Hot off the press

Welcome to the "Hot off the Press" blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she will be sharing her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

Hot off the Press: Part 1

A little delayed, but as promised we are sharing our experience of converting over to Gutenberg duplication as our main circulation method. This first installment will cover our pre-planning steps.

Our Director has been excited about using duplication on demand since she first heard about it. Knowing this and also knowing our KLAS server was reaching end of life and would not support KLAS 7.7, I began conversations with both our IT department and Keystone as early as December 2018 with a plan to have our server replaced by June 2019. I also started discussions with our security officer and our network administrator about DoD to ensure we would be able to use the equipment on our network without issues.

In May 2019, we found out we had been chosen to be the self-hosted pilot site for Gutenberg integration with KLAS. Our IT department had set-up a new virtual server for me and agreed to allow Keystone to submit an image to be placed on the server to run KLAS. Their caveat was that they would not provide support since the software didn’t conform to standards. Since they have never provided support for our servers anyway, I didn’t see this as a problem.

Things we needed to think about between finding out about the pilot and getting the Gutenberg equipment in September:

• Placing an order for additional mail cards beyond what NLS provides
• Preparing cartridges and containers to use for DoD
  • Placing labels on unused cartridges and containers
  • Stripping labels from used cartridges and containers and replacing with new labels
• Notification of patrons – we did a blurb in our newsletter and that was our only notification to patrons.
• Selecting patrons for the pilot (if you do one)
• When to start new patrons on DoD (we started new patrons when we started the pilot)
• When to zero out copy allotment so no new books come
• How to cut-over patrons once the pilot is complete
• Initial default number of books on a cartridge and default number of cartridges (We used 10 books/3 cartridges per patron as our default)

Both NLS and Keystone have documents of things to consider during planning stages. NLS also has a great overview of the necessary IT requirements. Once I received this document, I forwarded it to our Security Officer and Network Administrator to ensure there would be no problems in using the Gutenberg equipment on our network. I think opening these lines of communication early helped the process go more smoothly.

We were finally able to convert to KLAS 7.7 on August 19, 2019. This gave us about a month to iron out any issues before receiving our equipment from NLS on September 20th.

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she will be shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first post in the series is here: Hot off the Press: Part 1.

Hot off the Press: Part 2 - Setting up and testing the Gutenberg Equipment

Warning: a little geeky

On Friday, September 20th, our shipment of equipment arrived from NLS. We received:

• 2 Gutenberg workstations with monitors, keyboard, and mice
• 2 scanners – 1 for check out, 1 for returns
• 2 sets of 20 cartridge slot toaster racks
• 2 sets of USB hubs to attach the toaster racks to the computers
• 2 surge protector power strips
• Lexmark Printer

All of the items are clearly marked with tags to show you how to connect everything.

Back of the Toaster

USB Hub

Hub Top

Computer Back

I immediately set-up the equipment so we could begin testing since I was scheduled to be on vacation the following week. NLS sends instructions in an email of what to do once the equipment arrives. One of the functions on the Gutenberg equipment is a “health check” app. In my hurry to get everything set-up, I forgot to run the health check and contacted both NLS and Keystone to let them know the equipment was installed and turned on.

Picture – HealthCheck_LI (screen shot of Gutenberg desktop with HealthCheck icon circled)

John C. contacted me and asked if I had run the health check since they were unable to connect to our Gutenberg equipment. Since we received two machines, NLS sets one up as the main computer (called CO1A and set with a static IP address) and the other as a secondary computer (called C01A-2). When I ran the health check I found that CO1A wasn’t connecting to the VPNs it needed to access.
I came in on Monday so we could troubleshoot the problem. I contacted our Network Administrator and had him monitor the firewall and traffic coming in and out of the Gutenberg machines using the static IP address we gave CO1A. He could not see any traffic being blocked or any firewall rules preventing access to the system. While I was on the phone with him, I was also having email conversations with NLS and Keystone staff about the problem.

Finally, during a conference call with John C and Mark at Keystone, Mark made a comment about CO1A not connecting to our DNS server. I looked at the settings on the machine again and realized the IP address for our gateway server had been entered as the IP address for our DNS server. Once I corrected the IP address in the settings for CO1A rebooted it, everything starting working. Then Mark and John C worked their magic to finalize the connection and push a test order through the system.

So lesson learned – double check all the settings on the Gutenberg machines very carefully once they are received and set-up.

Up next: Testing the system

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she will be shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first two posts in the series are here:

• Hot off the Press: Part 1
• Hot off the Press: Part 2

Hot off the Press: Part 3, The Pilot

We received our equipment on a Friday and got everything working on the following Monday. Even though we had the system working on Sept. 23rd, we didn’t do any testing until I returned to the office on Sept. 30th.

When the Gutenberg system is first installed, it is operating in “sandbox” mode and is connected to the preview database for KLAS. We tried to push through a few orders for staff from the preview database, but they weren’t being copied onto cartridges. It was finally determined that KLAS and Gutenberg weren’t syncing with each other so the orders weren’t getting processed. Once Keystone restarted the syncing process, the orders came through. So on Oct. 2nd, we switched from sandbox to production mode so we could really test the system by starting the pilot.

