has a tendency to become a family.  We often become more than coworkers.  We even have students that come back to visit and stay in touch.  We are expecting two or three past Informaticans to show up at the Bonfire tonight.  I hope that this tradition will continue and that as in the past we will remember that we can and should be a spiritual support to each other.  

I also charge you not to forget that we are not all about fun and games.  We have a serious job to do and though it might not be the difference between life and death it is the place that God has placed us for this period of our lives.  Personally, when I think about my job, I try to remember that it was ultimately our Heavenly Father that put us here.  I love what my pastor said in one of his lessons, "You want to honor and respect the one who gives you everything."  It is so true.  He has given me everything - being here is such an honor and a privilege.  Getting to know each of you, working with you, guiding you is such a blessing.  In Col 03:17, We are commanded "And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father."  

Our words and actions reflect what is in our souls.  In your Informatics job, you will be seen and heard in the library.  I hope that you choose to represent us well by doing your job as unto the Lord with integrity and going the extra mile.  

Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you that we here together and are alive and the beneficiaries of your grace.  We thank you for the safe arrival of each one of our team members.  We pray a special prayer for Luke today, that you will go before him and comfort him.  We pray that you will heal his body and he will have a minimal amount of scarring.  

We pray for each one of the Informatics students.  They all have such high aspirations and great attitudes.  We pray that you will go before them this year.  We pray that You will protect them not only physically but spiritually.  We pray that they will be motivated to learn more and more about You each day.  We ask that You will help them prioritize their lives and make good decisions.  Please give them wisdom in their studies and encouragement to make them a priority.  We pray that distractions from you, their studies, and their other commitments will be obvious and you will give them the courage to stand up to any temptations.  Go before us today during our meeting and help us to use the time efficiently.  

Barcode Scanner Issue

One of the first issues we have encountered this summer was with our barcode scanners.  Kudos goes out to Matt S, the Informatics Assistant for resolving the issue.  See his communication below:

In our library, we use a bunch of MS 9520 Voyager barcode scanners.  In general, these are fantastic, reliable scanners and we have not had any fail. 

Recently though, we have had some interesting problems as the barcode scanner has randomly read only part of the barcode on an item.

This is what our Circulation department discovered:

“Just wanted to inform you all of another barcode scanning error involving a set of headphones.  We were alerted of the issue today because the book that was erroneously charged was generating overdue notices and the patron came in to ask about it.

The actual charge happened on April 30 at 7:54pm.  The book that was charged has an accession number of 8XXXX.  At the same time my reports show the book being charged, the headphones with barcode 4000000008XXXX were also charged.  (Last five digits of the barcode match the book’s accession number.)  The time stamps are the same down to the second—7:54:27pm.  This makes me think that perhaps nothing even popped up in Voyager to indicate that the book was charged.  This particular set of headphones has been charged 123 times and this is the first time this book was charged as well.  So it’s definitely not consistent.

In previous communications I’ve had with our library consortium, I’ve heard that some scanners allow for setting a fixed code length.  I’m not sure we can have a fixed length because our item barcodes are 14-digits and our ID card barcodes are 12-digits.  But do you know if any settings exist that would allow us to set a minimum length (i.e., greater than or equal to 12 digits)?  I just can’t wrap my head around the irregular nature of these incorrect scans.  From what I’ve documented, this appears to be the 7^th instance of this in the past two and a half years.  Any ideas you might have would be welcome.”

While relatively infrequent, these errors are a nuisance and I decided to set out to find a way to set the minimum barcode scanning length to 12 digits.

I started with a Google search and turned up nothing so I then decided to consult the rather thick manual that came with our 9520 scanners.  After pouring through the manual, I found a section ambiguously entitled “Additional Decode Features” which outlined instructions to set a minimum symbol (or barcode) length.  My excitement was quickly dampened when the instructions for setting a minimum length made little sense.  The instructions were not clear and they incorrectly referenced the location of additional necessary configuration information in the manual.  After more searching through the manual, I finally found what I needed and tried to decipher the required steps.

Essentially, the configuration process requires that you:

1. Scan the “configuration mode” barcode at the beginning of the manual

2. Scan the barcode to enter the minimum symbol length mode

3. Scan barcodes for “code bytes” the set the minimum symbol length

4. Scan the configuration mode barcode one last time

The problem was that the code bytes section, which provided no instructions, made it look like I had to figure out the hexadecimal equivalent for our minimum barcode length.  I kept on going through the prior instructions to figure that out and was about to give up when I decided to ask one of our programmers, Ian, for his perspective.  After looking through it for a few minutes, Ian realized that I had over-thought it and said that the code bytes simply stood for digits.  Could it really be that simple? 

Indeed it was.

I tried it over again and in step three, I scanned the byte that corresponded with 0, then 1, then 2, equating to a minimum length of 12.

I finished the process and scanned some test barcodes that I had printed and VOILA, it worked!  Anything less than 12 digits simply does not scan now.

Now we will get to see if this solves this random problem for us. 

-Matt S

Welcome to Informatics

My name is Ann Johnston and I am the Informatics & Curriculum Librarian at Benner Library located on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University.  My other main responsibilities aside from being the head of Informatics and of the Curriculum Departments is to help cover reference desk and act as library liaison to the Military Science program and the School of Education.  I also support the SGCS Research Librarian with grad school specific endeavors.  

The main focus of this blog will mostly pertain to the Informatics portion of my position.  I’m often asked, “What is it that you do?” or “What exactly is Informatics?”  It is such a difficult question to answer because there are so many aspects of our department and even mini-branches within our department.  The main purpose of Informatics is to research, test, implement, and utilize technology to increase library efficiencies and usability. 

The Informatics office serves as a first line of defense for IT issues, we troubleshoot software issues, collect and produce reports on a wide range of library-related statistics, storage and backup maintenance, maintain the library website, maintain the usage-end of electronic resources, produce the majority of library tutorials, maintain the library labs and printing functionality from a usage/patron perspective, produce a variety of programs usually library specific, iPad training and education, graphic design, photography and photo editing, research and testing of new technologies and programs, and training when needed.

This week our office dropped in our new library website (a two year project that I will discuss in a later entry) and all week my family has been asking me how it is going.  I realized by their questions that not even the people closest to me have a full understanding of what I do for a living.  (For those of you from the Friends generation, I feel a bit like Chandler.)  This project and a couple other accomplishments in our department this week also made me realize that the Informatics Staff do not get enough recognition for some of their accomplishments.  Because of these two issues, I have decided that I need to communicate and document more of what is being accomplished in our office.  Thus the purpose of this blog…

I will be the main author of the blog but I may sometimes ask my staff to write up a general summary or steps followed for specific achievements and I will include those in some of the entries.  I hope that not only my family will gain insight to what we are about, but that the Informatics staff can also show off some of their accomplishments to their family and friends.  If in the end some of our entries prove to help out someone with the same types of issues that will be an added bonus.