We began the pilot with 50 existing patrons. For the existing patrons, we decided we would send out 2 cartridges with 3 books on them so we could get them back during the month long pilot and test the return part of the system too. We also made the decision to not send books out to new patrons about a week before we started the pilot. So since the end of September, all the new patrons have been put on the duplication model. New patrons were set-up to receive 3 cartridges with 10 books each on them.

On Oct. 3rd, we sent out our first 76 DoD cartridges! Yay!

The most consistent problem we noticed in the first few weeks of running Gutenberg was that daily KLAS and Gutenberg would stop syncing and we’d have to contact Keystone to restart the process. Because the problem was so consistent they wrote a temporary fix to automatically restart the service each morning to try to help with the process. Within 2 weeks of starting the pilot the problem has been solved and a fix applied during an update of KLAS.

We also had problems with serving walk-in patrons due to the time it would take to process an order. At first, Keystone and Gutenberg were only syncing every 15 minutes. So we would place an order and potentially have to wait up to 15 minutes to see if the order synced or not. If it didn’t sync and we needed to contact Keystone to restart the service, another 15 minutes would pass. Many times we would just pull individual books from the shelves and check them out using front desk since we are unable to assign books to a duplication patron. However, I believe the sync times have been cut down and we don’t usually have problems serving walk-ins now. An order for a walk-in patron, will be sent fairly quickly, even if we are still in the midst of making cartridges for the day. So mail room staff have to check mail cards as they scan each completed cartridge to look for the walk-in patron’s order.

A big learning curve came in how to best figure out how to set the nightly settings for DoD, since it works a little differently than it did before. When I would call Nancy, she would tell me “theoretically” it should work this way. I had to just make adjustments and then see what happened afterwards. Luckily our pilot patrons were very understanding during the process.

Other minor problem we encountered (that have all been fixed now):

• Service queue was adding all the books in a series, even if the patron had already had them before.
• Service queue was adding oldest books from request list, when we had the system set to add the newest books first.
• KLAS would allow orders larger than 4GB, which would then sit on Gutenberg since we didn’t have a cartridge big enough to copy the order
• Duplication orders were still being processed for patrons with a block on their account.

On Oct. 22nd, we participated in a conference with NLS, Keystone and Georgia to discuss how we felt things were going with our pilots. Both of us agreed that there were some minor problems, but nothing to prevent us from moving forward with beginning to convert the rest of our patrons over to DoD. We decided to start the conversion process at the beginning of November with the goal of being completely done with the conversion by the end of the year.

Statistics for our pilot (10/3 – 11/1):

• 644 cartridges sent out
• 192 patrons on DoD
• 91 cartridges returned

Up next: Converting existing patrons

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first three posts in the series are here:

• Hot off the Press: Part 1
• Hot off the Press: Part 2
• Hot off the Press: Part 3

Hot off the Press: Part 4, Converting existing patrons

On November 4th, we began the process of converting our existing patrons over to the duplication model. We decided to go with our high-demand patrons (we have a separate patron type for high-demand) first, followed by students. Then we worked on converting the remainder of our patrons based on the number of books they were receiving. We initially set patrons up to get 1 cartridge with 10 books on it.

The first day I converted 100 patrons over. However, I realized that in order to complete the conversion by the end of the year, we would need to convert more than that each day. After discussing this with our mailroom supervisor, it was decided to convert 200 patrons each day.

As I ran queries in KLAS to find the patrons I needed to convert, I created Excel spreadsheets with lists of 200 patron ID’s and saved them as text files with the date I was converting them to DoD. Then I could pull the query into KLAS and use the Batch Update Profile tool to convert all 200 patrons at one time. Then I would scroll through the records to verify everything looked like it should.
One of the problems we had early on was duplication orders being sent to patrons that had a block on their account. As I was scrolling through the patrons, I would find those patrons and make their digital book service inactive so no cartridges would go out. Once the problem was fixed in KLAS, I changed all these patrons back to active for digital books, so those that had an automated date to restart service would get a cartridge.

One week after a patron was converted to DoD, I would to run the same query again and bump their number of cartridges up to 2, and after another week, set them to our max of 3 cartridges. We gradually increased their number so they didn’t get all 3 cartridges at once and also to try and not overwhelm mailroom staff.

Most days, we were getting around 250 orders. We figured once our conversion was done, we would get somewhere between 300-400 cartridges per day. In order to try and meet those numbers and see how it would affect mailroom staff, I upped the number of patrons being converted to DoD to 300 per day.

Around mid-November, we noticed that KLAS and Gutenberg didn’t appear to by syncing again. Orders we created in the morning we not being sent to the Gutenberg machines. We were unable to serve walk-in patrons because their orders wouldn’t go through. After looking into the problem, we discovered that the batch manager was being overwhelmed with creating service queues for the patrons I had converted that morning. After figuring out this was the problem, I didn’t do conversions until after 3:30 in the afternoon. John C. at Keystone also mentioned putting something in place on KLAS so the service queue would function more efficiently (not sure if this was done or not).

Around the same time, NLS had problems with one of their servers, and our duplication order didn’t run in the morning. Because I had converted patrons in the morning, our order didn’t start copying until 3:30 in the afternoon. That caused us to have almost 1000 cartridges the next day. I guess it was a good test for how much duplication we can get done in a day.

With this large order, we realized the copying process went fairly quickly and we could easily make this many cartridges each day. However, printing the mailing cards took most of the day. So we decided to invest in a 2nd printer to alleviate the bottleneck at the printer.

On 12/3, I converted the remainder of our individual patrons to duplication and also the 200 organization accounts we had on automated digital book service. This resulted in our largest duplication order of 1,015 cartridges, although I’m not sure why. Once this conversion was done, I spent the next 2 weeks moving all the patrons up to 3 cartridges each. The process was completely done by 12/11/19, which worked out great since we needed to be closed the week on 12/16 due to a building maintenance issue.

Statistics for 11/4/2019 – 12/31/2019:

• 15,721 cartridges sent out
• 3,790 cartridges returned
• 4,711 patrons received duplication cartridges

Up next: Problems and ongoing issues

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first four posts in the series are here:

• Hot off the Press: Part 1
• Hot off the Press: Part 2
• Hot off the Press: Part 3
• Hot off the Press: Part 4

Hot off the Press: Part 5, Problems and ongoing issues

Here is a recap of some of the issues we have/are experiencing with Gutenberg.

Service Queue/Order issues:

• With DoD, patrons now have to the entire collection on BARD. Because of this they are getting books in subjects they may not have been before and also getting a lot of the newer books. We get a lot of RA calls for patrons saying I would never order books like this. The RAs go through their subjects and work with them on getting them the type of books they like. This has brought up the issue that there is no easy way to empty the service queue. Each item must be deleted one at a time. If all the items are deleted out of the queue, KLAS hangs up and usually needs to be restarted.
• Because of the issue above, we are still in flux as to the default number of books we want in the service queue and where the refill point should be. This has also been problematic for us as it results in cartridges going out with less than the 10 we have them set for.
• When RAs are trying to create an order for a patron, it takes our system over 5 minutes to open the “Create Dup Order From Queue” screen. This makes it difficult to create orders for patrons when also taking phone calls because of the time involved. Many times they will have to make a note and go back and create the patron’s order later.
• Cartridges will go out for our on-demand patrons, so we need to have their NS Cutoff set to 0 to prevent that from happening.
• Local Recordings:
• We have been working with both NLS and Keystone to figure out how to get our locally recorded books that are not on BARD to work with Gutenberg. We think we have come up with a solution, but it will take some time to implement.
• Keystone is also working on having functionality for Serials in place for Gutenberg so that we can put our local newsletter on the duplications cartridges.

Cartridge Errors:

• When the service queue is filled, it will select books from our local recordings for patrons. Because we had not solved the problem with our local books, this would cause the cartridge have an “error” status. There is currently not a way to run reports or queries in KLAS to find these errors and make sure those patrons are getting service.
• Also for cartridges that are in error status – the books on the cartridge are not added as a has-had to the patrons record since the cartridge never got checked out. But since the cartridge is on the orders tab, those books are not eligible for selection. There is currently no easy way to get those books back on the service queue.

Gutenberg Hubs:

• Sometimes a cartridge is scanned and the internal and external barcode have not been linked. There is a way to configure a port on the Gutenberg machine to plug in a cartridge and have that connection made. NLS is now sending out the machines with this port already configured. Ours was not sent that way and I had to create the port myself. Once I configured the port, Gutenberg stopped recognizing the first hub in the toaster rack attached to that computer. I don’t know if the two events were related since we have ongoing issues with Gutenberg not recognizing hubs at various times. We are working with NLS on this. It’s a fairly simple fix, but it is an issue.
• Offender (Inmate) Accounts:
• We handle our offender mail separately from our other patrons’ mail. Because of this, we have not converted our offenders to duplication service since we don’t currently have a way to run their cartridge orders separately from the rest of the orders.
• Cartridge issues:
• We ordered a supply of cartridges from Perkins to help with the problem of large orders being created. The Perkins cartridges do not have external barcodes on them. We had to work with NLS to figure out a way to be able to use these cartridges with Gutenberg. Since we placed the order, KLAS put a fix in place to prevent orders larger than 4GB to be sent to Gutenberg for copying.
• We also ran into problems trying to repurpose the green cartridges we purchased to use. NLS had to make a setting change in Gutenberg for us to be able to use these cartridges with the system. However, we have to go into another computer, plug in the cartridges and unlock them with the DTB Protect software before we can use them with Gutenberg.

I hope you enjoyed my posts on our conversion experience. Both Debbi and I have documents we kept during the process that we would be happy to share. I’ve also started a post in the discussion forum if you have questions or would like me to cover something not included in these posts.